A Family and a Fortune (7 page)

‘Or forgets it,' said her aunt. ‘Yes, I think that is what Aunt Matty had better do. She has not the will or the energy to think it over at this juncture of her life. And forgetting it will be better, so that is the effort she must make.'

‘Now I am in disgrace, but I do not regard it. I have had my say and I always find that enough,' said Justine, who was wise in this attitude, as she would seldom have been advised to go further.

‘How very unlike Edgar and Justine are, dear!' said Matty to her sister. ‘They have not a touch of each other, and they say that daughters are like their fathers. They are both indeed themselves.'

‘Well, that is as well,' said Justine. ‘Father would not like me to be a copy of him. He would not feel the attraction of opposites.'

‘Opposite. Yes, that is almost the word,' said her aunt.

Miss Griffin gave the sudden, sharp breath of someone awaking from a minute's sleep, and looked about with bewildered eyes.

‘Poor Miss Griffin, you are tired out,' said Blanche.

‘I am so glad you got off for a minute, Miss Griffin,' said Justine.

‘I did not know where I was; I must have dropped off
with all the voices round me,' said Miss Griffin, with a view of the talk which she would hardly have taken if she had heard it. ‘I don't know why I did, I am sure.'

‘Being overtired is quite enough reason,' said Justine.

‘So Miss Griffin is the first of us to make it one,' said Matty in an easy tone.

‘It is a stronger reason in her case.'

‘Is it, dear?' said Matty, so lightly that she hardly seemed to enunciate the words.

‘Why, Aunt Matty, she must have done twice as much as you - as anyone else. You know that.'

‘Twice as much as I have, dear? Many times as much, I daresay; I have been able to do hardly anything. And of course I know it.' Matty gave her little laugh. ‘But what we have mostly done today, is sitting in the train, and we have done it together.'

‘Yes, but the preparations before and the unpacking afterwards! It must have been overwhelming. The time in the train must have been quite a respite.'

‘Yes, that is what I meant, dear.'

‘But it was only one day, only part of one. The work must have begun directly you reached this house. I can see how much has been achieved. You can't possibly grasp it, sitting in a chair.'

‘So sitting in a chair has become an advantage, has it?'

‘Poor, dear Aunt Matty!' said Justine, sitting on the arm of the chair, as if to share for the moment her aunt's lot. ‘But it cannot contribute to the actual weariness, you know. That is a thing by itself.'

‘So there is only one kind of weariness,' said Matty, putting her hand on her niece's and speaking in a tone of gentle tolerance towards her unknowing youth.

‘Dear Aunt Matty! There must be times when to be hustled and driven seems the most enviable thing in the world. You are more unfortunate than anyone,' said Justine, indicating and accepting her aunt's lot and Miss Griffin's.

Miss Griffin rose and went to the door with an explanatory
look at Matty. Dudley opened it and followed her.

‘How do people feel on a first night in a new place? I have never had the experience. I have lived in the same house all my life.'

Miss Griffin lifted her eyes with a look he had not expected, almost of consternation.

‘It does make you feel uncertain about things. But I expect you soon get used to it. I was in the last house thirty-one years. Miss Seaton had never lived in any other.'

‘And are you sorry to come away from it?'

‘No, not very. It makes a change. We shall see different people. And it will be nice for Miss Seaton to have her sister and her family. It was the wisest plan.'

‘The best plan, not the wisest. It was very unwise. But a great many of the best things are that.'

Miss Griffin looked at him with a hint of a smile.

‘You agree with me, do you not?'

Miss Griffin checked her smile and looked aside.

‘You and I must be very much alike. We both live in other people's houses; we are both very kind; and I am very good at playing second fiddle, and I believe you are too.'

‘Oh, I never mind doing that,' said Miss Griffin in a full tone.

‘I have minded in my weaker moments, but I have conquered my worse self. You have no worse self, have you?'

‘No,' said Miss Griffin, speaking the truth before she thought. ‘Well, I don't know. Perhaps everyone has.'

‘You have to think of other people's. So I see that you have not. And as I have suppressed mine, it is another point we have in common.'

Miss Griffin stood with a cheered expression.

‘Has Miss Seaton a better self?' said Dudley.

Miss Griffin gave him a half smile which turned to a look of reproach.

‘Yes, of course she has. Everyone has.'

‘So it was her worse self we saw this evening?'

‘I did not mean that she had a worse self. You know I
did not. She was very tired. It must be so dreadful not to be able to get about.' Miss Griffin's voice died away on a note of pure pity.

‘Well good night, Miss Griffin; we shall often meet.'

‘Good night, Mr Dudley,' said Miss Griffin, turning towards the kitchen with a lighter step.

Dudley returned to the parlour to find the family dispersing. Matty was on her feet, talking with the lively affection which followed her difficult moods, and which she believed to efface their memory.

‘Good-bye, dearest; good-bye, my Justine; you will often come in to see the cross old aunt who loves you. Good-bye, Dudley; where have you been wandering? It was clever to find enough space to lose yourself. Good-bye, Edgar; my father has so enjoyed his masculine talk. It is a thing that does him so much good.'

‘And how have you enjoyed your feminine one?' said Oliver, who had caught snatches of this dialogue. ‘Upon my word, I daresay a good deal. You look the better for it.'

‘Good-bye, Aunt Matty dear,' said Justine. ‘I have seemed a brute, but I have meant it for your good, and you are large enough to take it as it was meant.'

‘Good-bye,' said Edgar at once. ‘We shall often meet; I hope we shall meet very often.'

‘Well, of course, people are only human,' said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. ‘But it really does not seem much for them to be.'

‘Yes, we must do what we can in our new life,' said Edgar, as if in reply. ‘I think we may call it that. It may be a better life for Blanche. I think - I trust it may.'

‘Is her present life so bad?'

‘She may be lonely without knowing it. I fear it may have been the case. I feel - I fear I have little to be proud of in my family life.'

‘It is I who have the cause for pride. It is wonderful, the way in which I have put myself aside and kept your affection and won your wife's. But I think the things we suffer without knowing are the best, as we are born to suffer. It
is not as if Blanche had suspected her loneliness. And she can't be with her sister and be unconscious of it.'

‘Neither can any of us,' said Edgar, with the short, broken laugh which was chiefly heard by his brother. ‘I could see – I saw that she realized it today.'

‘I saw that Justine did too. The sight became too much for me and I had to escape.'

‘What were you doing all that time?'

‘Why do people say that they do not like having to account for their every action? I do like it. I like telling everything about myself and feeling that people take an interest. I was saying a kind word to Miss Griffin. They say that a kind word may work wonders; and I saw that something had to work wonders for her; and so I said the word and it did.'

‘Poor Miss Griffin! I mean that we cannot judge of other people's lives.'

‘Of course we can. We all have lives and know about them. No one will have it said that he has no knowledge of life; and it could not be true.'

‘She has been with Matty and her father for a long time. I am not sure how long.'

‘I am. She told me. But there are things which cannot pass my lips.'

‘It must be over thirty years.'

‘You are a tougher creature than I am. I wonder if people know that you are.'

‘It is difficult to form a picture of all those years.'

‘Edgar, you do sometimes say the most dreadful things. You should remember my shrinking nature. I shall have to see a great deal of Miss Griffin. Will seeing her take away that picture before my eyes?'

‘Come along, you two,' called Justine, turning with beckoning hand. ‘If you wait every minute to argue, we shall never get up the drive. Mother does not like to keep stopping.'

That was true of Blanche, and therefore she had not stopped, but was proceeding towards the house, with her short, unequal steps carrying her rapidly over the ground.

When she came to the porch she paused, as if waiting there affected her differently.

‘There is that little brick house beyond the trees,' said Justine, turning to look back as they all met.

‘Your eyes do not deceive you,' said her father, with a smile.

‘Now don't try to snub me, Father; that is not like your dealings. There it is, and it is good to think of Grandpa and Aunt Matty snugly sheltered in it. I shall call up the picture tonight when I am in bed.'

‘At night,' murmured Dudley, ‘and in bed! In those hours when things rise up before us out of their true proportion!'

‘What are you murmuring about to yourself, Uncle?'

‘About the picture which you will call up in the night.'

‘You like to share it with me? It is a pretty picture, isn't it? Dear Grandpa, with his white hair and fine old face; and Aunt Matty, handsome in the firelight, vivacious and fluent, and no more querulous than one can forgive in her helpless state; and dear, patient Miss Griffin, thinking of everyone but herself. It is a satisfying sight.'

‘Perhaps it is healthier to bring it out into the light.'

‘You were the one who did not forgive your aunt,' said Edgar, smiling again at his daughter.

‘Now, Father, don't think that your naughty little thrusts are atoned for by your especial smile for me, dear to me though it is.' Edgar's expression wavered as he heard it defined. ‘Aunt Matty and I are the firmest friends and very good for one another. We never mind looking at ourselves through each other's eyes and getting useful light on our personalities. I do not believe in putting disabled people on one side and denying them their share in healthy human life. It seems to me a wrong thing to do, and in the end bad for everyone. So I sound my bracing note and snap my fingers at the consequences.' Justine illustrated what she said.

The scene in the lodge was as she saw it, except that Matty's querulousness was missing. The latter was sitting at dinner, talking with a great liveliness, as if her audience were larger than it was, almost as if in practice for greater
occasions. She often threw herself into the entertainment of her father and her companion, with or without thought of imaginary listeners.

‘And then those funny, little, country shoes! Dear Blanche, still full of her quaint, little, old touches! I had to laugh to myself when I saw her come tripping and stumbling in, such a dear, familiar figure!'

‘No one would have known you had,' said Oliver. ‘It might have been better to give some sign. It seemed the last thing to expect of you.'

Matty was indifferent to her father's criticism and knew that her talk diverted him.

‘And then her own little, charitable ways, a mixture of daughter and sister and lady bountiful! So full of affection and kindness and yet with her own little sharpness, just our old Blanche! And her dear Justine' - Matty put her hand to her lips and fell into mirth - ‘so sure of her right to improve us all and so satisfied with it! So pleased with her effort to influence her aunt, who has faced so much more than she could conceive! Dear child, may she never even have to attempt it. Well, we are not all alike and perhaps it is as well. Perhaps it is good that we are all on our different steps in the human scale. And there are good things on each level. In some ways we might take a leaf out of her book.'

‘We might, but I do not think of it, and I do not ask it of you.'

‘It is naughty to say it, but does she remind you of that church worker at home? Someone so good and useful that everyone loved her and no one admired her? Now how unkind and malicious! I am quite ashamed.'

‘Have I met a person of that kind?'

‘You must remember poor Miss Dunn at home.'

‘Why should I single her out of all that I remember? And how could I guess her employment?'

‘The coat and the collar and the shoes,' said Matty, again in mirth.

‘They both wear such things, I grant you. I do the same and shall do it still for a short time.'

‘Poor Miss Griffin, you were the target. You might have
been a little dark slave or a wee beastie in a trap, from the way she spoke. We do not move every day, do we? It has only been once in thirty years.'

Miss Griffin felt that there was some reproach in the rareness of the step, though she would willingly have taken it oftener.

‘She meant to be very kind, I am sure.'

‘She meant to be a little stern with me, just a tiny bit severe. But I did not mind. She is my dear, good niece and wants to improve the world and the people in it, Aunt Matty into the bargain.'

‘They might be the better for it,' said Oliver, ‘but it is not her business.'

‘She feels it is, and so we must let her do it. We must take it up as a funny little cross and carry it with us.'

‘Why do that? Why not close her mouth upon things which are not her concern? That is a thing you can do. I have observed it.'

‘Edgar is a handsome man,' said Matty in another tone. ‘He was very tall and distinguished in this little room. Oh, wasn't it funny, the way they kept talking about it? Calling it snug and cosy. We might be cottagers.'