A Family and a Fortune (23 page)

‘I believe I have put something definitely between Aunt Matty and me. That is what I have done in the first days without Mother. Well, we can't expect to do so well without her.'

‘Is Miss Sloane remaining with us in simple obedience?' said Mark.

‘I should like to stay with you all.'

‘I will give her to you for a time,' said Dudley. ‘I must learn to talk like a husband.'

‘And Aunt Matty has given her,' said Aubrey.

‘Father, she is yours, if you will have it so,' said Justine. ‘No one counts with us as you do.'

‘Justine has also given Miss Sloane,' said Aubrey.

‘Then I will talk to your father,' said Maria. ‘And you can have your uncle.'

Justine waited for the door to close.

‘Uncle, I don't think it is too soon to broach a subject which Mother would wish to be dealt with. This does not seem the wrong day to carry out what may have been her last wish. You know what I would say?'

‘Can't you try to say it? Because I cannot. And if your mother would have wished it, you must.'

‘It goes without saying,' said Justine, with a casual gesture. ‘It is yours, that which you gave us in your generosity when it was yours to give. Now it belongs to another, and we are glad that there is the nearer claim. The lack of it was the shadow over your good fortune. Mother felt it for you and just had time to know that it was lifted. You must have known her feelings.'

‘What about your old men and women in the village?'

‘I shall give them what I gave them before, the work of my heart and head. They like it better, or rather I like it as well for them, as it does not touch their independence. Do
not fear, Uncle. There is no sacrifice in rendering to you the things that are yours.'

‘It seems that there must be sacrifice in rendering things. What does Mark feel about the house?'

‘Am I so much worse than Justine?'

‘I should think you must be rather worse. Anyone would be. And it is on the weaker person that the greater sacrifice falls.'

‘Sacrifice? Faugh!' said Justine. ‘What Father can bear, Mark can, and with as good a grace, I hope, as someone who is less affected and matters less.'

‘I did not know all that about Mark. And I am still ill at ease. To give a thing and take a thing is so bad that I cannot do it. It must be done for me. And I am glad that a beginning is made.'

‘We can go on,' said Clement, quickly. ‘Everything is in your hands. Have you anything to tell us of your future home?'

‘Do you remember', said Justine, ‘how I almost foresaw the need of some readjustment like this, and made a stipulation to meet it? Everything was to be as it had been. That is how it is.'

‘Mark has not told me that he will like to see the house decay. I wish he would.'

‘I can tell you how glad I am to have parts of it saved, and the parts in most danger, and how glad to feel that you will have a home of your own.'

‘Here is a little man who is as ready as anyone to make what you will call his sacrifice,' said Justine. ‘He is too shy to say so, but he feels it none the less.'

‘I am ready indeed,' said Aubrey at once, showing his sister's rightness and her error.

‘And it is not really a sacrifice,' said Dudley. ‘He will tell me that it is not.'

‘There is no need to do that, Uncle.'

‘Haven't you enjoyed the money I gave you? It is dreadful to want you to enjoy it and then to give it back. But am I the only person in the world who really likes money?'

‘We have savoured it to the full,' said Justine, ‘but not as
much as we shall savour the sense that you are using it for yourself.'

‘I do not like the sound of that. I want to eat my cake and have it. I had better let Aubrey keep his pocket money. Then I shall feel that I am letting my brother's family have all I can. That is all I can let them have. Five shillings a week.'

‘Well, the little boy will appreciate it, Uncle. And he will feel that he has shown himself willing to fall into line.'

‘Aubrey will eat his cake and have it,' said Clement.

‘So he will,' said Dudley. ‘And I shall keep my cake and give away the smallest morsel of it. I think that is what people do with cakes. I shall have to be like people; I cannot avoid it.'

‘You cannot,' said Justine. ‘You are caught in the meshes of your own life. It has come at last, though it has been so long delayed.'

‘You don't think I am old, do you?'

‘No, not at all. You are in time to give your full prime to her who has won it. Accepted it, you would like me to say. And I think it may be the truer word.'

‘And some people always have a touch of youth about them.'

‘Yes, and you are indeed one of them.'

‘Thank you, I think that is all. And yet I feel there is something else. Oh, Clement has not told me that he is pleased to give up his allowance.'

‘It goes without saying, Uncle.'

‘I see it will have to. And I am taking everything and giving nothing. That is terribly like people. I have so often heard it said of them.'

‘The tables are turned on you at last,' said Justine. ‘Brace up your courage and meet the truth.'

‘Of course people never can really part with money. You seem to be the only ones who are different from them. I am getting to know myself better. I knew people before.'

‘You will have a larger charity.'

‘Is it larger? It is certainly not the same. Perhaps it is
what people have when they give their sympathy and nothing else? I am more and more as they are. I shall have to face it.'

‘Well, I don't think it does us any harm to look at that straight. I have always regarded it squarely myself.'

‘But you have never given a thing and taken a thing. You may not really be like people. You can cling to that in your heart.'

‘I wonder if I do,' said Justine, in a musing tone.

‘I am going,' said her uncle. ‘I may be told that I am like people and you are not. Saying a thing of yourself does not mean that you like to hear other people say it. And they do say it differently.'

‘Well, we have come to it quickly,' said Clement. ‘I wonder that Uncle liked to bring another change to our life at once.'

‘It was Justine who chose the time,' said Mark.

‘I liked the way he did it,' said Justine, still musingly. ‘It was the way I should have chosen to see him carry it through. My heart ached for him as he tried to keep his own note throughout. And he succeeded as well as anyone can, who attempts the impossible. And I think that I spared both him and us by grasping the rope in both hands.'

‘You could not have helped him more,' said Mark.

‘Miss Sloane and I are to share his money,' said Aubrey. ‘It should knit us closer.'

‘I am glad you are not to make a sacrifice, little boy. You are young to take that sort of part in life.'

‘I regret that I have to make one,' said Clement.

‘I would rather that Uncle had the money than I. I am only so glad that he wants it.'

‘I can't understand his wanting it all at once like this. Our little allowances can't make so much difference.'

‘He has spent too much on the house,' said Mark. ‘It has taken much more than we foresaw. He has overdrawn his income and the capital he cannot touch. He must actually be in debt. If he did not have this money, he would have nothing for the time. If he had not inherited it, he could not have thought of marrying.'

‘He would have had to see Miss Sloane quite differently,' said Aubrey. ‘We see the power of wealth.'

‘He could easily borrow money,' said Clement.

‘You talk as if you did not know him,' said Mark. ‘He would not do that; he would hardly dare. You must allow for the effect of his life upon him and for his own character. And it may be less easy to borrow when your securities are in trust.'

‘The income would soon accumulate. He is not going to be married tomorrow.'

‘Let us face the truth,' said Justine suddenly. ‘Uncle has lost himself heart and soul in Miss Sloane. Nothing counts beside her and his desire to lavish all he has upon her. His old feelings and affections are for the time in abeyance. We must face it, accept it, welcome it. Anything else would be playing a sorry part.'

‘And he has to take a house and do the part of an engaged man,' said Mark. ‘He will have expenses.'

‘We shall have to see that we have none,' said Clement.

‘And quite time too,' said Justine, ‘if it makes us feel like this. It is a good thing that the change has come before we are quite ruined.'

‘You are all ruined but me,' said Aubrey.

‘Make an end to your selfish complacence,' said Clement to his sister. ‘You are giving up nothing.'

‘Justine has spent what she had on other people,' said Mark. ‘Her old men and women are the sufferers.'

‘Oh, I have spent on them very wisely, very circumspectly. I have seen to it that they should take no risk. They will feel no sudden change. I have had a care for them.'

‘Is Aunt Matty to give up her money?' said Clement.

‘No. Uncle indicated to me in an aside that there would be no question of that. It is to remain as it is.'

‘He should have had an aside about Clement,' said Aubrey.

‘Mother has left her money to Father, hasn't she?' said Clement.

‘Yes, most of it. A small legacy to Aunt Matty. She had very little.'

‘Will Aunt Matty be ruined, Justine?' said Aubrey. ‘What will she be like then?'

‘Poor Aunt Matty!'

‘Rich Aunt Matty!'

‘Oh, come, she is an invalid woman, living in a small way. It is not for us, in this house and in comparative luxury, to grudge her any extra that she has. And it will make a difference to Grandpa's last years.'

‘Grandpa is not an old man in the village. Only in the lodge.'

‘And you are a naughty little boy. We must have Mr Penrose back. We must make an end of this doing nothing because of our sorrow. We have lost our leader, but we are in no doubt about her lead. We shall get into the way of hiding a good deal of laziness under our grief. I am in her place and I must represent her.'

‘Your own place entitles you to direct Aubrey,' said Mark.

‘We must take up our burdens and go forward.'

‘People say that kind of thing so cheerfully.'

‘I am at a standstill,' said Clement.

‘Things go deep with people of Clement's saturnine exterior,' said Aubrey, glancing at his brother with a wariness which was not needed, as the latter's demeanour showed that he had not noticed his words and would notice no other words from him.

‘I do see his point,' said Justine. ‘But it will not hurt him to show a little grit in his youth.'

‘Things like that ought to be guaranteed or not given,' said Clement. ‘People can't have credit for giving things just while they do not want them.'

‘Uncle asked no credit.'

‘No, but he had it, and we shall have none for giving them up when we are becoming dependent on them. People's outlook alters a great deal in a few months.'

‘Really, Clement, I don't see that you deserve any praise for your kind of relinquishment. We have not had enough
giving up in our lives. We see it as a thing which has to be learnt. I am not quite so pleased with my part in it as I perhaps implied; but in a way I welcome it and look forward to getting my teeth into it and going forward without a sign. We may look back on this early lesson and be grateful.'

Aubrey looked at his sister in surprise at the place she gave the lesson in her life.

‘What will Father do now?' he said. ‘There will be no one to be with him.'

‘Ah,' said Justine, shaking her head, ‘is that ever out of my mind? Does anything matter beside our real problem? We can snap our fingers at any other.'

‘Yes, we see you can,' said Clement.

‘We must all do our best,' said Mark.

‘Mark has confidence in himself as a substitute for Mother and Uncle,' said Clement, irritated by this attitude towards problems.

‘Now I don't think what he said suggested that, Clement.'

‘We can't help fate,' said Mark.

‘We can't help it,' said his sister, sighing, ‘in any sense.'

‘I suppose all problems solve themselves.'

‘Why do you think that?' said Clement. ‘Yours does. My problem and Father's have no solution. We shall have to cut the knots, and the result will be the usual mess and waste.'

‘Come,' said Justine, beckoning with a slow hand and moving to the window. ‘Come. Perhaps the answer to our question is here.'

Maria and the brothers were walking together below.

‘Is that our solution? May it be.'

‘May it,' said Clement. ‘It has served so far for several seconds.'

‘Come,' said his sister, beckoning again. ‘Is it unfolding itself before our eyes?'

Dudley had left his place in the middle and taken Maria's other arm, leaving the one he relinquished, for his brother.'

‘There may be the lifting and laying of our fear, the final token of the future.'

‘You build rather much on it,' said Mark.

‘I feel it is symbolic, emblematic, whatever you call it. I cannot feel that the future will be left to itself, with Uncle's eyes upon it, with Uncle's hand to steer its way. And by the future I mean Father's future, of course.'

‘No one else has one,' said Clement. ‘But it is natural that Father should not escape Uncle's thoughts at this time. He has just lost his wife, and his brother is leaving him after fifty years. It is not an average situation.'

‘Well, I feel that we have had a sign. But you are determined to be contrary until your own little share in the change becomes familiar.'

‘Why is it little? Because yours is? There is no other reason.'