‘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.’
‘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, each 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.
The family waited in the door for the carriage to appear.
‘Well, what a moment!’ said Justine. ‘To think that our normal life is to be restored! It seems almost too much. It shows us what rich people we are.’
‘That has hardly been true of us of late,’ said Mark.
‘Yes, it is partly the force of contrast. The sharp edge of our appreciation will be blunt. So we will make the most of it.’
‘I deprecate the method of enhancing our feeling.’
‘Our worst chapter is behind, our very worst. And I mean what I say; I use the words advisedly. You need not all look at me. You see, our grief for Mother was unsullied. This would have had its alloy.’
‘Relief from anxiety gives the impression of happiness,’ said Clement.
‘Then let us have that impression,’ said his brother.
‘Here they come!’ We must set our faces to disguise our emotion,’ said Aubrey, doing as he said.
‘I don’t want to disguise it,’ said his sister, wiping her eyes. ‘I do not care how much of it is seen by Uncle or anyone else. I should not like to go away and nearly die, and come back to unmoved faces.’
‘Neither should I,’ said Dudley’s voice. ‘I could not bear it. I do not like people not to show their feelings. If they do not, they are no good to anyone but themselves, and they don’t enjoy them nearly so much as the people who cause them. And it is better to have proof of everything, anyhow of feelings.’
‘Oh,’ said Justine, with a deep sigh, ‘the old touch!’
‘I must pay great attention,’ said Aubrey. ‘I have been a long time without an example.’
‘Stay,’ said his sister, thrusting a hand behind her as she strode forward. ‘I am going to help Uncle out. I am going to use my feminine privilege in an unusual way.’
‘She looks equal to it,’ said Matty, smiling at Maria.
‘Oh, someone else is to come out first,’ said Justine, turning and ruefully raising her brows. ‘Oh, it is Miss Griffin. Uncle does not forget to be himself. Well, it will give me great pleasure to help them both.’
‘How do you do, Miss Seaton?’ said Miss Griffin, as she set foot upon the ground, embarking on her ordeal at once.
‘How do you do, my dear?’ said Matty, shaking hands with cordial affection. ‘We owe a great deal to you.’
‘What a good thing it is that I am spared!’ said Dudley, descending on his niece’s arm. ‘It is generally the valuable lives that are cut off, but I can feel that a real attempt was made on mine.’
‘You helped yourself a great deal,’ said Miss Griffin.
‘And heaven helps those who do that. But I really don’t remember any help but yours.’
‘Now up to your room. No more talking,’ said Justine, bringing her hands together. ‘Not another moment in this chilly hall. Maria, you do not mind my taking matters into my own hands. You see, Uncle has been bound up with the whole of my life.’
‘It is well that Maria feels as you say,’ said Clement.
Justine’s words brought a sense of what was behind, and Edgar cleared a way through the hall. Dudley was assisted by his nephews to his room. He would have been able to walk with Edgar’s help, but the brothers shrank from following their natural ways, as yet unsure of their footing. The uncertainty had come with Dudley’s return to health.
‘Well, what are we to do to celebrate the occasion?’ said Matty, with something of her old tense touch.
‘Go into the drawing-room and sit quietly down,’ said Justine, in a rather loud tone, ‘and give ourselves to thank-fulness.’
‘Yes, dear, that is what we feel inclined to do. So we are to indulge ourselves,’ said Matty, putting her niece’s inclinations on their right level, and taking her seat by the fire in silence.
‘Uncle will come and join us for an hour when he is rested.’
‘Well, I will wait for that, if Maria will let me.’ ‘You will wait for it, of course, with all of us,’ said Maria.
Mark and Clement returned.
‘Uncle is resting in his own room and Miss Griffin in another.’
‘Not in the same room?’ said Aubrey.
‘Now, little boy, no foolishness on this occasion.’
‘Those two great, clumsy lads carried Uncle up with hands as gentle as a woman’s,’ said Aubrey, blinking his eyes.
‘Poor Miss Griffin, I am shocked by her appearance,’ said Justine. ‘She looks more worn than Uncle.’
‘Yes, dear, I am troubled too,’ said Matty. ‘It seems sad that her connexion with us should bring her to this. I have never seen her looking in this way before.’
‘You must have, Aunt Matty, at the times of your own illnesses.’
Matty gave a smile and a sigh, as if it were no use to make statements doomed to rejection.
‘This was arduous nursing,’ said Maria. ‘It could not be helped.’
‘Of course not, dear. If it could have been it would have. That is the thing that makes us sorry.’
‘The nursing has not been much for some time,’ said Edgar. ‘Miss Griffin is looking fairly well. She was upset by the motion of the carriage.’
‘And Father behaved with simple chivalry,’ said Aubrey. ‘Well, it would have been no good for Clement to be a witness.’
‘Oh, I believe she always is!’ said Justine, sitting up straight.
Matty gave a laugh.
‘That sort of thing does make people look ill for the moment,’ said Maria.
‘And Miss Griffin is not used to driving,’ said Justine. Matty put back her head in mirth.
‘Did you know, Aunt Matty, that she was to have a little house of her own?’ said Justine, driven to the sudden announcement. ‘Uncle is to make it possible.’
‘No, dear,’ said Matty, with her eyes dilating. ‘I did not know. How could I when I was not told? When was that arranged?’
‘When they met after - before Uncle was ill.’
‘Well, I am glad, dear; glad that our long relation is ending like this; glad that I brought her to a family who were to do this for her. It is good that our friendship should have this culmination.’
‘It was not the one which Aunt Matty planned when she turned her out of doors,’ said Mark to his brothers. ‘There was no question of any alternative roof.’
‘I am sure you are glad, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine.
‘Are you, dear? So you accept something that I say?’
‘And I am sure it will be the beginning of a new relation with Miss Griffin.’
Matty gave a little trill of laughter.
‘Now, Aunt Matty, what exactly amuses you?’
‘My relation with her, when you have all used her as a sick nurse and nothing else!’ said Matty, bending her head and speaking in an impeded voice.
‘Maria, would you advise me to move out of hearing of my aunt?’
Matty sat up and looked from her niece to her friend.
‘If you think there would be anything gained,’ said Maria.
Justine rose and went to a distant seat, and her aunt looked after her with open mockery.
‘So I am too dangerous a tinder for my niece’s flint and steel. Or is it the other way round?’
‘Either account will serve,’ said Clement.
‘Well, well, then we must try not to come against each other. Perhaps we are too much alike.’
‘No, I don’t think that is it, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine. ‘Oh, what is the good of my moving to a distance if I must communicate from it?’
‘No good,’ said her brother.
‘I should move back again, dear,’ said Matty easily. ‘I don’t think it does achieve anything.’
Justine returned and sat down even nearer to her aunt, raising her shoulders.
Matty looked at her for a moment and turned to Maria.
‘You have the whole of your family at home?’ she said, stooping as if unconsciously to free her dress from contact with her niece.
‘They are all at home as a usual thing. Clement is away for the term, but he gives us a good deal of time.’
‘He hasn’t the house of his own yet?’
‘I don’t want it yet; I am putting it off,’ said Clement, in a quick, harsh tone. ‘I am thinking about it. I shall have it before long.’
‘I have rather an uncompromising nephew and niece.’
‘Well, we say what we mean, Aunt Matty,’ began Justine. ‘Oh, it is not worth while to waste a thought on us. Here is the person who matters! We might be twice as good or twice as bad and still be as nothing. And Father in attendance, after hovering about upstairs until he should wake! So that is why he crept away. I need not have wondered.’
‘Can we all quite agree that we are as nothing?’ said Matty in a low, arch, rapid tone, looking up at Dudley as he passed. ‘I have never felt it of myself, or had it felt of me, if I can judge by the signs. So I must hold myself apart from that generalization, though it is not a thing that matters on this occasion.’
‘This is the occasion in question,’ said Clement.
‘I have not had any sleep,’ said Dudley. ‘I could not lose myself. I may be better down here amongst you all. If you see me dropping off, you could all steal quietly away. Perhaps your talk will lull me to sleep unawares.’
Edgar followed his brother, looking as if he had no connexion with him and holding his face to prevent an encounter of their eyes. Dudley sat down by the fire and signed for a cushion. His niece was at his side in an instant, settling the cushion behind him and thrusting a rug down on either side of his knees.
‘I think Justine is a little more than nothing,’ said Matty, with a smile.
‘I am Uncle’s willing slave. That is all I ask to be.’
‘Well, I would ask nothing better, if I were permitted such a character. But, as I have said, it has not been the one assigned to me.’
‘Well, you have been an invalid,’ said Justine, making a sally towards the rug where it was working up. ‘Justine explains it,’ said Aubrey.
‘Not always, dear. Not when I was your age, for instance,’ ‘I don’t think this talk will lull me to sleep,’ said Dudley.
‘Well, I may not be a slave,’ said Matty, holding up a piece of needlework for his eyes, ‘but I have been willing in your service. A little bit of something made by a friend means more, I hope, than the same thing bought out of an ample purse.’
‘Is every stitch in it worked by loving hands?’
In an instant Justine had the work out of her aunt’s hands and before Dudley’s eyes.
‘Gently, dear, the stitches will unravel,’ said Matty, leaning forward.
‘Barely an inch or two. Nothing compared to the satisfaction of proving to Uncle that the work is all your own.’
‘He would have taken Aunt Matty’s word,’ said Mark.
Matty retrieved the work and placing it on her knee, set herself to remedy the damage.
‘Not much harm done, is there?’ said her niece.
‘A piece to be worked again, dear. It does not matter. I have all the time to do it, as no doubt you thought.’
‘Let me do it, just the piece that came undone. Then you will have worked the whole of it once.’
‘I only want loving thoughts stitched into it,’ said Dudley.
‘You shall have them,’ said Matty, in a full tone. ‘Every thought shall be loving and every stitch mine, some of them doubly done.’
‘Oh, we forgot to ask, Aunt Matty, how you have been managing without Miss Griffin,’ said Justine, recalled by her aunt’s industry to the fact that she was used to aid.
‘Forgot to ask!’ said Mark to Aubrey. ‘I would have died rather than do so.’
‘I think I shall die, now it is done. If I don’t I don’t know how to manage.’
‘Don’t talk about dying in that light way,’ said Dudley.
‘You have no right. You have no idea of what it is to hover between life and death.’
‘No experience of the valley of the shadow,’ said Aubrey.
‘None at all. I suppose there will be something in my face now that there is not in yours.’
‘Don’t let us talk about that time,’ said Justine, with a shudder. ‘Let us only remember it enough to be thankful that it is past.’
‘And to feel the value of my presence in your home.’
The words recalled the other way in which Dudley might have been lost to them. Justine moved to her uncle and stood stroking his hair, and her father’s eyes followed her hand.
‘Father might like to help Justine to smooth Uncle’s hair,’ murmured Aubrey, ‘to help his only daughter.’
‘Well, Aunt Matty, what have you to tell us about yourself?’ said Justine, putting more energy into her hand. ‘We have been too lost in our own troubles to give a thought to things outside.’
‘Your aunt has been in similar case,’ said Edgar.
‘Now there is a nice, undertsanding word,’ said Matty. ‘And it is indeed a true one, even though in my case the things were not outside myself.’
‘Aunt Matty threw Father a grateful glance,’ said Aubrey.
‘So I did, dear. I do not get too much understanding since Mother died, and Grandpa,’ said Matty, adapting her words to her nephew. ‘So much of it went with them. I do not mean that I expect more than I have. It would be idle indeed to do so. But I am the more grateful when it comes.’
‘Well, let us all emerge from that stage and take more interest in each other,’ said Justine. ‘You tell us of your plans and we will hear them.’
‘Well, dear, I have none as yet, as your father would know. Plans need thought and attention, and they have not been forthcoming.’
‘Try to do what you can about them at the moment,’ said Maria.
‘Shall I, dear? I have been wondering when I should hear your voice. All these loquacious young relatives of mine seem to overwhelm you.’
‘I have never been a talkative person. Perhaps I have not much to say.’
‘Don’t be afraid, Aunt Matty; Maria can hold her own,’ said Justine.
‘Well, now, I have been asked for my plans. So I must make them and make them at once, so as not to keep people waiting. Well, as Miss Griffin is no longer to depend on me for a home, I must look for someone else who will find it a help to do so. For I cannot rely upon a maid-servant for the greater part of my companionship.’
‘Indeed no,’ said Justine, ‘though it would not be the greater part. You are wise to fill Miss Griffin’s place, in so far as you can do so.’
‘Yes, dear, we all have to deal like that with places, or we all do. And, you know’ - Matty gave her niece a different smile - ‘I do not make a sorrow of a friend’s good fortune.’
‘Ought the next person who is to depend on Aunt Matty for a home,’ said Aubrey, ‘to be told that it may be in the garden?’
‘I have heard that snow is a warm covering,’ said Mark. ‘I don’t know if Aunt Matty had.’
‘Uncle had not, or he need not have given Miss Griffin his coat.’
‘Depend does not seem a word to use of Miss Griffin,’ said Justine. ‘She earned her independence, if anyone did.’
‘It is clear what your aunt means,’ said Edgar.
‘Father, I believe you are jealous of me for my proximity to Uncle,’ said Justine, hastening away from Dudley with no idea that her words had any real truth.
Edgar, who only knew it at the moment, put a chair for his daughter and smiled at her as she took it.
‘Dear Father, with his one ewe lamb!’
‘Suppose Father had more than one,’ said Aubrey.
‘Well, Miss Griffin has certainly earned her independence in these last weeks,’ said Matty. ‘And she is to have it.
That is so good to hear.’
‘Uncle had arranged to give it to her before he was ill,’ said Justine.
‘Had he, dear? Well, that does not make it any less good. And if she had not earned it then, she has now. Or if she had earned it then, she has now earned it doubly. Let us put it like that. So she has a right to it. And I shall like so much to see her in her own home, as she has always seen me in mine.’
‘I really believe you will, Aunt Matty.’
Matty appeared once more to strive with her laughter.
‘Where is Miss Griffin?’ she said, looking round as she overcame it. ‘Does she not want to be with you all? Or is she afraid of so many of us?’
‘She is afraid of one of us,’ said Mark. ‘And so am I.’
‘Where has Clement gone?’ said Edgar.
‘I expect to his room,’ said Aubrey. ‘He is always slinking away by himself.’
‘Well, he has seen me,’ said Dudley, ‘and satisfied himself that I am on the mend.’
‘And to do him justice, Uncle, he did not go until he had done that,’ said Justine. ‘And he has his work. And we shall have someone else disappearing tomorrow. These holidays are at an end and they come too often. Maria and I are agreed.’
‘Aubrey could not work while he was gnawed by anxiety.’
‘Well, the relief will be a tonic now.’ ‘I may wish to give myself to thankfulness for a time,’ said Aubrey.
‘We all feel inclined for that, but the world has to go on.’
‘I suppose it would have gone on if I had died,’ said Dudley. ‘That is what we hear about the world. I think the world is worse than anything. Even Aubrey’s lessons stopped.’
‘They are about to begin again,’ said Justine, with resolute descent to daily life. ‘There are many things in Clement which he might emulate.’
‘And Clement might take many lessons from his quiet little brother,’ said Aubrey, looking to see his stepmother smile and inconsistently looking away as she did so.
‘I suppose you will all understand each other better now,’ said Dudley. ‘People do that after anxiety. I can feel that I have not been ill in vain.’
‘It seems that there ought to be more understanding,’ said Matty, with a faint sigh.
‘Oh, people are not often as ill as I was.’
‘How does it feel to be so ill that you might die?’ said Aubrey, with a desire to know.
‘I can hardly say. Perhaps I was ready. I really don’t understand about people who are not. When you are delirious and do not recognize people, it is hard to see how you can feel remorse for a lifetime and prepare yourself for eternity. I cannot help thinking that even people who die, are not as ill as I was. I think they are sometimes surprisingly well, even perhaps at their best.’
‘It is the few lucid moments at the last,’ said Justine.
‘Well, I did not have those, of course. It is odd to think that we are all to have them. It does make me respect everyone. But long conversations and meetings after years of estrangement must be so difficult when you cannot recognize people. And it hardly seems worth while for a few moments, even though they are lucid. And I see that they must be. When people’s lives are hanging by a thread, it seems enough to break the thread. And I think it must do so sometimes, if people die when they are equal to so much, more perhaps than they have ever been before.’
Justine looked at Dudley uncertainly, and Matty with a smile.
‘Have you been reading the books in the farmhouse, Uncle?’ said Mark.
‘Yes, I read them while I was getting well. And if I had known I was to be so ill, I would have read them at first.’
‘I love to hear him talk like his old self,’ said Matty, glancing at her niece.
‘Don’t you notice that a new note has crept in? Perhaps it marks me as a person who has looked at death. I think that Justine has noticed it.’
‘Yes, I have, Uncle,’ said his niece quietly. ‘It is the weakness of convalescence.’
‘Convalescence seems to be a little like the lucid moments at the last. I may not have got quite far enough away from them.’
‘You will soon forget it.’
‘I shall not. You will. I see you are doing so.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Matty, keeping her eyes on Dudley’s face. ‘I too sometimes feel rather apart, as I live in my memories and find that other people have lost them. But I would not have them oppressed by what I can carry alone.’
‘I would; I had no idea that I should have to do that. I thought that people would always be as they were at my sickbed. They were so nice then; I thought a great change had come over them, and it had. They must have been expecting the lucid moments and getting themselves up to their level. And now they have returned to their old selves, as you were saying of me. But they have really done it.’
‘Are you joking, Uncle, or not?’ said Justine.
‘I am joking, but with something else underneath, something which may return to you later. If it does, remember that it is only convalescence. And now I will go and have another rest. Being here with you has not lulled me to sleep.’
‘Mark had better go up with you,’ said Maria. ‘You are not quite steady on your feet.’
Dudley crossed the room, touching something as he passed and letting Mark take his arm at the door. His brother rose the next moment, adjusted something on the chimney-piece, went to the door and swung it in his hand and followed.
‘Father cannot keep away from Uncle and I cannot either,’ said Justine. ‘I am going to follow at a respectful distance, more to feast my eyes on him than to be of any use. I am not going to grasp at the privilege of waiting on him. I bow to Father’s claim.’
‘I will bring up the rear,’ said Aubrey, ‘and feast my eyes on Justine.’
‘And Maria and Aunt Matty can have the hour together for which I suspect Aunt Matty has been pining.’
‘I shall enjoy it, dear, but so I hope will Maria. It is a thing which depends on us both.’
‘Yes, have it your own way. Enjoy it together. Forget us; agree that we are in the crude and callow stage; anything; I am quite beyond caring. Oh, I am so happy that I could clap my hands; I could leap into the air.’ Justine proved her powers. ‘I am in such a mood that it would be idle to attempt to contain myself.’
Aubrey gave a grin towards his stepmother, and opening the door for his sister, followed her with his head erect.
‘Quite a finished little man,’ said Matty. ‘You should not have much trouble with him. In what order do they come in your affections? They are already there, I can see.’
‘I hardly know the order. There will be one, of course. I think perhaps Mark comes first; then Justine; then Aubrey and then Clement. I hardly feel that I know Clement yet.’
‘I think I would put them in the same order,’ said Matty, who had lost her tenseness. ‘Except that perhaps I would put Mark after Justine. Yes, I think that my niece comes first, even though we try to quarrel with each other. We never succeed and that says a great deal.’
‘Why do you make the effort? It seems to be a rather constant one.’
‘Ah, you are catching the note of my nephews! You are to be a true Gaveston after all. You are not going to be left behind.’ Matty broke off as a noise came from the stairs.
Dudley had mounted the first flight, and coming to the second, had shaken off his nephew’s hand and gone on alone. His limbs gave under him and he fell forward. Edgar sprang after him; Justine gave a cry; Mark turned back and raised his voice; Aubrey ran up the last stairs; Clement broke from his room and hurried to the scene. Dudley was helped to his nephew’s bed, hardly the worse. Edgar stood by him, looking as if his defence had broken before this last onset. Clement made a movement to cover something on his desk, stumbled and made a clutch at the desk, and sent a mass of gold coins in a stream to the floor.
Justine started and glanced at them; Aubrey paused for a longer moment and stared at his brother; Mark left the bed as he saw that no harm was done, and stood looking from the floor to the desk. Clement touched the coins with his foot, kicked a cloth towards them, and thrust his hands into his pockets.
‘How nice you all looked!’ said Dudley, who had seen what they all saw. ‘Just as you did when I was ill.’
‘And we felt like it for a minute,’ said Justine, turning from her uncle as she spoke.
Edgar sat down and looked at his son, as if he ought to have some feeling over for him.
‘Father looks paler than Uncle,’ said Mark.
‘But anyone can see that I am the one who has been ill,’ said Dudley.
Maria appeared at the door with Jellamy behind, and Clement had the eyes of the household turned on the secret corner of his life.
‘Is Dudley hurt?’ said Maria. ‘Was it Dudley who fell?’
‘Yes, it was me. It was a silly thing to do. You will get quite tired of all my disturbances and think less of them. It never does to wear out people’s feelings.’
‘Is that money, Clement?’ said Justine.
‘If it is not, I will leave you to guess what it is.’
‘Have you been saving?’
‘I have been putting by something to spend on my house. You know that I am going to have one, and that I do not spend what I have.’
‘Why do you keep it in that form?’
‘It is like that at the moment. Or some of it is. I have to have some in hand for various things. And I don’t care about having interest up to the last moment.’
‘Clement is a miser,’ said Aubrey, who accepted this account and did not know how the words struck other ears.
‘Well, are you going to leave me?’ said his brother, who was strolling up and down, enabled by the smallness of the space to turn round often and hide his face.
‘Or are you going to settle in my room? Perhaps you forget that it is mine.’
‘You can allow Uncle time to recover,’ said Mark.
‘He does not need to do so, as you know,’
‘And the rest of us to get our breath,’
‘I admit that I took that away from you,’ said Clement, with a laugh.
‘Clement, that is no good,’ said Justine. ‘It is not a pretty thing that we have seen, and you will not make it better by showing us anything else that is ugly.’
‘I have no wish to show you anything. I don’t know why you think so. It is your own idea to pry about in my room. I don’t know what you keep in yours,’ Clement turned to Aubrey, who was touching things on the table. ‘Stop fingering what is not your own and get out of the room. Or I will throw you out.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Dudley. ‘If anyone else has a fall, I shall not be the centre of all eyes. And if you won’t share things with Aubrey, why should I?’
‘Is anyone of any use to Uncle? And ought not Maria to be in the drawing-room, giving tea to Aunt Matty?’
‘The king is in his counting house, counting out his money;
The queen is in the parlour, eating bread and honey.’
quoted Aubrey in the door.
Clement took one step to the door and kicked it to its latch, indifferent to what he kicked with it. It opened smoothly in a moment.
‘Miss Seaton wished to be told if any harm was done, ma’am,’ said Jellamy.
‘None is done in here,’ said Mark. ‘I don’t know about outside.’
‘Master Aubrey has knocked his head, sir,’
‘Oh, I had better go,’ said Justine.
‘We will come with you,’ said Maria. ‘Clement did not ask us in here.’
Edgar followed his wife, and Dudley got off the bed and strolled to the desk.
‘I am glad that you value your money, Clement. I like you to take care of what I gave you. And it shows how well you behaved when I asked for it back. I can’t think of that moment without a sense of discomfort. We all have a little of the feeling at times. To know all is to forgive all, but we can’t let people know all, of course. Does it give you a sense of satisfaction to have money in that; form?’
‘I don’t know. Some of it happened to be like that.’
‘I wish you would tell me. Because, if it does, I will have some of mine in it.’
‘I suppose some people sent it in that form, and I put it all together. It will not remain so for long.’
‘Of course I am not asking for your confidence.’
‘I hope you have not killed Aubrey, Clement,’ said Mark.
‘Justine would have come back and said so if I had. She would think it worthy of mention.’
‘I should not like Aubrey to die,’ said Dudley. ‘I only nearly died, and it would give him the immediate advantage.’
‘You must come to your room, Uncle,’ said Mark. ‘It was my duty to see you there.’
‘I am not going there,’ said Dudley on the landing. ‘I am going downstairs again. I have lost my desire for rest. I can’t be shut away from family life; it offers too much. To think that I have lived it for so long without even suspecting its nature! I have been quite satisfied by it too; I have had no yearning after anything further. Matty is going and the gossip can have its way. It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement. I cannot be asked to miss it in my weak state. I should only fret.’
‘You won’t find it too much?’
‘I feel it will be exactly what I need somehow.’
Matty waved her hand to Dudley and continued her way through the hall, as if taking no advantage of his return.
‘Now I feel really at ease for the first time,’ he said as he entered the drawing room. ‘I do not mind having fled from my home in a jealous rage, now that Clement is a miser. It was a great help when Matty turned her old friend out into the snow, but not quite enough. Now I am really not any worse than other people. Not any more ridiculous; I don’t mind if I am worse.’
‘You know you are better,’ said Justine, ‘and so do we. Now, little boy, sit down and keep quiet. You will be all right in an hour.’
‘You need not change the subject. I really am at ease. I don’t need Aubrey to take the thoughts off me. I don’t even like him to.’
‘Clement believed that I had attained his size before I had,’ said Aubrey, assuming that thoughts were as his uncle did not prefer them.
‘Well, are we to talk about it or are we not?’ said Justine.
‘Of course we are,’ said Dudley. ‘You know I have already mentioned it. I hope you do not think that it would have been fairer to Clement if I had not. If you do, I shall never forgive myself, or you either. But of course you would forgive me anything today; and what is the good of that, if there is nothing to forgive?’
‘It is fairer to Clement to talk of it openly, reasonably, and without exaggeration,’
‘Justine speaks with decision,’ said Aubrey.
‘It may be better still just to forget it,’ said Maria. ‘We came upon it by accident and against his will. And it may not mean so much. We all do some odd things in private.’
‘Do we?’ said Dudley. ‘I had no idea of it. I never do any. As soon as I did an odd thing, I did it in public. I am so glad that life was not taken from me before I even guessed what it was.’
‘How much money was there in gold?’ said Aubrey.
‘Now, little boy, that is not at all the point.’
‘If Clement is to have a house, it will take all he has,’ said Edgar.
‘A less simple speech than it sounds,’ said Justine. ‘There is the solution, swift, simple and complete.’
‘Perhaps he will starve behind his doors,’ said Aubrey, ‘and put his gold into piles at night.’
‘Someone deserved to have his head broken,’ said Edgar.
‘He may suffer from reaction and be driven into extravagance,’ said Dudley. ‘We shall all mind that much more. It must be difficult for young people to strike the mean.’
‘The golden mean,’ murmured Aubrey. ‘Clement may like to strike that.’
‘He will have a good many expenses,’ said Mark. ‘A housekeeper and other things.’
‘We already detect signs of extravagance,’ said Dudley.
His nephew strolled into the room.
‘Well, am I to flatter myself that I am your subject? I am glad that you can take me in a light spirit. I was fearing that you could not.’
‘We were wondering if you could afford to run a house,’ said Maria.
Clement stopped and looked into her eyes.
‘Well, I shall have to be careful. But I think I can manage with the sum I have saved. I am keeping part of it in money for the first expenses. They are always the trouble.’
‘Do you think of having the house at once?’ said his father.
‘Well, very soon now. I shall be going to Cambridge to see about it. I have enough put by for the initial outlay.’
Clement went to the window and stood looking out, and then pushed it open and disappeared.
‘Is it wise for a young man to spend all he has?’ said Mark. ‘Let us now transfer our anxiety.’
‘So it is over,’ said Dudley. ‘Clement is a victim of the rashness of youth. I hope he will not waste his allowance.’
‘And all our thought and talk about it are over too,’ said Justine, rising. ‘We are not saying another word. Come, Aubrey; come, Mark. Come, Maria, if I may say it; we are really following your lead. We know you want us to leave Father and Uncle alone.’
Edgar looked at the door as it closed, and spoke at once.
‘The boy has hardly had a father.’
‘No, you have failed in one of the deepest relations of life. And you are faced by one of the results. Because there is more in this than we admit. I am not going to get so little out of it. I am sure people got more out of my running away from home.’
‘I hope he will go along now. This may be the result of too little to spare all his life. Your help may be a godsend in more than one sense.’
‘It seems to have been the cause of the trouble. You can’t be a miser with no money.’
‘You can be with very little, when it is scarce.’
‘I rather liked Clement to be a miser; I felt flattered by it. It was taking what I gave him, so seriously.’
‘We may be making too much of the matter.’
‘Maria will not let us make enough. I will not give up the real, sinister fact. Why should I not cling to the truth?’
‘Maria will be a help to us with all of them.’
‘To us! You knew the word that would go straight to my heart. But you ought to be a success as a brother, when as a father you are such a failure. What can you expect but that the tender shoots should warp and grow astray? They had no hand to prune or guide them. I don’t believe you even realized that Clement was a shoot. And he was so tender that he warped almost at once. I think you are very fortunate that he was the only one.’
‘How much has happened in the last fourteen months!’
‘Yes. Matty came to live here. I inherited a fortune. I was engaged to Maria. Blanche fell ill and died. You became engaged in my place. You and Maria were married. Matty’s father died. Matty drove her old friend out into the snow. I ran away from my home. I am not quite sure of the order of the last three, but they were all on the same night, and it was really hard on Matty that it happened to be snowing. On a mild night she would not have been blamed half so much. I rescued Miss Griffin and took her into my charge. It was hard on us that it happened to be snowing too. I decided to provide for her for her life. It seemed the only thing in view of the climate. At any time it might snow. I was sick almost to death, and was given back to you all. In more than one sense; I must not forget that. Oh and Clement was gradually becoming a miser all the time. You would have thought he had enough to distract him.’
There was a pause.
‘Dudley, I can ask you a question, as I know the answer. Maria does not mean to you what she did?’
‘No, not even as much as you would like her to. I cannot see her with your eyes. I have returned to the stage of seeing her with my own. I nearly said that to me she would always be second to Blanche, but it would be no good to echo your own mind. And of course to both of us she is only just second to her. But I think that you married her too soon after Blanche died, and that you may never live it down. You can see that I am speaking the truth, that I feel it to be my duty. I know that Blanche had a good husband, but it would never be anyone’s duty to say that.’
‘I was carried away. I had not been much with women. And I think that emotion of one kind - I think it may predispose the mind to others.’
‘Why do some people say that we are not alike? We seem to be almost the same. But grief for a wife is a better emotion than excitement over money. Your second feelings had a nobler foundation and deserved success. But no wonder there are no secrets between us. I only have one secret left. But it shows me what it was for Clement, when his only secret was exposed.’
‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Yes, I am, because it is proof that I have lost my feeling for Maria. I have already proposed to someone else.’
‘What?’ said Edgar, the fear in his tone bringing final content to his brother. ‘You have not had time. You were ill a few days after you left this house,’
‘Well, I proposed to her a few minutes after. You see that I lost my feeling for Maria very soon. And she refused me. Women do not seem to want me as the companion of their lives.’
‘Miss Griffin?’ said Edgar, with incredulity and perception.
‘How affection sharpens your wits! But you should have said: “I want you, Dudley.”’
‘I think -1 see that the sun is coming out.’
‘So we can go out and walk as we have all our lives. The only difference will be that I must lean on your arm. I have had to say it for you. Saying it in your way does not count. I said it in anyone’s way. I am the better of the two.’
‘I think you might for twenty minutes, for a quarter of an hour.’
The pair went out and walked on the path outside the house, and Justine, catching the sight from a window, rose with a cry and ran to fetch her brothers.