A Family and a Fortune

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Ivy Compton-Burnett

  A FAMILY AND A FORTUNE

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 1

  ‘Justine, I have told you that I do not like the coffee touched until I come down. How can I remember who has had it, and manage about the second cups, if it is taken out of my hands? I don’t know how many times I have asked you to leave it alone.’

  ‘A good many, Mother dear, but you tend to be rather a laggard. When the poor boys sit in thirsty patience it quite goes to my heart.’

  ‘It would not hurt them to wait a few minutes. Your father and your uncle are not down yet. There is no such hurry.’

  Mrs Gaveston dealt with the coffee with small, pale, stiff hands, looking with querulous affection at her children and signing in a somewhat strained manner to the servant to take the cups. She had rather uncertain movements and made one or two mistakes, which she rectified with a sort of distracted precision. She lifted her face for her children’s greetings with an air of forgetting the observance as each one passed, and of being reminded of it by the next. She was a rather tall, very pale woman of about sixty, who somehow gave the impression of being small, and whose spareness of build was without the wiriness supposed to accompany it. She had wavy, grey hair, a long, narrow chin, long, narrow, dark eyes in a stiff narrow, handsome face, and a permanent air of being held from her normal interest by some passing strain or distraction.

  Her only daughter and eldest child was shorter and stronger in build, with clear, light eyes, a fuller face, pleasant features which seemed to be without a plan, and a likeness to her mother which was seen at once to overlie a great difference. She looked as much less than her thirty years as her mother looked more than her double number. Strangers often took Blanche for her children’s grandmother, a fact which she had not suspected and would not have believed. She considered that she looked young for her age, or rather assumed that she did so, as she also took it for granted that she was successful, intelligent, and admired, an attitude which came from a sort of natural buoyancy and had little meaning. She really gave little thought to herself and could almost be said to live for others. Her children had for her a lively, if not the deepest affection, and she was more than satisfied with it. She would hardly have recognized the deepest feeling, as she had never experienced or inspired it.

  The three sons kissed their mother and returned to their seats. The eldest was a short, solid young man of twenty-eight, with large, grey eyes, the dark, curly hair his mother had had in her youth, a broader, blunter but perhaps more attractive face, and an air of being reasonably at peace with himself and his world. The second, Clement, was taller and thinner, with straight hair and darker skin, and looked the same age as Mark, although two years younger. He had cold, dark eyes, a cold, aloof expression, and a definite resemblance in feature to his mother. He seemed to look what he was, and neither to require nor repay observation. Aubrey, the youngest by eleven years, was a boy of fifteen, small and plain to the point of being odd and undersized, with a one-sided smile which often called for the abused term of grin, an indefinable lack of balance in movement, and a reputed backwardness which did not actually extend beyond his books. They had all been named after godparents from whom their mother had vague expectations for them. The expectations had not materialized, but Blanche had been too indefinite about them to resent it, or even actually to imagine their doing so, and felt less disappointment than vague appreciation that they had been possible.

  Justine and Mark conversed with goodwill and ate with an ordinary appetite; Clement did not converse and showed an excellent one; Blanche watched her children’s plates and made as good a meal as she could without giving her attention to it; and Aubrey sat and swung his feet and did not speak or eat.

  ‘Are you not enjoying your breakfast, my dear?’ said Blanche, in a faintly outraged and incredulous manner, which was possibly due to surprise that this should happen again after so many times.

  Aubrey gave her a smile, or gave a smile in her direction. The smile seemed to relate to his own thoughts, and did so.

  ‘Wake up, little boy,’ said Justine, leaning across to tap his shoulder.

  Her brother gave a smile of another kind, intended to show that he was at ease under this treatment.

  ‘If I have some toast, perhaps I shall grow tall enough to go to school.’

  Aubrey’s life at home with a tutor was a source of mingled embarrassment and content, and the hope that he would eventually go to Eton like his brothers was held by everyone but himself. Everyone knew his age of fifteen, but he alone realized it, and knew that the likelihood of a normal school life was getting less. Blanche regarded him as a young child, Justine as a slightly older one, Mark as an innocently ludicrous exception to a normal family, and Clement as a natural object of uneasiness and distaste. Aubrey saw his family as they were, having had full opportunity to know them, and made his own use of it.

  ‘This omelette is surely a breach with tradition,’ said Clement.

  ‘It is not,’ said Blanche, instantly and without looking at it or following the words beyond recognizing a criticism. ‘It is very good and very wholesome.’

  ‘Clement speaks from experience,’ said Aubrey, glancing at his brother’s plate.

  ‘Why do you eat it, if you don’t like it?’ said Mark, with no sting in his tone.

  ‘I am hungry; I must eat something.’

  ‘There is ham,’ said Justine.

  ‘Clement will eat the flesh of the pig,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘It is certainly odd that civilized people should have it on their tables,’ said his brother.

  ‘Do uncivilized people have things on tables?’

  ‘Now, little boy, don’t try to be clever,’ said Justine, in automatic reproof, beginning to cut the ham.

  ‘Justine understands Clement,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Well, I know you all in and out. After all, I ought, having practically brought you all up.’

  ‘Well, hardly that, dear,’ said Blanche, looking at her daughter with the contraction of her eyes which marked her disagreement. ‘You were only two when Mark was born. It is I who have brought up the four of you, as is natural.’

  ‘Well, well, have it your own way, little Mother,’

  ‘It is not only Mother’s way. It is the way of the world,’ said Mark.

  ‘Would some ham make me grow?’ said Aubrey. ‘I am afraid my size is really worrying for Clement.’

  ‘What does it matter on what scale Aubrey is?’ said the latter.

  ‘I should always be your little brother. So you do not mind.’

  ‘Always Mother’s little boy,’ said Blanche, taking Aubrey’s hand.

  ‘Mother’s hand looks lily-white in my brown, boyish one.’

  ‘Don’t let us sit bickering all through breakfast,’ said Justine, in an absent tone.

  ‘We are surely not doing that, dear,’ said Blanche, her eyes again contracting. ‘We are only having some conversation. We can’t all think alike about everything.’

  ‘But you do all agree that I am hardly up to my age,’ said Aubrey. ‘Not that there is anything to take hold of.’

  ‘I thought the conversation was tending to a bickering note.’

  ‘I don’t think it was, dear. I do not know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, then, neither do I, little Mother. I was only talking at random.’

  ‘Suppose Justine’s voice was to be stilled!’ said Aubrey. ‘What should we
feel about it then?’

  ‘Don’t say such things,’ said his mother, turning on him sharply.

  ‘I am not so very late,’ said a voice at the door. ‘You will be able to feel that you had me in the first hour of your day.’

  ‘Well, Uncle dear,’ said Justine, accepting the normal entrance of a member of the house.

  ‘Good morning, good morning,’ said another voice. ‘Good morning, Blanche; good morning Justine; good morning, my sons. Good morning.’

  ‘Good morning, Father dear,’ said Justine, leaning forward to adjust the cups for her mother.

  The two brothers who entered were tall, lean men in the earlier fifties, the elder being the squire of the neighbourhood, or rather the descendant of men who had held this title together with a larger estate. He had thick, straight, speckled hair, speckled, hazel eyes, vaguely speckled clothes, a long solid nose and chin, a look of having more bone and less flesh than other men, a face and hands which would have been called bronzed, if there had been anything in the English climate of his home to have this effect on them, and a suggestion of utter honesty which he had transmitted to his daughter. The younger brother, Dudley, was of the same height and lighter build, and was said to be a caricature of the elder, and was so in the sense that his face was cast in a similar mould and had its own deviations from it. His nose was less straight; his eyes were not entirely on a line, and had a hint of his youngest nephew’s; and his skin was rather pale than bronzed, though the pair had lived in the same place, even in the same house, all their lives. It was a question in the neighbourhood which brother looked the more distinguished, and it was thought a subtle judgement to decide for Dudley. The truth was that Dudley looked the more distinguished when he was seen with his brother, and Edgar by himself, Dudley being dependent on Edgar’s setting of the type, and Edgar affording the less reward to a real comparison. The butler who followed them into the room, bearing a dish to replace the cold one, was a round-featured, high-coloured man about thirty, of the same height as his masters but in other respects very different.

  ‘Good morning, sir; good morning, sir,’ he said with a slight, separate bow to each.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Dudley.

  ‘Good morning, good morning,’ said Edgar, taking no longer over the words.

  Blanche looked up in a daily disapproval of Jellamy’s initiative in speech, which had never been definite enough to be expressed.

  ‘It is a very unsettled day, sir.’

  ‘Yes, it appears to be,’ said Edgar; ‘yes, it is unsettled.’

  ‘The atmosphere is humid, sir.’

  ‘Yes, humid; yes, it seems to be damp.’

  Edgar seldom made a definite statement. It was as if he feared to commit himself to something that was not the utter truth.

  ‘I love a conversation between Father and Jellamy,’ said Justine, in an undertone.

  Blanche looked up with an expression which merely said that she did not share the feeling.

  ‘The plaster is peeling off the walls in the hall, sir.’

  ‘I will come some time and see. I will try to remember to come and look at it.’

  ‘I meant the servants’ hall, sir,’ said Jellamy, as if his master would hardly penetrate to this point.

  ‘That room you all use to sit in? The one that used to have a sink in it?’

  ‘The sink has been removed, sir. It is now put to the individual purpose.’

  ‘That will do, Jellamy, thank you,’ said Blanche, who disliked the presence of servants at meals. ‘If we want you again we will ring.’

  ‘It would be a good plan to remove all sinks and make all rooms into halls,’ said Dudley. ‘It would send up the standard of things.’

  ‘In this poor old world,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘How did you sleep, Father?’ said Justine.

  ‘Very well, my dear; I think I can say well. I slept for some hours. I hope you have a good account to give.’

  ‘Oh, don’t ask about the sleep of a healthy young woman, Father. Trust you to worry about the sleep of your only daughter!’ Edgar flinched in proportion to his doubt how far this confidence was justified, ‘It is your sleep that matters, and I am not half satisfied about it.’

  ‘The young need sleep, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, I am not as young as all that. A ripe thirty, and all my years lived to the full! I would not have missed out one of them. I don’t rank myself with the callow young any longer.’

  ‘Always Father’s little girl,’ murmured Aubrey.

  ‘What, my son?’ said Edgar.

  ‘I still rank myself with the young,’ said Aubrey, as if repeating what he had said. ‘I think I had better until I go to school. Anything else would make me look silly, and Clement would not like me to look that.’

  ‘Get on with your breakfast, little boy,’ said Justine. ‘Straight on and not another word until you have finished.’

  ‘I was making my little effort to keep the ball of conversation rolling. Every little counts.’

  ‘So it does, dear, and with all our hearts we acknowledge it.’

  Blanche smiled from her eldest to her youngest child in appreciation of their feeling.

  ‘Aubrey meets with continual success,’ said Mark. ‘He is indeed a kind of success in himself.’

  ‘What kind?’ said Clement.

  ‘Too simple, Clement,’ said Justine, shaking her head. ‘How did you sleep, Uncle?’

  ‘Very well until I was awakened by the rain. Then I went to the window and stood looking out into the night. I see now that people really do that.’

  ‘They really shut out the air,’ said Clement.

  ‘Is Clement a soured young man?’ said Aubrey.

  ‘I had a very bad night,’ said Blanche, in a mild, conversational tone, without complaint that no enquiry had been made of her. ‘I have almost forgotten what it is to have a good one.’

  ‘Poor little Mother! But you sleep in the afternoon,’ said Justine.

  ‘I never do. I have my rest, of course; I could not get on without it. But I never sleep. I may close my eyes to ease them, but I am always awake.’

  ‘You were snoring yesterday, Mother,’ said Justine, with the insistence upon people’s sleeping and giving this sign which seems to be a human characteristic.

  ‘No, I was not,’ said Blanche, with the annoyance at the course, which is unfortunately another. ‘I never snore even at night, so I certainly do not when I am just resting in the day.’

  ‘Mother, I tiptoed in and you did not give a sign.’

  ‘If you made no sound, and I was resting my eyes, I may not have heard you, of course.’

  ‘Anyhow a few minutes in the day do not make up for a bad night,’ said Mark.

  ‘But I do not sleep in the day, even for a few minutes,’ said his mother in a shriller tone. ‘I don’t know what to say to make you all understand.’

  ‘I don’t know why people mind admitting to a few minutes’ sleep in the day,’ said Dudley, ‘when we all acknowledge hours at night and indeed require compassion if we do not have them.’

  ‘Who has acknowledged them?’ said Clement. ‘It will appear that as a family we do without sleep.’

  ‘But I do not mind admitting to them,’ said Blanche. ‘What I mean is that it is not the truth. There is no point in not speaking the truth even about a trivial matter.’

  ‘I do not describe insomnia in that way,’ said Mark.

  ‘Dear boy, you do understand,’ said Blanche, holding out her hand with an almost wild air. ‘You do prevent my feeling quite alone.’

  ‘Come, come, Mother, I was tactless, I admit,’ said Justine. ‘I know people hate confessing that they sleep in the day. I ought to have remembered it.’

  ‘Justine now shows tact,’ murmured Aubrey.

  ‘It is possible - it seems to be possible,’ said Edgar, ‘to be resting with closed eyes and give the impression of sleep.’

  ‘You forget the snoring, Father,’ said Justine, in a voice
so low and light as to escape her mother’s ears.

  ‘If you don’t forget it too, I don’t know what we are to do,’ said Mark, in the same manner.

  ‘Snoring is not proof of being asleep,’ said Dudley.

  ‘But I was not snoring,’ said Blanche, in the easier tone of one losing grasp of a situation. ‘I should have known it myself. It would not be possible to be awake and make a noise and not hear it.’

  Justine gave an arch look at anyone who would receive it, Edgar did so as a duty and rapidly withdrew his eyes as another.

  ‘Why do we not learn that no one ever snores under any circumstances?’ said Clement.

  ‘I wonder how the idea of snoring arose,’ said Mark.

  ‘Mother, are you going to eat no more than that?’ said Justine. ‘You are not ashamed of eating as well as of sleeping, I hope.’

  ‘There has been no question of sleeping. And I am not ashamed of either. I always eat very well and I always sleep very badly. There is no connexion between them.’

  ‘You seem to be making an exception in the first matter today,’ said her husband.

  ‘Well, it upsets me to be contradicted, Edgar, and told that I do things when I don’t do them, and when I know quite well what I do, myself,’ said Blanche, almost flouncing in her chair.

  ‘It certainly does, Mother dear. So we will leave it at that; that you know quite well what you do yourself.’

  ‘It seems a reasonable conclusion,’ said Mark.

  ‘I believe people always know that best,’ said Dudley. ‘If we could see ourselves as others see us, we should be much more misled, though people always talk as if we ought to try to do it.’

  ‘They want us to be misled and cruelly,’ said his nephew.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Justine. ‘We might often meet a good, sound, impartial judgement.’

  ‘And we know, when we have one described like that, what a dreadful judgement it is,’ said her uncle.

  ‘Half the truth, the blackest of lies,’ said Mark.

  ‘The whitest of lies really,’ said Clement. ‘Or there is no such thing as a white lie.’

  ‘Well, there is not,’ said his sister. ‘Truth is truth and a lie is a lie.’