‘Aubrey has a look of Father, Blanche,’ said Matty.
‘I believe you are right, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, with more than the usual expression. ‘I often see different likenesses going across his face. It has a more elusive quality than any of our faces.’
‘I mean something quite definite, dear. It was unmistakable for the moment.’
‘Yes, for the moment. But the moment after there is nothing there. It is a face which one has to watch for its fleeting moods and expressions. Would not you say so, Father?’
Edgar raised his eyes.
‘Father has to watch,’ said Aubrey, awaiting the proceeding with a grin.
‘What a gallant smile!’ said Clement, unaware that this was the truth.
‘There, Uncle’s smile!’ said Justine.
The quality of the grin changed.
‘And now Grandpa’s! Don’t you see it, Aunt Matty?’
‘I spoke of it, dear. Yes.’
‘And don’t you, Father? You have to look for a moment.’
Edgar again fixed his eyes on his son.
‘There, it has gone! The moment has passed. I knew it would.’
Aubrey had not shared the knowledge, the moment having seemed to him interminable.
‘Father need not watch any longer,’ he said, and would have grinned, if he had dared to grin.
‘The process does not seem to be attended by adequate reward,’ said Mark.
Clement raised his eyes and drew a breath and dropped his eyes again.
‘Clement need not watch any longer either,’ said Aubrey.
‘Now, little boy, you pass out of the common eye.’
Oliver turned his eyes on his grandson.
‘The lad is getting older,’ he said.
‘Now that is indubitably true, Grandpa,’ said Justine. ‘It might be said of all of us. And it is true of him in another sense; he has developed a lot lately. But do take your eyes off him and let him forget himself. This is all so bad for him.’
‘He could not help it, dear,’ said Blanche, expressing the thought of her son.
‘Now are our little affairs of any interest to you?’ said Matty, who had been waiting to interpose and at once arrested Sarah’s eyes. ‘If they are, we have our own little piece of news. We are to have a guest, who is to spend quite a while with us. I am looking forward to it, as I have a good deal of time to myself in my new life. There are many people whom I miss from the old one, though I have others to do their part indeed. And this is one of the first, and one whose place it would be difficult to fill.’
‘We have found a corner for her,’ said Oliver, ‘though you might not think it.’
‘She will have the spare room, of course, Father,’ said Blanche. ‘It is quite a good little room.’
‘Yes, Mother, of course it is,’ said Justine, in a low, suddenly exasperated tone. ‘But it is to be like that. The house is to be a hut and the room a corner, and there is an end of it. Let us leave it as they prefer it. People can’t do more than have what they would choose.’
Matty looked at the two heads inclined to each other, but did not strain her ears to catch the words. Sarah did so and controlled a smile as she caught them.
‘Well, are you going to let me share this advantage with you?’ went on Matty. ‘It is to be a great pleasure in my life, and I hope it will count in yours. There is no great change of companionship round about.’
‘Well, no, I suppose there is not,’ said Justine. ‘We are in the country after all.’
‘So I am not a host in myself,’ said Dudley.
‘It is known to be better for the country to be like itself,’ said Sarah, who found this to be the case, as it was the reason of her acquaintanceship with the Gavestons.
Thomas looked up with a faintly troubled face.
‘This is a very charming person, who has been a great deal with me,’ continued Matty, as if these interpositions did not signify. ‘Her parents have lately died and left her at a loose end; and if I can help her to gather up the threads of her life, I feel it is for me to do it. It may be a thing I am equal to, in spite of my - what shall I call them? -disadvantages.’
‘I always tell you that your disadvantages do not count, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine.
‘I feel that they do, dear. They must to me, you see. But I try not to let them affect other people, and I am glad of any assurance that they do not.’
‘Do you mean Maria Sloane?’ said Blanche. ‘I remember her when we had just grown up and she was a child. She grew up very pretty, and we saw her sometimes when we stayed with you and Father.’
‘She grew up very pretty; she has remained very pretty; and she will always be pretty to me, though she is so to everyone as yet, and I think will be so until she is something more.’
‘It is odd to see Aunt Matty giving her wholehearted admiration to anyone,’ said Justine to Mark. ‘It shows that we have not a complete picture of her.’
‘It also suggests that she has one of us.’
‘It is pleasant to see it in a way.’
‘We may feel it to be salutary.’
‘She has only seen one or two of my many sides,’ said Dudley.
‘Miss Sloane has not married, has she?’ said Blanche.
‘No, she is still my lovely Maria Sloane. I don’t think I could think of her as anything else. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but it seems that marriage might be a sort of desecration of Maria, a sort of plucking of the rose.’ Matty ended on an easy note and did not look into anyone’s face.
Sarah regarded her with several expressions, and Blanche with an easy and almost acquiescent one.
‘Mrs Middleton has been plucked,’ murmured Aubrey. ‘Mr Middleton has plucked her.’
Thomas gave a kindly smile which seemed to try to reach the point of amusement.
‘Is she well provided for, Aunt Matty?’ said Justine in a clear tone.
Sarah nodded towards Justine at the pertinence of the question.
‘I think so, dear; I have not heard anything else. Money seems somehow not to touch her. She seems to live apart from it like a flower, having all she needs and wanting nothing more.’
‘Flowers are plucked,’ said Aubrey.
‘They look better when they are not, dear.’
‘Money must touch her if she has all she needs,’ said Clement. ‘There must be continual contact.’
‘Well, I suppose she has some, dear, but I think it is not much, and that she does not want any more. When you see her you will know what I mean.’
‘We have all met people of that kind, and very charming they are,’ said Justine.
‘No, not anyone quite like this. I shall be able to show you something outside your experience.’
‘Come, Aunt Matty, think of Uncle Dudley.’
‘I could not say it of myself,’ said her uncle.
‘Yes, I see that you follow me, dear. But there is no one else who is quite as my Maria. Still you will meet her soon, and I shall be glad to do for you something you have not had done. I take a great deal from you, and I must not only take.’
‘Is she so different from other people?’ said Blanche, with simple question. ‘I do not remember her very well, but I don’t quite know what you mean.’
‘No, dear? Well, we shall see, when you meet, if you do know. We can’t all recognize everything.’
‘Would it be better if Mother and Aunt Matty did not address each other in terms of affection?’ said Mark. ‘Is it supposed to excuse everything else? It seems that something is.’
‘Well, perhaps in a way it does,’ said Justine, with a sigh. ‘Affection should be able to stand a little buffeting, or there would be nothing in it.’
‘There might be more if it did not occasion such a thing,’ said Clement.
‘Oh, come, Clement, people can’t pick their way with their intimates as if they were strangers.’
‘It is only with the latter that they attempt it.’
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p; ‘Father and Uncle behave like friends,’ said Aubrey, ‘Mother and Aunt Matty like sisters, Clement and I like brothers. I am not sure how Mark and Clement behave, I think like strangers.’
‘No, I can’t quite subscribe to it,’ said Justine. ‘It is putting too much stress on little, chance, wordy encounters. Our mild disagreement now does not alter our feeling for each other.’
‘It may rather indicate it,’ said Clement.
‘We should find the differences interesting and stimulating.’
‘They often seem to be stimulating,’ said Mark. ‘But I doubt if people take much interest in them. They always seem to want to exterminate them.’
‘I suppose I spend my life on the surface,’ said Dudley. ‘But it does seem to avoid a good deal.’
‘Now that is not true, Uncle,’ said Justine. ‘You and Father get away together and give each other of the best and deepest in you. Well we know it and so do you. Oh, we know what goes on when you are shut in the library together. So don’t make any mistake about it, because we do not.’
Edgar’s eyes rested on his daughter as if uncertain of their own expression.
‘Do you live on the surface, Aunt Matty?’ said Aubrey.
‘No, dear. I? No, I am a person who lives rather in the deeps, I am afraid. Though I don’t know why I should say “afraid”, except that the deeps are rather formidable places sometimes. But I have a surface self to show to my niece and nephews, so that I need not take them down too far with me. I have a deal to tell them of the time when I was as young as they, and things were different and yet the same, in that strange way things have. Yes, there are stories waiting for you of Aunt Matty in her heyday, when the world was young, or seemed to keep itself young for her, as things did somehow adapt themselves to her in those days. Now there is quite a lot for Aunt Matty to talk about herself. But you asked her, didn’t you?’ Matty looked about in a bright, conscious way and tapped her knee.
‘It was a lot, child, as you say,’ said Oliver.
‘Aubrey knew not what he did,’ said Clement.
‘He knew what he meant to do,’ said Mark. ‘Happily Aunt Matty did not.’
‘We both used to be such rebels, your aunt and I,’ said Blanche, looking round on her children. ‘We didn’t find the world large enough or the time long enough for all our pranks and experiments, I must tell you all about it some time. Hearing about it brings it all back to me.’
‘Being together makes Mother and Aunt Matty more alike,’ said Mark.
‘Suppose Mother should become a second Aunt Matty!’ said Aubrey.
‘Or Aunt Matty become a second little Mother,’ said Justine. ‘Let us look on the bright side - on that side of things. Grandpa, what did you think of the two of them in those days?’
‘I, my dear? Well, they were young then, as you are now. There was nothing to think of it and I thought nothing.’
‘We were such a complement to each other,’ continued Blanche. ‘People used to say that what the one did not think of, the other did, and vice versa. I remember what Miss Griffin thought of us when she came. She said she had never met such a pair.’
‘Miss Griffin!’ said Justine. ‘I meant to ask her to come in tonight and forgot. Never mind, the matter can be mended. I will send a message.’
‘Is it worth while, dear? It is getting late and she will not be ready. There is not much left for her to come for. We will ask her to dinner one night and give her proper notice.’
‘We will do that indeed, Mother, but there is still the evening. And she is just sitting at home alone, isn’t she, Aunt Matty?’
‘Why, yes, dear, she is,’ said Matty with a laugh. ‘When two out of three people are out, there must be one left. But I think she enjoys an evening to herself.’
‘I see it myself as a change for the better,’ said Oliver.
‘Now I rather doubt that,’ said Justine, ‘It is so easy, when people are unselfish and adaptable, to assume that they are enjoying things which really offer very little. Now what is there, after all, in sitting alone in that little room?’
‘Cosiness, dear, perhaps,’ said Matty, with a change in her eyes. ‘I have asked that same question and have had an answer.’
‘The size of the room is well enough for one person,’ said Oliver. ‘That is indeed its scope.’
‘Mother dear, I have your permission to send for her?’ said Justine, as if the words of others could only be passed over.
‘Well, dear, if you have your aunt’s. But I don’t know whom we are to send. The servants are busy.’
‘There is no problem there; I will go myself. I have eaten enough and I will be back before the rest of you have finished.’
‘One of the boys could go,’ said Edgar.
‘No, Father, I will leave them to satisfy their manly appetites. No one else will understand the exigencies of Miss Griffin’s toilet, and be able by a touch and a word to put things right, as I shall.’
‘Certainly no one else will undertake that,’ said Mark.
‘Should I come to help with the toilet?’ said Aubrey.
‘One of you should walk with your sister,’ said Edgar, without a smile.
Aubrey rose with a flush, stood aside for Justine to pass and followed her out of the room.
‘Oh, my baby boy has gone,’ said Blanche, not referring to the actual exit.
‘He has developed very much, dear,’ said Matty. ‘We shall have him like his brothers after all.’
‘Why should he not be like them?’
‘Well, he will be. We see that now.’
‘He has always seemed to me as promising as either of them. A little less forward for his age, but that is often a good sign.’
‘It must be difficult to judge of children’, said Mark, ‘when their progress must count against them.’
‘I can’t think of a childhood with less of the success that spells failure,’ said Clement.
‘Slow and steady wins the race,’ said Oliver, without actually following.
‘He is not particularly slow. He is only different from other people, as all individual people are,’ said Blanche. ‘No one with anything in him is just like everyone else.’
‘That cannot be said of anyone here, can it?’ said her sister. ‘We are an individual company.’
‘Yes, but no one quite so much so as Aubrey. He is without exception the most individual person I have ever met.’
‘Without exception, dear?’ said Matty, bending her head and looking up from under it. ‘Have you forgotten the two young rebels we were talking about just now?’
‘No, but even you and I did not quite come up to him in originality. He is something in himself which none of the rest has been.’
‘I think that is true,’ said Mark.
‘Now what do you mean by that? If you mean anything disparaging, it is very petty and absurd. I wish Justine were here to take my part. I can only repeat that there is something in Aubrey which is to me peculiarly satisfying. Edgar, why do you not support me?’
‘You do not seem - you hardly seem to need my help.’
‘But what do you think yourself of the boy? I know you always speak the truth.’
Edgar, who had lately hoped that his son might after all attain the average, broke this record.
‘I see there is much - that there may be much in what you say.’
‘Aubrey is the one with a touch of me in him,’ said Dudley. ‘I wish Justine were here too.’
‘Hark! Hush! Listen,’ said Matty. ‘Do not make so much noise. Is it Maria’s voice in the hall? Blanche, do ask your boys to stop talking. Yes, it is my Maria; Justine must have brought her. She must have arrived this evening. It is a full moment for me, and I am glad for you all to share it.’ Matty broke off and sat with a listening expression and set lips.
‘What a pity for her to come like this,’ said Blanche, ‘with dinner nearly over! I hope she has had something to eat, but Miss Griffin will have seen to that.’
&
nbsp; ‘Yes, Miss Griffin will have cared for her, but I am here to give her welcome, And I cannot get my chair away from the table; I cannot manage it; I am dependent upon others; I must sit and wait for help. Yes, it is her voice. Sometimes patience is very hard. Thank you, Dudley; thank you, Edgar; I knew I should not wait long. No one else, Jellamy; too many cooks spoil the broth. I am on my feet now, and I can arrange my lace and touch my hair and make myself look my best, vain person that I am; make myself look like myself, I should rather say, for that is all my aim.’
‘What relation is this friend to you all?’ said Sarah, leaning towards Blanche.
‘No relation, only an old friend. She lived near to our old home and my sister saw a good deal of her.’
Sarah gave a grateful nod and leaned back, ready for the scene.
Justine spoke in the doorway.
‘Now, I am simply the herald. I claim no other part. I found Miss Sloane already in the lodge and Miss Griffin at a loss how to manage the situation. So I took it into my own hands. And I feel a thought triumphant. I induced Miss Sloane, tired as she was, travel-stained and unwilling as she was, harassed and moithered by crossing letters and inconsistent trains, to come and join us tonight. Now do you not call that a success? Because it was a hardly earned one. And now you can all share the results.’
A tall, dark woman of fifty entered the room, came towards Matty with a swift but quiet step, exchanged a natural embrace and looked round for her hosts. Blanche came forward in the character; Matty introduced the pair with an air of possession in each; Miss Griffin watched with the open and almost avid interest of one starved of interest and accordingly unversed in its occasions, and Justine took her stand at her side with an air of easy friendship.
‘I do not need an introduction,’ said Blanche. ‘I remember you well, Miss Sloane. I am afraid that my daughter has asked rather much of you, but we do appreciate your giving it to us.’
‘Miss Sloane has made a gallant capitulation, Mother, and does not want credit for it any more than any other generous giver.’
‘It is more than we had a right to expect,’ said Edgar.
‘It is certainly that, Father. So we will take it in a spirit of simple gratitude.’
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