A Family and a Fortune (21 page)

‘We must seem selfish and egotistic, Uncle, in that we do not remember your personal happiness.'

‘Just now we are sharing yours,' said Maria.

‘And I am afraid we cannot be showing it,' said Dudley.

‘We can all share each other's,' said Matty. ‘I can give my own illustration. My joy for my sister tonight only gives more foundation to my joy for my friends. Yes, that other happiness which I feel here is very near to my heart.'

‘You are fancying it,' said Dudley. ‘Maria and I have laid it aside.'

‘You have pushed it deeper down. Into a fitter place.'

‘I am appalled by the threat and danger of life,' said Mark. ‘It may be good for us to realize that in the midst of life we are in death,' said his sister.

‘What benefit do we derive from it?' said Clement.

‘Oh, don't let us talk like that on this day of all days. It is not suitable or seemly. Our nerves may be on edge, but we must not hold that an excuse for crossing every bound.'

‘We may have no other excuse', said Edgar, ‘but our guests will accept that one, We have been tried to the end of our strength and I fear beyond.'

‘We are not guests, dear Edgar,' said Matty. ‘As a family we have been in darkness, and as a family we emerge into the light. And perhaps it is a tiny bit ungrateful not to see the difference.'

‘We do not find the light dazzling,' said Clement.

‘No, so I see, dear. Now I do find it so, but to me the darkness has been so very dark.' Matty was easily tried by depression in others, being used to support and cheer herself. ‘You see, my sister and I are so very near. From our earliest memories our lives have been bound in one. And not even the mother's tie goes back so far.'

‘Really, Aunt Matty, that is too much,' said Justine. ‘Or I should say it was, if it were not for the occasion.'

‘It is that which makes it so,' said Mark.

‘So the occasion does mean something, dears?'

‘Aunt Matty, if you do not beware, you will have us turning from you with something like shrinking and contempt, said Justine, allowing her movements to illustrate these feelings.

‘Something very like,' said Clement.

Edgar looked up as if weariness held him silent.

‘Well, well, dear, perhaps I betrayed something of such feelings myself. We are all wrought up and beyond our usual barriers. We must forgive each other.'

‘I do not see why,' said Clement.

‘And I am indulging in personal joy all through this,' said Dudley. ‘And Matty said that she shared it. So I suppose this is what joy for others is like. No wonder people rather avoid feeling it.'

‘Miss Sloane, come to our rescue,' said Justine. ‘We need some sweetness and sanity to save us from ourselves.'

‘It is the anxiety that is to blame. A happy ending does not alter what has gone before.'

‘That is what I say,' said Clement. ‘Why should we hold a celebration because Mother's life has been threatened and just saved?'

‘Poor little Mother! Are we in danger of losing her experience in our own?'

‘Surely not, dear,' said Matty. ‘No, I do not think that you and your brothers would find yourselves coming to that.'

Justine gave a laugh which was openly harsh in its acceptance of her aunt's meaning.

Matty raised her brows in perplexed enquiry.

‘Come, come,' said Edgar.

‘No, I shall not come, Father. I shall not rise to that bait any more. I shall not rise to those heights. I will not be forbearing and tolerant through any strain. It is not a fair obligation on anyone. I shall be hard and snappish and full of mean and wounding insinuation like anyone else. Oh, you will find a great difference. You will find that I mean what I say. I feel the strain of temper and malice which is in the family, coming out in me. I am a true daughter of the Seatons, after all.'

‘Well, you are your mother's daughter,' said Matty. ‘And we will ask nothing better, if you can be that.'

‘But I cannot. I am not even now saying what I mean. I am not Mother's daughter as much as your niece. That is what I should have said; that is what I did say in my heart. I have nothing of Mother in me. That strain of heroism and disregard of self is wanting in me, as it is in you, as it is in all of us.'

Edgar made a sound of appeal to Maria, and she rose and came to his daughter and allowed her to throw her arms round her neck and weep.

‘I hope I am not the cause of this,' said Matty.

‘What is your ground for hope?' said Clement.

Edgar threw his son a look of warning.

‘I am not surprised to hear that heroism is not one of my qualities,' said Mark, trying to be light. ‘I have always suspected it.'

‘Heroism and disregard of self,' said Matty, giving a little laugh. ‘Has my poor little sister had to show such things?'

‘Oh, what will you all think of me? wept Justine. ‘What of my poor little boy who is looking at me with such baffled eyes? What is he to do if I fail him?'

‘We think you have had more strain than other people, and been of more use,' said Maria.

‘Indeed, indeed,' said Edgar. ‘The chief demand has fallen on Justine and Miss Griffin. My wife is not happy with strangers, and the actual nursing is a small part of what has been done?'

‘Father has surpassed himself,' said Justine, sitting up and using a voice which became her own as she spoke. ‘There, I am myself again. I have had my outburst and feel the better for it. And I don't suppose anyone else is much the worse.' She wiped her eyes and left Maria and returned to her place.

‘I am very shaken,' said Aubrey, speaking the truth.

‘You have all been very good,' said Miss Griffin, who had witnessed the attack on Matty with consternation, pity, and exultation struggling through her fatigue, and now lifted eyes that seemed to strive to see.

‘You are very tired, Miss Griffin. You had better go home and rest,' said Matty, somehow betraying a desire to deprive the family of Miss Griffin's service.

Miss Griffin looked up to speak, assuming that words would come to her and finding her mistake.

‘It cannot be good for you or for anyone else, for you to go on in that state.'

‘It is the best thing for Mother,' said Justine. ‘She will be happier if she knows that Miss Griffin is sleeping in the next room. We shall see tonight that it is real sleep.'

‘Well, that is a good way of feeling indispensable. Too sound a way to be given up. We shall all be useful like that tonight. I shall be able to sleep for the first time, and I shall be glad to feel that I am doing some good by doing it.'

‘Well, I think you will be, Aunt Matty,' said Justine, who was right in her claim that she was again herself. ‘Doing what we can for ourselves does make the best of us for other people. And not sleeping is the last thing to achieve either.'

‘We are certainly more useful - have more chance of being of use when we are not tired out,' said Edgar, though it is only Miss Griffin who seems to be indispensable at the moment of sleep.'

‘Then she is continually useful,' said Matty, glancing at Miss Griffin and using a tone at once light and desperate.

Miss Griffin rose with a feeling that movement would be easier and less perilous than sitting still.

‘I will go and take Mrs Gaveston's temperature. That was the doctor's bell. I will bring it down so that she need not be disturbed again tonight.'

‘You see us all human again, Dr Marlowe,' said Justine.

‘He would hardly have a moment ago,' said Clement.

‘We could not be more human than we have been in the last week,' said Dudley. ‘We have sounded the deeps of human experience. I am very proud of all we have been through.'

‘Father, you were going to say some formal words of gratitude to Dr Marlowe,' said Justine. ‘But there is no need. He is no doubt as skilled in reading people's minds as their bodies.'

‘Then it is well that he was not here just now,' said Aubrey.

‘So, little boy, you have found your tongue again,' said Justine, stooping and putting her cheek against his.

‘Weren't you glad to hear my authentic note?' said Aubrey, glancing at the doctor.

‘I meant to sound mine too,' said Dudley.

‘We heard it, Uncle, and happy we were to do so. But you have had your own support in the last days.'

‘My feelings have been too deep for words like anyone else's.'

‘I think we hear our Justine's voice again,' said Matty, with an effort to regain a normal footing.

Justine crossed the room and sat down on the arm of her aunt's chair.

‘What a thing affection is, as exemplified between Aunt Matty and Justine!' said Mark.

‘A thing indeed but not affection,' said Clement.

‘I think this thermometer must be wrong,' said Miss Griffin, in the measured tones of one forcing herself to be coherent in exhaustion. ‘I used it myself and it has gone up like this. I don't know what can be wrong with it. It has not had a fall.'

The doctor took it, read it, shook it, read it again, and was suddenly at the door, seeming to be another man.

‘Come with me, anyone who should. There may be no time to be lost. The temperature has rushed up suddenly. I hoped the danger was past.'

The family followed, at first instinctively, then in grasp of the truth, then with the feelings of the last days rushing back with all their force. The late hour of reaction might have been an imaginary scene, might have been read 01 written.

They reached the bedroom and Edgar took his daughter's arm. Justine pushed Aubrey back into the passage and then walked forward with her father. Her brothers stood with them, and Dudley a step behind. Maria drew back and waited with Aubrey on the landing.

‘You feel hot, Blanche, my dear?' said Edgar.

‘Yes - yes, I do feel hot,' said his wife, looking at him as if she barely saw him and hardly wished to do more. ‘What have you all come for?'

‘To say good night to you, Mother dear,' said Justine.

‘Yes, I am better,' said Blanche, as if this accounted for their presence. ‘I shall soon feel better. Of course it must be slow.'

‘Yes, you will be better, Mother dear.'

‘But I don't want Miss Griffin to go,' said Blanche, with a sharpness which was her own, though her voice could hardly be heard. ‘I don't want to have to get well all at once. I am not going to try.'

‘Of course you are not,' said her husband. ‘You must just lie still and think of nothing.'

‘I don't often think of nothing. I have a busy brain.'

Edgar took her hand and she drew it away with a petulance which was again her own.

‘Is Aubrey in bed?'

‘He will be soon. He wanted to come and see you, but we thought you were too tired.'

‘Yes, I am very tired. Not so much tired as sleepy.'

‘Shut your eyes, Mother, and try to sleep,' said Mark.

Blanche simply obeyed but opened her eyes again.

‘I want Miss Griffin to be where I can see her. You make her go away.'

Miss Griffin drew near and Blanche gave her a smile.

‘We are happy together, aren't we? My sister does not know.'

‘I am very happy with you.'

‘My bed is right up in the air. Are you all up there too?'

‘We are with you, dear,' said Edgar. ‘We are all here.'

‘It is too many, isn't it?' said Blanche, in a tone of agreement. ‘Has Matty been here today?'

‘She is downstairs, waiting to hear how you are.'

‘She cannot come up here,' said his wife, with a note of security.

‘No, she will wait downstairs.'

‘Her brain is not really so much better than mine.'

‘No, we know it is not.'

‘Father does not know that I am really a nicer person. But it does not matter, a thing like that.'

‘We all know it, Mother,' said Mark.

‘But you must be kind to Aunt Matty,' said Blanche, as if speaking to a child.

‘Yes, we will be, Mother.'

‘She wants too much kindness,' said Blanche, in a dreamy tone.

‘Shut your eyes, dear, and try to sleep,' said Edgar.

‘Are you that tall man who asked me to marry him?' said Blanche, in a very rapid tone, fixing her eyes on his face.

‘Yes, I am. And you married me. And we have been very happy.'

‘I did not mind leaving Father and Matty. But I don't think that Father will die.'

‘No, not for a long time.'

‘Dr Marlowe is watching me. A doctor has to do that. But I don't like it when Jellamy does it.'

‘He shall never do it again,' said Edgar, stumbling over the words.

The doctor moved out of her sight, and Dudley felt his brother's hand and came to the bed.

‘They are not really so alike, when you get to know them,' said Blanche to Miss Griffin.

‘Mother, try to rest,' said Mark.

‘Try to rest,' echoed his mother, looking before her.

‘Perhaps you are a little near to the bed,' said the doctor.

They moved away.

‘Where have you all gone?' said Blanche at once.

‘We are here, dear,' said Edgar. ‘You are not alone.'

‘Alone? That would be an odd thing, when I have a husband and four children.'

‘We are all here, Blanche, all with you.'

‘Matty does not mind not having any children. Some women do not mind.'

Justine came closer and her mother saw her face.

‘Are you my beautiful daughter?' she said, again in the rapid tone. ‘The one I knew I should have? Or the other one?'

‘I am your Justine, Mother.'

‘Justine!' said Blanche, and threw up her arms. ‘Why should we want her different?'

‘I am here, dear,' said Edgar, bending over her, and saw that his wife was not there.

For another minute they were as silent as she.