A Family and a Fortune (35 page)

‘Now, little boy, no foolishness on this occasion.'

‘Those two great, clumsy lads carried Uncle up with hands as gentle as a woman's,' said Aubrey, blinking his eyes.

‘Poor Miss Griffin, I am shocked by her appearance,' said Justine. ‘She looks more worn than Uncle.'

‘Yes, dear, I am troubled too,' said Matty. ‘It seems sad that her connexion with us should bring her to this. I have never seen her looking in this way before.'

‘You must have, Aunt Matty, at the times of your own illnesses.'

Matty gave a smile and a sigh, as if it were no use to make statements doomed to rejection.

‘This was arduous nursing,' said Maria. ‘It could not be helped.'

‘Of course not, dear. If it could have been it would have. That is the thing that makes us sorry.'

‘The nursing has not been much for some time,' said Edgar. ‘Miss Griffin is looking fairly well. She was upset by the motion of the carriage.'

‘And Father behaved with simple chivalry,' said Aubrey. ‘Well, it would have been no good for Clement to be a witness.'

‘Oh, I believe she always is!' said Justine, sitting up straight.

Matty gave a laugh.

‘That sort of thing does make people look ill for the moment,' said Maria.

‘And Miss Griffin is not used to driving,' said Justine. Matty put back her head in mirth.

‘Did you know, Aunt Matty, that she was to have a little house of her own?' said Justine, driven to the sudden announcement. ‘Uncle is to make it possible.'

‘No, dear,' said Matty, with her eyes dilating. ‘I did not know. How could I when I was not told? When was that arranged?'

‘When they met after - before Uncle was ill.'

‘Well, I am glad, dear; glad that our long relation is ending like this; glad that I brought her to a family who were to do this for her. It is good that our friendship should have this culmination.'

‘It was not the one which Aunt Matty planned when she turned her out of doors,' said Mark to his brothers. ‘There was no question of any alternative roof.'

‘I am sure you are glad, Aunt Matty,' said Justine.

‘Are you, dear? So you accept something that I say?'

‘And I am sure it will be the beginning of a new relation with Miss Griffin.'

Matty gave a little trill of laughter.

‘Now, Aunt Matty, what exactly amuses you?'

‘My relation with her, when you have all used her as a sick nurse and nothing else!' said Matty, bending her head and speaking in an impeded voice.

‘Maria, would you advise me to move out of hearing of my aunt?'

Matty sat up and looked from her niece to her friend.

‘If you think there would be anything gained,' said Maria.

Justine rose and went to a distant seat, and her aunt looked after her with open mockery.

‘So I am too dangerous a tinder for my niece's flint and steel. Or is it the other way round?'

‘Either account will serve,' said Clement.

‘Well, well, then we must try not to come against each other. Perhaps we are too much alike.'

‘No, I don't think that is it, Aunt Matty,' said Justine. ‘Oh, what is the good of my moving to a distance if I must communicate from it?'

‘No good,' said her brother.

‘I should move back again, dear,' said Matty easily. ‘I don't think it does achieve anything.'

Justine returned and sat down even nearer to her aunt, raising her shoulders.

Matty looked at her for a moment and turned to Maria.

‘You have the whole of your family at home?' she said, stooping as if unconsciously to free her dress from contact with her niece.

‘They are all at home as a usual thing. Clement is away for the term, but he gives us a good deal of time.'

‘He hasn't the house of his own yet?'

‘I don't want it yet; I am putting it off,' said Clement, in a quick, harsh tone. ‘I am thinking about it. I shall have it before long.'

‘I have rather an uncompromising nephew and niece.'

‘Well, we say what we mean, Aunt Matty,' began Justine. ‘Oh, it is not worth while to waste a thought on us. Here is the person who matters! We might be twice as good or twice as bad and still be as nothing. And Father in attendance, after hovering about upstairs until he should wake! So that is why he crept away. I need not have wondered.'

‘Can we all quite agree that we are as nothing?' said Matty in a low, arch, rapid tone, looking up at Dudley as he passed. ‘I have never felt it of myself, or had it felt of me, if I can judge by the signs. So I must hold myself apart from that generalization, though it is not a thing that matters on this occasion.'

‘This is the occasion in question,' said Clement.

‘I have not had any sleep,' said Dudley. ‘I could not lose myself. I may be better down here amongst you all. If you see me dropping off, you could all steal quietly away. Perhaps your talk will lull me to sleep unawares.'

Edgar followed his brother, looking as if he had no connexion with him and holding his face to prevent an encounter of their eyes. Dudley sat down by the fire and signed for a cushion. His niece was at his side in an instant, settling the cushion behind him and thrusting a rug down on either side of his knees.

‘I think Justine is a little more than nothing,' said Matty, with a smile.

‘I am Uncle's willing slave. That is all I ask to be.'

‘Well, I would ask nothing better, if I were permitted such a character. But, as I have said, it has not been the one assigned to me.'

‘Well, you have been an invalid,' said Justine, making a sally towards the rug where it was working up. ‘Justine explains it,' said Aubrey.

‘Not always, dear. Not when I was your age, for instance,' ‘I don't think this talk will lull me to sleep,' said Dudley.

‘Well, I may not be a slave,' said Matty, holding up a piece of needlework for his eyes, ‘but I have been willing in your service. A little bit of something made by a friend means more, I hope, than the same thing bought out of an ample purse.'

‘Is every stitch in it worked by loving hands?'

In an instant Justine had the work out of her aunt's hands and before Dudley's eyes.

‘Gently, dear, the stitches will unravel,' said Matty, leaning forward.

‘Barely an inch or two. Nothing compared to the satisfaction of proving to Uncle that the work is all your own.'

‘He would have taken Aunt Matty's word,' said Mark.

Matty retrieved the work and placing it on her knee, set herself to remedy the damage.

‘Not much harm done, is there?' said her niece.

‘A piece to be worked again, dear. It does not matter. I have all the time to do it, as no doubt you thought.'

‘Let me do it, just the piece that came undone. Then you will have worked the whole of it once.'

‘I only want loving thoughts stitched into it,' said Dudley.

‘You shall have them,' said Matty, in a full tone. ‘Every thought shall be loving and every stitch mine, some of them doubly done.'

‘Oh, we forgot to ask, Aunt Matty, how you have been managing without Miss Griffin,' said Justine, recalled by her aunt's industry to the fact that she was used to aid.

‘Forgot to ask!' said Mark to Aubrey. ‘I would have died rather than do so.'

‘I think I shall die, now it is done. If I don't I don't know how to manage.'

‘Don't talk about dying in that light way,' said Dudley.

‘You have no right. You have no idea of what it is to hover between life and death.'

‘No experience of the valley of the shadow,' said Aubrey.

‘None at all. I suppose there will be something in my face now that there is not in yours.'

‘Don't let us talk about that time,' said Justine, with a shudder. ‘Let us only remember it enough to be thankful that it is past.'

‘And to feel the value of my presence in your home.'

The words recalled the other way in which Dudley might have been lost to them. Justine moved to her uncle and stood stroking his hair, and her father's eyes followed her hand.

‘Father might like to help Justine to smooth Uncle's hair,' murmured Aubrey, ‘to help his only daughter.'

‘Well, Aunt Matty, what have you to tell us about yourself?' said Justine, putting more energy into her hand. ‘We have been too lost in our own troubles to give a thought to things outside.'

‘Your aunt has been in similar case,' said Edgar.

‘Now there is a nice, undertsanding word,' said Matty. ‘And it is indeed a true one, even though in my case the things were not outside myself.'

‘Aunt Matty threw Father a grateful glance,' said Aubrey.

‘So I did, dear. I do not get too much understanding since Mother died, and Grandpa,' said Matty, adapting her words to her nephew. ‘So much of it went with them. I do not mean that I expect more than I have. It would be idle indeed to do so. But I am the more grateful when it comes.'

‘Well, let us all emerge from that stage and take more interest in each other,' said Justine. ‘You tell us of your plans and we will hear them.'

‘Well, dear, I have none as yet, as your father would know. Plans need thought and attention, and they have not been forthcoming.'

‘Try to do what you can about them at the moment,' said Maria.

‘Shall I, dear? I have been wondering when I should hear
your voice. All these loquacious young relatives of mine seem to overwhelm you.'

‘I have never been a talkative person. Perhaps I have not much to say.'

‘Don't be afraid, Aunt Matty; Maria can hold her own,' said Justine.

‘Well, now, I have been asked for my plans. So I must make them and make them at once, so as not to keep people waiting. Well, as Miss Griffin is no longer to depend on me for a home, I must look for someone else who will find it a help to do so. For I cannot rely upon a maid-servant for the greater part of my companionship.'

‘Indeed no,' said Justine, ‘though it would not be the greater part. You are wise to fill Miss Griffin's place, in so far as you can do so.'

‘Yes, dear, we all have to deal like that with places, or we all do. And, you know' - Matty gave her niece a different smile - ‘I do not make a sorrow of a friend's good fortune.'

‘Ought the next person who is to depend on Aunt Matty for a home,' said Aubrey, ‘to be told that it may be in the garden?'

‘I have heard that snow is a warm covering,' said Mark. ‘I don't know if Aunt Matty had.'

‘Uncle had not, or he need not have given Miss Griffin his coat.'

‘Depend does not seem a word to use of Miss Griffin,' said Justine. ‘She earned her independence, if anyone did.'

‘It is clear what your aunt means,' said Edgar.

‘Father, I believe you are jealous of me for my proximity to Uncle,' said Justine, hastening away from Dudley with no idea that her words had any real truth.

Edgar, who only knew it at the moment, put a chair for his daughter and smiled at her as she took it.

‘Dear Father, with his one ewe lamb!'

‘Suppose Father had more than one,' said Aubrey.

‘Well, Miss Griffin has certainly earned her independence in these last weeks,' said Matty. ‘And she is to have it.

That is so good to hear.'

‘Uncle had arranged to give it to her before he was ill,' said Justine.

‘Had he, dear? Well, that does not make it any less good. And if she had not earned it then, she has now. Or if she had earned it then, she has now earned it doubly. Let us put it like that. So she has a right to it. And I shall like so much to see her in her own home, as she has always seen me in mine.'

‘I really believe you will, Aunt Matty.'

Matty appeared once more to strive with her laughter.

‘Where is Miss Griffin?' she said, looking round as she overcame it. ‘Does she not want to be with you all? Or is she afraid of so many of us?'

‘She is afraid of one of us,' said Mark. ‘And so am I.'

‘Where has Clement gone?' said Edgar.

‘I expect to his room,' said Aubrey. ‘He is always slinking away by himself.'

‘Well, he has seen me,' said Dudley, ‘and satisfied himself that I am on the mend.'

‘And to do him justice, Uncle, he did not go until he had done that,' said Justine. ‘And he has his work. And we shall have someone else disappearing tomorrow. These holidays are at an end and they come too often. Maria and I are agreed.'

‘Aubrey could not work while he was gnawed by anxiety.'

‘Well, the relief will be a tonic now.' ‘I may wish to give myself to thankfulness for a time,' said Aubrey.

‘We all feel inclined for that, but the world has to go on.'

‘I suppose it would have gone on if I had died,' said Dudley. ‘That is what we hear about the world. I think the world is worse than anything. Even Aubrey's lessons stopped.'

‘They are about to begin again,' said Justine, with resolute descent to daily life. ‘There are many things in Clement which he might emulate.'

‘And Clement might take many lessons from his quiet
little brother,' said Aubrey, looking to see his stepmother smile and inconsistently looking away as she did so.

‘I suppose you will all understand each other better now,' said Dudley. ‘People do that after anxiety. I can feel that I have not been ill in vain.'

‘It seems that there ought to be more understanding,' said Matty, with a faint sigh.

‘Oh, people are not often as ill as I was.'

‘How does it feel to be so ill that you might die?' said Aubrey, with a desire to know.

‘I can hardly say. Perhaps I was ready. I really don't understand about people who are not. When you are delirious and do not recognize people, it is hard to see how you can feel remorse for a lifetime and prepare yourself for eternity. I cannot help thinking that even people who die, are not as ill as I was. I think they are sometimes surprisingly well, even perhaps at their best.'