A Family and a Fortune

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘Mother is not herself,’ said Justine, rising to deal with the damage, and speaking for her mother s ears, though not directly to her. ‘She is at once more and less than herself, shall we say?’

  Blanche watched the process of clearing up with vague interest.

  ‘That is one of the best table napkins,’ she said, reaching towards it. ‘That wine does not stain, does it? I only put them out last week,’ Her voice died away and she sat looking before her as if she were alone.

  ‘We must take - it would be well to take her temperature,’ said Edgar.

  ‘That was in my mind, Father. I was waiting for the end of luncheon.’

  ‘Send Jellamy away,’ said Blanche suddenly. ‘He keeps on watching me.’

  ‘Jellamy can fetch a thermometer,’ said Mark, giving an explanatory smile to the man. ‘That will kill two birds with one stone.’

  Jellamy vanished in complete good-will towards his mistress, and Blanche gave a laugh which passed to a fit of coughing, and sat still and shaken, with her eyes moving about in a motionless head.

  ‘Mother’s breathing is very quick and hard,’ said Clement.

  ‘She must have been feverish all day,’ said Mark.

  ‘We all see that now,’ said Justine sharply. ‘It is no good to wish that someone had seen it before. That will not help. We can only deal with things as they are.’

  ‘I thought perhaps no one would notice, if I did not speak,’ said Blanche, as if to herself. ‘Sometimes people don’t see anything.’

  Edgar had come to his wife’s side. Dudley and Maria had risen and were talking apart. Matty sat with her eyes on her sister, her expression wavering between uneasiness and irritation at the general concern for someone else. Aubrey looked about for reassurance. There was the sudden stir and threat of acknowledged anxiety.

  The thermometer told its tale. Blanche lost her patience twice and delayed its action. Matty and Dudley talked to amuse her while she waited. She was interrupted by her cough, and they all realized its nature and its frequency. Her sister’s face became anxious and nothing else.

  ‘I heard Mother coughing in the night like that,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Then why did you not say so?’ said Clement.

  ‘That is no good, Clement,’ said Justine. ‘We all wish we had taken earlier alarm. It was not for Aubrey to give us the lead.’

  Blanche was found to be in high fever, and seemed to take pleasure and even pride in the discovery.

  ‘I never make a fuss about nothing,’ she said, as she sat by the fire while her room was warmed. ‘I have always been the last to complain about myself. When I was a child they had to watch me to see if I was ill. I never confessed to it, whatever I felt.’

  ‘That was naughty, dearest,’ said Matty. ‘And you are not a child now.’

  ‘An ignorant and arrogant boast, Mother,’ said Mark.

  ‘Poor Uncle!’ said Justine, in a low tone, touching Dudley’s sleeve. ‘On your engagement day! We are not forgetting it. You know that.’

  ‘I am oblivious of it. I am lost in the general feeling.’

  ‘I often kept about when people less ill than I was were in bed,’ continued Blanche, her eyes following this divergence of interest from herself. ‘I remember I once waited on my sister when my temperature was found to be higher than hers. I daresay Miss Sloane remembers hearing of that.’

  ‘Don’t tell such dreadful stories, dear,’ said Matty.

  ‘But I often think that not giving in is the best way to get well,’ said Blanche, putting back her hand to a shawl that was round her shoulders, and glancing back at it as a shiver went through her. ‘Staying in bed lowers people’s resistance and gives the illness a stronger hold. Not that I am really ill this time, though a bad chill is something near to it. I shall not give in for long. I am a person who likes to do everything for herself.’

  ‘It is not always the way to do anything for other people, dear.’

  ‘You will do it once too often, Mother,’ said Clement, glad that his words were broken by the opening door.

  The room was said to be ready. The doctor was heard to arrive. It seemed incredible that an hour before the household had been taking its usual course, even more incredible that the course had been broken as it had.

  Blanche sat still, with her eyes narrower than usual and her hands and face less than their normal size, stooping forward to avoid the full breath which brought the cough.

  ‘I think people know what suits themselves. I have never done myself any harm by keeping about. I shall not stay in bed a moment longer than I must. The very thought of it makes me feel worse. I am worse now just from thinking about it. People’s minds do influence their bodies.’ Her tone showed that she was accounting for her feelings to herself.

  The doctor gave his word at a glance. Blanche was wrapped up and taken to her room. Her sons returned with the chair which had carried her, and glanced at each other as they set it down.

  ‘What a very light chair!’ said Clement, giving it a push.

  ‘People who are light are often stronger than heavier ones,’ said his brother.

  Aubrey began to cry.

  ‘Come, come, all of you,’ said Justine. ‘Mother can’t have got any lighter in the last days. She can never have weighed much. I always feel a clodhopper beside her.’

  ‘When is the nurse coming?’ said Mark.

  ‘As soon as she can,’ said Matty, who had returned from seeing the doctor. ‘That is good news, isn’t it? And I have some better news for you. We are sending for Miss Griffin. Your uncle and Maria have gone to fetch her, and she is the best nurse I have ever known. That is why I am yielding her up to you. So Aunt Matty provides the necessary person a second time.’

  Miss Griffin arrived with her feelings in her face, concern for Blanche and pleasure in the need of herself, and settled at once into the sickroom as her natural place. She had more feeling for helpless people than for whole ones, and it was Matty’s lameness rather than the length of their union, which made the bond she could not break. She began to talk to Blanche of Dudley’s engagement, feeling it an interest which could not fail, and making the most of the implication that Blanche was bound up with ordinary life.

  But Blanche had taken the news more easily than Miss Griffin, and had a lighter hold on the threads of life, though she seemed to have so many more of them. Her lightness of grasp went with her through the next days, working for her in holding her incurious about her state, against her in allowing her less urge to fight for life. With petulance and heroism, childishness and courage she lived her desperate hours, and emerged into peace and weakness with remembrance rather than realization of what was behind.

  Her family was new to such suspense and lived it with a sense of shock and disbelief. After the first relief they accepted her safety and resented that it had been threatened.

  When Matty and Maria came to share the rejoicing, they found it took the form of reaction and silence. The first evening after the stress might almost have been one at the height of it.

  Justine extended a hand to her uncle as though she had hardly strength to turn her eyes in the same direction.

  ‘We must seem selfish and egotistic, Uncle, in that we do not remember your personal happiness.’

  ‘Just now we are sharing yours,’ said Maria.

  ‘And I am afraid we cannot be showing it,’ said Dudley.

  ‘We can all share each other’s,’ said Matty. ‘I can give my own illustration. My joy for my sister tonight only gives more foundation to my joy for my friends. Yes, that other happiness which I feel here is very near to my heart.’

  ‘You are fancying it,’ said Dudley. ‘Maria and I have laid it aside.’

  ‘You have pushed it deeper down. Into a fitter place.’

  ‘I am appalled by the threat and danger of life,’ said Mark. ‘It may be good for us to realize that in the midst of life we are in death,’ said his sister.

  ‘What benefit do we derive fro
m it?’ said Clement.

  ‘Oh, don’t let us talk like that on this day of all days. It is not suitable or seemly. Our nerves may be on edge, but we must not hold that an excuse for crossing every bound.’

  ‘We may have no other excuse’, said Edgar, ‘but our guests will accept that one, We have been tried to the end of our strength and I fear beyond.’

  ‘We are not guests, dear Edgar,’ said Matty. ‘As a family we have been in darkness, and as a family we emerge into the light. And perhaps it is a tiny bit ungrateful not to see the difference.’

  ‘We do not find the light dazzling,’ said Clement.

  ‘No, so I see, dear. Now I do find it so, but to me the darkness has been so very dark.’ Matty was easily tried by depression in others, being used to support and cheer herself. ‘You see, my sister and I are so very near. From our earliest memories our lives have been bound in one. And not even the mother’s tie goes back so far.’

  ‘Really, Aunt Matty, that is too much,’ said Justine. ‘Or I should say it was, if it were not for the occasion.’

  ‘It is that which makes it so,’ said Mark.

  ‘So the occasion does mean something, dears?’

  ‘Aunt Matty, if you do not beware, you will have us turning from you with something like shrinking and contempt, said Justine, allowing her movements to illustrate these feelings.

  ‘Something very like,’ said Clement.

  Edgar looked up as if weariness held him silent.

  ‘Well, well, dear, perhaps I betrayed something of such feelings myself. We are all wrought up and beyond our usual barriers. We must forgive each other.’

  ‘I do not see why,’ said Clement.

  ‘And I am indulging in personal joy all through this,’ said Dudley. ‘And Matty said that she shared it. So I suppose this is what joy for others is like. No wonder people rather avoid feeling it.’

  ‘Miss Sloane, come to our rescue,’ said Justine. ‘We need some sweetness and sanity to save us from ourselves.’

  ‘It is the anxiety that is to blame. A happy ending does not alter what has gone before.’

  ‘That is what I say,’ said Clement. ‘Why should we hold a celebration because Mother’s life has been threatened and just saved?’

  ‘Poor little Mother! Are we in danger of losing her experience in our own?’

  ‘Surely not, dear,’ said Matty. ‘No, I do not think that you and your brothers would find yourselves coming to that.’

  Justine gave a laugh which was openly harsh in its acceptance of her aunt’s meaning.

  Matty raised her brows in perplexed enquiry.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Edgar.

  ‘No, I shall not come, Father. I shall not rise to that bait any more. I shall not rise to those heights. I will not be forbearing and tolerant through any strain. It is not a fair obligation on anyone. I shall be hard and snappish and full of mean and wounding insinuation like anyone else. Oh, you will find a great difference. You will find that I mean what I say. I feel the strain of temper and malice which is in the family, coming out in me. I am a true daughter of the Seatons, after all.’

  ‘Well, you are your mother’s daughter,’ said Matty. ‘And we will ask nothing better, if you can be that.’

  ‘But I cannot. I am not even now saying what I mean. I am not Mother’s daughter as much as your niece. That is what I should have said; that is what I did say in my heart. I have nothing of Mother in me. That strain of heroism and disregard of self is wanting in me, as it is in you, as it is in all of us.’

  Edgar made a sound of appeal to Maria, and she rose and came to his daughter and allowed her to throw her arms round her neck and weep.

  ‘I hope I am not the cause of this,’ said Matty.

  ‘What is your ground for hope?’ said Clement.

  Edgar threw his son a look of warning.

  ‘I am not surprised to hear that heroism is not one of my qualities,’ said Mark, trying to be light. ‘I have always suspected it.’

  ‘Heroism and disregard of self,’ said Matty, giving a little laugh. ‘Has my poor little sister had to show such things?’

  ‘Oh, what will you all think of me? wept Justine. ‘What of my poor little boy who is looking at me with such baffled eyes? What is he to do if I fail him?’

  ‘We think you have had more strain than other people, and been of more use,’ said Maria.

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Edgar. ‘The chief demand has fallen on Justine and Miss Griffin. My wife is not happy with strangers, and the actual nursing is a small part of what has been done?’

  ‘Father has surpassed himself,’ said Justine, sitting up and using a voice which became her own as she spoke. ‘There, I am myself again. I have had my outburst and feel the better for it. And I don’t suppose anyone else is much the worse.’ She wiped her eyes and left Maria and returned to her place.

  ‘I am very shaken,’ said Aubrey, speaking the truth.

  ‘You have all been very good,’ said Miss Griffin, who had witnessed the attack on Matty with consternation, pity, and exultation struggling through her fatigue, and now lifted eyes that seemed to strive to see.

  ‘You are very tired, Miss Griffin. You had better go home and rest,’ said Matty, somehow betraying a desire to deprive the family of Miss Griffin’s service.

  Miss Griffin looked up to speak, assuming that words would come to her and finding her mistake.

  ‘It cannot be good for you or for anyone else, for you to go on in that state.’

  ‘It is the best thing for Mother,’ said Justine. ‘She will be happier if she knows that Miss Griffin is sleeping in the next room. We shall see tonight that it is real sleep.’

  ‘Well, that is a good way of feeling indispensable. Too sound a way to be given up. We shall all be useful like that tonight. I shall be able to sleep for the first time, and I shall be glad to feel that I am doing some good by doing it.’

  ‘Well, I think you will be, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, who was right in her claim that she was again herself. ‘Doing what we can for ourselves does make the best of us for other people. And not sleeping is the last thing to achieve either.’

  ‘We are certainly more useful - have more chance of being of use when we are not tired out,’ said Edgar, though it is only Miss Griffin who seems to be indispensable at the moment of sleep.’

  ‘Then she is continually useful,’ said Matty, glancing at Miss Griffin and using a tone at once light and desperate.

  Miss Griffin rose with a feeling that movement would be easier and less perilous than sitting still.

  ‘I will go and take Mrs Gaveston’s temperature. That was the doctor’s bell. I will bring it down so that she need not be disturbed again tonight.’

  ‘You see us all human again, Dr Marlowe,’ said Justine.

  ‘He would hardly have a moment ago,’ said Clement.

  ‘We could not be more human than we have been in the last week,’ said Dudley. ‘We have sounded the deeps of human experience. I am very proud of all we have been through.’

  ‘Father, you were going to say some formal words of gratitude to Dr Marlowe,’ said Justine. ‘But there is no need. He is no doubt as skilled in reading people’s minds as their bodies.’

  ‘Then it is well that he was not here just now,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘So, little boy, you have found your tongue again,’ said Justine, stooping and putting her cheek against his.

  ‘Weren’t you glad to hear my authentic note?’ said Aubrey, glancing at the doctor.

  ‘I meant to sound mine too,’ said Dudley.

  ‘We heard it, Uncle, and happy we were to do so. But you have had your own support in the last days.’

  ‘My feelings have been too deep for words like anyone else’s.’

  ‘I think we hear our Justine’s voice again,’ said Matty, with an effort to regain a normal footing.

  Justine crossed the room and sat down on the arm of her aunt’s chair.

  ‘What a thing affecti
on is, as exemplified between Aunt Matty and Justine!’ said Mark.

  ‘A thing indeed but not affection,’ said Clement.

  ‘I think this thermometer must be wrong,’ said Miss Griffin, in the measured tones of one forcing herself to be coherent in exhaustion. ‘I used it myself and it has gone up like this. I don’t know what can be wrong with it. It has not had a fall.’

  The doctor took it, read it, shook it, read it again, and was suddenly at the door, seeming to be another man.

  ‘Come with me, anyone who should. There may be no time to be lost. The temperature has rushed up suddenly. I hoped the danger was past.’

  The family followed, at first instinctively, then in grasp of the truth, then with the feelings of the last days rushing back with all their force. The late hour of reaction might have been an imaginary scene, might have been read 01 written.

  They reached the bedroom and Edgar took his daughter’s arm. Justine pushed Aubrey back into the passage and then walked forward with her father. Her brothers stood with them, and Dudley a step behind. Maria drew back and waited with Aubrey on the landing.

  ‘You feel hot, Blanche, my dear?’ said Edgar.

  ‘Yes - yes, I do feel hot,’ said his wife, looking at him as if she barely saw him and hardly wished to do more. ‘What have you all come for?’

  ‘To say good night to you, Mother dear,’ said Justine.

  ‘Yes, I am better,’ said Blanche, as if this accounted for their presence. ‘I shall soon feel better. Of course it must be slow.’

  ‘Yes, you will be better, Mother dear.’

  ‘But I don’t want Miss Griffin to go,’ said Blanche, with a sharpness which was her own, though her voice could hardly be heard. ‘I don’t want to have to get well all at once. I am not going to try.’

  ‘Of course you are not,’ said her husband. ‘You must just lie still and think of nothing.’

  ‘I don’t often think of nothing. I have a busy brain.’

  Edgar took her hand and she drew it away with a petulance which was again her own.

  ‘Is Aubrey in bed?’