A Family and a Fortune (3 page)

Blanche held the letter at arm's length to read the address, while she felt for her glasses.

‘It is from your grandfather,' she said, adjusting the glasses and looking at her daughter over them. ‘It is from my father, Edgar. It is so seldom that he writes himself. Of course, he is getting an old man. He must soon begin to feel his age.'

‘Probably fairly soon, as he is eighty-seven,' said Clement.

‘Too obvious once again, Clement,' said Justine. ‘Open the letter, Mother. You should have read it last night.'

Blanche proceeded to do so at the reminder, and Edgar gave a glance of disapproval at his son, which seemed to be late as the result of his weighing its justice.

His wife's voice came suddenly and with unusual expression.

‘Oh, he wants to know if the lodge is still to let. And if it is, he thinks of taking it! He would come with Matty to live here. Oh, it would be nice to have them. What a difference it would make! They want to know the lowest rent we can take, and we could not charge much to my family. I wish we could let them have it for nothing, but I suppose we must not afford that?'

There was a pause.

‘We certainly should not do so,' said Mark. ‘Things are paying badly as it is.'

‘It opens up quite a different life,' said Justine.

‘Are we qualified for it?' said her brother.

‘I don't see why we should not ask a normal rent,' said Clement. ‘They would not expect help from us in any other way, and they do not need it.'

‘They are not well off, dear,' said Blanche, again looking over her glasses. ‘They have lost a good deal of their money
and will have to take great care. And it would be such an advantage to have them. We must think of that.'

‘They think of it evidently, and intend to charge us for it. I wonder at what they value themselves.'

‘They ought to pay us for our presence too,' said Mark. ‘I suppose it is worth an equal price.'

‘I believe I am more companionable than either of them,' said Dudley.

‘Oh, we ought not to talk like that even in joke,' said Blanche, taking the most hopeful view of the conversation. ‘We ought to think what we can do to help them. They have had to give up their home, and this seems such a good solution. With my father getting old and my sister so lame, they ought to be near their relations.'

‘Do you consider, Mother dear, how you and Aunt Matty are likely to conduct yourselves when you are within a stone's throw?' said Justine, with deliberate dryness. ‘On the occasions when you have stayed with each other, rumours have come from her house, which have been confirmed in ours. Do remember that discretion is the better part of many another quality.'

‘Whatever do you mean? We have our own ways with each other, of course, just as all of you have, and your uncle and your father; as brothers and sisters must. But it has been nothing more.'

‘Edgar and I have not any,' said Dudley. ‘I don't know how you can say so. I have a great dislike for ways; I think few things are worse. And I don't think you and your sister ought to live near to each other, if you have them.'

‘What an absurd way to talk! Matty and I have never disagreed. There is no need for us to treat each other as if we were strangers.'

‘Now remember, Mother dear,' said Justine, lifting a finger, ‘that there is need for just that. Treat each other as strangers and I will ask no more. I shall be utterly satisfied.'

‘What a way to talk!' repeated Blanche, her tone showing her really rancourless nature. ‘Do let us stop talking like this and think of the pleasure they will be to us.'

‘If they bring any happiness to you, little Mother, we
welcome them from our hearts. But we are afraid that it will not be without alloy.'

‘I think - I have been considering,' said Edgar, ‘I think we might suggest the rent which we should ask from a stranger, and then see what their not being strangers must cost us,' He gave his deliberate smile, which did not alter his face, while his brother's, which followed it, seemed to irradiate light. ‘We must hope it will not be much, as we have not much to spare.'

‘I suppose the sums involved are small,' said Justine.

‘We are running things close,' said Mark. ‘And why should they put a price on themselves when other people do not?'

‘Oh, my old father and my invalid sister!' said Blanche. ‘And the house has been empty for such a long time, and the rents in this county are so low.'

‘We shall take all that into account,' said Edgar, in the tone he used to his wife, gentler and slower than to other people, as if he wished to make things clear and easy for her. ‘And it will tend to lower the rent.'

‘Then why not just ask them very little and think no more about it? I don't know why we have this kind of talk. It will be so nice to have them, and now we have made it into a subject which will always bring argument and acrimoniousness. It is a great shame,' Blanche shook her shoulders and looked down with tears in her eyes.

‘They want us to write at once, if Mother does not mind my looking at the letter,' said Justine, assuming that this was the case. ‘Dear Grandpa! His writing begins to quaver. They have their plans to make.'

‘If his writing quavers, his rent must be low, of course,' said Mark, ‘We are not brutes and oppressors.'

Blanche looked up with a clearing face, as reason and feeling asserted themselves in her son.

‘Yes, yes, we must let them know,' said Edgar. ‘And of course it will be an advantage to have them - any benefit which comes from them will be ours. We cannot dispute it.'

‘We do not want to,' said his daughter, ‘or to dispute anything else. This foretaste of such things is enough. Let
us make our little sacrifice, if it must be made. We ought not to jib at it so much.'

‘Let us leave this aspect of the matter and turn to the others,' said Mark, keeping his face grave. ‘Do you suppose they really know about Aubrey?'

‘I don't see how they can,' said Clement. ‘He was too young the last time they were here for it to be recognized.'

‘I don't know what you mean,' said Blanche, who fell into every trap. ‘They will be devoted to him, as people always are.'

‘Yes, Aubrey will be a great success, I will wager,' said Justine. ‘We shall all of us pale beside him. You wait and see.'

‘I shall have the same sort of triumph,' said Dudley. ‘They will begin by noticing my brother and find their attention gradually drawn to me.'

‘And then it will be all up with everyone else,' said Justine, sighing. ‘Oh, dreadful Uncle, we all know how it can be.'

‘And then they will think - I will not say what. It will be for them to say it.'

‘Well, poor Uncle, you can't always play second fiddle.'

‘Yes, I can,' said Dudley, his eyes on Edgar. ‘It is a great art and I have mastered it.'

Edgar rose as though hearing a signal and went to the door, resting his arm in his brother's, and a minute later the pair appeared on the path outside the house.

‘Those two tall figures!' said Justine. ‘It is a sight of which I can never tire. If I live to be a hundred I do not wish to see one more satisfying.'

Blanche looked up and followed her daughter's eyes in proper support of her.

Mark took Clement's arm and walked up and down before his sister.

‘No, away with you!' she said with a gesture. ‘I don't want an imitation; I don't want anything spurious. I have the real thing before my eyes.'

‘I like to see them walking together like that,' said Blanche.

‘Well, I do not, Mother. It is a mockery of something better and I see nothing about it to like.'

‘I am sure they are very good friends. We need not call it a mockery. It illustrates a genuine feeling, even if the action itself was a joke.'

‘Genuine feeling, yes, Mother, but nothing like the feeling between Father and Uncle. We must face it. You have not produced that in your family. It has skipped that generation.'

Blanche looked on in an impotent way, as her daughter left the room, but appreciation replaced any other feeling on her face. She had the unusual quality of loving all her children equally, or of believing that she did. If Mark and Aubrey held the chief place in her heart, the place was available for the others when they needed it, so that she was justified in feeling that she gave it to them all. Neither she nor Clement suspected that she cared for Clement the least, and if Dudley and Aubrey knew it, it was part of that knowledge in them which was their own. Edgar would not have been surprised to hear that her second son was her favourite.

Jellamy came into the room as his mistress left it, and carried some silver to the sideboard.

‘So we are to have Mr Seaton and Miss Seaton at the lodge, sir?'

‘How did you know?' said Mark. ‘We have only just heard.'

‘The same applies to me, sir,' said Jellamy, speaking with truth, as he had heard at the same moment. ‘Miss Seaton will be a companion for the mistress, sir. The master and, Mr Dudley being so much together leaves the mistress rather by herself.' Jellamy's eyes protruded over a subject which was rife in the kitchen, and had never presented itself to Blanche.

‘She is never by herself,' said Clement. ‘We all live in a chattering crowd, each of us waiting for a chance to be heard.'

Luncheon found the family rather as Clement described it. Edgar sat at the head of the table, Blanche at the foot;
Dudley and Justine sat on either side of the former, Mark and Clement of the latter; and Aubrey and his tutor faced each other in the middle of the board. Mr Penrose was treated with friendliness and supplied with the best of fare, and found the family luncheon the trial of his day. He sat in a conscious rigour, which he hardly helped by starting when he was addressed, and gazing at various objects in the room with deep concentration. He was a blue-eyed, bearded little man of forty-five, of the order known as self-made, who spoke of himself to his wife as at the top of the tree, and accepted her support when she added that he was in this position in the truest sense. He had a sharp nose, supporting misty spectacles, and neat clothes which had a good deal of black about them. He was pleasant and patient with Aubrey, and made as much progress with him as was possible in view of this circumstance, and had a great admiration for Edgar, whom he occasionally addressed. Edgar and Dudley treated him with ordinary simplicity and never referred to him in any other spirit. Justine spoke of him with compassion, Mark with humour, Blanche with respect for his learning. Clement did not speak of him, and Aubrey saw him with the adult dryness of boys towards their teachers.

‘Well, Mr Penrose, a good morning's work?' said Justine.

‘Probably on Mr Penrose's part,' said Clement.

‘Yes, I am glad to say it was on the whole satisfactory, Miss Gaveston. I have no complaint to make.'

‘I wish we could sometimes hear some positive praise of our little boy.'

‘He is before you,' said Mark. ‘Consider what you ask.'

‘Don't talk nonsense,' said Blanche. ‘None of you was perfect at his age. If you tease him, I shall be very much annoyed. Have you done well yourself this morning, Clement?'

‘Well enough, thank you, Mother.'

‘We hear some positive praise of Clement,' said Aubrey.

‘Clement ought to have a mediocre future before him,' said Dudley, ‘and Aubrey a great one.'

‘I don't agree with this theory that early failure tends to ultimate success,' said Justine. ‘Do you, Mr Penrose?'

‘Well, Miss Gaveston, that has undoubtedly been the sequence in some cases. But the one may not lead to the other. There may be no connexion and I think it is probable that there is not.'

‘Dear little Aubrey!' said Blanche, looking into space. ‘What will he become in time?'

Mr Penrose rested his eyes on her, and then dropped them as if to cover an answer to this question.

‘That is the best of an early lack of bent,' said Clement. ‘It leaves an open future.'

‘The child is father of the man,' said Mark. ‘It is no good to shut our eyes to it.'

‘I cannot grow into anything,' said Aubrey, ‘until I begin to grow. I am not big enough to be my own son yet.'

Edgar laughed, and Blanche glanced from him to his son with a mild glow in her face.

‘We were talking of the growth of the mind, little boy,' said Justine.

‘I am sure he is much taller,' said Blanche.

‘Mother dear, his head comes to exactly the same place on the wall. We have not moved it for a year.'

‘I moved it yesterday,' said Aubrey, looking aside. ‘I have grown an inch.'

‘I knew he had!' said Blanche, with a triumph which did not strike anyone as disproportionate.

‘If we indicate Aubrey on the wall,' said Clement, ‘have we not dealt sufficiently with him?'

‘Why do you talk about him like that? Why are you any better than he is?'

‘We must now hear some more positive praise of Clement,' said Aubrey.

‘It need not amount to that,' said his brother.

‘I don't want to have him just like everyone else,' said Blanche, causing Aubrey's face to change at the inexplicable attitude. ‘I like a little individuality. It is a definite advantage.'

‘A good mother likes the ugly duckling best,' said Justine, coming to her mother's aid in her support of her son, and with apparent success, as the latter smiled to himself. ‘How do you really think he is getting along, Mr Penrose?'

‘Mr Penrose has given us one account of him,' said Edgar. ‘I think we will not - perhaps we will not ask him for another.'

‘But I think we will, Father. The account was not very definite. Unless you really want to leave the subject, in which case your only daughter will not go against you. That would not be at all to your mind. Well, have you heard, Mr Penrose, that we are going to have a family of relations at the lodge?'