A Family and a Fortune (20 page)

‘So you are not too absorbed in the new excitement to remember the old aunt. That is so sweet of all of you. And I do indeed bring you my congratulations. I feel I am rather at the bottom of this. So, Blanche, I have given you something at last. I am not to feel that I do nothing but receive. That is not always to be my lot. I am the giver this time, and I can feel it is a rare and precious gift. And I do not grudge it, even if it may mean yielding up a part of it myself. No, Dudley, it is yours and it is fully given. You and I are both people who can give. That is often true of people who accept. And you find yourself in the second position this time.'

‘There have to be people there or giving would be no good.'

‘We are all there together,' said Blanche, who looked excited and confused. ‘Edgar's sister will be a sister to me, as his brother has been my brother.'

‘We have always valued the relation,' said Matty, taking Blanche's hand. ‘And now we are to be three instead of two, we shall have even more to value. I must feel that I also am accepting. I shall try to feel it and not dwell upon what I relinquish.'

‘I do not feel that I am losing anything. I know Dudley too well.'

‘Well, if I feel I am giving up a little, I yield it gladly, feeling that others' gain is more than my loss, or more important. For I have been a dependent person who has had to make demands; and now there has come a demand on me, I am glad to meet it fully. I have had my share of weakness and welcome a position where I have some of the strength.'

‘I need not talk about what I am accepting,' said Maria, ‘in this house where it is known. I am giving all I have in return.'

‘Simple and telling, Miss Sloane, as we should have expected,' said Justine. ‘But we did not need you to say it, and hope that it was not at any cost. And we will all give you on our side what is right and meet. And rest assured, Aunt Matty, that we are not unmindful of your sacrifice. If we seem to be a little distant today, it is because the march of affairs is carrying us with it. Let us make our little sally and return in course.'

‘Edgar, we must have a word from you,' said Matty. ‘It may seem hard when you are giving up the most, but you are a person from whom we expect much.'

‘Surely not in that line,' said Clement.

‘Well, Aunt Matty, I think it
is
hard,' said Justine. ‘And you have given the reason. Well, just a word, and then we must make a move. We must eat even on the day of Uncle's engagement. Uncle's engagement! Who could know what the words mean to us?'

‘I think that will do for my speech,' said Edgar.

‘Then that is enough,' said Justine, taking his arm and setting out for the dining room.

‘Dudley must sit by Miss Sloane,' said Blanche, ‘and then that is the whole duty of them both.'

‘Shall I say my little original word?' said Aubrey.

‘Now, little boy, silence is the best kind of word from you.'

‘I should like to see Clement come out of himself.'

‘You go back into yourself and stay there.'

‘Does Miss Sloane know how bad notice is for Clement?'

‘You must forgive him, Miss Sloane; he is excited,' said Justine, giving an excuse which both satisfied the truth and silenced her brother.

‘Blanche, your cough is worse,' said Matty. ‘I believe you ought to be in bed.'

‘I could not be, dear, on a day like this. What would happen to them all? I am indispensable.'

‘You are indeed, my dear. That is what I mean.'

‘Mother was condemned to remaining in one room,' said Justine, ‘but I had not the heart to carry out the sentence. Our little leader shut up alone, with the rest of us observing this celebration! My feelings baulked at it.'

‘It is a mistake to be all heart and no head,' said Clement.

‘I am quite well,' said his mother. ‘I am only a little worked up. I cannot sit calmly through a day like this. I was never a phlegmatic person. I feel so keenly what affects other people. I get taken right out of myself. I almost feel that I could rise up and float above you all. I don't know when I have felt so light all through myself. I don't believe that even your uncle feels as much lifted above his level.'

‘I see that people really do rejoice in others' joy,' said Dudley.

‘You have done your share of it, Uncle,' said Justine. ‘And it is well that something else has come in time. A spell of natural selfishness will do you good. Give yourself up to it. We have schooled ourselves for the experience. It will be a salutary one. And a proportion of your thoughts will return to us, supported by someone else's.'

‘So for the time I have no uncle,' said Aubrey.

‘You will have a second aunt, dear,' said Matty. ‘Come and sit by your first one. Aunts can be a compensation, and you shall find that they can.'

‘Perhaps I shall be Miss Sloane's especial nephew.'

‘You do not deserve it, but I have an idea that you may be,' said Justine. ‘Naughty little boy, to have a way of being people's favourite and knowing it! Confess now, Miss Sloane, that you already look upon him with a partial eye.'

Maria smiled at Aubrey but was not in time to check a glance at his brothers.

‘Ah, now, you may not be so much the chosen person this time. You can take it to heart and retire into the background,' said Justine, as Aubrey did both these things.

‘Mother, you don't seem to know what you are doing,' said Mark. ‘You keep on beginning to eat and forgetting and beginning again. You have not accomplished a mouthful in the last ten minutes.'

‘I am a little wrought up, dear. I can't treat this as an ordinary day. Your uncle has never been engaged before.'

‘Never and may not be again,' said Clement. ‘He will not spoil Mother's appetite many times.'

Blanche began to laugh, pursuing something with her fork and continuing her mirth as she had continued her tears, as if she had not the strength to overcome it.

‘Mother, you are over excited,' said Justine. ‘You are on the point of becoming hysterical. Not that that is any great matter. It is pleasant for Uncle in a way to see how you feel yourself involved in his life. It is not your own interest that looms large to you, is it?'

Blanche looked up as if she did not follow the words.

‘You are faint from want of food, Blanche,' said Edgar. ‘You ate nothing at breakfast. You must make an effort.'

‘I can't make an effort,' said his wife, in another tone. ‘I don't feel well enough. And I do not like being told what I am to do. I am used to doing what I choose. I am able to judge for myself.' She thrust her plate against her glass, and sat watching the result in a sort of childish relief in having wreaked her feeling.

‘Mother is not herself,' said Justine, rising to deal with the damage, and speaking for her mother s ears, though not directly to her. ‘She is at once more and less than herself, shall we say?'

Blanche watched the process of clearing up with vague interest.

‘That is one of the best table napkins,' she said, reaching towards it. ‘That wine does not stain, does it? I only put them out last week,' Her voice died away and she sat looking before her as if she were alone.

‘We must take - it would be well to take her temperature,' said Edgar.

‘That was in my mind, Father. I was waiting for the end of luncheon.'

‘Send Jellamy away,' said Blanche suddenly. ‘He keeps on watching me.'

‘Jellamy can fetch a thermometer,' said Mark, giving an explanatory smile to the man. ‘That will kill two birds with one stone.'

Jellamy vanished in complete good-will towards his mistress, and Blanche gave a laugh which passed to a fit of coughing, and sat still and shaken, with her eyes moving about in a motionless head.

‘Mother's breathing is very quick and hard,' said Clement.

‘She must have been feverish all day,' said Mark.

‘We all see that now,' said Justine sharply. ‘It is no good to wish that someone had seen it before. That will not help. We can only deal with things as they are.'

‘I thought perhaps no one would notice, if I did not speak,' said Blanche, as if to herself. ‘Sometimes people don't see anything.'

Edgar had come to his wife's side. Dudley and Maria had risen and were talking apart. Matty sat with her eyes on her sister, her expression wavering between uneasiness and irritation at the general concern for someone else. Aubrey looked about for reassurance. There was the sudden stir and threat of acknowledged anxiety.

The thermometer told its tale. Blanche lost her patience
twice and delayed its action. Matty and Dudley talked to amuse her while she waited. She was interrupted by her cough, and they all realized its nature and its frequency. Her sister's face became anxious and nothing else.

‘I heard Mother coughing in the night like that,' said Aubrey.

‘Then why did you not say so?' said Clement.

‘That is no good, Clement,' said Justine. ‘We all wish we had taken earlier alarm. It was not for Aubrey to give us the lead.'

Blanche was found to be in high fever, and seemed to take pleasure and even pride in the discovery.

‘I never make a fuss about nothing,' she said, as she sat by the fire while her room was warmed. ‘I have always been the last to complain about myself. When I was a child they had to watch me to see if I was ill. I never confessed to it, whatever I felt.'

‘That was naughty, dearest,' said Matty. ‘And you are not a child now.'

‘An ignorant and arrogant boast, Mother,' said Mark.

‘Poor Uncle!' said Justine, in a low tone, touching Dudley's sleeve. ‘On your engagement day! We are not forgetting it. You know that.'

‘I am oblivious of it. I am lost in the general feeling.'

‘I often kept about when people less ill than I was were in bed,' continued Blanche, her eyes following this divergence of interest from herself. ‘I remember I once waited on my sister when my temperature was found to be higher than hers. I daresay Miss Sloane remembers hearing of that.'

‘Don't tell such dreadful stories, dear,' said Matty.

‘But I often think that not giving in is the best way to get well,' said Blanche, putting back her hand to a shawl that was round her shoulders, and glancing back at it as a shiver went through her. ‘Staying in bed lowers people's resistance and gives the illness a stronger hold. Not that I am really ill this time, though a bad chill is something near to it. I shall not give in for long. I am a person who likes to do everything for herself.'

‘It is not always the way to do anything for other people, dear.'

‘You will do it once too often, Mother,' said Clement, glad that his words were broken by the opening door.

The room was said to be ready. The doctor was heard to arrive. It seemed incredible that an hour before the household had been taking its usual course, even more incredible that the course had been broken as it had.

Blanche sat still, with her eyes narrower than usual and her hands and face less than their normal size, stooping forward to avoid the full breath which brought the cough.

‘I think people know what suits themselves. I have never done myself any harm by keeping about. I shall not stay in bed a moment longer than I must. The very thought of it makes me feel worse. I am worse now just from thinking about it. People's minds do influence their bodies.' Her tone showed that she was accounting for her feelings to herself.

The doctor gave his word at a glance. Blanche was wrapped up and taken to her room. Her sons returned with the chair which had carried her, and glanced at each other as they set it down.

‘What a very light chair!' said Clement, giving it a push.

‘People who are light are often stronger than heavier ones,' said his brother.

Aubrey began to cry.

‘Come, come, all of you,' said Justine. ‘Mother can't have got any lighter in the last days. She can never have weighed much. I always feel a clodhopper beside her.'

‘When is the nurse coming?' said Mark.

‘As soon as she can,' said Matty, who had returned from seeing the doctor. ‘That is good news, isn't it? And I have some better news for you. We are sending for Miss Griffin. Your uncle and Maria have gone to fetch her, and she is the best nurse I have ever known. That is why I am yielding her up to you. So Aunt Matty provides the necessary person a second time.'

Miss Griffin arrived with her feelings in her face, concern for Blanche and pleasure in the need of herself, and settled at once into the sickroom as her natural place. She had
more feeling for helpless people than for whole ones, and it was Matty's lameness rather than the length of their union, which made the bond she could not break. She began to talk to Blanche of Dudley's engagement, feeling it an interest which could not fail, and making the most of the implication that Blanche was bound up with ordinary life.

But Blanche had taken the news more easily than Miss Griffin, and had a lighter hold on the threads of life, though she seemed to have so many more of them. Her lightness of grasp went with her through the next days, working for her in holding her incurious about her state, against her in allowing her less urge to fight for life. With petulance and heroism, childishness and courage she lived her desperate hours, and emerged into peace and weakness with remembrance rather than realization of what was behind.

Her family was new to such suspense and lived it with a sense of shock and disbelief. After the first relief they accepted her safety and resented that it had been threatened.

When Matty and Maria came to share the rejoicing, they found it took the form of reaction and silence. The first evening after the stress might almost have been one at the height of it.

Justine extended a hand to her uncle as though she had hardly strength to turn her eyes in the same direction.