A Family and a Fortune

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘How I remember Mother’s slender figure moving in and out between the two taller ones! That is a different line of thought, but the picture somehow came. And it brings its own train. Mother would have wished things to come right between them. And it may be that they will do so, and the three tall figures move together through life. But I fear it cannot be yet. Uncle was heading for trouble, and at the crucial moment it came. He could not go on too long, keyed up to that pitch. The strain of the last months can only be imagined. None of us can know what it was.’

  ‘Is Justine transfigured?’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Well, I am affected by the spectacle of intense human drama. I do not deny it.’

  ‘It were idle to do so,’ said Clement.

  ‘It would have been better to go away at once,’ said Mark, ‘and not attempt the impossible.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said his sister, gazing before her. ‘It was a great failure. Surely one of those that are greater than success.’

  ‘I never quite know what those are. I suppose you mean other kinds of success. The same kind involves the same effort and has a better end.’

  ‘And a much more convenient one,’ said Clement.

  ‘Yes, yes, more convenient,’ said Justine. ‘But what we have seen was surely something more than that.’

  ‘Something quite different indeed,’ said Mark.

  ‘Surely it was worth it.’

  ‘From our point of view, as spectators?’

  ‘Well, in the sense that all human effort must achieve something essential, even if not apparent.’

  ‘Well, now the human drama goes on in the snow,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘Oh, surely they have got under shelter by now,’ said Justine, laughing as she ended. ‘Oh, what intolerable bathos! You horrid little boy, pulling me down from my heights!’

  ‘You could not have gone on too long any more than Uncle.’

  ‘I don’t know. I felt I was somehow in my element.’

  ‘That may have been what Uncle thought. I believe it was,’ said Mark.

  ‘A greater than Uncle is here,’ said Aubrey.

  ‘And they are different heights,’ said Clement.

  ‘I think Clement is making an effort to conquer his taciturnity, Justine.’

  ‘Oh, don’t let us joke about it. Do let us turn serious eyes on a serious human situation.’

  ‘Miss Griffin and Uncle walking through the snow, with Miss Griffin wearing Uncle’s coat and hat!’ murmured Aubrey.

  ‘She was not wearing his hat. She - she -’ said Justine, going into further laughter - ‘had a shawl round her head. Oh, why are we laughing? Why cannot we take a serious view of what is serious and even tragic in itself? Miss Griffin’s long relation with Aunt Matty broken! Because I suppose it is the break. And her life at sixes and sevens, because that must be the truth. And we cannot see it without being diverted by silly, little, surface things which in themselves have their tragic side, just because they touch our superficial sense of humour.’ Justine’s voice quavered away as this again happened to her. ‘I suppose we are half hysterical; that is what it is.’

  ‘That is the usual explanation of unseemly mirth,’ said Mark.

  ‘Well, happiness is a good thing,’ said Edgar, smiling in the door, his voice as he said Matty’s words illustrating the difference between them. ‘Maria and I are going to walk outside - that is, we are going for a walk before Mark and I begin to work. Your aunt is resting upstairs.’

  ‘Oh, Father, it seems that we ought not to be in spirits on the day of Grandpa’s death and Aunt Matty’s desolation, and all of it,’ said Justine, taking hold of his coat. ‘But we are in a simple, silly mood. We have agreed that we must be hysterical.’

  ‘Your grandfather’s death can only seem to you the natural thing it is. He has not been much in your life and he has had his own.’ Edgar’s voice was calm and almost empty, as if his feelings on one thing left him none for any other.

  ‘But Aunt Matty’s loneliness and all that has happened,’ said Justine, standing with her face close to the coat and bringing the lapels together. ‘You do feel that you have an anchor in your children?’

  Edgar turned and walked away.

  ‘Oh, I suppose I have said the wrong thing as usual. I might have known it was hopeless to attempt to do anything for him. In my heart I did know.’

  ‘It is good to follow the dictates of the heart,’ said Clement.

  ‘Yes, you can be supercilious. But what did you attempt after all? I did try to show Father that he had something to depend on in his home.’

  ‘And he showed you that he could not take your view.’

  ‘I suppose Maria has taken my place with him. Well, it would be small to mind it. I have never done much to earn the place. And it is better than her taking another. She does not feel she has taken that. We can think of that little place as open and empty, free for Mother’s little shadow.’

  Aubrey turned and slouched out of the room, kicking up his feet. He came upon Maria, who had been to fetch a cloak and was following her husband.

  ‘Are you going upstairs?’ she said. ‘What is the matter? Come back in a minute and tell me.’

  Aubrey threw back his head, thrust his hands into his pockets and turned and sauntered back.

  ‘Odd days these.’

  ‘Yes, they are strange and disturbed. But they will pass.’

  ‘Days have a way of doing that. It is the one thing to be said for them.’

  ‘Too much happened yesterday indeed.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Your grandfather had had his full share of everything. And there is no greater good fortune than sudden death.’

  ‘No,’ said Aubrey, his face changing in a manner which told Maria her mistake.

  ‘And he knows nothing now,’ she said, ‘not even that he is dead. And that can be said of all dead people.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You have had your share of things,’ said Aubrey, with terse and equal understanding.

  ‘We have all had that and found it enough.’

  ‘Too much for me. Quickly up and quickly down at my age. But if I am thought callous one minute, I am thought sensitive the next.’

  ‘We need not mind being thought callous sometimes,’ said Maria, seeing the aspect preferred.

  ‘No. The heart knoweth,’ said her stepson, turning away.

  Chapter 10

  ‘Shall I say what I can see?’ said Mark. ‘Or does it go without saying?’

  ‘Let us not go to meet her,’ said Clement. ‘Let us begin differently and hope so to go on.’

  ‘Your aunt is already in the hall or we should meet her,’ said Edgar with a vision of his brother going swiftly to such a scene.

  Matty came forward without exhibition of her lameness or of anything about herself.

  ‘No, I am afraid you must see me as the bearer of ill tidings. And I may deserve to have to bring them. I have made myself the harbinger of sadness and now I am not to come without it. But you will make my hard task easy. You will know that the tidings are sad for me as well as for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Edgar at once. ‘Is it my brother?’

  ‘Yes, you have helped me. And now I can help myself and tell you that it is not the worst, that all is not lost. There is still hope. He is lying ill at a farmhouse twenty miles away. He walked for days when he left this house, and got wet and got weary, and ate and slept where he could; and came at last to this farm one night, hardly able to say who he was or whence he came.’ Matty dramatized what she had to tell, but spoke without actual thought of herself. ‘And the next day they fetched Miss Griffin to nurse him, and a message came from her to me this morning, to say that there is trouble on the lungs and that she does not dare to hide the truth. She has a doctor and a nurse, and the woman at the farm is good. So all we have to do is to go to him at once All that you have to do. What I have to do is to stay here and keep the house until your return.. And if it seems to
me the harder part, I will still do it to the best that is in me. I will do what serves you most and what saves you anything.’

  Edgar had already gone, followed by his wife. Matty suggested some things which might be of use, and before they were ready he had set off on horseback by himself.

  ‘Someone should go with Father,’ said Justine. ‘But it is too late.’

  ‘Is Uncle a strong man?’ said Mark.

  ‘He has seemed to be in his own way. But the troubles must have lowered his resistance, and the wet and cold have done the rest.’

  ‘He saved Miss Griffin,’ said Aubrey; ‘himself he could not save.’

  ‘My dear, think what you are saying. What makes you talk like that?’

  ‘Excess of feeling and a wish to disguise it,’ said Aubrey, but not aloud.

  ‘Where has Miss Griffin been?’ said Mark.

  ‘At the Middletons’ house, where your uncle took her on the day when your grandfather died,’ said Matty, stating the fact without expression. ‘I know no more.’

  ‘We must go. Good-bye, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine. ‘Maria is in the hall. Keep Aubrey with Mr Penrose, and the house to its course. We can’t say yet just what we may require of you.’

  ‘Command me, dear, to any service,’ said Matty, with a hint of dryness in her tone.

  ‘You can send me word,’ said Aubrey, ‘and I will command my aunt.’

  Edgar was in advance of his family and was the first to enter his brother’s room. Miss Griffin met him at the door, and the way she spoke of Dudley, as if he could not hear, warned him of his state.

  ‘He is very ill. He must have been ill for days. He will have me with him; he will not be left to the nurse.’ She stood, stooping forward, with her eyes bright and fixed from want of sleep. ‘He is like Mrs Gaveston in that. The doctor says that his heart is holding out and that he may get well.’

  Dudley was raised a little in his bed, the limpness of his body showing his lack of strength to support himself, his breathing audible to Edgar at the door. His eyes were still and seemed not to see, but as his brother came they saw.

  ‘What is the time?’ he said in a faint, rapid voice between his breaths. ‘They do not tell it to me right.’

  ‘It is about twelve o’clock.’

  ‘No, it is the afternoon,’ said Dudley, with a cry in his tone. ‘I have been asleep for hours.’

  ‘Yes, you have had a sleep,’ said Miss Griffin, in a cheerful, ordinary voice, which she changed and lowered as she turned to Edgar. ‘It was only for a few minutes. He never sleeps for more.’

  ‘It will soon be night,’ said Dudley.

  ‘Not just yet, but it is getting nearer.’

  Dudley lay silent, his expression showing his hopeless facing of the hours of the day.

  ‘Does the time seem very long to him?’ said Edgar.

  ‘Yes, it is so with very sick people. It is as if he were living in a dream. A minute may seem like hours.’

  Dudley fell into a fit of coughing and lay helplessly shaken, and under cover of the sound Miss Griffin’s voice became quicker and more confidential.

  ‘Oh, I am glad I could come to him; I am glad that he sent for me. It was a good thing that I was not with Miss Seaton. She might not have let me come. She said she would never let me nurse anyone but her again. But I don’t expect she would have kept to that.’

  ‘I am sure she would not,’ said Edgar. ‘Is there anything my brother would like?’

  ‘If only it would stop!’ said Dudley, looking at Edgar as he heard the word of himself.

  Edgar turned to him with so much pain in his face, that he saw it and in the desperation of his suffering tried to push it further.

  ‘If only it would stop for a second! So that I could get a moment’s sleep. Just for a moment.’

  ‘He is not like himself,’ said Edgar. ‘It seems - it reminds me of when my wife was ill.’

  There were the sounds of the carriage below and Miss Griffin spoke with appeal.

  ‘Is anyone coming who can help? I have been with him all day and all night. He cannot bear to be with strangers, and he should not be nursed by anyone who is too tired.’

  ‘My wife and daughter are here,’ said Edgar, the word of his second wife bringing the thought that he could not replace his brother. ‘And any help can come from the house at once. In the meantime my sons and I have hands and ordinary sense, and can be put to any service.’

  Maria came into the room and Dudley saw her.

  ‘It is the afternoon,’ he said, as if she would allow it to be so.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, coming up to the bed. ‘You did not send for us, Dudley. That was wrong.’

  ‘I sent for Miss Griffin.’

  ‘Yes, but you should have sent for Edgar and me.’

  ‘I only want to have someone here.

  I don’t think you are different from other people,’ said Dudley, in a rapid, empty tone, which did not seem to refer to what she said, looking at her with eyes which recognized her and did no more. ‘It doesn’t matter if we are not married. I like Edgar best.’

  ‘Of course you do. I knew it all the time. And he feels the same for you.’

  ‘If I could get to sleep, the day would soon be gone. And this is the longest day.’

  Maria turned to speak to her husband and Dudley’s eyes followed her, and the moment of attention steadied him and he fell asleep.

  Justine entered and kept her eyes from the bed, as if she would fulfil her duty before she followed her will.

  ‘I have come to take Miss Griffin to rest, and then to wait upon anyone. The boys have gone on some messages. Father, the doctor is here and can see you.’

  Dudley was awake and lay coughing and looking about as if afraid.

  ‘Is it another day? Shall I get well?’

  ‘Of course you will,’ said the nurse. ‘It is the same day. You only slept for a little while. But to sleep at all is a good sign.’

  ‘People are here, are they? Not only you?’

  ‘Justine and I are here,’ said Maria.

  ‘Why are you both here?’

  ‘We both like to be with you,’

  ‘Is it the afternoon?’

  ‘It will be soon. Would you like me to read to you?’

  ‘Will you put in any feeling?’

  ‘No, none at all.’

  ‘Who is that person who puts in feeling? Matty would, wouldn’t she? And Justine?’ Dudley gave a smile.

  ‘What book will you have?’

  ‘Not any book. Something about -’

  ‘About what?’ said Maria, bending over him.

  ‘You know, you know!’ said Dudley in a frightened voice, throwing up his arms.

  The movement brought a fit of coughing, and as it abated he lay trembling, with a sound of crying in the cough. Edgar and the doctor entered and seeing them broke his mood, though he did not seem to know them.

  ‘Well, I haven’t much to live for,’ he said to himself. ‘I am really almost alone. It isn’t much to leave behind.’ He tried to raise himself and spoke almost with a scream. ‘If I die, Miss Griffin must have some money! You will give her some? You won’t keep it all?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course we will. She shall have enough,’ said Edgar. ‘But you will not die.’

  Something in the voice came through to Dudley, and he lay looking at his brother with a sort of appraisement.

  ‘You don’t like me to be ill,’ he said, in a shrewd, almost knowing tone. ‘Then you should not make me ill. It is your fault.’

  ‘He does not know what he is saying,’ said the nurse.

  ‘I do,’ said Dudley, nodding his head. ‘Oh, I know.’

  ‘How long will it go on?’ said Edgar to the doctor.

  ‘It cannot be quick. He is as ill as he can be, and any change must be slow. And the crisis has yet to come.’

  The crisis came, and Dudley sank to the point of death, and just did not pass it. Then as he lived through the endless days, e
ach one doubled by the night, he seemed to return to this first stage, and this time drained and shattered by the contest waged within him. Blanche’s frailer body, which had broken easily, seemed to have stood her in better stead. But the days which passed and showed no change, did deeper work, and the sudden advance towards health had had its foundations surely laid. The morning came when he looked at his brother with his own eyes.

  ‘You have had a long time with me.’

  ‘We have, Dudley, and more than that.’

  ‘Do they know that I shall get better?’

  ‘Yes, you are quite out of danger.’

  ‘Did you think I should get well?’

  ‘We were not always sure.’

  Dudley saw what was behind the words, but was too weak to pursue it.

  ‘Shall I be the same as before?’

  ‘Yes. There will be no ill results.’

  Dudley turned away his head in weakness and self-pity.

  ‘You can go away if you like. There is nothing you can do. Where is Miss Griffin?’

  Miss Griffin was there, as she always was at this time. The lighter nursing of this stage was within her powers. Dudley reached out his hands and smiled into her eyes, and Edgar watched and went away.

  These moments came more often and at last marked another stage. Then the change was swift, and further stages lay behind. Dudley was to be taken to his brother’s house to lie in his own bed, but before the day came even this stage had passed. The change was more rapid in his mind than in his body. In himself he seemed to be suddenly a whole man. The threat of death, with its lesson of what he had to lose, had shown him that life as he had lived it was enough. He asked no more than he had, chose to have only this. His own personality, free of the strain and effort of the last months, was as full and natural as it had been in his youth.

  His return to the house as an essential member of it was too much a matter of course to be discussed. It was observed with celebration, Dudley both expecting and enjoying it. Maria went home in advance to get order in the house, and Edgar and Miss Griffin were to manage the move and follow.

  Matty had been an efficient steward, but the servants did not bend to her simply autocratic rule, and Jellamy was open in his welcome. She seemed to be oppressed by her time of solitude, and kept to the background more than was her habit, seeming to acknowledge herself as bound less closely to the house. She knew that Maria realized her effect on its life, and was trying to establish a different intercourse, welcoming her as a family connexion and her own friend, but keeping the relation to this ground.