A Family and a Fortune

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘He will be soon. He wanted to come and see you, but we thought you were too tired.’

  ‘Yes, I am very tired. Not so much tired as sleepy.’

  ‘Shut your eyes, Mother, and try to sleep,’ said Mark.

  Blanche simply obeyed but opened her eyes again.

  ‘I want Miss Griffin to be where I can see her. You make her go away.’

  Miss Griffin drew near and Blanche gave her a smile.

  ‘We are happy together, aren’t we? My sister does not know.’

  ‘I am very happy with you.’

  ‘My bed is right up in the air. Are you all up there too?’

  ‘We are with you, dear,’ said Edgar. ‘We are all here.’

  ‘It is too many, isn’t it?’ said Blanche, in a tone of agreement. ‘Has Matty been here today?’

  ‘She is downstairs, waiting to hear how you are.’

  ‘She cannot come up here,’ said his wife, with a note of security.

  ‘No, she will wait downstairs.’

  ‘Her brain is not really so much better than mine.’

  ‘No, we know it is not.’

  ‘Father does not know that I am really a nicer person. But it does not matter, a thing like that.’

  ‘We all know it, Mother,’ said Mark.

  ‘But you must be kind to Aunt Matty,’ said Blanche, as if speaking to a child.

  ‘Yes, we will be, Mother.’

  ‘She wants too much kindness,’ said Blanche, in a dreamy tone.

  ‘Shut your eyes, dear, and try to sleep,’ said Edgar.

  ‘Are you that tall man who asked me to marry him?’ said Blanche, in a very rapid tone, fixing her eyes on his face.

  ‘Yes, I am. And you married me. And we have been very happy.’

  ‘I did not mind leaving Father and Matty. But I don’t think that Father will die.’

  ‘No, not for a long time.’

  ‘Dr Marlowe is watching me. A doctor has to do that. But I don’t like it when Jellamy does it.’

  ‘He shall never do it again,’ said Edgar, stumbling over the words.

  The doctor moved out of her sight, and Dudley felt his brother’s hand and came to the bed.

  ‘They are not really so alike, when you get to know them,’ said Blanche to Miss Griffin.

  ‘Mother, try to rest,’ said Mark.

  ‘Try to rest,’ echoed his mother, looking before her.

  ‘Perhaps you are a little near to the bed,’ said the doctor.

  They moved away.

  ‘Where have you all gone?’ said Blanche at once.

  ‘We are here, dear,’ said Edgar. ‘You are not alone.’

  ‘Alone? That would be an odd thing, when I have a husband and four children.’

  ‘We are all here, Blanche, all with you.’

  ‘Matty does not mind not having any children. Some women do not mind.’

  Justine came closer and her mother saw her face.

  ‘Are you my beautiful daughter?’ she said, again in the rapid tone. ‘The one I knew I should have? Or the other one?’

  ‘I am your Justine, Mother.’

  ‘Justine!’ said Blanche, and threw up her arms. ‘Why should we want her different?’

  ‘I am here, dear,’ said Edgar, bending over her, and saw that his wife was not there.

  For another minute they were as silent as she.

  Then Miss Griffin spoke.

  ‘I got to love her so much. She was so good. She never made a murmur and it must be dreadful not to be able to breathe. We could hardly wish her to linger like that.’

  The speech, with its difference of thought, of word, of class, seemed to shock them back into life. Edgar turned from the bed, as if forcing himself to return to the daily world. Clement moved towards the door. Dudley turned to speak to the doctor. Mark tried to lead his sister away. Aubrey met them in the passage and stood with the expression of a man before he broke into a child’s tears. Maria went down to tell Matty the truth. The day which had been at an end was ending again. Another end had come.

  ‘We must go down and say good night to Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, as if feeling that normal speech and action were best. ‘And then Miss Griffin must go to bed. Uncle, you have Father in your charge. Dr Marlowe will understand us. We cannot say much tonight.’

  Matty was sitting in her chair, waiting for them to come. She held out her arms to them, one by one, going through an observance which she had had in her mind, and which seemed to suggest that she offered herself in their mother’s place.

  ‘My poor children, your mother’s sister is with you. That is the light in my darkness, that I am here to watch over you. It must have been put into my thoughts to come to your gates, that you might not be alone when your sorrow came.’

  They stood about her, heedless of what she said, and her voice went on on the same note, with another note underneath.

  ‘There is one little comfort I can give you, one poor, sad, little comfort. You have not suffered quite the worst. You have not sat still and felt that you could not go to her side. You were able to obey your hearts.’

  They did not answer, and as Matty’s face fell from its purpose a look of realization came. Her world would be different without her sister; her place in it would be different. She rose to go and found that she must wait while Dudley and Maria took their leave.

  ‘Come, dear, I must get home to my father. I have more to go through tonight. And if I do not face it now, my strength may fail. I feel I have not too much.’ She broke off as she remembered that Blanche would not hear and suffer from her words. They would fall on other ears and she must have a care how they fell.

  ‘Well, I must leave you to take care of yourselves, of yourselves and Miss Griffin and each other. I must believe that you will do it. And I will go home and take some thought for myself, as there is no one else to do that.’

  ‘There is not, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, in a clear, slow, almost ruthless voice. ‘We cannot tell you that there is. We have all lost her who watched over us. We are all desolate. We cannot tell you that that place will be filled.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘Well, my son,’ said Oliver, as he entered Edgar’s house on the day after his daughter’s funeral. ‘I hope I may always call you that. It is what she has left to me. It is the wrong thing that she is taken and I am left. No one feels it more than I do.’

  Edgar was silent before the difference made by death. His father-in-law had never used the words before.

  ‘No, Grandpa, you must not feel that,’ said Justine, walking with her arms about him. We do not take one person in terms of another. She never did and we do not.’

  ‘It is kind of you, my dear, but I cumber the ground in her house.’

  ‘If Grandpa had had the choice of sacrificing himself for Mother,’ said Mark to Clement, ‘I should have taken it ill if he had not done so.’

  ‘I wonder if he would have. There are only records of the opposite feeling.’

  ‘Mrs Middleton, this is kind,’ said Justine, ‘and I ought to have greeted you. But I instinctively waited for someone else to do it.’

  ‘My dear, if kindness could do anything!’

  Thomas stood aside, as if he would suppress a possibly unwelcome presence.

  ‘Well, dear ones,’ said Matty, looking at her nephews as though uncertain of her new position with them. ‘Now is anyone good and brave enough to say that he has had a good night?’

  ‘Brave in what sense?’ said Clement.

  ‘I am not going to admit that I have no heart and no feeling,’ said Mark. ‘I think that is the sense.’

  ‘So you slept well, dear?’ said Matty.

  ‘They are still in a daze,’ said Sarah with compassion.

  ‘I wish I could have taken refuge for longer in that first numbness. But it has passed and left me without defence. I have nothing left to me but courage, and I am sure my boys and girl have that. Is it enough for them to tell me that they are better and brighter th
is morning?’

  ‘We seem to have told her,’ said Mark.

  ‘Because I have not been able to summon mine as yet,’ said Matty, lowering herself into a chair with a weakness at once assumed and real. ‘No, I cannot give a very good account of myself. I am not much of an example.’

  ‘We none of us are,’ said Justine. ‘It is rather soon to expect it.’

  ‘Yes, it is, dear, but I catch a return of spirit in those words, a note of hope and resolve for the future. I fear that I have not got so far. I feel today as if I may never do so. There is a confession to make. That is not much of an aunt to boast of.’

  ‘We should be out of sympathy with any other feeling.’

  ‘That is kind, dear. And I must try to sympathize with your hope and looking forward.’

  ‘We must be allowed to live in the moment, Aunt Matty.’

  ‘But I must be in sympathy with your moment. I must not feel that it is like my eternity.’

  Justine gave her aunt a glance and turned away, and Matty sank lower in her chair, in apprehension and remembrance.

  ‘Can’t you occupy yourself, little boy?’ said Justine.

  Aubrey began to cry. Matty looked up and held out her arms, and he faltered towards her and stood within them. Justine did not speak; she would take no more on herself. Sarah sent her eyes from face to face and then put up her hand to steady them.

  ‘What will Father do without either Mother or Uncle?’ said Clement to Mark. ‘I can’t imagine his life.’

  ‘I shall have to spend more time with him.’

  ‘And that will fill the double blank?’

  ‘It will be doing what I can. More than you will do by living your time for yourself.’

  ‘If I had it carried on for me, as you have yours, I could be more free with it.’

  ‘Boys, boys!’ said Justine, with a hand on their arms. ‘It is a dreadful day, a day which puts more on us than fits our strength, but we shall gain nothing by being conquered by it.’

  ‘Will you come into the library?’ said Edgar to his father-in-law. ‘We can do no better than keep to our old ways.’

  ‘I will do what you tell me. I have not come here, seeing any good in myself. I must take what is done for me. And who but you will do anything?’

  ‘Whatever is done, is really done by Mother, Grandpa,’ said Justine, accompanying him to the door.

  ‘I am in no doubt about the bond between us, child.’

  ‘Are we to hear your uncle’s voice today?’ said Matty. ‘Is he to give us anything of himself?’

  ‘He is in the garden with Miss Sloane,’ said Aubrey. ‘Perhaps he has given all of it.’

  ‘Little boy, I like to see you try to do that with yourself,’ said Justine in her brother’s ear. ‘We know who would have liked it.’

  ‘We do not grudge them to each other,’ said Matty. ‘I do not, who gave them. But it seems that they might spare a little of what they have today. I might feel now that I went almost too far in giving. I must rise above the feeling, but today it seems far to rise.’

  ‘They may hesitate to intrude their happiness on our sorrow,’ said Justine.

  ‘They might give us a little of the one, dear, and share a little of the other. Your uncle lived with your mother for thirty years. It might be that he missed her. If he knew how I envy him those years!’

  ‘Oh, Aunt Matty!’ said Justine, shaking her head and turning away, and then turning impulsively back again. ‘Poor Aunt Matty, you are old and helpless and alone, and we give ourselves to our own sorrow and forget your greater need. For your need is greater, though your sorrow is less.

  ‘Yes, that is how you would see me, dear. That is how I should seem to you all, now that my sister is gone. I must thank you for trying to feel kindly towards what you see.’

  Clement gave a faint laugh, and Matty looked at him as if in surprise at such a sound.

  ‘They keep on passing the library window and looking in,’ said Mark.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Justine. ‘They are waiting for Grandpa to go, so that Uncle may go in to Father. Their minds are full of us, after all. Miss Sloane is waiting to yield up Uncle to his brother. They say that sorrow makes us sensitive to kindness, but I am touched by that.’

  Matty sat with her lips compressed and her hands on her chair, as if trying to face the effort of rising. Sarah watched her but did not offer her aid, knowing that it would not be welcome.

  ‘Well, we will go, dear, if they are waiting for that, if that is what we can do to help you. We came to try to give our help.’

  ‘Dear Aunt Matty, I believe it would be doing what you can. Grandpa has had his word with Father, and can go, strengthened by it. And Father can have the support of Uncle’s companionship. He is hardly in a state to give virtue out himself today.’

  Matty turned and went to the door, hardly looking at her niece.

  ‘Where is Miss Griffin?’ she said, in a tone of asking for something that went as a matter of course.

  ‘I don’t know. She may not be up yet. We leave her to sleep late. She may not know that you are here.’

  ‘Well, no, dear, not if she is not awake. If she were, she would know that I should not have stayed away.’

  ‘I will go and see if she can come down.’

  ‘She can come down, dear.’

  ‘Well, I will go and see.’

  ‘Send her down, and then your grandfather can come with me. Until she comes he had better stay with your father.’

  ‘She may not be ready, Aunt Matty, Would not Miss Sloane go home with you?’

  ‘We are talking about Miss Griffin, dear,’ said Matty, with a smile and a sigh.

  ‘We may have to keep you waiting.’

  Matty turned and went back to her place, loosening her cloak and drawing off her gloves in preparation for this period.

  She sat down with her nephews, and began to distract their thoughts with lively accounts of their mother’s youth, which neither saddened them nor required them to suppress their feelings, seeming to forget her own trouble in her effort to help them in theirs. When Justine returned she hardly looked up, and maintained her talk as if fully occupied with it.

  ‘Miss Griffin will be ready quite soon. She has only to put her things together.’

  Matty gave two bright nods in her niece’s direction, as if in reference to something that went without saying, and continued to talk.

  Miss Griffin came down, a little abashed, a little out of heart, a little the better for her time under another roof. Matty just threw her a glance and gave herself to ending a tale. Then she looked round in faint question, as if expecting something to be taking place.

  ‘Are you ready for Grandpa, Aunt Matty?’

  ‘Yes, dear, I have been ready since we talked about it, since you said that things would be the better for our going. But I don’t think my nephews were quite so inclined for me to leave them.’

  ‘Shall I fetch him for you?’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Matty, in a tone of full encouragement. ‘But I see that Aubrey is going for you. He is better and brighter in the last half-hour.’

  ‘Mrs Middleton, I feel that we are dismissing you,’ said Justine. ‘And it has been so kind of you to come.’

  ‘We have had our glimpse of you, dear,’ said Sarah, in an unconsciously satisfied tone, having had a full sight of the situation.

  Thomas departed with a bare handshake, as though he would impose the least demand. He uttered no word as a word would have required an ear.

  ‘Well, it becomes easier for me to leave you all,’ said Oliver. ‘I have those who belong to me on both sides. It gets to make less difference to me on which side I am.’

  His grandsons looked at him with incredulous eyes, startled by the faith of a man who was in other respects a normal being. They had no grasp of the mental background of Oliver’s youth.

  ‘I suppose Grandpa is saved,’ murmured Aubrey.

  ‘People always are,’ said Clement. ‘T
hat is the plan. It is specified that sins may be of any dye and make no difference’.

  ‘There are arrangements for those who are not,’ said Mark, ‘permanent ones. They seem indeed to err on the side of permanency.’

  ‘I suppose Aunt Matty is saved,’ said Aubrey. ‘Sins being as scarlet –’

  ‘Boys dear,’ said Justine, ‘isn’t this rather cheap jesting upon subjects which are serious to many people? Do you know, at this moment I could find it in me to envy Grandpa his faith?’

  ‘I see that he has the best of it,’ said Mark.

  ‘We should like to have some comfort,’ said Aubrey, his grin extending into the grimace of weeping, as he found himself speaking the truth.

  Justine stroked his hair and continued to do so while she addressed her aunt.

  ‘Aunt Matty, as you are taking Miss Griffin and you also have Grandpa, will you leave us Miss Sloane? I feel we need someone to break down the barriers of family grief. And I begin to find it much, this being the only woman in the family.’

  ‘Yes, dear, take anything from me; take anything that is mine,’ said Matty, proceeding on her way. ‘I am willing to be generous.’

  Justine ran after her and flung her arms round her neck. ‘Dear Aunt Matty, you are generous indeed. And we do value the gift.’

  Her aunt walked on, perhaps not wishing to go further in this line.

  Justine sighed as she looked after her.

  ‘I believe I have put something definitely between Aunt Matty and me. That is what I have done in the first days without Mother. Well, we can’t expect to do so well without her.’

  ‘Is Miss Sloane remaining with us in simple obedience?’ said Mark.

  ‘I should like to stay with you all.’

  ‘I will give her to you for a time,’ said Dudley. ‘I must learn to talk like a husband.’

  ‘And Aunt Matty has given her,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Father, she is yours, if you will have it so,’ said Justine. ‘No one counts with us as you do.’

  ‘Justine has also given Miss Sloane,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Then I will talk to your father,’ said Maria. ‘And you can have your uncle.’

  Justine waited for the door to close.

  ‘Uncle, I don’t think it is too soon to broach a subject which Mother would wish to be dealt with. This does not seem the wrong day to carry out what may have been her last wish. You know what I would say?’