The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Nonsense, Miller,’ said Sir Edmund, who knew that the Vicar’s income was not large and that much of it went in charity, ‘nonsense. There are two rooms at Clematis Cottage and Mrs Bevan is a very nice, clean, respectable woman and I’d see to all that.’

  Mrs Brandon had barely heard what her kind-hearted guests were saying. She remembered how worn Miss Morris looked, how patient she had been with the old lady, with what gratitude she had accepted so dull a treat as a picnic. She also remembered with less sympathy how Miss Morris had shown unmistakable signs of devotion to her, but put this away as selfishness. Here was Stories, with two spare bedrooms which were seldom used except at weekends. The servants would enjoy having a guest in the house so fresh from the excitement of a funeral. Her duty seemed plain.

  ‘I think, Sir Edmund, she had better come here,’ she said. ‘It is most kind of you and Mr Miller, but I really think she would be better at Stories. She has had a most trying time with Aunt Sissie and looks as if she needed a good rest. I could easily have her for two or three weeks, or more if she doesn’t find a new place. I like her and I think we’d get on quite well. Of course I hope this is only a false alarm and that Aunt Sissie will get well again, but if anything does happen I’ll go over to the Abbey and fetch her.’

  Sir Edmund and Mr Miller expressed their approval of this scheme and Mr Miller went so far as to say that it was just like her.

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘As a matter of fact I hadn’t thought about her at all till Delia mentioned her, which was very selfish and forgetful of me. It is really Delia’s plan.’

  Delia blushed and looked gratified. Sir Edmund and Mr Miller took their leave. Mr Grant lingered to speak to his hostess.

  ‘I do think it is marvellous of you, Mrs Brandon,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose you have to go on saying, Mrs Brandon,’ said she. ‘I wish you would say Cousin Lavinia, or just Lavinia.’

  ‘You know by what name I always think of you,’ said Mr Grant in a dark quivering voice.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Brandon, enjoying herself immensely. ‘May I hear?’

  Mr Grant looked self-conscious, looked down, up, and wildly about him, and said in a hoarse croak:

  ‘I did tell you once. In my mind I call you my friend.’

  Having made this avowal he waited for Mrs Brandon to dismiss him for ever from her sight. As she said nothing he dared to raise his eyes and look at her. Her charming face, a little tired, a little dark under the eyes after yesterday’s scene, bore an expression as of one whose thoughts are fixed on a distant star.

  ‘I feel,’ said Mrs Brandon, in a low, thrilling tone, ‘about that word as Shelley felt about the word “Love”.’

  She paused for a moment, to get it right. Mr Grant, on hearing the word Love, a word which he had hardly dared to use even to himself, nearly lost consciousness, but recovered himself in time to hear the goddess’s last words.

  ‘“One word”,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘“is too often profaned for me to profane it.”’

  Mr Grant, while feeling that it was he rather than Mrs Brandon who intended to profane the word, fully realised the exquisite quality of the rebuke, and mumbling goodbye, hastened after his coach.

  Francis, who had frankly been eavesdropping, now approached his mother.

  ‘Really, Mamma!’ he said.

  Mrs Brandon looked at him with the face of a saint and then broke into her mischievous amused smile.

  ‘I couldn’t help it,’ she said.

  ‘I know you couldn’t, darling,’ said Francis. ‘But what you could have helped was saddling yourself with Miss Morris.’

  ‘I had to,’ said his mother. ‘She seems to have no friends or relations and she has had a dreadful time with Aunt Sissie. If only she didn’t have a slight passion for me, it would be all right. But I do hope Aunt Sissie will get better.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Francis, ‘if it means you being worn to the bone by Miss Morris’s devotion. Perhaps we could interest her in church work.’

  ‘I’m afraid she and Mr Miller don’t approve of each other,’ said his mother, ‘which makes it all more difficult.’

  ‘All true Brandons thrive on difficulties, or else they make them for other people,’ said Francis. ‘I am an example of the first and Aunt Sissie of the second. To make matters smooth between Miss Morris and Mr Miller shall be my life’s work. Come and look at Turpin’s marrow, Mamma. You will find it has a soothing and inspiriting influence.’

  8

  The Last of Brandon Abbey

  The more Mrs Brandon thought about her kind offer to take Miss Morris in the event of ‘anything happening’ as everyone preferred euphemistically to put it, the more she wished she had not felt she must make it. Then she blamed herself and thought again of Miss Morris’s position, and how horrid it must be to go from one old lady to another, with no home or background of her own. Dr Ford’s report next day was that Miss Brandon was still much the same, and he promised to let Stories know of any change. Mrs Brandon asked if her aunt would like to see her and was greatly relieved to hear that the old lady did not want to see anyone but Sparks and Miss Morris. Her only pleasure, he said, was to hear Miss Morris read Captain Brandon’s old letters aloud, when she was not in a semi-conscious condition.

  Mrs Brandon told her children the news. Francis went off to work and Delia, oppressed by a shadow that had never before overcast her young spirits, went over to Grumper’s End to see how the chickenpox was. Mrs Brandon went up to Nurse’s room, where Nurse was pressing one of Delia’s evening frocks.

  ‘Dr Ford has just rung up,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘He says Miss Brandon is much the same.’

  ‘I’m sure I’m glad to hear that, madam,’ said Nurse, who had been hoping for something much more exciting.

  ‘If anything did happen,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘I am going to ask her companion, Miss Morris, here for a few weeks. She is a clergyman’s daughter and very nice. And I was thinking about that black frock of mine with the pleated skirt. I haven’t worn it since the winter, but I think if you took the gold belt off and put on a black one, and just put some of that black lace that is in the cardboard box with the flowers on it on the top shelf of my big cupboard round the neck, I could wear it quite nicely.’

  As she spoke she looked Nurse firmly in the eye, as if challenging her to prove that the mention of the black frock was anything but a housewife’s careful attention to her wardrobe. Nanny, seconding admirably this pretence, said she would just run down and get the dress and see. She was back in a few moments carrying an armful of clothes which she laid on the table.

  ‘I’d better turn the iron off,’ said Nurse, ‘or we’ll be having an accident, like the time that nursery-maid left the electric kettle on all afternoon and burnt the hearth rug. I brought up some frocks I thought you might like to go over, madam.’

  ‘I had quite forgotten about that black and white foulard,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘It looks well with a black hat. You see what I mean about the pleated frock, Nurse.’

  ‘Yes, madam,’ said Nurse. ‘It would look quite effective with a black belt and the lace, the way you said. And I brought up this black georgette. You did say it had got a little tight for you, but there didn’t seem to be anything to let out, so I wondered if it might do for Miss Delia. I’ll try it on her as soon as she gets back. I wish you’d speak to her, madam, about visiting Grumper’s End. I know she’s had chickenpox twice, but it isn’t so much the chickenpox as Other Things she might get there.’

  ‘Yes, Nurse, I’ll try to,’ said Mrs Brandon, absent-mindedly. ‘Why did you bring up the pale green? I thought we were going to give it away.’

  ‘It would dye nicely, madam, and if I sent it to Barchester today we’d have it back in two days if it’s a special order, and it might come in quite handy.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘And there’s that lilac georgette.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have it dyed, madam,’ said Nurse, shocked. ‘It’s all made
on the cross and things on the cross do shrink up so when they are dyed. It would come in quite handy for later, madam. Really the two black frocks for you, the pleated one and the green one dyed, and your old black frock for Miss Delia would be quite enough. The black and white foulard and the lilac georgette would come in for afterwards, if the weather still keeps hot. I’ll finish pressing this frock of Miss Delia’s and then I’ll send the pale green to be dyed and get on with altering the belt.’

  ‘Well, I think that’s all,’ said Mrs Brandon and left Nurse to her ironing, both ladies perfectly satisfied by a conversation which had covered Miss Brandon’s death, funeral, and the subsequent light mourning, without once mentioning an unpleasant word. On the landing Mrs Brandon found Ethel, the upper housemaid, and paused to tell her that the Green Room might be wanted quite soon, as Miss Morris might be coming from Brandon Abbey if anything happened, and to see that there was clean paper in all the drawers, an order which filled the recipient with ghoulish joy. Thence proceeding to the ground floor she found Rose in the sitting-room, taking away the silver ornaments to clean them.

  ‘Oh, Rose,’ she said, ‘Dr Ford rang up just now. It seems that Miss Brandon is just the same.’

  ‘Oh dear, madam,’ said Rose.

  ‘Her companion, Miss Morris, has had a very hard time,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘and I thought if Miss Morris needed a rest I could have her over here for a fortnight. I told Ethel to see that the Green Room was ready. I was thinking she could use the little dressing-room as a sitting-room if we put a comfortable chair into it.’

  Rose, understanding perfectly well the implications of these remarks, said the chair out of the Pink Room would go in nicely, and would Mrs Brandon mention it to Ethel, as really she sometimes hardly liked to say anything to Ethel herself, and was always one for peace and quiet.

  This matter adjusted, Mrs Brandon passed on to the kitchen. Cook, who had already heard the news from Nurse and Ethel, said she really was sorry to hear Miss Brandon was no better and she was thinking of making some beef tea and some calves’ foot jelly, because it was as well to be prepared and she always liked two clear days for her jellies, and if people had had a shock there was nothing like it.

  Meanwhile at Brandon Abbey old Miss Brandon’s life was slowly ebbing away. It had perhaps not been a very interesting life, or one which contained much affection, but its owner had enjoyed it in her own way. She had admired the father who made a fortune and built the Abbey, and done her best to administer as he would have wished it the vast fortune that he left her. ‘Be just before you are generous’ was her guiding rule, and made her disliked, for the justice was kept for servants, tenants, tradespeople and such few friends as she had, while the generosity was confined to large subscriptions and donations to various charitable institutions, often appearing as anonymous gifts. The one deep feeling of her life had been her affection, amounting to adoration, for her scapegrace brother, Captain Brandon. To have been in his regiment was a sure passport to her favour, and successive Colonels could have told of help given to any of the regiment whose needs were made known to her. In her younger days more than one officer, who as a subaltern had known Captain Brandon, had come to her when in difficulties with ladies of confirmed or brevet rank, and had been rescued, the only price of his rescue being Miss Brandon’s ribald chuckle as she insisted on having the story retailed to her in every detail.

  Now she lay half asleep for hours together, watched by Sparks and Miss Morris by day, by the nurse at night, rousing herself from time to time to order Miss Morris to read aloud Captain Brandon’s old, yellow letters, never tiring of those in which he described the unfortunate entanglement with Mrs Colonel Arbuthnot which had resulted in his having to exchange.

  Late in the afternoon a clerk from her solicitors, to whom Miss Morris had written at her request on the previous day, arrived at Brandon Abbey. The old lady summoning her energy insisted on seeing him alone, except for Sparks, and he soon went away again. After this her interest in the world lapsed altogether. At five o’clock next morning the nurse tapped at Miss Morris’s door. Miss Morris, who had almost forgotten what a good night’s sleep was like, was up and dressed in a very short time and came into Miss Brandon’s bedroom.

  Nurse had drawn up the blind and the early sun was shining into the room, as it had not been allowed to do for many years.

  Miss Morris came near the bed. Her employer was lying back on the pillows, her eyes shut, her heavy face in its frilled cap looking very tired and old.

  ‘She will notice you presently,’ said the nurse. ‘She was asking for you.’

  ‘Never could abide nurses. Meddling fools,’ said the old lady in a weak but distinct voice, without opening her eyes.

  ‘It’s Miss Morris, Miss Brandon, you asked for her, you know,’ said nurse in a voice of patient brightness that fully justified Miss Brandon’s dislike.

  ‘Come here,’ said the old lady. ‘Fred wouldn’t have looked at you, but you’ll find someone else will, before long. I’m sorry I couldn’t fancy my supper last night. It’s high time I was dead.’

  These may be said to have been Miss Brandon’s last sensible words. Miss Morris, who was sitting by her bed, did indeed hear her mutter, ‘Mrs Colonel Arbuthnot,’ and give a ghostly chuckle, but otherwise she never spoke again. Presently Miss Morris and the nurse looked at each other. Then Miss Morris went and telephoned to Dr Ford, and because there was nothing else to be done she went back to her room, vaguely wondered in what kind of bedroom she would find herself in her next place, and lay down, dressed as she was, on her bed.

  By ten o’clock Mrs Brandon was at the Abbey. When Dr Ford rang her up Francis had offered to come, but as there would have been nothing for him to do she refused his kind offer. Poor Delia, after all her longing to see the last of her aunt, was suddenly overcome by the tender heart that she kept beneath her robust exterior and burst into tears, weeping for her disagreeable aunt as bitterly as if she had been a field mouse. So her mother left her to Nurse and started alone. At the drive gate Curwen suddenly pulled up, as a figure rose from the ditch where it had been sitting.

  ‘Hilary!’ exclaimed Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Dr Ford rang Mr Miller up,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I had an idea you would be going, because of that very kind thing you said about Miss Morris. I didn’t like to bother you, but I thought I’d wait here, and if you did come I wanted to ask if I could do anything to help.’

  ‘Get in and come with me,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  Mr Grant did as he was told. As on a previous journey Mrs Brandon spoke very little, but this time her companion did not take her silence for scorn. To his adoration there began to be added a cooler admiration for someone who was going to do a job that not everyone would have done, and was doing it without any fuss. When they got to the Abbey Mrs Brandon suddenly became an efficient grown-up person and disappeared upstairs with a red-eyed Sparks, leaving Mr Grant a prey to a sense of his own incompetence. The butler offered him sherry in so suitable a voice that Mr Grant, though he disliked sherry early in the morning excessively, was afraid to refuse it, and under the butler’s eye not only had to drink it, but also eat two small biscuits with caraway seeds in them, a form of refreshment that he loathed. When he had choked upon the second the butler hastened to refill his glass, and Mr Grant wished Mrs Brandon could see what he was suffering for her sake.

  Accompanied by poor Sparks, who was bewailing her mistress as if she had been the kindest of employers, Mrs Brandon visited the dead woman’s room, laid on the bed the spray of flowering myrtle that she had brought with her, had a few words with the nurse, and came out again into the little sitting-room with relief that one part of her duty was done. She then set herself to comfort poor Sparks, who found real consolation in telling Mrs Brandon of the various passages she had had with the nurse, even going so far as a dark hint that some nurses got a retaining fee from undertakers, but at this point Mrs Brandon, with as much tact as possible, interrupted and asked where
Miss Morris was. Sparks had to confess that she hadn’t seen her that morning, but offered to go and look.

  Mrs Brandon, left alone, looked for the last time on the serried rows of photographs, wondering by what slow process the plump, pretty child with ringlets had been changed to the shapeless, bed-ridden old woman, feared or disliked by most of those who came in contact with her. Looking absent-mindedly at her own hands according to custom, Mrs Brandon saw the diamond ring and wondered if Miss Brandon was even now meeting Captain Frederick Brandon and if so in what possible kind of heaven. Probably an Indian station, she thought, where Miss Amelia Brandon, keeping house for her gallant brother, would for ever look on his escapades with an indulgent eye and listen to his stories of pretty ladies. But realising that these were irreligious thoughts, she pulled herself together. Sparks then returned with a face of pleasurable gloom to say that she had knocked at Miss Morris’s door, but couldn’t get any answer, and she didn’t like to think what might have happened.