A Family and a Fortune

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘Justine dear, will you fetch my silks from my room?’

  ‘No, Mother, I can’t be sent out of the room like that, even if I have been a little frank and definite and may be so again. You must know me by now, and if you want me you must take me as I am.’

  ‘And as we cannot do without her, she has us in a tight place,’ said Matty, retrieving her position.

  ‘It is half past eleven,’ said Blanche, relinquishing her work as if her thoughts had not returned to it. ‘Matty dear, would you like anything? Or would Father? It is surprising how the time goes.’

  ‘Well, I really don’t think it is today,’ said Justine. ‘I should not have been surprised to find ourselves at the last stroke.’

  ‘Well, dear, some coffee for me, and for Father a glass of wine and a sandwich,’ said Matty, somehow implying that in the risen fortunes of the house such requirements would hardly count. ‘I hope you are going to join us.’

  ‘Yes, we will all have something; I think our nerves need it,’ said Justine.

  ‘Are you feeling guilty?’ said Matty, in a low, mischievous tone to Dudley.

  ‘Will Miss Seaton and Mr Seaton be staying to luncheon, ma’am?’ said Jellamy.

  ‘Yes. You will be staying, won’t you, Matty? Father won’t find it too much? He can have his rest.’

  ‘We will quarter ourselves upon you,’ said Oliver. ‘You will put up with what comes to you today. I take it that you wouldn’t alter it.’

  ‘Yes, they will both be here for luncheon, Jellamy.’

  ‘And Miss Sloane and Miss Griffin, Jellamy,’ said Justine, throwing a glance from her chair.

  ‘My dear, have you heard that?’

  ‘No, mother, I have just decided it. I think we need the effect of their presence.’

  ‘But are they free, dear child?’

  ‘Well, we can soon find out. If they are not, they cannot come, of course. But I fail to see what engagements they can have in a place where neither knows anyone.’

  ‘But Miss Sloane may not care to come, What does Aunt Matty say? Miss Sloane is her guest.’

  ‘Well, for that reason I should like to have her with me. It is a kind thought of Justine’s. I was wondering if I could leave her alone, and how to send a message. But Miss Griffin finds it a change to be without us.’ Matty’s tone quickened and her eyes changed. ‘And I find certain relief in being only with my relations. So I will say what I mean in my family circle and feel it is said.’

  ‘You will be better apart, if I may still depend on my eyes and ears,’ said her father. ‘I do not know what Maria makes of it all. I do not ask. She could not give a true answer and a false one would be no help. You forget the size of the house, though you talk of it.’

  ‘Well, I am not used to it yet.’

  ‘You would do well to become so.’

  ‘Let me have my own way, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, sitting on the arm of her aunt’s chair. ‘Don’t deny it to me because we have got a little cross. Give it to me all the more for that.’

  ‘Well, well, take it, dear. You know how I like you to have it.’

  ‘You have your own way a good deal, Justine,’ said Blanche.

  ‘Oh, well, Mother, a mature woman, the only sister amongst three brothers. Father’s only daughter! What can you expect?’

  Edgar looked up as if to see how his own name had become involved.

  ‘Everyone must rejoice with me today,’ said Dudley. ‘That always seems to me an absurd demand, but I am going to make it.’

  ‘And if there is anyone for selfless rejoicing for other people, Miss Griffin is that person, if I know her,’ said his niece. ‘And I shouldn’t be surprised if Miss Sloane has a touch of the same quality.’

  ‘Suppose we keep people apart, dear,’ said Matty in a light tone.

  ‘Oh, Aunt Matty, Miss Sloane has not a touch of that feeling. She would not mind being coupled with Miss Griffin. Even being with her once told me that. I should think it is not in her.’

  ‘But keep her apart, nevertheless, dear,’ said Blanche, in a low voice that was at once reproving and confidential. ‘She has nothing to do with anyone else.’

  ‘I am not sure that she would say that,’ said Justine audibly. ‘She has the connexion with Miss Griffin of a long friendship. I should say that she would be the first to recognize it.’

  ‘Well, well, dear, are you going to run down and ask them?’

  ‘No, no, not I this time,’ said Justine, shaking her head. ‘I am not always going to present myself as the bearer of such messages. It would mean that we thought too much of them altogether.’

  ‘Clement and I will go,’ said Mark. ‘That will give a trivial air to the errand. And we can imply that we think little of it.’

  ‘That should be easy,’ said his brother. ‘We have only to be natural.’

  ‘Ah, that is not always so easy as you seem to think,’ said Justine.

  ‘Perhaps you find it too much so.’

  ‘Well, run along, dears,’ said Blanche, in a neutral manner. ‘You can wait and bring them back.’

  ‘If they consent to come, Mother,’ said Justine, with a note of reproof.

  ‘Well, you thought they had no other engagements, dear. Let the boys go now. It will be a breath of fresh air for them after their exciting morning. We can’t have nothing but excitement.’

  ‘Do you know where to look?’ said Matty to Dudley, in a mischievous aside.

  ‘Mother talks as if we were guilty of some excess,’ said Clement to his brother as they left the house. ‘Our excitement has been for Uncle. Nothing has come to most of us.’

  ‘A good deal has come to Father, and in a certain sense to me.’

  ‘A good deal to you both. A house handed on intact is different indeed from one gaping at every seam, and sucking up an income to keep it over our heads. You are full of a great and solemn joy.’

  ‘And my happiness is not yours?’

  ‘Any satisfaction of mine must come out of my own life, not out of other people’s. But I ought to have some of my own. Father’s money will be set free and Uncle has no one to spend on but us.’

  ‘What are your personal hopes?’

  ‘Much as yours, except that they are on a smaller scale and yours are already fulfilled. I don’t want a place or could not have one. But I do want a little house of my own in Cambridge. I hate the college and I am obliged to live in the town. And a little income to add to what I earn. Then I should not need to spend my spare time at home. I cannot suffer much more of Aubrey and Justine.’

  ‘And I can?’

  ‘Your prospects are safe. You have no right to speak.’

  ‘I shall have nothing until Father dies, but the life which you must escape.’

  ‘Your future is bound up in the place. Mine has nothing to do with it. The house is a halting place for me.’

  ‘And for Justine and Aubrey what is it?’

  ‘Aubrey is a child and Justine is a woman. There is no comparison.’

  ‘Aubrey will not always be a child and Justine not always a young and dependent woman. I can imagine her in her own house as well as you.’

  ‘Mine is the need of the moment.’

  ‘So is mine. I could do with many things. But I don’t know if we can make the suggestions to Uncle.’

  ‘They may occur to him.’

  ‘Images will have to come crowding on his mind.’

  ‘I don’t see why they should not. He must have seen our straitened life.’

  ‘He must have lived it,’ said Mark.

  ‘You can make a joke of other people’s needs, when your own are satisfied. He can hardly go on for ever, spending all he has on the house. All sorts of demands must arise. We have been held very tight and insensibly the bonds will be loosened.’

  ‘When Father dies, you will have your share of what there is. Both he and Uncle must leave what they have to us.’

  ‘And how long will that be to wait?’

  ‘Clem
ent, what manner of man are you?’

  ‘The same as you, though you pretend not to know it. You can go in here and offer this invitation. Explain that we observe a piece of good fortune for one of us as a general festival.’

  ‘I am in command of such a situation. You are right to imply that you are not.’

  ‘There is Miss Griffin at the window. She is there whenever we come.’

  ‘She sees the shadows of coming events. Such a gift would develop in her life.’

  In due course the four emerged from the lodge and set off towards the house. Mark was ready to discuss the event; Clement was inclined to glance at Maria to judge of her view of it, and to try to talk of other things; Maria was lively and interested and Miss Griffin was alternately reflective and disposed to put sudden questions.

  ‘Here is a fairy-tale piece of news!’ said Maria, as she met the family. ‘I shall always be glad to have heard it at first hand. We must thank you for our experience as well as congratulate you on yours.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Sloane. That is a pleasant congratulation indeed,’ said Justine, turning to her brothers to continue. ‘What a contrast to poor Aunt Matty’s! What a difference our little inner differences make!’

  ‘A quarter of a million pounds!’ said Miss Griffin, standing in the middle of the floor. ‘I have never heard anything like it.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ said Dudley. ‘It is about a twentieth of a million.’

  ‘A twentieth of a million!’ said Miss Griffin, in exactly the same tone.

  ‘About fifty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Fifty thousand pounds!’ said Miss Griffin, with the fuller feeling of complete grasp.

  ‘We ought not to keep talking about the amount,’ said Blanche. ‘We value the thought and the remembrance.’

  ‘But if we leave it out,’ said Dudley, ‘people will think it is so much more than it is.’

  ‘1 think it is better than that,’ said Maria. ‘It will not eliminate planning and contrivance from your life, and it will keep you in the world you know.’

  ‘Sound wisdom,’ said Justine. ‘Flow it falls from unexpected lips!’

  ‘I feel very comforted,’ said Dudley. ‘People may realize my true position after all.’

  ‘It was deep sagacity, Miss Sloane,’ said Justine. ‘I daresay you hardly realize how deep. Words of wisdom seem to fall from your lips like raindrops off a flower.’

  ‘Justine dear, was that a little frank?’ said Blanche, lowering her voice.

  ‘Well, Mother, pretty speeches always are,’ said Justine, not doing this with hers. ‘But I don’t think that a genuine impulse towards a compliment is such a bad thing. It might really come to us oftener. And Miss Sloane is not in the least embarrassed. It is not a feeling possible to her. I had discerned that, or I had not taken the risk.’

  ‘The impulse has come to Justine again,’ said Mark to his brother.

  ‘And embarrassment is a feeling possible to the rest of us.’

  ‘Well, I have not been saying words of wisdom, perhaps,’ said Matty, in a tone that drew general attention. ‘But I have done my best to show my joy in others’ good fortune. Though ‘others’ is hardly the word for people with whom I feel myself identified. Contrivance had not struck me as one of the likely results, but if they like to enjoy the poverty of the rich, we will not say them nay. It is only the poverty of the poor which we should not welcome for them. We have that enough in our thoughts.’ Matty’s voice died away on a sigh which was somehow a thrust.

  ‘I shall have to give to the poor,’ said Dudley. ‘It is a thing I have never done. It shows how nearly I have been one of them. I have only just escaped being always in Matty’s mind.’

  ‘A dangerous place to be,’ said Mark.

  ‘I suppose I shall subscribe to hospitals. That is how people seem to give to the poor. I suppose the poor are always sick. They would be, if you think. I once went round the cottages with Edgar, and I was too sensitive to go a second time. Yes, I was too sensitive even to set my eyes on the things which other people actually suffered, and I maintain that that was very sensitive. Now I shall improve things out of recognition, and then I can go again and not recognize anything, and feel no guilt about my inheritance.’

  ‘No one can help being left money,’ said Miss Griffin.

  ‘That is not on any point,’ said Matty lightly.

  ‘I don’t know, Aunt Matty; I don’t think I agree with you,’ said Justine. ‘But I have disagreed with you enough; I will not say it.’

  ‘Well, it may be as well not to let it become a habit, dear.’

  ‘Justine dear, come and sit by me,’ said Blanche.

  ‘Oh, you mean to be repressive, Mother. But I feel quite irrepressible this morning. Uncle’s good fortune sets my heart singing even more than yours or Father’s would. Because he has been the one rather to miss things himself and to see them pass to other people, and to see it in all goodwill. And that is so rare that it merits a rare compensation. And that the compensation should come, is the rarest thing of all. “My heart is like a singing bird, whose nest is in a water’d shoot”.’

  ‘Are we all going to stay in the whole morning?’ said Blanche. ‘Justine, it is not like you to be without energy.’

  ‘Surely an unjust implication,’ said Mark.

  ‘Well, we can hardly bring Miss Sloane and Miss Griffin up here, Mother, and then escort them out again at once.’

  ‘They might like to join us in a walk round the park. I sleep so much better if I get some exercise, and I expect we shall sit and talk after luncheon.’

  ‘An indulgence which can be expiated in advance by half an hour in a drizzle,’ said Clement.

  ‘Well, what do you feel, Miss Sloane?’ said Justine.

  ‘I should like to go with your mother.’

  ‘And you Miss Griffin?’

  Miss Griffin opened her mouth and glanced at the fire and at Matty.

  ‘Miss Griffin prefers the hearth. And I don’t wonder, considering the short intervals which she probably spends at it. So you set off with Miss Sloane, Mother, and the rest of us will remain in contented sloth. I believe that is how you see the matter.’

  Blanche began to roll up her silks without making much progress. Justine took them from her, wound them rapidly round her hand, thrust them into the basket, and propelled her mother to the door with a hand on her waist. Maria followed without assistance, and Blanche shook herself free without any change of expression and also proceeded alone. Matty at once addressed the group as if to forestall any other speaker.

  ‘Now I must tell you of something which happened to me when I was young, something which this occasion in your lives brings back to me. I too might have been left a fortune. When we are young, things are active or would be if we let them, or so it was in my youth. Well, a man was in love with me or said he was; and I could see it for myself, so I cannot leave it out; and I refused him - well, we won’t dwell on that; and when we got that behind, he wanted to leave me all he had. And I would not let him, and we came to words, as you would say, and the end of it was that we did not meet again. And a few days afterwards he was thrown from his horse and killed. And the money went to his family, and I was glad that it should be so, as I had given him nothing and I could not take and not give. But what do you say to that, as a narrow escape from a fortune? I came almost as near to it as your uncle.’

  ‘Was that a large fortune too?’ said Miss Griffin.

  ‘It was large enough to call one. That is all that matters for the story.’

  ‘You ran very near the wind, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine. ‘And you came out well.’

  ‘I shall be obliged to take and not give, if no one will accept anything from me,’ said Dudley. ‘Because I am going to take. Indeed I have taken.’

  ‘You have not been given the choice,’ said Miss Griffin.

  ‘Well, well, we all have that,’ said Matty. ‘But there is not always reason for using it. There is no obligation to
seek out connexions when there is no immediate family. This friend of mine had brothers.’

  ‘I wish you would not put such thoughts into words,’ said Dudley.

  ‘I can’t help wishing that he had not had them, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine. ‘You might have had a happier life or an easier one.’

  ‘An easier later chapter, dear, but I do not regret it. We cannot do more than live up to the best that is in us. I feel I did that, and I must find it enough.’ Matty’s tone had a note of truth which no one credited.

  ‘I find it so too,’ said Dudley. ‘My best is to accept two thousand a year. It is enough, but I do wish that people would not think it is more.’

  ‘Two thousand a year!’ said Miss Griffin.

  ‘Well, it is between a good many,’ said Matty. ‘It is so good when a family is one with itself. And you are all going to find it so.’

  ‘To accept needs the truest generosity,’ said Dudley. ‘And I am not sure that they have it. I know that people always underrate their families, but I suspect that they only have the other kind.’

  ‘It is that kind which is the first requirement,’ said Clement.

  ‘Clement, that remark might be misunderstood,’ said Justine.

  ‘Or understood,’ said Mark.

  ‘I don’t think I should find any difficulty in accepting something I needed, from someone I loved. But I am such a fortunate person; I always have all I need.’

  ‘There, what did i say?’ said Dudley An utter lack of true generosity.’

  ‘I will go further,’ said his niece. I will accept an insurance of the future of my little Aubrey. Accept it in my name and in that of Father and Mother, I think I am justified in going so far.’

  ‘It is all very well to laugh, Clement,’ said Dudley, ‘but how will you look when it appears that your brothers have true generosity, and you have none?’

  ‘I can do as they do and without having it. It seems to me to be the opposite thing that is needed.’

  ‘Clement, be careful!’ said Justine, in an almost stricken tone.

  ‘People are always ashamed of their best qualities and describe them in the wrong way,’ said Dudley. ‘Clement will accept an allowance from me and let me forget that my generosity is less than his.’