He paused at the door of the upper room and listened to the sound of voices. Justine and Aubrey and Mark were playing a game. Clement was standing on the hearth, as he had stood while the scene went on below. Dudley had not thought to dread this moment as much as he dreaded it. It had seemed that his main feeling must drown any other, and a thought just came that he could not be suffering to the last. He stood just inside the door and said the words which he felt would be his.
‘I bring you a piece of good news. You are not going to lose me. I am to remain the light of your home. You thought that my gain was to be your loss, but I am not going to have the gain. It seemed impossible that I should be going to marry, and it is impossible.’
‘What do you mean, Uncle?’ said Justine. ‘Have you changed your mind?’
‘No, I am better than that. I have been rejected in favour of my brother and I have risen above it. I am the same person, better and finer. The last little bit of self has gone. It was rather a large piece at our last interview, but that does not matter, now it has gone.’
‘Tell us what you mean,’ said Mark.
‘I don’t think I can be expected to say plainly that Maria has given me up and is going to marry your father. Surely you can save me from the actual words. I shall soon have said them. Surely you have taken the hint.’
‘It is really true, Uncle?’
‘Yes, you have taken it,’ said Dudley, sinking into a chair as if in relief.
‘We are to accept this as definite and acknowledged? It affects us as well as you.’
‘It does, doesn’t it? I had not thought of that. I am glad that you are to share the embarrassment. A burden is halved if it is shared, though it almost seems that it would be doubled. And you must be very uncomfortable. It is very soon for your father to want to marry.’
‘But Father can’t marry Miss Sloane,’ said Aubrey. ‘He is married to Mother.’
‘No, dear,’ said Justine, in a low tone. ‘Mother is dead.’
‘But she would not like him to have another wife.’ ‘We do not know, dear, Hush. Mother might understand.’ ‘So that is what it has meant,’ said Mark, ‘their being so much together.’
‘Is that what it was’, said Aubrey, ‘when I saw them -’
Justine put her hand on his to enforce his silence. ‘Yes,’ said Dudley, ‘all of it was that. It is bad enough to bring out the best in me, and it has had to be the very best. And your position is not so good. Your father is losing no time in filling your mother’s place. I must make one mean speech; I can’t be the only person to suffer discomfiture. But of course you see no reason why I should suffer it, and of course I see that your mother would have wished this to happen, and that your father is simply fulfilling her wish.’
‘We cannot but rejoice that we are to keep you, Uncle,’ said Mark.
‘Yes, we must feel that for ourselves,’ said Justine. Clement and Aubrey did not speak.
‘I don’t wonder that you are ill at ease. And I must embarrass you further and tell you that you will have your money back again. I want you to feel some awkwardness which is not caused by my being rejected. No doubt you see that I do. But you will have the money after you have proved that you could give it up. It is just the position one would choose. And I have simply proved that I could take it back. My situation would not be chosen in any way. What do you think people will think of me? Will they despise me for being rejected? I do not say jilted. A vulgar word could not pass my lips.’
‘They will think what they always have of you, Uncle,’ said Justine.
‘That I am second to my brother? Well, they must think that. Do you think a vulgar word could pass their lips?’
‘I am sure it could not in connexion with you.’
‘That is a good thing. Perhaps I am a person who can carry off anything. I must be, because that is what I am doing. You will have to support me and not show it. I should not like it to be thought that I needed help from others. And as I am still well off, people won’t entirely despise me.’
‘You are many other things, Uncle.’
‘They are not the kind of things that people would see. People are so dreadful. I am not like them, after all.’
‘When will Father marry Miss Sloane?’ said Aubrey.
‘We do not know, dear. No one knows,’ said his sister. ‘Some time will have to pass.’
‘That seems so unreasonable,’ said Dudley. ‘Why should people wait to carry out their wishes? Of course they should not have them. I see that; I like to see it. I am not a man without natural feelings. I could not rise above them if I were without them. And that seems the chief thing that I do.’
‘Will you be taking up the repairs to the house again?’ said Justine, in a practical tone, as if to liberate her uncle from the thrall of speech.
‘Your father will think of that. It will be to his advantage. Oh, I must not let myself grow bitter. People are ennobled by suffering and that was not the speech of an ennobled man. And I thought of my advantage when my turn came. That came as a shock to people; I like to remember that it did. I was not a person who could be trusted to think of himself; they actually hardly expected it. If I had not become engaged, my true self would never have emerged. And now I shall never be thought the same of again. But I suppose nobody would be, whose true self had emerged.’
‘Is Father’s self made manifest now?’ said Aubrey.
‘Yes, it is, and we see that it is even worse than mine.’
Justine rose and shook out her skirt with a movement of discarding the traces of some pursuit.
‘People’s weaker side is not necessarily their truer self,’ she said, in a tone which ended the talk and enabled her uncle to leave the room.
A silence followed his going.
‘Are men allowed to marry someone else as soon as they like after their wives are dead?’ said Aubrey.
‘How many weeks is it?’ said Mark.
‘I do not know. We will not say,’ said his sister. ‘It can do no good.’
‘It may have been the emotion of that time which prepared the way for the other.’
‘It may have been. It may not. We do not know.’
‘Is it often like that?’ said Aubrey.
Justine sat down and drew him to her lap, and as he edged away to save her his weight, suddenly raised her hands to her head and burst into a flood of tears. Her brothers looked on in silence. Aubrey put his knee on the edge of her chair and stared before him.
‘Well, that is over,’ she said, lifting her face. ‘I had to let myself go at first. If I had not, it would only have been bottled up and broken out at some inopportune time. Witness my passages with Aunt Matty. Well, I have betrayed my feelings once and am in no danger of doing it a second time. I can feel that Uncle will be able to face his life, and that I shall be able to face seeing him do it.’
‘Shall we all be able to, or must we all cry?’ said Aubrey, who was himself taking the latter course.
‘Well, women look into the depths more than men. But you need not fear that I shall reveal myself again.’
‘Shall we all follow Justine’s example?’ said Aubrey, glancing at his brothers to see if they had done so.
‘Uncle did a difficult thing well,’ said Mark.
‘I wondered when he was going to stop doing it,’ said Clement.
‘Clement! Ah well, it is your feeling that makes you say it,’ said Justine.
‘Justine helped him to stop,’ said Mark. ‘I wonder what would have happened if she had not.’
‘He would have managed for himself. I had no real fear. I only wanted to spare him all I could.’
‘It seems that we have been blind,’ said Clement.
‘Have we?’ said his sister. ‘Did we see anything? Did we foresee it? Shall we ever know?’
‘Of course we shall,’ said Mark. ‘We know now that we have had a shock.’
‘It seems that there must have been signs, even that there were. Well, then, so it was.’
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‘I wonder what the scene was like between Uncle and Father,’ said Clement.
‘We need not wonder. We know that it was an exhibition of dignity and openness on the one side and generosity and courage on the other.’
‘Miss Sloane was there,’ said Aubrey. ‘I saw them all go into the library together.’
‘And what quality did she contribute?’ said Mark. ‘But there was surely no need of any more.’
‘I wonder which of them one’s heart aches for the most,’ said Justine.
‘For Uncle. Mine only aches for him.’
‘I don’t know. If I know Father, he has his share of the suffering.’
‘I think it is clear that we did not entirely know him. And Uncle is reaping the reward.’
‘Yes, yes, that in a way,’ said Justine, putting her hands round her knee and looking before her, ‘That, indeed. And yet there is something so stimulating in the thought of Uncle’s course. It is such a tonic sadness. One wonders if such things are ever not worth while.’
‘Not for Uncle, I am afraid. The benefit is for other people.’
‘Do you know, I don’t know?’ said Justine, beginning again to gaze before her but checking herself. ‘Well, I must go and pursue the trivial round. Even such things as these bring duties in their wake. Miss Sloane will be staying to dinner, and I suppose Aunt Matty must come to preside at this further involvement of her fortunes with ours.’
‘Is that the best thing?’ said Mark.
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Justine, simply. ‘It saves Uncle the most. He gets it all over in one fell swoop and has his path clear. Let him go to bed tonight feeling that his hard time is behind, that he has finished with heroism and has only to look forward in his old way to the happiness of others.’
‘Finished with heroism!’
‘Well, begun it then, begun the real part. Begun to serve his sentence, even if it is for life. That is not so foreign to Uncle. We are not on his level. We can trust him to go further than we could.’
‘And fare worse, it seems.’
‘And fare as he may,’ said Justine with a sigh. ‘Now we have to take our thoughts from him and think of Father.’ ‘A less elevating subject.’
‘No, no, Mark. We will not cross our proper bounds. Though Father is changing his life and ours, we are none the less his children.’
‘Will Aunt Matty be any relation of Father’s now?’ said Aubrey. ‘It was because of Mother that he was her brother.’
‘Oh, what a muddle and mix-up it all is! Well, we must leave the future. We have no right to mould or mar it. Aunt Matty is Mother’s sister and has a right in our home. And she is also Miss Sloane’s friend. It is strange that I do not feel inclined to say Maria now. But I daresay that is littleness and perhaps, if I knew, self-righteousness. She has brought this happiness into Father’s life, and we must not forget it, though we have counted the cost. Let me see bright faces now. It is due to Father and to her, yes, and to Uncle too, that we should show a pleasant front to those who are managing their lives in their own way.’
‘Certainly not ours,’ said Mark.
‘The whole point is the feeling between Father and Miss Sloane,’ said Clement. ‘It is best for things to happen according to the truth underneath.’
‘We can’t help resenting the truth; that is the trouble,’ said his sister. ‘We shall have to hide our feelings, and we shall not be the only people doing that. It is surprising how little we are in control of our minds. I found myself wishing that Mother were here, to help us out of the muddle which has come through her death.’
‘Well, she is not, and Father has to make his life without her. And he would be a more tragic figure alone than Uncle, if only for the reason that he would be lonely and Uncle will not.’
‘Not on the surface. We shall all see to that. But there is such a thing as being alone in a crowd. And perhaps we had some feeling that Father ought to be lonely at this time. Well, if we had, we had; I don’t know what it says for us. Now will you walk across to Aunt Matty, and break the news cheerfully, gently - oh, how you please, and come back and tell me if she is coming tonight? To see her friend taking her sister’s place may be a thing she can face, and it may not. Only she can know. Dear, dear, I don’t see how things are to straighten out.’
‘I believe that you are a contributing cause of all this,’ said Mark to Clement as they set off. ‘It was your idea that Uncle should stay away to serve Aunt Matty. That is how things had the chance to turn themselves over. They could hardly have done it otherwise.’
‘It was a good thing they had it, with all this working underneath. It would not have done for the future to go on without any root in the truth.’
‘Have you had any base thoughts in your mind?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you begun to think of having your money?’
‘Oh, that. Uncle said something about it.’
‘He said the one significant thing.’
‘I suppose I shall come to it: I see you have done so.’
‘I was wondering if my mind were baser than anyone else’s. I see it is baser than yours.’
‘Oh, all our minds are alike,’ said Clement. ‘Everyone is base in a way.’
Dudley came across the grass behind them, raising his voice.
‘Are you going to see your aunt? Then I will come with you and get the last piece of my ordeal over. I have shown you how a person should bear himself under a reverse, and now I will give the same lesson to Matty. We do seem to feel that she needs lessons, though I begin to see that her failings are not so bad as such things go.’
Matty’s voice came to their ears, raised and almost strident.
‘Of course I should not be treated like this. You seem to be devoid of any knowledge of civilized life. Here have I been sitting alone all day, imagining everything, anxious about everyone, yearning for some word or sign! And here I am left as if I were nothing and nobody, and had nothing to do with the people who are the nearest in my life. I have lost my sister, but her children are my charge, and the woman who is to take her place is my friend. I am deeply involved in all of it and it is torment to be kept apart.’
‘I only said that they must have had a shock, and may not have thought of sending anyone down.’
‘Then don’t say it; don’t dare to say it. Sending anyone down! As if I were some pensioner to be cast a scrap, instead of what I am, the woman who stands to my sister’s children in the place of a mother! You have never felt or had any affection, or you could not say such things.’
Miss Griffin looked at the window, opening her eyes to prevent any other change in them, and Matty broke off, touched her hair, laid her hands on her flushed cheeks, and leaned towards the door.
‘Come in, whoever you are, and find a poor, wrought-up woman, tired of knowing nothing, tired of being alone. You have come to put an end to that. I am not quite forgotten. And do I see three dear faces? I am not forgotten indeed. But I have been feeling quite a neglected, sad person, and I am not going to sympathize with anyone. I have used up that feeling on myself. I know how the day was to go; I had my place behind the scenes; and I am just going to congratulate two of you on keeping your uncle. I know that I am striking the right note there.’
The three men greeted the women, Mark guessing nothing of the scene, Clement part of it, Dudley the whole.
‘Well, so I am to hear what has happened, all of it from the beginning. You tell me, Dudley. You are too interested in the whole panorama of life to be biased by your own little share. You know that I use the word, little, in its relation to your mind, not to mine. So tell me about it, and when it is all to take place, and what you will do with your wealth, now that it has come back into your hands. You won’t think there is anything I do not want to hear. I include all human experience in my range. You and I are at one there.’
‘I think you have got me over my first moment better than anyone,’ said Dudley, reminded of Blanche by her
sister and catching the deeper strain in Matty’s nature. ‘I can really pretend that I feel no embarrassment. We ought not to feel any when we have done nothing wrong, but there are so many wrong things people do without feeling it, and so few they can have done to them. And being rejected in favour of a brother is not one of those. People will say that I am behaving well, but that I shall keep the most for myself by doing so, and how wise I am. They said it thirty-one years ago, and I remember it as if it were yesterday, and now it is happening again today. And you just said that my wealth had come back into my hands. And that is one of those words which we carry with us. I have never heard anyone say one of those before.’
Matty flashed her eyes over his face and touched the chair at her side.
‘Now you and I have to suffer the same sort of thing. I feel that my sister’s place will be filled, and that I have not quite the same reason for being here as I had, and not quite the same claim on her family. And people will say the things of me, as you say they will of you.’
‘Do you really think they will? I like someone else to have things said, but I expect we can depend on people.’
‘Miss Griffin, suppose you run away and find something to do,’ said Matty, in such a light and expressionless tone that she might almost not have spoken.
Miss Griffin, whose eyes had been fastened on the scene, withdrew them and went to the door, with her face fallen and a step slow enough to cover her obedience to a command. Matty turned to her nephews.
‘Well, you thought that you were to have a new aunt, and you are to have a new - what can we say? Well, we can’t say it, can we? You and I can’t. So we will just say that you are only to have one aunt after all. We do not want to cloud other people’s happiness, and we will not; we shall be able to steer our way; we will keep to the strait and narrow path. But now we have made our resolve, we will get what we can out of it for ourselves. Let us have our gossip. That is much less than other people are getting, and if we do not grudge them their big share, they must not grudge us our little one. So when did you see the first hint of change, the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand?’
A Family and a Fortune Page 20