‘Is this a house or a hutch? It is meant, I suppose, for human habitation,’ said Blanche’s father, walking about his new home. ‘It is well that I shall soon be gone and leave you alone in it. For it is better for one than for two, as I cannot but see.’
‘Come, Father, pluck up heart. You are an able-bodied man and not a crippled woman. I must not be given any more to bear. You must remember your poor invalid, though I never remind you that I am that.’
‘If that was not a reminder, I need not take it as one. I grant that that fall made a poor thing of you, but you want a chair to sit upon, all the more. And I don’t see where we are to put one, on a first sight.’
‘There are plenty of chairs, Father. Let us sit down in two of them. Come, I think they have done their best. It only needed a little best for such a little home, but such as it had to be, I think it is done. And we must be as grateful as they will expect us to be.’ Blanche’s sister put back her head and went into mirth. ‘This room is quite a pretty little place. So we must try to feel at home in it. We are not people to fail in courage.’
Matilda Seaton was two years older than Blanche, of the same height as her sister, but of the suppler, stronger build of her niece, Justine. She had hair less grey than her sister’s, a darker skin less lined, and the same narrow, dark eyes looking out with a sharper, deeper gaze. A fall from a horse had rendered her an invalid, or rather obliged her to walk with a stick, but her energy seemed to accumulate, and to work itself out at the cost of some havoc within her. Her voice was deeper than her sister’s and had some sweeter tones. She appeared handsomer, though she also looked her age and her features were of the same mould. Her father admired her the more, and believed her maidenhood to be due to her invalid state, though her accident had not happened until she was middle-aged. It had done him a service in a way, as he had been at a loss to account for the position. The truth was that Matty had had many chances to marry and had not accepted them. She had never met a man whom she saw as her equal, as her conception of herself was above any human standard. She may also have had some feeling that a family would take her attention and that of others from herself. The idea that anyone could pity her found no place in her mind; there was no place there for such a feeling. Even her lameness she saw as giving a touch of tragic interest to an already remarkable impression. Oliver knew of her efforts, or rather had been told of them, as his daughter kept nothing which seemed to exalt her to herself, but he thought it normal self-respect in a woman to invent proposals if they were not forthcoming. Matty did not guess that she had not justice from her father, as he thought it wise to keep his doubt to himself, indeed knew it was. The father and daughter were less alike than they had been, for Oliver’s face, once the original type, was fallen and shrunk from age. His figure was of the same size for a man as his elder daughter’s for a woman, and had a touch of the awkwardness of the younger’s which was something apart from the stiffness of the old. When he was seen with Blanche and her youngest son, this lack of balance became a family trait. His wife had been some years his senior and had herself lived to an advanced age, and at her death he had been old enough to accept his daughter in her place.
‘Yes, I am sure they have done what they can,’ said Matty, still looking round, ‘It is a funny little pattern on the paper. Suitable for the funny little room, I suppose. We are not to forget how we are placed. They thought it was better for us to take the plunge at once. Well, I daresay they are right. We will try to think they are. That is a lesson we shall have to learn.’
‘You seem to be failing at the moment,’ said Oliver, as Matty wiped her eyes. ‘I can’t see that the scrawl on the paper makes much odds. And the room seems to hold two people, which is what we want of it. What are you crying about? Aren’t you thankful to have a home?’
‘I am not so very at the moment. I can’t help thinking of the one we have left. Perhaps it shows the feeling I had for that,’ said Matty, putting her handkerchief away with a courageously final movement. ‘I shall soon be able to be myself, but it is rather a sudden difference, the little paper and all.’ She put her hand to her mouth in her sudden laughter. ‘Well, shall we say that we appreciated our old home so much? I think we may say that without being unthankful.’
Oliver was silent. He had suffered from leaving his home as well as his daughter, almost feeling that he left his youth and his prime and his married life behind in it, but the lessening grasp of his age had saved him the worst. He had lived all his life on private means, and his capital had dwindled, partly in the natural course - his investments suffering from age like himself, and even in some cases succumbing like his wife - and partly because he had annually spent a portion of it. The eventual result struck him as a sudden misfortune, and his daughter faced their retrenchment in this spirit.
‘Is that commotion to continue?’ he said, as sounds of adjusting furniture came from the hall. ‘No one would guess that we left our possessions behind. I should not have thought that the place was large enough to allow of it.’
‘We must have a few necessities even in a little home. But there is less to be done than if we were to have what we have always had. That is one bright side to it.’
‘And you see it, do you? When did you get your glimpse?’
‘Things will soon be done, and you can have your dinner,’ said Matty, retaliating on her father by explaining his mood. ‘Miss Griffin will come and tell us.’
‘You will eat as well as I, I suppose, and so will she. Will she be able to put up with the corner in which she finds herself?’
‘It is the only home we can give her. We have to be content with it.’
‘I meant what I said, her corner of it,’ said Oliver, with a grin which recalled his youngest grandson. ‘I still mean what I say.’
‘We cannot help having had to leave our house for this one. It is not a pleasure for us.’
‘No, my dear, you give no sign that it is. I grant it to you. Well, Miss Griffin is a good woman not to leave us. She has indeed been a remarkable person not to do that. I cannot say what she gets out of serving us.’
‘Of course you can. It is quite clear. We give her a home when she has no other.’
‘Sell it to her for herself, I should say. I would not congratulate her on her bargain.’
‘It is better to stay with people who are fond of her, than to start again with strangers.’
‘Strangers would treat her as a stranger. That was rather in my mind. And fond of her! You may be that; I am myself. But I shouldn’t be proud of your way of showing it. Indeed I am not proud of it.’
‘It would take her a long time to get to the same stage with another family.’
‘Why, that is what I meant; this stage could not come at once. But I suppose women understand each other. I can only hope it. I don’t see what I can do more. But it doesn’t seem enough to keep a human being at my beck and call.’
‘They have not come down to see us,’ said Matty, glancing at the time. ‘They have not run across from their big house to see how we are faring on our first evening in our small one. Well, I suppose they have many other claims: we must think they have.’ She looked again at the clock and tapped her knee with her hand, making a simultaneous movement with her foot, as if she would have tapped the ground if she had been able.
‘Well, I cannot tell. But we have not been in the house above two hours.’
‘They are long hours when you have to sit still and hear other people about and doing, and feel how much better you could do it all, if you were as they are. They have been long ones.’
‘Why, so they have, child, for me as well as for you.’
‘Well, we must be still and go on a little longer.’
‘Why, so we must, and for how much longer we cannot say. But it will not help us for you to cry about it. And what is your reason? You have a home and a bed and a woman to wait on you, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, I have, and I am going to feel it. I have more than many people. But it did seem to me for a moment that people who have more still - and we must say much more -might spare a thought for us in our first isolation. It was just for the moment.’
‘Then it doesn’t seem to you so any longer.’
‘No, it must not,’ said Matty, again concealing her handkerchief. ‘There shall be nothing in our minds but bright and thankful thoughts.’
‘Well, that will make a difference. And here is someone in the hall. So if you want to hide your handkerchief, find a place that serves your purpose. It is well that you are what you say in time.’
‘Well, Matty dear, well, Father dear!’ said Blanche’s voice, the unconscious order of the names telling its tale. ‘Well, here is a red-letter day for us all!’
‘Red-letter day, when we have left our home and all we have, behind!’ said Matty in a rapid aside to her father, pressing her handkerchief to her face in another spirit.
Blanche entered with outstretched arms and stumbled slightly over nothing apparent, as she hurried forward.
‘Well, how do you like coming here amongst us? We like to have you so much. How are you both after your journey? I could not wait another minute to come and see.’
Blanche gave her father and sister a long embrace, stooping to the latter, at she remained in her seat, and then stood back to receive her response.
‘Well, how do you feel about coming to share our life?’ she said, as something more was needed to produce it.
‘We shall be happy in it, dear. We shall,’ promised Matty, rapidly using her handkerchief and hiding it. ‘We see that now. We did not feel quite amongst you until this moment. But we do now indeed.’ She took her sister’s hand and lifted it to her face, as Blanche often did her daughter’s.
‘Sit down, my dear, sit down,’ said Oliver. ‘You give us a welcome and we do the same for you. I think there is a chair; I think there is room for three.’
‘Of course there is. It is a very nice little room,’ said Blanche, sitting down and looking round. ‘How do you like the little paper? Don’t you think it is just the thing? It is the one the boys have in their study.’
‘Yes, dear, is it? Yes, it would be nice for that,’ said Matty, following her sister’s eyes. ‘Just the thing, as you say. For this room in my house, and for a little, odd room in yours. It is the suitable choice.’
‘Don’t you like it in this room, dear?’ said Blanche, evidently accustomed to answering her sister’s meaning rather than her words.
‘Yes, yes, I do. It is best to realize that we are in a little room, and not in a big one any longer. Best to leap the gulf and have a paper like the one in the boys’ study.’ Matty began to laugh but checked herself at once. Tar better not to try to make it like the room at home, as we might have done by ourselves. We might have tried and failed, and it is so much wiser not to do that. Yes, it was best for people to deal with it who saw it from outside and not from within. And it was so good of you do it for us, and it is kindly and wisely done.’
‘I thought you would like it so much; I did not know that you would want it like the drawing-room at home. That was so much larger that I thought it would be better to start afresh.’
‘So it was, dear; that is what I said.’
‘No, you said other things, child,’ said Oliver.
‘That is what we are doing, starting afresh, and finding rather a task at the moment,’ said Matty, not looking at her father. ‘But we shall manage it. It is only hard at first, and we can’t help it that you find us in the first stage.’ She touched her eyes and this time retained the handkerchief.
‘Keep it, my dear,’ said Oliver, offering her another. ‘It is more convenient to you at hand.’
Matty held up the handkerchief to her sister with a smile for its size, and went on as if she had not paused.
‘We shall make a success of it, as you have done with the room.’
‘The room serves its purpose, my dear,’ said Oliver to Blanche. ‘The paper covers the walls and the plaster would not look as well without it, and what more should be done? You have managed well for us, and so we should tell you, and I do so for us both.’
‘Yes, if we have seemed ungrateful, we are not,’ said Matty, not explaining the impression. ‘We both thank you from our hearts. So Edgar did not come with you to see us?’
‘He came with me to the door and left me. He thought we should like our first meeting by ourselves.’
‘He is always so thoughtful, and we have liked it indeed. And we shall like one with him as well the next time he is at our door. We have come to a place where we hope there will be so many meetings.’
‘Blanche is enough for us,’ said Oliver. ‘We do not want her man. Why not say that you want the whole family? You almost did say it.’
‘Well, I did have a thought that they might all come running down to greet the old aunt on her first night. I had almost imagined myself the centre of a family circle.’
‘You imagined yourself the centre! So that is what is wrong. No wonder you wanted a room like the one at home. I don’t know where you would have put them.’
‘They could have got in quite well,’ said Blanche. No doubt they will often do so. But tonight we thought you would want to be spared.’ She paused and seemed to yield to another impulse. ‘I am glad that you are so little depressed by the good-bye to the old home. We thought you might be rather upset by it.’ Her way of speaking with a sting seemed an echo of her sister’s in a lighter medium.
‘We are too affected by that to show it on the surface,’ said Matty. ‘That is not where the feeling would appear. Is that where you would look for it?’
‘Then what can we see there?’ said Oliver. ‘Your sister can find something, and does so. If that isn’t where it ought to be, put it in its place.’
‘Edgar is coming to fetch me in an hour,’ said Blanche, resuming her normal manner. ‘You will see him then, and he will see you. He is looking forward to it.’
‘You are only staying an hour, dear? I thought that you might have dinner with us, or we with you, on our first night.’
‘Why pack so much into it?’ said Oliver. ‘There are other nights and others after those. And your sister is right that we are not fit for it. You were certainly not, when you were crying into a rag. And why did you order dinner here, if you wanted to eat it somewhere else?’
‘We had to have it somewhere, Father, and we did not hear.’
‘Oh, we thought you would be tired,’ said Blanche. ‘And there are so many of us. It would not be restful for you. And we are not prepared for you tonight. We shall be so delighted to see you when it is arranged, and we hope that will be very often.’
‘I did not make anything of extra guests, when I ran a large house,’ said Matty, with a simple wonder which was not entirely assumed, as her housekeeping had played its part in her father’s debts.
‘And that may be partly why you are now running a small one,’ said the latter, with a guess rather than a glimpse at the truth.
‘We are hoping to see you constantly,’ said Blanche. ‘We can’t quite manage our home so that people can come without notice, but we hope to plan so many things and to carry them out.’
‘We can’t run in and out, as if we were of the same family? We felt we were that when we came. That indeed is why we are here. You can do so in this little house. You will remember and tell the children?’
‘I hope she will not retain any of this talk,’ said Oliver, looking at his elder daughter, nevertheless, with his own admiration. ‘I will ask her to forget it. Well, Miss Griffin, have you done enough of putting away what we have, in a space that cannot hold it?’
‘We shall have to get rid of some furniture, dear,’ said Matty to her sister, with a vague note of reproach.
‘My dear, you have not brought all the furniture of that big house?’
‘No, no, we remembered the size of this one, and only brought the things we knew and loved. I daresay you would not remember some of them. But we did not realize that it was quite such a cot. I expect our thoughts of it were tinged with memories of you and your large one, as that is how we have seen the life here. Never mind, we shall call it our cottage home, and be quite happy in it.’
‘Then pray begin to be so,’ said Oliver. ‘Happiness is too good a thing to put off. And I am not at the age for doing that with anything.’
‘How do you do, Miss Griffin?’ said Blanche, shaking hands with her sister’s attendant and companion. ‘I hope you are not too tired with all your efforts?’
‘How do you do, Mrs Gaveston? No, I am not so very tired,’ said Miss Griffin, a short, thin woman of fifty, with a long, sallow face, large, hazel eyes, features which might have been anyone’s except for their lines of sufferance and kindness, hands which were more developed than her body, and a look of being very tired indeed. ‘It is very good of you to come to welcome us.’
‘Mrs Gaveston came in to see her father and sister, of course,’ said Matty, in a tone which said so much more than her words, that it brought a silence.
‘Yes, indeed, dear,’ said her sister. ‘And when you want me to go and leave you to your dinner, you must tell me.’
‘The dinner is not - the dinner will not be ready yet,’ said Miss Griffin, in a stumbling tone, glancing at Matty and away. ‘The maid does not know where anything is yet. She is quite new.’
‘Of course she is, as we did not bring her with us,’ said Matty, with her little laugh. ‘Couldn’t you show her where the things are, as you have just unpacked them?’
‘She put everything together - I put it all together - we have not sorted them yet. She is just finding what she can.’
‘I should have put all the things in their places as I took them out. I should not have thought of any other way.’
‘We couldn’t do that. The men were waiting to take the cases. We had to put them all down anywhere.’
‘I should have known where anywhere was. I often wish I were able-bodied, for everyone’s sake.’
‘We wish you were, child, but for your own,’ said Oliver.
‘I think Miss Griffin has managed wonders from the look of the house,’ said Blanche.
‘We have all done that today,’ said her sister. ‘I almost think I have managed the most, in keeping still through all the stir and turmoil. I hope we shall never have such a day again. I can’t help hoping it.’
‘I know I shall not,’ said her father.
‘I remember so well the day when you came to us, Miss Griffin,’ said Blanche. ‘It was thirty-one years ago, a few days before my wedding. And you were so kind in helping me to pack and put the last touches to my clothes. I wish I was taking you with me.’
‘I remember thinking that you were using my companion as your own,’ said Matty, smiling from one to the other.
Miss Griffin turned her face aside, finding it unsteadied by ordinary kindness.
‘Sit down, Miss Griffin, and rest until dinner,’ said Matty. ‘There is no need to stand more than you must, though I often wish I could do a little of it. That may make me think other people more fortunate than they are.’
Miss Griffin sat down in the sudden, limp way of someone who would soon have had to do so.
‘There is Edgar,’ said Blanche. ‘He will come in and say a word, and then we will leave you all to rest.’
‘Why, Edgar, this is nice,’ said Matty, rising from her seat as she had not done for her sister, and showing that she stood tall and straight, in spite of disabled lower limbs. ‘I did not think you would forget us on our first night. We had not forgotten you. No, you have been in our minds and on our lips. Now what do you say to our settling at your very gates?’
‘That it is - that I hope it is the best place for you to be,’ said Edgar, putting out all his effort and accordingly unable to say more.
‘And your brother! I am never quite sure what to call him,’ said Matty, putting round her head to look at Dudley. ‘Come in and let us hear your voice. We have been cheered by it so many times.’
‘I am glad you have. I have always meant you to be. I am in my element in a chat. My strong point is those little things which are more important than big ones, because they make up life. It seems that big ones do not do that, and I daresay it is fortunate.’
‘Yes, it is indeed. We have been involved in the latter today, and we see that we could not manage too many. Now it is so good to hear you talk again. We see we have not given up our home for nothing.’
‘Indeed you have not. You have left it to make a new one with all of us,’ said Blanche, relieved by the turn of the talk and not disturbed that she had been unable to produce it.
‘Such a lot of happiness, such a lot of affection and kindness,’ said Matty, in a tone charged with sweetness and excitement. ‘It is so good to know that we are welcome.’
‘It is indeed,’ said Oliver; ‘for a moment since I should have thought that we could not be.’
‘How are you, sir?’ said Edgar and Dudley, speaking at one moment, but obliged to shake hands in turn.
‘I am well, I thank you, and I hope that both of you are better by thirty-odd years, as you should be.’
Oliver put a chair for his son-in-law and settled down to talk. He gave his feeling to his daughters but he liked to talk with men.
‘How are you, Miss Griffin?’ said Dudley, turning from the pair. ‘I hope you are not hiding feelings of your own on the occasion.’
‘No, I am not; it all makes a change,’ said Miss Griffin, admitting more feeling than she knew into the last word. ‘And we did not want that large house for so few people. It is better to be in a little one, where there is less work and more comfort. And I don’t mind the small rooms. I rather like to be snug and compact.’
‘Now I would not claim that that is just my taste. I confess to a certain disposition towards the opposite,’ said Matty, in a clear tone. ‘It is not of my own will that I have changed my scale of life. I admit that I felt more at home with the other. It is all a matter of what fits our different personalities, I suppose.’
‘I hope I do not make cosy corners wherever I go,’ said Dudley. ‘I don’t want too many merely lovable qualities. They are better for other people than for oneself.’
‘Well, there will always be such a corner for you here. I shall be grateful if you will help me to make one, as it is rather outside my experience and scope. But once made, it will be always hospitable and always ready. If we can’t have one thing we will have another, or anyhow I will. I am not a person to give up because I can’t have just what I should choose, just what fits me, shall we say?’
‘I don’t know why we should say it, child,’ said Oliver. ‘And anyhow you should not.’
‘I wish my parents were not dead,’ said Dudley. ‘I should like to be called “child” by someone. It would prove that there were people about who were a generation older than me, and it will soon want proof.’
‘Welcome, welcome to your new hom! said Justine’s voice. ‘Welcome to your new life. I know I am one too many; I know you are tired out; I know your room is full. I know it all. But I simply had to come to wish you happiness, and say to you, Welcome, well come.’
‘So you had, dear, and it gives us such pleasure to hear it,’ said Matty, raising her face from her chair. ‘I did hope that some of you would feel that and come to tell us so. It seemed to me that you would, and I see I was not wrong. One, two, three, four dear faces! Only three left at home. It is such a help to us in starting again, and it is a thing which does need help. You don’t know that yet, and may it be long before you do.’
‘Well, I judged it, Aunt Matty, and that is why I am here. Of course, you must need courage. You can’t start again without a good deal of looking back. That must be part of it. And I did feel a wish to say a word to help you to look forward.’
Blanche looked at her daughter in simple appreciation; Edgar threw her a glance and withdrew it; and Oliver surveyed the scene as if it were not his concern.
‘You help us, dear, indeed,’ said Matty. ‘It was a kind and loving wish, and as such we accept it and will try to let it do its work.’
‘I know you will, Aunt Matty dear; I know your inexhaustible fund of courage. You know, I am of those who remember you of old, straight and tall and proud, as you appeared to my childish eyes. My feeling for you has its ineradicable root in the past.’
The words brought a silence, and Justine, fair in all her dealings, broke it herself.
‘How are you, Miss Griffin?’ she said, shaking hands with great cordiality, and then sitting down and seeming to render the room at once completely full. ‘Now this is a snug little cottage parlour. Now, how do you take to it, Aunt Matty?’
‘We shall be content in it, dear. We mean to be. And where there is a will there is a way. And it should not be difficult to come to like it, our little cottage parlour. Those are good and pretty words for it. They give the idea without any adding to it or taking away.’
‘It is not a cottage, dear,’ said Blanche, looking at her daughter.
‘Isn’t it, Mother? Well, no, we know it strictly is not. But it gives all the idea of one somehow. And I mean nothing disparaging; I like a roomy cottage. When I am a middle-aged woman and Mark is supreme in the home, I shall like nothing better than to have perhaps this very little place, and reign in it, and do all I can for people outside. Now does not that strike you all as an alluring prospect?’
‘Yes, it sounds very nice,’ said Miss Griffin, who thought that it did, and who was perhaps the natural person to reply, as the arrangement involved the death of most of the other people present.
‘I don’t think it gives the idea of a cottage at all,’ said Blanche, looking round with contracting eyes. ‘The rooms are so high and the windows so broad. One could almost imagine oneself anywhere.’
‘But not quite,’ said her sister, bending her head and looking up at the men from under it. ‘We can’t, for example, imagine ourselves where we used to be.’
‘Well, no, not there, dear. We must both of us leave that. It was my old home too, as you seem to forget.’
‘No, dear. You do at times, I think. That is natural. You have put too much over it. Other things have overlaid the memory. I chose to keep it clear and by itself. There is the difference.’
‘Well, it is natural, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine. ‘I don’t think Mother must be blamed for it. There is a difference.’
‘Yes, dear, and so you will not blame her. I have said that I do not. And is the old aunt already making herself tiresome? She must be so bright and easy as an invalid in a strange place?’
‘Come, Aunt Matty, invalid is not the word. You are disabled, we know, and we do not underrate the handicap, but your invalidism begins and ends there. Now I am not going to countenance any repining. You are in your virtual prime; you have health and looks and brains; and we are going to expect a good deal from you.’
‘My dear, did Aunt Matty ask you to sum up her position?’ said Blanche, a faint note of triumphant pride underlying her reproof.
‘No, Mother, you know she did not, so why put the question? I did not wait to be asked; it is rather my way not to. You need not put on a disapproving face. I have to be taken as I am. I do not regret what I said, and Aunt Matty will not when she thinks it over.’
‘Or forgets it,’ said her aunt. ‘Yes, I think that is what Aunt Matty had better do. She has not the will or the energy to think it over at this juncture of her life. And forgetting it will be better, so that is the effort she must make.’
‘Now I am in disgrace, but I do not regard it. I have had my say and I always find that enough,’ said Justine, who was wise in this attitude, as she would seldom have been advised to go further.
‘How very unlike Edgar and Justine are, dear!’ said Matty to her sister. ‘They have not a touch of each other, and they say that daughters are like their fathers. They are both indeed themselves.’
‘Well, that is as well,’ said Justine. ‘Father would not like me to be a copy of him. He would not feel the attraction of opposites.’
‘Opposite. Yes, that is almost the word,’ said her aunt.
Miss Griffin gave the sudden, sharp breath of someone awaking from a minute’s sleep, and looked about with bewildered eyes.
‘Poor Miss Griffin, you are tired out,’ said Blanche.
‘I am so glad you got off for a minute, Miss Griffin,’ said Justine.
‘I did not know where I was; I must have dropped off with all the voices round me,’ said Miss Griffin, with a view of the talk which she would hardly have taken if she had heard it. ‘I don’t know why I did, I am sure.’
‘Being overtired is quite enough reason,’ said Justine.
‘So Miss Griffin is the first of us to make it one,’ said Matty in an easy tone.
‘It is a stronger reason in her case.’
‘Is it, dear?’ said Matty, so lightly that she hardly seemed to enunciate the words.
‘Why, Aunt Matty, she must have done twice as much as you - as anyone else. You know that.’
‘Twice as much as I have, dear? Many times as much, I daresay; I have been able to do hardly anything. And of course I know it.’ Matty gave her little laugh. ‘But what we have mostly done today, is sitting in the train, and we have done it together.’
‘Yes, but the preparations before and the unpacking afterwards! It must have been overwhelming. The time in the train must have been quite a respite.’
‘Yes, that is what I meant, dear.’
‘But it was only one day, only part of one. The work must have begun directly you reached this house. I can see how much has been achieved. You can’t possibly grasp it, sitting in a chair.’
‘So sitting in a chair has become an advantage, has it?’
‘Poor, dear Aunt Matty!’ said Justine, sitting on the arm of the chair, as if to share for the moment her aunt’s lot. ‘But it cannot contribute to the actual weariness, you know. That is a thing by itself.’
‘So there is only one kind of weariness,’ said Matty, putting her hand on her niece’s and speaking in a tone of gentle tolerance towards her unknowing youth.
‘Dear Aunt Matty! There must be times when to be hustled and driven seems the most enviable thing in the world. You are more unfortunate than anyone,’ said Justine, indicating and accepting her aunt’s lot and Miss Griffin’s.
Miss Griffin rose and went to the door with an explanatory look at Matty. Dudley opened it and followed her.
‘How do people feel on a first night in a new place? I have never had the experience. I have lived in the same house all my life.’
Miss Griffin lifted her eyes with a look he had not expected, almost of consternation.
‘It does make you feel uncertain about things. But I expect you soon get used to it. I was in the last house thirty-one years. Miss Seaton had never lived in any other.’
‘And are you sorry to come away from it?’
‘No, not very. It makes a change. We shall see different people. And it will be nice for Miss Seaton to have her sister and her family. It was the wisest plan.’
‘The best plan, not the wisest. It was very unwise. But a great many of the best things are that.’
Miss Griffin looked at him with a hint of a smile.
‘You agree with me, do you not?’
Miss Griffin checked her smile and looked aside.
‘You and I must be very much alike. We both live in other people’s houses; we are both very kind; and I am very good at playing second fiddle, and I believe you are too.’
‘Oh, I never mind doing that,’ said Miss Griffin in a full tone.
‘I have minded in my weaker moments, but I have conquered my worse self. You have no worse self, have you?’
‘No,’ said Miss Griffin, speaking the truth before she thought. ‘Well, I don’t know. Perhaps everyone has.’
‘You have to think of other people’s. So I see that you have not. And as I have suppressed mine, it is another point we have in common.’
Miss Griffin stood with a cheered expression.
‘Has Miss Seaton a better self?’ said Dudley.
Miss Griffin gave him a half smile which turned to a look of reproach.
‘Yes, of course she has. Everyone has.’
‘So it was her worse self we saw this evening?’
‘I did not mean that she had a worse self. You know I did not. She was very tired. It must be so dreadful not to be able to get about.’ Miss Griffin’s voice died away on a note of pure pity.
‘Well good night, Miss Griffin; we shall often meet.’
‘Good night, Mr Dudley,’ said Miss Griffin, turning towards the kitchen with a lighter step.
Dudley returned to the parlour to find the family dispersing. Matty was on her feet, talking with the lively affection which followed her difficult moods, and which she believed to efface their memory.
‘Good-bye, dearest; good-bye, my Justine; you will often come in to see the cross old aunt who loves you. Good-bye, Dudley; where have you been wandering? It was clever to find enough space to lose yourself. Good-bye, Edgar; my father has so enjoyed his masculine talk. It is a thing that does him so much good.’
‘And how have you enjoyed your feminine one?’ said Oliver, who had caught snatches of this dialogue. ‘Upon my word, I daresay a good deal. You look the better for it.’
‘Good-bye, Aunt Matty dear,’ said Justine. ‘I have seemed a brute, but I have meant it for your good, and you are large enough to take it as it was meant.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Edgar at once. ‘We shall often meet; I hope we shall meet very often.’
‘Well, of course, people are only human,’ said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. ‘But it really does not seem much for them to be.’
‘Yes, we must do what we can in our new life,’ said Edgar, as if in reply. ‘I think we may call it that. It may be a better life for Blanche. I think - I trust it may.’
‘Is her present life so bad?’
‘She may be lonely without knowing it. I fear it may have been the case. I feel - I fear I have little to be proud of in my family life.’
‘It is I who have the cause for pride. It is wonderful, the way in which I have put myself aside and kept your affection and won your wife’s. But I think the things we suffer without knowing are the best, as we are born to suffer. It is not as if Blanche had suspected her loneliness. And she can’t be with her sister and be unconscious of it.’
‘Neither can any of us,’ said Edgar, with the short, broken laugh which was chiefly heard by his brother. ‘I could see – I saw that she realized it today.’
‘I saw that Justine did too. The sight became too much for me and I had to escape.’
‘What were you doing all that time?’
‘Why do people say that they do not like having to account for their every action? I do like it. I like telling everything about myself and feeling that people take an interest. I was saying a kind word to Miss Griffin. They say that a kind word may work wonders; and I saw that something had to work wonders for her; and so I said the word and it did.’
‘Poor Miss Griffin! I mean that we cannot judge of other people’s lives.’
‘Of course we can. We all have lives and know about them. No one will have it said that he has no knowledge of life; and it could not be true.’
‘She has been with Matty and her father for a long time. I am not sure how long.’
‘I am. She told me. But there are things which cannot pass my lips.’
‘It must be over thirty years.’
‘You are a tougher creature than I am. I wonder if people know that you are.’
‘It is difficult to form a picture of all those years.’
‘Edgar, you do sometimes say the most dreadful things. You should remember my shrinking nature. I shall have to see a great deal of Miss Griffin. Will seeing her take away that picture before my eyes?’
‘Come along, you two,’ called Justine, turning with beckoning hand. ‘If you wait every minute to argue, we shall never get up the drive. Mother does not like to keep stopping.’
That was true of Blanche, and therefore she had not stopped, but was proceeding towards the house, with her short, unequal steps carrying her rapidly over the ground.
When she came to the porch she paused, as if waiting there affected her differently.
‘There is that little brick house beyond the trees,’ said Justine, turning to look back as they all met.
‘Your eyes do not deceive you,’ said her father, with a smile.
‘Now don’t try to snub me, Father; that is not like your dealings. There it is, and it is good to think of Grandpa and Aunt Matty snugly sheltered in it. I shall call up the picture tonight when I am in bed.’
‘At night,’ murmured Dudley, ‘and in bed! In those hours when things rise up before us out of their true proportion!’
‘What are you murmuring about to yourself, Uncle?’
‘About the picture which you will call up in the night.’
‘You like to share it with me? It is a pretty picture, isn’t it? Dear Grandpa, with his white hair and fine old face; and Aunt Matty, handsome in the firelight, vivacious and fluent, and no more querulous than one can forgive in her helpless state; and dear, patient Miss Griffin, thinking of everyone but herself. It is a satisfying sight.’
‘Perhaps it is healthier to bring it out into the light.’
‘You were the one who did not forgive your aunt,’ said Edgar, smiling again at his daughter.
‘Now, Father, don’t think that your naughty little thrusts are atoned for by your especial smile for me, dear to me though it is.’ Edgar’s expression wavered as he heard it defined. ‘Aunt Matty and I are the firmest friends and very good for one another. We never mind looking at ourselves through each other’s eyes and getting useful light on our personalities. I do not believe in putting disabled people on one side and denying them their share in healthy human life. It seems to me a wrong thing to do, and in the end bad for everyone. So I sound my bracing note and snap my fingers at the consequences.’ Justine illustrated what she said.
The scene in the lodge was as she saw it, except that Matty’s querulousness was missing. The latter was sitting at dinner, talking with a great liveliness, as if her audience were larger than it was, almost as if in practice for greater occasions. She often threw herself into the entertainment of her father and her companion, with or without thought of imaginary listeners.
‘And then those funny, little, country shoes! Dear Blanche, still full of her quaint, little, old touches! I had to laugh to myself when I saw her come tripping and stumbling in, such a dear, familiar figure!’
‘No one would have known you had,’ said Oliver. ‘It might have been better to give some sign. It seemed the last thing to expect of you.’
Matty was indifferent to her father’s criticism and knew that her talk diverted him.
‘And then her own little, charitable ways, a mixture of daughter and sister and lady bountiful! So full of affection and kindness and yet with her own little sharpness, just our old Blanche! And her dear Justine’ - Matty put her hand to her lips and fell into mirth - ‘so sure of her right to improve us all and so satisfied with it! So pleased with her effort to influence her aunt, who has faced so much more than she could conceive! Dear child, may she never even have to attempt it. Well, we are not all alike and perhaps it is as well. Perhaps it is good that we are all on our different steps in the human scale. And there are good things on each level. In some ways we might take a leaf out of her book.’
‘We might, but I do not think of it, and I do not ask it of you.’
‘It is naughty to say it, but does she remind you of that church worker at home? Someone so good and useful that everyone loved her and no one admired her? Now how unkind and malicious! I am quite ashamed.’
‘Have I met a person of that kind?’
‘You must remember poor Miss Dunn at home.’
‘Why should I single her out of all that I remember? And how could I guess her employment?’
‘The coat and the collar and the shoes,’ said Matty, again in mirth.
‘They both wear such things, I grant you. I do the same and shall do it still for a short time.’
‘Poor Miss Griffin, you were the target. You might have been a little dark slave or a wee beastie in a trap, from the way she spoke. We do not move every day, do we? It has only been once in thirty years.’
Miss Griffin felt that there was some reproach in the rareness of the step, though she would willingly have taken it oftener.
‘She meant to be very kind, I am sure.’
‘She meant to be a little stern with me, just a tiny bit severe. But I did not mind. She is my dear, good niece and wants to improve the world and the people in it, Aunt Matty into the bargain.’
‘They might be the better for it,’ said Oliver, ‘but it is not her business.’
‘She feels it is, and so we must let her do it. We must take it up as a funny little cross and carry it with us.’
‘Why do that? Why not close her mouth upon things which are not her concern? That is a thing you can do. I have observed it.’
‘Edgar is a handsome man,’ said Matty in another tone. ‘He was very tall and distinguished in this little room. Oh, wasn’t it funny, the way they kept talking about it? Calling it snug and cosy. We might be cottagers.’
‘That is what we are, though your sister did not allow it.’
‘And Justine said that she was glad we were safe in it. We had no other refuge, had we?’
‘I cannot tell you of one. So we have our cause for thankfulness. But it is not for her to point it out. She seems to me to have greater cause.’
‘Mr Gaveston and Mr Dudley are not so much alike when you get to know them,’ said Miss Griffin.
‘They are of the same type, but Mr Gaveston is the better example,’ said Matty, who maintained the full formal distance between herself and her companion, in spite of her habit of frankness before her.
‘I like Mr Dudley’s face better.’
‘Do you? It is not the better face. It has not the line or the symmetry. It is a thought out of drawing. But they are a fine pair of brothers.’
‘There is something in Mr Dudley’s face that makes it quite different from Mr Gaveston’s, I hardly know how to say what I mean.’
‘That might be said of any two people. They are not just alike, of course.’
‘Mr Dudley’s face has a different kind of attraction.’
‘There is only one kind, of the one we were talking of,’ said Matty in a tone which closed the subject.
‘Miss Griffin has found another,’ said Oliver, ‘or has fancied it. But why talk of the fellows’ looks? They are not women. And both of you are, so it is wise to leave the matter.’
‘Was Mr Dudley talking to you outside?’ said Matty in a sudden, different tone to Miss Griffin.
‘No - yes - he just said a word, and then went out to look at the night, into the porch,’ said Miss Griffin, who told a falsehood when she could see no other course.
Oliver had heard the voices in the hall, but he did not speak. He never crossed the barrier into the women’s world. If he had done so, he would have had to protect Miss Griffin and anger his daughter; and he felt unequal to either of these things, which would have tried the strength of a younger man.
‘Did you notice the way they set off home?’ said Matty, with a return of mirth. ‘I saw them from the window. My eyes are still alert for what they can see, though I am tied to my chair. Blanche leading the way, and Justine trying to keep up and to keep step, and failing in both in spite of her youth and her strength! And the two men walking behind, as tranquil as if they were unconscious of the feminine creatures in front! Blanche leading a group is one of my earliest memories. Her stiff, little legs marching on, how they come back to me! And they are so little different, the active, determined, little legs. How much of her height is in her body! Well, my legs are not so much to boast of now. I have not my old advantage. Dear, dear, it is a funny thing, a family. I can’t help feeling glad sometimes that I have had no part in making one.’
‘Why try to help it? It is well to be glad of anything, and you do not too often seem so. Though some people might not choose just that reason.’
‘Well, mine is not a lot which calls for much gladness. It needs some courage to find any cause for it.’
‘So courage is the word for your talk of your sister. We could find others.’
‘Blanche and I are the closest friends. I am going to rejoice in being the elder sister again. You and she are the only people who see me as I was, and not as I am, the poor, baffled, helpless creature who has to get her outlet somehow. Yes, I was bright and young once. Even Miss Griffin remembers part of that time.’
‘Yes, indeed I do; indeed you were,’ said Miss Griffin.
‘Miss Griffin was even younger,’ said Oliver, bringing a new idea to both his hearers as he rose to leave them.
‘Yes, I was a naughty, sprightly person,’ continued Matty after a moment’s pause, during which the idea left her. ‘Always looking for something on which to work my wits. Something or someone; I fear it did not matter as long as my penetration had its exercise. Well, we can’t choose the pattern on which we are made. And perhaps I would not alter mine. Perhaps there is no need to meddle with it, eh, Miss Griffin?’
Miss Griffin was standing with her hand on her chair, thinking of the next step in her day. She gave a faint start as she realized her plight and saw the look on Matty’s face. The next moment she heard her voice.
‘Don’t go dragging away from the table like that. Either move about and get something done, or don’t pretend to do anything. Just posing as being a weary drudge will not get us anywhere.’
‘Perhaps the things which have made me that, have got us somewhere,’ said Miss Griffin, in an even, oddly hopeless tone, with little idea that the words on her lips marked a turning point in her life.
‘You need not answer like that. That is not going to begin, so you need not think it is. I do not expect to have my words taken up as if I were a woman on the common line. I am a very exceptional person and in a tragic position, and you will have to grasp it, or you are no good to me. And going off in that way, pretending not to hear, taking advantage of my helplessness! That is a thing of such a dreadful meanness that no one would speak to you if he knew it; no one would go near you; you would be shunned and spat upon!’
Matty’s voice rose to a scream, as her words did nothing and Miss Griffin passed out of hearing. She rocked herself to and fro and muttered to herself, with her hands clenched and her jaw thrust forward in a manner which would have made a piece of acting and really had something of this in it, as she did not lose sight of herself.
Miss Griffin went along the passage and paused at the end where the wall made a support, and looked to see that Matty had not followed.
‘It is all I have. Just this. I have nothing else. I have no home, no friends. I go on, year after year, never have any pleasure, never have any change. She feels nothing for me after I have been with her for thirty years. All the best years of my life. And it gets worse with every year. I thought this move might make a change, but it is going to be the same. And my life is going; I may never have anything else; and no one ought to have only that.’ She shed some tears, scanty through fear and furtiveness, and lightening her face and throwing off a part of her burden, went into the kitchen to the maid, glad of this degree of human fellowship.
Matty, left to herself, relaxed her body and her mind and hoped that her father had not heard her voice, or rather recalled that he would behave as if he had not done so. When Oliver came from his study to bid her a good night, she rose to meet him, hiding what she could of her lameness, and led him to a chair, amending both his and her own conception of herself.
‘I come to take my leave of you, my dear, in case I do not see you again. My end may come at any time and why not tonight? The strength ebbs after dark and I have used too much of mine today. So good night and more, if that is to be.’
‘Come, Father, you are overtired and depressed by being in this funny little place. Cosy we are to call it, and we will do our best. We have to try to do so many things and in time we shall succeed. We are not people who fail. We will not be.’
‘I am almost glad that your mother is not here tonight, Matty. This would not have been a home for her. It will do for you and me.’
‘I don’t know why we should be so easily satisfied,’ said Matty, unable to accept this view of herself in any mood. ‘But we shall have another outlook tomorrow and it will seem a different place, and we shall wish Mother back with us, as I have wished her many times today.’ Her father must pay for using such words of his daughter. ‘But we can’t do anything more tonight. We have striven to our limit and beyond. It is no wonder if we fail a little. I daresay we have all had our lapses from our level.’
Oliver, who was in no doubt of it, left her and mounted the stairs, bringing his feet together on each. In his room above the step became stronger, and Matty listened and put him from her mind. She understood her father. A good deal of him had come down to her.
Miss Griffin came in later with a tray, to find Matty in an attitude of drooping weariness, with a pallor which was real after her stress of feeling.
‘Will you have something hot to drink?’ she said in a tone which seemed to beseech something besides what it said. ‘It will do you good before you go to bed.’
‘It will do us both good. It was a sensible thought. If you will bring up that little table and move that chair’ - Matty indicated with vivacious hand this further effort for Miss Griffin - ‘we will have a cosy time together and feel that we are doing what we should, as cosy is what we are supposed to be.’
‘It really is rather cosy in here,’ said Miss Griffin, looking round with a faint air of surprise.
‘Yes, it is foolish to fret for the might-have-beens. Or for the have-beens in this case.’
Miss Griffin did not fret for these.
‘Now do not shirk drinking your share,’ said Matty, replenishing the cups. ‘You need it as much as I do. Being up and doing is as tiring as sitting still, however much one may envy it. Mr Seaton has gone to bed. He was overtired and sorry for himself, but I did not take much notice. It was wiser not to sympathize.’
‘Oh, I expect he was very tired,’ said Miss Griffin, sitting up as if to put her full energy into her compassion.
‘He begins to feel his age, but he is very well and strong. And we are all tired.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Griffin, speaking in a mechanical tone and suddenly enlivening it. ‘But it is a healthy tiredness.’ She had been so often told of the beneficial effects of weariness on the human frame, that she felt she should know them.
‘It has gone a little beyond that today. But it is only once in a lifetime. We must not complain.’
Miss Griffin was not going to do this, but her nod had something besides agreement.
‘Come, come now, we must go to bed,’ said Matty, keeping her eyes from the other as if in fear of what might meet them. ‘We shall be a couple of sleepy old maids in the morning, if we do not take care.’
Miss Griffin’s eyes opened wide and held themselves on Matty’s face.
‘We owe it to ourselves and to other people not to sink to that. We must not quite lose our self-respect. This is a matter in which considering ourselves is best for everyone. Has Emma gone to bed?’
‘Yes, hours ago,’ said Miss Griffin, only realizing her implication when she had spoken.
Matty did not comment on it, possibly for the reason that Emma had only been half a day in her service and had not yet learned the benefits of exhaustion.
‘Well, then she can be up bright and early to wait upon us,’ she said with an effort which did not say nothing for her will. ‘We will not be down until ten o’clock. We have had a nice little chat. Good night, and mind you sleep.’
Matty went to her room, feeling that she had made her companion ample amends, and the latter, waiting to turn out the lamps, wondered that she did not feel the same, as she had felt it so many times. This was the reason for her not feeling it again.