“Much good her tender sensibilities did me,” he said. “And her best.”
“Well, they did.” She had herself firmly in hand again and looked like the stern, proper lady with whom he was more familiar. She sat with rigidly correct posture and a frown between her brows—she frowned rather often. “The orphanage is a good one. So, I assume, was the art school. You are a talented artist, but would you be doing as well as you are now if you had not gone there? She paid your fees. Could you have gone otherwise? Or would you have spent your life chopping meat at a butcher’s shop while your talent withered away undeveloped and unused? She could not show her affection openly. It is just not done in polite society for bastards to be openly acknowledged. And that is exactly what you are, Joel. Just as it is exactly what I am. Neither of us is to blame. It just is. Your grandmother did what she could regardless to see that you had all the necessities of life in a good home as you grew up and to help make your dream come true when you were old enough to leave.”
“All the necessities.” He stood with his hands at his back, looking down at her. He did not want to hear excuses for his grandmother. He wanted to feel angry and aggrieved, and he wanted someone to feel aggrieved for him. “Everything except love.”
“So, would you rather not know what you learned today?” she asked him, her expression stern. “Would you prefer to have gone through life not even sure that your name was rightfully your own? Do you wish you had not gone to that house today?”
He thought about it. “I suppose not,” he said grudgingly. “But what have I learned, Camille, beyond the very barest facts? My mother would never say who my father was. Cox-Phillips concluded he was the Italian painter solely on the evidence of my looks and the fact that I paint. I do not know anything about my mother and next to nothing about my grandmother. My great-uncle is the curmudgeon you said he used to be. I have no wish to know anything about his other three relatives, who are presumably mine too. And I do not imagine they would be delighted to know anything about their long-lost relative, an orphanage bastard, either.”
“Mr. Cox-Phillips invited you to call on him, then, just in order to tell you the truth about yourself before he dies?” she asked him.
He stared at her. Had he not told her? No, he supposed he had not. “He wanted to write me into his will this afternoon,” he said. “He wanted to leave me everything. Just to spite those other three. I said no, absolutely not. I was not going to have him use me in such a way.”
She stared back at him.
“I suppose I am glad to have learned something of my identity at last,” he said. “But my mother and grandmother are dead, and if my father is still living I have no way of tracing him. As for my mother’s uncle, he has apparently known for twenty-seven years where I am and has shown no interest in making himself known to me. I have done very well without him and can continue to do so for a week or two longer until he dies.”
“Oh, Joel.” She sighed and relaxed into a woman again. She leaned back on the sofa. “You are hurting very badly. And you are trying to harden yourself against the pain and even deny it is there. You will feel a great deal better if you admit it.”
“And this is a pearl of wisdom from someone who knows?” he said.
Color flooded her cheeks and he was immediately contrite. Was he now going to lash out at the very person he had sought out for comfort? She had given it with unstinting generosity. “Yes, that is exactly right,” she said. “It feels a bit shameful to be suffering, does it not? As though one must have done something to deserve it. Or as if one were admitting to some weakness of character at being unable to shake off the hurt. But hiding it can turn one to marble with nothing but hollowness inside—and an unacknowledged pain. Do you believe Mr. Cox-Phillips was exaggerating when he told you he had only a week or two left to live?”
“No,” he said. “It was clearly what his physician had told him and what he believed. And he looks far from well. He is eighty-five years old and looks a hundred. He is tired of living. He has outlasted everyone who has ever meant anything to him and probably everything too.”
“Did he try to persuade you not to leave?” she asked. “Did he ask you to visit again?”
“No to both questions,” he said. “He invited me out there purely on a rather malicious whim, Camille. I refused to play a part in his game when he had probably expected that I would leap at the chance of inheriting whatever fortune he has. That was the end of the matter. There was no grand sentiment on either side when he told me who I was. He did not clasp me to his bosom as his long-lost grand-nephew. But then, I was never lost, was I? Only unclaimed, unwanted baggage. He made not the smallest pretense of feeling for me any of the sentiment he claimed his sister felt. Yes, it was a bit upsetting to learn the truth about myself so abruptly and unexpectedly and dispassionately. I cannot deny it. My head and every emotion were in a whirl after I had left him. I know I wandered the streets here for hours, though I would not be able to tell you exactly where I went. When I burst in upon you, I behaved like a madman and dragged you here when it was probably the last thing you wanted to do after a day of teaching. But you are wrong when you say I am still hurting. I am not, and I have you to thank for that. You have been kindness itself. I will not keep you any longer, though. I will walk you back home.”
“Joel, you are speaking absolute nonsense.” The grim schoolmistress had returned to confront him from the sofa. “You are going to have to go back. You must realize that.”