‘Justine, I have told you that I do not like the coffee touched until I come down. How can I remember who has had it, and manage about the second cups, if it is taken out of my hands? I don’t know how many times I have asked you to leave it alone.’
‘A good many, Mother dear, but you tend to be rather a laggard. When the poor boys sit in thirsty patience it quite goes to my heart.’
‘It would not hurt them to wait a few minutes. Your father and your uncle are not down yet. There is no such hurry.’
Mrs Gaveston dealt with the coffee with small, pale, stiff hands, looking with querulous affection at her children and signing in a somewhat strained manner to the servant to take the cups. She had rather uncertain movements and made one or two mistakes, which she rectified with a sort of distracted precision. She lifted her face for her children’s greetings with an air of forgetting the observance as each one passed, and of being reminded of it by the next. She was a rather tall, very pale woman of about sixty, who somehow gave the impression of being small, and whose spareness of build was without the wiriness supposed to accompany it. She had wavy, grey hair, a long, narrow chin, long, narrow, dark eyes in a stiff narrow, handsome face, and a permanent air of being held from her normal interest by some passing strain or distraction.
Her only daughter and eldest child was shorter and stronger in build, with clear, light eyes, a fuller face, pleasant features which seemed to be without a plan, and a likeness to her mother which was seen at once to overlie a great difference. She looked as much less than her thirty years as her mother looked more than her double number. Strangers often took Blanche for her children’s grandmother, a fact which she had not suspected and would not have believed. She considered that she looked young for her age, or rather assumed that she did so, as she also took it for granted that she was successful, intelligent, and admired, an attitude which came from a sort of natural buoyancy and had little meaning. She really gave little thought to herself and could almost be said to live for others. Her children had for her a lively, if not the deepest affection, and she was more than satisfied with it. She would hardly have recognized the deepest feeling, as she had never experienced or inspired it.
The three sons kissed their mother and returned to their seats. The eldest was a short, solid young man of twenty-eight, with large, grey eyes, the dark, curly hair his mother had had in her youth, a broader, blunter but perhaps more attractive face, and an air of being reasonably at peace with himself and his world. The second, Clement, was taller and thinner, with straight hair and darker skin, and looked the same age as Mark, although two years younger. He had cold, dark eyes, a cold, aloof expression, and a definite resemblance in feature to his mother. He seemed to look what he was, and neither to require nor repay observation. Aubrey, the youngest by eleven years, was a boy of fifteen, small and plain to the point of being odd and undersized, with a one-sided smile which often called for the abused term of grin, an indefinable lack of balance in movement, and a reputed backwardness which did not actually extend beyond his books. They had all been named after godparents from whom their mother had vague expectations for them. The expectations had not materialized, but Blanche had been too indefinite about them to resent it, or even actually to imagine their doing so, and felt less disappointment than vague appreciation that they had been possible.
Justine and Mark conversed with goodwill and ate with an ordinary appetite; Clement did not converse and showed an excellent one; Blanche watched her children’s plates and made as good a meal as she could without giving her attention to it; and Aubrey sat and swung his feet and did not speak or eat.
‘Are you not enjoying your breakfast, my dear?’ said Blanche, in a faintly outraged and incredulous manner, which was possibly due to surprise that this should happen again after so many times.
Aubrey gave her a smile, or gave a smile in her direction. The smile seemed to relate to his own thoughts, and did so.
‘Wake up, little boy,’ said Justine, leaning across to tap his shoulder.
Her brother gave a smile of another kind, intended to show that he was at ease under this treatment.
‘If I have some toast, perhaps I shall grow tall enough to go to school.’
Aubrey’s life at home with a tutor was a source of mingled embarrassment and content, and the hope that he would eventually go to Eton like his brothers was held by everyone but himself. Everyone knew his age of fifteen, but he alone realized it, and knew that the likelihood of a normal school life was getting less. Blanche regarded him as a young child, Justine as a slightly older one, Mark as an innocently ludicrous exception to a normal family, and Clement as a natural object of uneasiness and distaste. Aubrey saw his family as they were, having had full opportunity to know them, and made his own use of it.
‘This omelette is surely a breach with tradition,’ said Clement.
‘It is not,’ said Blanche, instantly and without looking at it or following the words beyond recognizing a criticism. ‘It is very good and very wholesome.’
‘Clement speaks from experience,’ said Aubrey, glancing at his brother’s plate.
‘Why do you eat it, if you don’t like it?’ said Mark, with no sting in his tone.
‘I am hungry; I must eat something.’
‘There is ham,’ said Justine.
‘Clement will eat the flesh of the pig,’ said Aubrey.
‘It is certainly odd that civilized people should have it on their tables,’ said his brother.
‘Do uncivilized people have things on tables?’
‘Now, little boy, don’t try to be clever,’ said Justine, in automatic reproof, beginning to cut the ham.
‘Justine understands Clement,’ said Aubrey.
‘Well, I know you all in and out. After all, I ought, having practically brought you all up.’
‘Well, hardly that, dear,’ said Blanche, looking at her daughter with the contraction of her eyes which marked her disagreement. ‘You were only two when Mark was born. It is I who have brought up the four of you, as is natural.’
‘Well, well, have it your own way, little Mother,’
‘It is not only Mother’s way. It is the way of the world,’ said Mark.
‘Would some ham make me grow?’ said Aubrey. ‘I am afraid my size is really worrying for Clement.’
‘What does it matter on what scale Aubrey is?’ said the latter.
‘I should always be your little brother. So you do not mind.’
‘Always Mother’s little boy,’ said Blanche, taking Aubrey’s hand.
‘Mother’s hand looks lily-white in my brown, boyish one.’
‘Don’t let us sit bickering all through breakfast,’ said Justine, in an absent tone.
‘We are surely not doing that, dear,’ said Blanche, her eyes again contracting. ‘We are only having some conversation. We can’t all think alike about everything.’
‘But you do all agree that I am hardly up to my age,’ said Aubrey. ‘Not that there is anything to take hold of.’
‘I thought the conversation was tending to a bickering note.’
‘I don’t think it was, dear. I do not know what you mean.’
‘Well, then, neither do I, little Mother. I was only talking at random.’
‘Suppose Justine’s voice was to be stilled!’ said Aubrey. ‘What should we feel about it then?’
‘Don’t say such things,’ said his mother, turning on him sharply.
‘I am not so very late,’ said a voice at the door. ‘You will be able to feel that you had me in the first hour of your day.’
‘Well, Uncle dear,’ said Justine, accepting the normal entrance of a member of the house.
‘Good morning, good morning,’ said another voice. ‘Good morning, Blanche; good morning Justine; good morning, my sons. Good morning.’
‘Good morning, Father dear,’ said Justine, leaning forward to adjust the cups for her mother.
The two brothers who entered were tall, lean men in the earlier fifties, the elder being the squire of the neighbourhood, or rather the descendant of men who had held this title together with a larger estate. He had thick, straight, speckled hair, speckled, hazel eyes, vaguely speckled clothes, a long solid nose and chin, a look of having more bone and less flesh than other men, a face and hands which would have been called bronzed, if there had been anything in the English climate of his home to have this effect on them, and a suggestion of utter honesty which he had transmitted to his daughter. The younger brother, Dudley, was of the same height and lighter build, and was said to be a caricature of the elder, and was so in the sense that his face was cast in a similar mould and had its own deviations from it. His nose was less straight; his eyes were not entirely on a line, and had a hint of his youngest nephew’s; and his skin was rather pale than bronzed, though the pair had lived in the same place, even in the same house, all their lives. It was a question in the neighbourhood which brother looked the more distinguished, and it was thought a subtle judgement to decide for Dudley. The truth was that Dudley looked the more distinguished when he was seen with his brother, and Edgar by himself, Dudley being dependent on Edgar’s setting of the type, and Edgar affording the less reward to a real comparison. The butler who followed them into the room, bearing a dish to replace the cold one, was a round-featured, high-coloured man about thirty, of the same height as his masters but in other respects very different.
‘Good morning, sir; good morning, sir,’ he said with a slight, separate bow to each.
‘Good morning,’ said Dudley.
‘Good morning, good morning,’ said Edgar, taking no longer over the words.
Blanche looked up in a daily disapproval of Jellamy’s initiative in speech, which had never been definite enough to be expressed.
‘It is a very unsettled day, sir.’
‘Yes, it appears to be,’ said Edgar; ‘yes, it is unsettled.’
‘The atmosphere is humid, sir.’
‘Yes, humid; yes, it seems to be damp.’
Edgar seldom made a definite statement. It was as if he feared to commit himself to something that was not the utter truth.
‘I love a conversation between Father and Jellamy,’ said Justine, in an undertone.
Blanche looked up with an expression which merely said that she did not share the feeling.
‘The plaster is peeling off the walls in the hall, sir.’
‘I will come some time and see. I will try to remember to come and look at it.’
‘I meant the servants’ hall, sir,’ said Jellamy, as if his master would hardly penetrate to this point.
‘That room you all use to sit in? The one that used to have a sink in it?’
‘The sink has been removed, sir. It is now put to the individual purpose.’
‘That will do, Jellamy, thank you,’ said Blanche, who disliked the presence of servants at meals. ‘If we want you again we will ring.’
‘It would be a good plan to remove all sinks and make all rooms into halls,’ said Dudley. ‘It would send up the standard of things.’
‘In this poor old world,’ said Aubrey.
‘How did you sleep, Father?’ said Justine.
‘Very well, my dear; I think I can say well. I slept for some hours. I hope you have a good account to give.’
‘Oh, don’t ask about the sleep of a healthy young woman, Father. Trust you to worry about the sleep of your only daughter!’ Edgar flinched in proportion to his doubt how far this confidence was justified, ‘It is your sleep that matters, and I am not half satisfied about it.’
‘The young need sleep, my dear.’
‘Oh, I am not as young as all that. A ripe thirty, and all my years lived to the full! I would not have missed out one of them. I don’t rank myself with the callow young any longer.’
‘Always Father’s little girl,’ murmured Aubrey.
‘What, my son?’ said Edgar.
‘I still rank myself with the young,’ said Aubrey, as if repeating what he had said. ‘I think I had better until I go to school. Anything else would make me look silly, and Clement would not like me to look that.’
‘Get on with your breakfast, little boy,’ said Justine. ‘Straight on and not another word until you have finished.’
‘I was making my little effort to keep the ball of conversation rolling. Every little counts.’
‘So it does, dear, and with all our hearts we acknowledge it.’
Blanche smiled from her eldest to her youngest child in appreciation of their feeling.
‘Aubrey meets with continual success,’ said Mark. ‘He is indeed a kind of success in himself.’
‘What kind?’ said Clement.
‘Too simple, Clement,’ said Justine, shaking her head. ‘How did you sleep, Uncle?’
‘Very well until I was awakened by the rain. Then I went to the window and stood looking out into the night. I see now that people really do that.’
‘They really shut out the air,’ said Clement.
‘Is Clement a soured young man?’ said Aubrey.
‘I had a very bad night,’ said Blanche, in a mild, conversational tone, without complaint that no enquiry had been made of her. ‘I have almost forgotten what it is to have a good one.’
‘Poor little Mother! But you sleep in the afternoon,’ said Justine.
‘I never do. I have my rest, of course; I could not get on without it. But I never sleep. I may close my eyes to ease them, but I am always awake.’
‘You were snoring yesterday, Mother,’ said Justine, with the insistence upon people’s sleeping and giving this sign which seems to be a human characteristic.
‘No, I was not,’ said Blanche, with the annoyance at the course, which is unfortunately another. ‘I never snore even at night, so I certainly do not when I am just resting in the day.’
‘Mother, I tiptoed in and you did not give a sign.’
‘If you made no sound, and I was resting my eyes, I may not have heard you, of course.’
‘Anyhow a few minutes in the day do not make up for a bad night,’ said Mark.
‘But I do not sleep in the day, even for a few minutes,’ said his mother in a shriller tone. ‘I don’t know what to say to make you all understand.’
‘I don’t know why people mind admitting to a few minutes’ sleep in the day,’ said Dudley, ‘when we all acknowledge hours at night and indeed require compassion if we do not have them.’
‘Who has acknowledged them?’ said Clement. ‘It will appear that as a family we do without sleep.’
‘But I do not mind admitting to them,’ said Blanche. ‘What I mean is that it is not the truth. There is no point in not speaking the truth even about a trivial matter.’
‘I do not describe insomnia in that way,’ said Mark.
‘Dear boy, you do understand,’ said Blanche, holding out her hand with an almost wild air. ‘You do prevent my feeling quite alone.’
‘Come, come, Mother, I was tactless, I admit,’ said Justine. ‘I know people hate confessing that they sleep in the day. I ought to have remembered it.’
‘Justine now shows tact,’ murmured Aubrey.
‘It is possible - it seems to be possible,’ said Edgar, ‘to be resting with closed eyes and give the impression of sleep.’
‘You forget the snoring, Father,’ said Justine, in a voice so low and light as to escape her mother’s ears.
‘If you don’t forget it too, I don’t know what we are to do,’ said Mark, in the same manner.
‘Snoring is not proof of being asleep,’ said Dudley.
‘But I was not snoring,’ said Blanche, in the easier tone of one losing grasp of a situation. ‘I should have known it myself. It would not be possible to be awake and make a noise and not hear it.’
Justine gave an arch look at anyone who would receive it, Edgar did so as a duty and rapidly withdrew his eyes as another.
‘Why do we not learn that no one ever snores under any circumstances?’ said Clement.
‘I wonder how the idea of snoring arose,’ said Mark.
‘Mother, are you going to eat no more than that?’ said Justine. ‘You are not ashamed of eating as well as of sleeping, I hope.’
‘There has been no question of sleeping. And I am not ashamed of either. I always eat very well and I always sleep very badly. There is no connexion between them.’
‘You seem to be making an exception in the first matter today,’ said her husband.
‘Well, it upsets me to be contradicted, Edgar, and told that I do things when I don’t do them, and when I know quite well what I do, myself,’ said Blanche, almost flouncing in her chair.
‘It certainly does, Mother dear. So we will leave it at that; that you know quite well what you do yourself.’
‘It seems a reasonable conclusion,’ said Mark.
‘I believe people always know that best,’ said Dudley. ‘If we could see ourselves as others see us, we should be much more misled, though people always talk as if we ought to try to do it.’
‘They want us to be misled and cruelly,’ said his nephew.
‘I don’t know,’ said Justine. ‘We might often meet a good, sound, impartial judgement.’
‘And we know, when we have one described like that, what a dreadful judgement it is,’ said her uncle.
‘Half the truth, the blackest of lies,’ said Mark.
‘The whitest of lies really,’ said Clement. ‘Or there is no such thing as a white lie.’
‘Well, there is not,’ said his sister. ‘Truth is truth and a lie is a lie.’
‘What is Truth?’ said Aubrey. ‘Has Justine told us?’
‘Truth is whatever happens to be true under the circumstances,’ said his sister, doing so at the moment. ‘We ought not to mind a searchlight being turned on our inner selves, if we are honest about them.’
‘That is our reason,’ said Mark. ‘“Know thyself” is a most superfluous direction. We can’t avoid it.’
‘We can only hope that no one else knows,’ said Dudley.
‘Uncle, what nonsense!’ said Justine. ‘You are the most transparent and genuine person, the very last to say that.’
‘What do you all really mean?’ said Edgar, speaking rather hurriedly, as if to check any further personal description.
‘I think I only mean’, said his brother, ‘that human beings ought always to be judged very tenderly, and that no one will be as tender as themselves. “Remember what you owe to yourself” is another piece of superfluous advice.’
‘But better than most advice,’ said Aubrey, lowering his voice as he ended. ‘More tender.’
‘Now, little boy, hurry up with your breakfast,’ said Justine. ‘Mr Penrose will be here in a few minutes.’
‘To pursue his life work of improving Aubrey,’ said Clement.
‘Clement ought to have ended with a sigh,’ said Aubrey. ‘But I daresay the work has its own unexpected rewards.’
‘I forget what I learned at Eton,’ said his uncle.
‘Yes, so do I; yes, so to a great extent do I,’ said Edgar. ‘Yes, I believe I forgot the greater part of it.’
‘You can’t really have lost it, Father,’ said Justine. ‘An education in the greatest school in the world must have left its trace. It must have contributed to your forming.’
‘It does not seem to matter that I can’t go to school,’ said Aubrey. ‘It will be a shorter cut to the same end.’
‘Now, little boy, don’t take that obvious line. And remember that self-education is the greatest school of all.’
‘And education by Penrose? What is that?’
‘Say Mr Penrose. And get on with your breakfast,’
‘He has only had one piece of toast,’ said Blanche, in a tone which suggested that it would be one of despair if the situation were not familiar. ‘And he is a growing boy.’
‘I should not describe him in those terms,’ said Mark.
‘I should be at a loss to describe him,’ said Clement.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said their mother at once. ‘You are both of you just as difficult to describe.’
‘Some people defy description,’ said Aubrey. ‘Uncle and I are among them.’
‘There is something in it,’ said Justine, looking round.
‘Perhaps we should not – it may be as well not to discuss people who are present,’ said Edgar.
‘Right as usual, Father. I wish the boys would emulate you.’
‘Oh, I think they do, dear,’ said Blanche, in an automatic tone. ‘I see a great likeness in them both to their father. It gets more striking.’
‘And does no one think poor Uncle a worthy object of emulation? He is as experienced and polished a person as Father.’
Edgar looked up at this swift disregard of accepted advice.
‘I am a changeling,’ said Dudley. ‘Aubrey and I are very hard to get hold of.’
‘And you can’t send a person you can’t put your finger on to school,’ said his nephew.
‘You can see that he does the next best thing,’ said Justine. ‘Off with you at once. There is Mr Penrose on the steps. Don’t keep the poor little man waiting.’
‘Justine refers to every other person as poor,’ said Clement.
‘Well, I am not quite without the bowels of human compassion. The ups and downs of the world do strike me, I confess.’
‘Chiefly the downs.’
‘Well, there are more of them.’
‘Poor little man,’ murmured Aubrey, leaving his seat. ‘Whose little man is he? I am Justine’s little boy.’
‘It seems - is it not rather soon after breakfast to work?’ said Edgar.
‘They go for a walk first, as you know, Father. It is good for Aubrey to have a little adult conversation apart from his family. I asked Mr Penrose to make the talk educational.
‘Did you, dear?’ said Blanche, contracting her eyes. ‘I think you should leave that kind of thing to Father or me.’
‘Indeed I should not, Mother. And not have it done at all? That would be a nice alternative. I should do all I can for you all, as it comes into my head, as I always have and always shall. Don’t try to prevent what is useful and right.’
Blanche subsided under this reasonable direction.
‘Now off with you both! Off to your occupations,’ said Justine, waving her hand towards her brothers. ‘I hope you have some. I have, and they will not wait.’
‘I am glad I have none,’ said Dudley. ‘I could not bear to have regular employment.’
‘Do you know what I have discovered?’ said his niece. ‘I have discovered a likeness between our little boy and you, Uncle. A real, incontrovertible and bona fide likeness. It is no good for you all to open your eyes. I have made my discovery and will stick to it.’
‘I have always thought they were alike,’ said Blanche.
‘Oh, now, Mother, that is not at all on the line. You know it has only occurred to you at this moment.’
‘No, I am bound to say’, said Edgar, definite in the interests of justice, ‘that I have heard your mother point out a resemblance.’
‘Then dear little Mother, she has got in first, and I am the last person to grudge her the credit. So you see it, Mother? Because I am certain of it, certain. I should almost have thought that Uncle would see it himself.’
‘We can hardly expect him to call attention to it,’ said Clement.
‘I am aware of it,’ said Dudley, ‘and I invite the attention of you all.’
‘Then I am a laggard and see things last instead of first.
‘But I am none the less interested in them. My interest does not depend upon personal triumph. It is a much more genuine and independent thing.’
‘Mine is feebler, I admit,’ said Mark.
‘Now, Mother, you will have a rest this morning to make up for your poor night. And I will drive the house on its course. You can be quite at ease.’
Justine put her hand against her mother’s cheek, and Blanche lifted her own hand and held it for a moment, smiling at her daughter.
‘What a dear, good girl she is!’ she said, as the latter left them. ‘What should we do without her?’
‘What we do now,’ said Clement.
‘Indeed we should not,’ said his mother, rounding on him at once. ‘We should find everything entirely different, as you know quite well.’
‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Edgar in a deliberate voice. ‘Indeed.’
Edgar and Blanche had fallen in love thirty-one years before, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy, when Edgar was twenty-four and Blanche thirty; and now that the feeling was a memory, and a rare and even embarrassing one, Blanche regarded her husband with trust and pride, and Edgar his wife with compassionate affection. It meant little that neither was ever disloyal to the other, for neither was capable of disloyalty. They had come to be rather shy of each other and were little together by day or night. It was hard to imagine how their shyness had ever been enough in abeyance to allow of their courtship and marriage, and they found it especially the case. They could only remember, and this they did as seldom as they could. Blanche seemed to wander aloof through her life, finding enough to live for in the members of her family and in her sense of pride and possession in each, it was typical of her that she regarded Dudley as a brother, and had no jealousy of her husband’s relation with him.
Edgar’s life was largely in his brother and the friendship which dated from their infancy. Mark helped his father in his halting and efficient management of the estate, and as the eldest son had been given no profession. Clement had gained a fellowship at Cambridge with a view to being a scholar and a don. Each brother had a faint compassion and contempt for the other’s employment and prospect.
‘Mother dear,’ said Justine, returning to the room, ‘here is a letter which came for you last night and which you have not opened. There is a way to discharge your duties! I suggest that you remedy the omission.’
Blanche held the letter at arm’s length to read the address, while she felt for her glasses.
‘It is from your grandfather,’ she said, adjusting the glasses and looking at her daughter over them. ‘It is from my father, Edgar. It is so seldom that he writes himself. Of course, he is getting an old man. He must soon begin to feel his age.’
‘Probably fairly soon, as he is eighty-seven,’ said Clement.
‘Too obvious once again, Clement,’ said Justine. ‘Open the letter, Mother. You should have read it last night.’
Blanche proceeded to do so at the reminder, and Edgar gave a glance of disapproval at his son, which seemed to be late as the result of his weighing its justice.
His wife’s voice came suddenly and with unusual expression.
‘Oh, he wants to know if the lodge is still to let. And if it is, he thinks of taking it! He would come with Matty to live here. Oh, it would be nice to have them. What a difference it would make! They want to know the lowest rent we can take, and we could not charge much to my family. I wish we could let them have it for nothing, but I suppose we must not afford that?’
There was a pause.
‘We certainly should not do so,’ said Mark. ‘Things are paying badly as it is.’
‘It opens up quite a different life,’ said Justine.
‘Are we qualified for it?’ said her brother.
‘I don’t see why we should not ask a normal rent,’ said Clement. ‘They would not expect help from us in any other way, and they do not need it.’
‘They are not well off, dear,’ said Blanche, again looking over her glasses. ‘They have lost a good deal of their money and will have to take great care. And it would be such an advantage to have them. We must think of that.’
‘They think of it evidently, and intend to charge us for it. I wonder at what they value themselves.’
‘They ought to pay us for our presence too,’ said Mark. ‘I suppose it is worth an equal price.’
‘I believe I am more companionable than either of them,’ said Dudley.
‘Oh, we ought not to talk like that even in joke,’ said Blanche, taking the most hopeful view of the conversation. ‘We ought to think what we can do to help them. They have had to give up their home, and this seems such a good solution. With my father getting old and my sister so lame, they ought to be near their relations.’
‘Do you consider, Mother dear, how you and Aunt Matty are likely to conduct yourselves when you are within a stone’s throw?’ said Justine, with deliberate dryness. ‘On the occasions when you have stayed with each other, rumours have come from her house, which have been confirmed in ours. Do remember that discretion is the better part of many another quality.’
‘Whatever do you mean? We have our own ways with each other, of course, just as all of you have, and your uncle and your father; as brothers and sisters must. But it has been nothing more.’
‘Edgar and I have not any,’ said Dudley. ‘I don’t know how you can say so. I have a great dislike for ways; I think few things are worse. And I don’t think you and your sister ought to live near to each other, if you have them.’
‘What an absurd way to talk! Matty and I have never disagreed. There is no need for us to treat each other as if we were strangers.’
‘Now remember, Mother dear,’ said Justine, lifting a finger, ‘that there is need for just that. Treat each other as strangers and I will ask no more. I shall be utterly satisfied.’
‘What a way to talk!’ repeated Blanche, her tone showing her really rancourless nature. ‘Do let us stop talking like this and think of the pleasure they will be to us.’
‘If they bring any happiness to you, little Mother, we welcome them from our hearts. But we are afraid that it will not be without alloy.’
‘I think - I have been considering,’ said Edgar, ‘I think we might suggest the rent which we should ask from a stranger, and then see what their not being strangers must cost us,’ He gave his deliberate smile, which did not alter his face, while his brother’s, which followed it, seemed to irradiate light. ‘We must hope it will not be much, as we have not much to spare.’
‘I suppose the sums involved are small,’ said Justine.
‘We are running things close,’ said Mark. ‘And why should they put a price on themselves when other people do not?’
‘Oh, my old father and my invalid sister!’ said Blanche. ‘And the house has been empty for such a long time, and the rents in this county are so low.’
‘We shall take all that into account,’ said Edgar, in the tone he used to his wife, gentler and slower than to other people, as if he wished to make things clear and easy for her. ‘And it will tend to lower the rent.’
‘Then why not just ask them very little and think no more about it? I don’t know why we have this kind of talk. It will be so nice to have them, and now we have made it into a subject which will always bring argument and acrimoniousness. It is a great shame,’ Blanche shook her shoulders and looked down with tears in her eyes.
‘They want us to write at once, if Mother does not mind my looking at the letter,’ said Justine, assuming that this was the case. ‘Dear Grandpa! His writing begins to quaver. They have their plans to make.’
‘If his writing quavers, his rent must be low, of course,’ said Mark, ‘We are not brutes and oppressors.’
Blanche looked up with a clearing face, as reason and feeling asserted themselves in her son.
‘Yes, yes, we must let them know,’ said Edgar. ‘And of course it will be an advantage to have them - any benefit which comes from them will be ours. We cannot dispute it.’
‘We do not want to,’ said his daughter, ‘or to dispute anything else. This foretaste of such things is enough. Let us make our little sacrifice, if it must be made. We ought not to jib at it so much.’
‘Let us leave this aspect of the matter and turn to the others,’ said Mark, keeping his face grave. ‘Do you suppose they really know about Aubrey?’
‘I don’t see how they can,’ said Clement. ‘He was too young the last time they were here for it to be recognized.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Blanche, who fell into every trap. ‘They will be devoted to him, as people always are.’
‘Yes, Aubrey will be a great success, I will wager,’ said Justine. ‘We shall all of us pale beside him. You wait and see.’
‘I shall have the same sort of triumph,’ said Dudley. ‘They will begin by noticing my brother and find their attention gradually drawn to me.’
‘And then it will be all up with everyone else,’ said Justine, sighing. ‘Oh, dreadful Uncle, we all know how it can be.’
‘And then they will think - I will not say what. It will be for them to say it.’
‘Well, poor Uncle, you can’t always play second fiddle.’
‘Yes, I can,’ said Dudley, his eyes on Edgar. ‘It is a great art and I have mastered it.’
Edgar rose as though hearing a signal and went to the door, resting his arm in his brother’s, and a minute later the pair appeared on the path outside the house.
‘Those two tall figures!’ said Justine. ‘It is a sight of which I can never tire. If I live to be a hundred I do not wish to see one more satisfying.’
Blanche looked up and followed her daughter’s eyes in proper support of her.
Mark took Clement’s arm and walked up and down before his sister.
‘No, away with you!’ she said with a gesture. ‘I don’t want an imitation; I don’t want anything spurious. I have the real thing before my eyes.’
‘I like to see them walking together like that,’ said Blanche.
‘Well, I do not, Mother. It is a mockery of something better and I see nothing about it to like.’
‘I am sure they are very good friends. We need not call it a mockery. It illustrates a genuine feeling, even if the action itself was a joke.’
‘Genuine feeling, yes, Mother, but nothing like the feeling between Father and Uncle. We must face it. You have not produced that in your family. It has skipped that generation.’
Blanche looked on in an impotent way, as her daughter left the room, but appreciation replaced any other feeling on her face. She had the unusual quality of loving all her children equally, or of believing that she did. If Mark and Aubrey held the chief place in her heart, the place was available for the others when they needed it, so that she was justified in feeling that she gave it to them all. Neither she nor Clement suspected that she cared for Clement the least, and if Dudley and Aubrey knew it, it was part of that knowledge in them which was their own. Edgar would not have been surprised to hear that her second son was her favourite.
Jellamy came into the room as his mistress left it, and carried some silver to the sideboard.
‘So we are to have Mr Seaton and Miss Seaton at the lodge, sir?’
‘How did you know?’ said Mark. ‘We have only just heard.’
‘The same applies to me, sir,’ said Jellamy, speaking with truth, as he had heard at the same moment. ‘Miss Seaton will be a companion for the mistress, sir. The master and, Mr Dudley being so much together leaves the mistress rather by herself.’ Jellamy’s eyes protruded over a subject which was rife in the kitchen, and had never presented itself to Blanche.
‘She is never by herself,’ said Clement. ‘We all live in a chattering crowd, each of us waiting for a chance to be heard.’
Luncheon found the family rather as Clement described it. Edgar sat at the head of the table, Blanche at the foot; Dudley and Justine sat on either side of the former, Mark and Clement of the latter; and Aubrey and his tutor faced each other in the middle of the board. Mr Penrose was treated with friendliness and supplied with the best of fare, and found the family luncheon the trial of his day. He sat in a conscious rigour, which he hardly helped by starting when he was addressed, and gazing at various objects in the room with deep concentration. He was a blue-eyed, bearded little man of forty-five, of the order known as self-made, who spoke of himself to his wife as at the top of the tree, and accepted her support when she added that he was in this position in the truest sense. He had a sharp nose, supporting misty spectacles, and neat clothes which had a good deal of black about them. He was pleasant and patient with Aubrey, and made as much progress with him as was possible in view of this circumstance, and had a great admiration for Edgar, whom he occasionally addressed. Edgar and Dudley treated him with ordinary simplicity and never referred to him in any other spirit. Justine spoke of him with compassion, Mark with humour, Blanche with respect for his learning. Clement did not speak of him, and Aubrey saw him with the adult dryness of boys towards their teachers.
‘Well, Mr Penrose, a good morning’s work?’ said Justine.
‘Probably on Mr Penrose’s part,’ said Clement.
‘Yes, I am glad to say it was on the whole satisfactory, Miss Gaveston. I have no complaint to make.’
‘I wish we could sometimes hear some positive praise of our little boy.’
‘He is before you,’ said Mark. ‘Consider what you ask.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Blanche. ‘None of you was perfect at his age. If you tease him, I shall be very much annoyed. Have you done well yourself this morning, Clement?’
‘Well enough, thank you, Mother.’
‘We hear some positive praise of Clement,’ said Aubrey.
‘Clement ought to have a mediocre future before him,’ said Dudley, ‘and Aubrey a great one.’
‘I don’t agree with this theory that early failure tends to ultimate success,’ said Justine. ‘Do you, Mr Penrose?’
‘Well, Miss Gaveston, that has undoubtedly been the sequence in some cases. But the one may not lead to the other. There may be no connexion and I think it is probable that there is not.’
‘Dear little Aubrey!’ said Blanche, looking into space. ‘What will he become in time?’
Mr Penrose rested his eyes on her, and then dropped them as if to cover an answer to this question.
‘That is the best of an early lack of bent,’ said Clement. ‘It leaves an open future.’
‘The child is father of the man,’ said Mark. ‘It is no good to shut our eyes to it.’
‘I cannot grow into anything,’ said Aubrey, ‘until I begin to grow. I am not big enough to be my own son yet.’
Edgar laughed, and Blanche glanced from him to his son with a mild glow in her face.
‘We were talking of the growth of the mind, little boy,’ said Justine.
‘I am sure he is much taller,’ said Blanche.
‘Mother dear, his head comes to exactly the same place on the wall. We have not moved it for a year.’
‘I moved it yesterday,’ said Aubrey, looking aside. ‘I have grown an inch.’
‘I knew he had!’ said Blanche, with a triumph which did not strike anyone as disproportionate.
‘If we indicate Aubrey on the wall,’ said Clement, ‘have we not dealt sufficiently with him?’
‘Why do you talk about him like that? Why are you any better than he is?’
‘We must now hear some more positive praise of Clement,’ said Aubrey.
‘It need not amount to that,’ said his brother.
‘I don’t want to have him just like everyone else,’ said Blanche, causing Aubrey’s face to change at the inexplicable attitude. ‘I like a little individuality. It is a definite advantage.’
‘A good mother likes the ugly duckling best,’ said Justine, coming to her mother’s aid in her support of her son, and with apparent success, as the latter smiled to himself. ‘How do you really think he is getting along, Mr Penrose?’
‘Mr Penrose has given us one account of him,’ said Edgar. ‘I think we will not - perhaps we will not ask him for another.’
‘But I think we will, Father. The account was not very definite. Unless you really want to leave the subject, in which case your only daughter will not go against you. That would not be at all to your mind. Well, have you heard, Mr Penrose, that we are going to have a family of relations at the lodge?’
‘No, I have not, Miss Gaveston. I have hardly had the opportunity.’
‘Grandpa and Aunt Matty and Miss Griffin,’ said Aubrey.
‘How do you know, little boy? We had the news when you had gone.’
‘Jellamy told me when he was setting the luncheon.’
‘Father, do you like Aubrey to make a companion of Jellamy?’
‘Well, my dear, I think so; I do not think - I see no objection.’
‘Then there is none. Your word on such a matter is enough. I shall like to see poor Miss Griffin again. I wonder how she is getting on.’
‘Do I understand, Mr Gaveston, that it is Mrs Gaveston’s family who is coming to the vicinity?’ said Mr Penrose.
‘Yes, Mr Penrose,’ said Justine, clearly. ‘My mother’s father and sister, and the sister’s companion, who has become a friend.’
‘My father is an old man now,’ said Blanche.
‘Well, Mother dear, he can hardly be anything else, with you - well, I will leave you the option in the matter of your own age - with a granddaughter thirty. Mr Penrose hardly needed that information.’
‘And my sister is a little older than I am,’ continued Blanche, not looking at her daughter, though with no thought of venting annoyance. ‘She is an invalid from an accident, but very well in herself. I am so much looking forward to having her.’
‘Poor little Mother! It sounds as if you suffered from a lack of companionship. But we can’t skip a generation and become your contemporaries.’
‘I do not want you to. I like to have my children at their stage and my sister at hers. I shall be a very rich woman.’
‘Well, you will, Mother dear. What a good thing you realize it! So many people do not until it is too late.’
‘Then they are not rich,’ said Clement.
‘People seem very good at so many things,’ said Dudley, ‘except for not being quite in time. It seems hard that that should count so much.’
‘Mother will be rich in Aunt Matty,’ said Aubrey.
‘I shall,’ said Blanche.
‘Really, you boys contribute very tame little speeches,’ said Justine. ‘You are indifferent conversationalists.’
‘If you wish us to be anything else,’ said Clement, ‘you must allow us some practice.’
‘Do you mean that I am always talking myself? What a very ungallant speech! I will put it to the vote. Father, do you think that I talk too much?’
‘No, my dear - well, it is natural for young people to talk.’
‘So you do. Well, I must sit down under it. But I know who will cure me; Aunt Matty. She is the person to prevent anyone from indulging in excess of talk. And I don’t mean to say anything against her; I love her flow of words. But she does pour them out; there is no doubt of that.’
‘We all have our little idiosyncrasies,’ said Blanche. ‘We should not be human without them.’
‘It is a pity we have to be human,’ said Dudley. ‘Human failings, human vanity, human weakness! We don’t hear the word applied to anything good. Even human nature seems a derogatory term. It is simply an excuse for everything.’
‘Human charity, human kindness,’ said Justine. ‘I think that gives us to think, Uncle.’
‘There are great examples of human nobility and sacrifice,’ said Blanche. ‘Mr Penrose must know many of them.’
‘People are always so pleased about people’s sacrifice,’ said Dudley; ‘I mean other people’s. It is not very nice of them. I suppose it is only human.’
‘They are not. They can admire it without being pleased.’
‘So I am to write - you wish me to write to your father, my dear,’ said Edgar, ‘and say that he is welcome as a tenant at a sacrifice to be determined?’
‘Yes, of course. But you need not mention the sacrifice. And I am sure we do not feel it to be that. Just say how much we want to have them.’
‘Father dear, I don’t think we need bring out our little family problems before Mr Penrose,’ said Justine. ‘They concern us but they do not - can hardly interest him.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that mattered, dear,’ said Blanche. ‘Mr Penrose will forgive us. He was kind enough to be interested.’
‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Gaveston. It is a most interesting piece of news,’ said Mr Penrose, relinquishing a spoon he was examining, as if to liberate his attention, which had certainly been occupied. ‘I must remember to tell Mrs Penrose. She is always interested in any little piece of information about the family - in the neighbourhood. Not that this particular piece merits the term, little. From your point of view quite the contrary.’
‘We shall have to do up the lodge,’ said Blanche to her husband. ‘It is fortunate that it is such a good size. Matty must have remembered it. The back room will make a library for my father, and Matty will have the front one as a drawing-room. And the third room on that floor can be her bedroom, to save her the stairs. I can quite see it in my mind’s eye.’
‘Drawing-room and library are rather grandiloquent terms for those little rooms,’ said Justine.
‘Well, call them anything you like, dear. Sitting-room and study. It makes no difference.’
‘No, it makes none, Mother, but that is what we will call them.’
‘We need not decide,’ said Clement. ‘Aunt Matty will do that.’
‘Aunt Matty would never use exaggerated terms for anything to do with herself.’
‘There are other ways of exaggerating,’ said Mark.
‘Mrs Gaveston,’ said Mr Penrose, balancing the spoon on his finger, to show that his words were not very serious to him, ‘it may interest you to hear how Mrs Penrose and I arranged rooms on a somewhat similar scale, as I gather, as those you mention.’
‘Yes, we should like to hear indeed.’
‘Thank you very much, Mr Penrose,’ said Justine warmly, sitting forward with her eyes on Mr Penrose’s face.
‘We selected large patterns for the carpets, to give an impression of space, though it might hardly be thought that the choice would have that result. And we kept the walls plain with the same purpose.’
‘We can have the walls plain,’ said Justine, ‘but we must use the carpets at our disposal, Mr Penrose. We are not as fortunate as you were.’
‘We shall not be able to write in time for them to hear by the first post,’ said Blanche. ‘I hope it won’t seem that we are in any doubt about it.’
‘About the sacrifice,’ said Dudley. ‘I hope not. I said that people were pleased by other people’s sacrifice. They would not like them to have any hesitation in making it.’
‘It would be an unwilling sacrifice,’ said Aubrey.
‘Another point to be made,’ continued Mr Penrose –
‘Yes, Mr Penrose, one moment,’ said Justine, leaning to her father and laying a hand on his arm, while glancing back at the tutor. ‘It is very kind and we are so interested, but one moment. Would it not be better, Father, to send the letter into the town to catch the afternoon post? Things always get to Grandpa in the morning if we do that.’
‘It might be - it probably would be better, I will write directly after luncheon, or as soon as we have decided what to say. What is Mr Penrose telling us?’
‘It does not matter, Mr Gaveston. I was only mentioning that in the experience of Mrs Penrose and myself - it is of no consequence,’ said Mr Penrose, observing that Justine had turned to her mother, and resuming the spoon.
‘Indeed it is of consequence,’ almost called Justine, leaning towards Blanche over Aubrey and giving another backward glance.
‘You have one of our seventeenth-century spoons?’ said Edgar.
‘Yes, Mr Gaveston, I was wondering if it was one of them. I see it is not,’ said Mr Penrose, laying down a spoon which his scrutiny had enabled him to assign to his own day. ‘You have some very beautiful ones, have you not?’
‘They are all put away, Mr Penrose,’ called Justine, in a voice which seemed to encourage Mr Penrose with the admission of economy. ‘We are not allowed to use them any more. They only come out on special occasions.’
‘Do go and write the letter, Edgar,’ said Blanche.
‘Poor Father, let him have his luncheon in peace.’
‘He has finished, dear. He is only playing with that fruit and wasting it.’
‘Waste not, want not, Father,’ said Justine, in a warning tone which seemed to be directed to Mr Penrose’s ears.
Edgar rose and left the room with his brother, and Justine’s eyes followed them.
‘Are they not a perfect pair, Mr Penrose?’
‘Yes, indeed, Miss Gaveston. It appears to be a most conspicuous friendship.’
‘What are you doing?’ said Blanche, suddenly, as she perceived her elder sons amusedly regarding the youngest, whose expression of set jauntiness told her that he was nearly in tears. ‘You are teasing him again! I will not have it. It is mean and unmanly to torment your little brother. I am thoroughly ashamed of you both. Justine, I wonder you allow it.’
‘I merely did not observe it, Mother. I was talking to you and Father. Now I certainly will not countenance it. Boys, I have a word to say.’
‘It is unworthy to torment someone who cannot retaliate,’ said Blanche, giving her daughter the basis of her homily.
‘I have managed to get my own back,’ said Aubrey, in an easy drawl, depriving her of it.
‘We were only wondering how to keep Aubrey out of Grandpa’s sight and Aunt Matty’s,’ said Mark. ‘A shock is bad for old and invalid people.’
‘You are silly boys. Why do you not keep out of their sight yourselves?’ said his mother.
‘That might be the best way to cover up the truth,’ said Mark, looking at his brother as if weighing this idea. ‘It would avoid any normal comparison.’
‘Suppose either should come upon him unawares! They have not seen him since we could hope it was a passing phase.’
‘A phase of what?’ said Blanche. ‘I do not know what you mean and neither do you.’
‘We thought a postscript might be added to the letter,’ said Mark. ‘So that they might be a little prepared.’
‘Prepared for what?’
‘Just something such as: “If you see Aubrey, you will understand.”’
‘Understand what?’ almost screamed his mother ‘You don’t understand, yourselves, so naturally they would not.’
‘Mother, Mother dear,’ said Justine, laughing gently, ‘you are pandering to them by falling into their hands like that. Take no notice of them and they will desist. They are only trying to attract attention to themselves.’
‘Well, that is natural at their stage,’ said Aubrey.
‘We did take no notice and they had reduced poor Aubrey nearly to tears,’ said Blanche, too lost in her partisanship of her son to observe its effect upon him.
‘They are naughty boys, or, what is worse, they are malicious young men, and I am very much annoyed with them. I did not mean that I was not.’
‘Then speak to them about it,’ said Blanche, standing back and looking with expectance born of experience from her daughter to her sons.
‘Boys, boys,’ said Justine gravely, ‘this will not do, you know. Take example from that.’ She pointed to the garden, where Edgar and Dudley were walking arm-in-arm. There is a spectacle of brotherhood. Look at it and take a lesson.’
‘So your father has not written the letter!’ said Blanche.
‘If you will excuse us, Mrs Gaveston, Aubrey and I should be thinking of our walk,’ said Mr Penrose, who had been uncertain whether the family had forgotten his presence.
‘Yes, of course, Mr Penrose, please do as you like,’ said Blanche, who had forgotten it, and even now did not completely recall it. ‘If he does not write it soon, it will have no chance of the post.’
Aubrey went up to his brothers and linked their arms, and taking a step backwards with a jeering face, took his tutor’s arm himself and walked from the room.
‘Dear, dear, what a little boy!’ said Justine. ‘I think Mr Penrose carried that off very well.’
‘Edgar!’ called Blanche from the window. ‘You are not writing that letter! And it has to go in an hour.’
‘We are deciding upon the terms - we are discussing the wording, my dear,’ said her husband, pausing and maintaining the courtesy of his voice, though he had to open his mouth to raise it. ‘It needs to be expressed with a certain care.’
‘Indeed,’ said Mark. ‘There is no need to employ any crudeness in telling Grandpa that we can’t do him too much charity.’
‘Oh, that is all right then,’ said Blanche, turning from the window. ‘There is no question of charity. That is not the way to speak of your grandfather. It is the coachman’s day out. Who had better drive the trap into the town? I have seen Jellamy drive. Would your father mind his driving the mare? I wish you would some of you listen to me, and not leave me to settle everything by myself.’
‘Mother, come and have your rest,’ said Justine, taking Blanche’s arm. ‘I will take the trap myself. You need have no fear. I also have seen Jellamy drive, and if Father does not grudge him the particular indulgence, I do.’
Blanche walked compliantly out of the room, relaxing her face and her thoughts together, and her husband and his brother passed to the library.
‘I think that will express it,’ said Dudley. ‘You are to drop a sum every year and not refer to it, and feel guilty that you take money from your wife’s relations for giving them a bare roof.’
‘I think it should be good for Blanche to have them. I hope we may think it should. I fear there may be - I fear -’
‘I fear all sorts of things; I am sick with fear. But we must think what Blanche is facing. I always think that women’s courage is hard on men. It seems absurd for men and women to share the same life. I simply don’t know how we are to share Blanche’s life in future.’
‘I am never sure how to address my father-in-law.’
‘When we speak to him, we say “sir”. I like saying “sir” to people. It makes me feel young and well-behaved, and I can’t think of two better things, or more in tune with my personality. What a good thing that Blanche will not ask to see the letter! I have a great respect for her lack of curiosity. It is a thing I could never attain.’
Dudley drafted and dictated the letter, and Edgar wrote it and submitted it for his inspection, and then suggested a game of chess. When Justine came for the letter, the brothers were sitting silent over the board. They played chess often, Dudley playing the better, but Edgar playing for the sake of the game, careless and almost unconscious of success. Justine tiptoed from the room, mutely kissing her hand towards the table.