‘Uncle is walking with Miss Sloane on the terrace,’ said Aubrey to his sister.
‘Well, that is a normal thing to do, little boy. I notice that Uncle is often with Miss Sloane of late. It may be that it gives Aunt Matty a chance to talk to Father.’
‘He has been helping her up the steps. She goes up them by herself when she is alone.’
‘Well, when you are older you will learn that men often do things for women which they can do for themselves. Uncle is a finished and gallant person, and there has been a late development in him along that line. He seems to be more aware of himself since he had this money. I hope it does not mean that we took him too much for granted in the old days. But the dear old days! I can’t help regretting them in a way, the days when he gave us more of himself, somehow, though he had less of other things to give. I could find it in me to wish them back. I don’t take as much pleasure in my new scope as I did in the old Uncle Dudley, who seems to have taken some course away from us of late. Well, I have taken what I can get, and I am content and grateful. And I hardly know how to put what I mean into words.’
Blanche looked up at her daughter as if struck by something in her speech, and rose and went to the window with her work dropping from her hand.
‘Mother, what is it? Come back to the fire. Your cough will get worse.’
Blanche began automatically to cough, holding her hand to her chest and looking at her daughter over it.
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘They are walking arm-in-arm. It is true.’
‘What is true? What do you mean?’ said Justine, coming to her side. ‘What is it? What are we to think?’
‘We are spying upon them,’ said Aubrey, his tone seeming too light for the others’ mood.
‘Yes, we are,’ said his sister, drawing back. ‘No, we are not. I see how it is. Uncle is choosing this method of making known to us the truth. We are to see it and grasp it. Well, we do. We will let it stand revealed. So that is what it has meant, this strange insight I have had into something that was upon us, something new. Well, we accept it in its bearing upon Uncle and ourselves.’
‘Dear Dudley!’ said Blanche, picking up her work.
‘Dear Uncle indeed, Mother! And the more he does and has for himself, the dearer. And now go back to the fire. You have grown quite pale. It cannot but be a shock. Aubrey will stay and take care of you, and I will go and do as Uncle wishes and carry the news. For we must take it that that is what his unspoken message meant.’
‘We must beware how we walk arm-in-arm,’ said Aubrey.
Blanche extended a hand to her son with a smile which was absent, amused, and admonitory, and remained silent until her other sons entered, preceded by their sister.
‘Standing at the landing window with their eyes glued to the scene! Standing as if rooted to the spot! Uncle chose his method well. It has gone straight home.’
‘My Justine’s voice is her own again,’ said Blanche, looking at her sons as if in question of their feeling.
‘Well, Mother, I am not going to be knocked down by this. It is a thing to stand up straight under, indeed. I found the boys in a condition of daze. I was obliged to be a little bracing, though I admit that it affected me in that way at first. This is a change for Uncle, not for ourselves. It is his life that is taking a new turn, though ours will take its subordinate turn, of course, and we must remember to see it as subordinate. But dear Uncle! That he should have come to this at his age! It takes away my breath and makes my heart ache at the same time.’
‘Are we sure of it?’ said Mark.
‘Let us build no further without a foundation,’ said his brother.
‘Look,’ said Justine, leading the way to the window. ‘Look. Oh, look indeed! Here is something else before our eyes. What led me to the window at this moment? It is inspiring, uplifting. I wish we had seen it from the first. We should not have taken our eyes away.’
Edgar was standing on the path, his hands on the shoulders of Maria and his brother, his eyes looking into their faces, his smile seeming to reflect theirs.
‘Is it not a speaking scene? Dear Father! Giving up his place in his brother’s life with generosity and courage. We see the simplicity and completeness of the sacrifice, the full and utter renunciation. It seems that we ought not to look, that the scene should be sacred from human eyes.’
‘So Justine stands on tiptoe for a last glimpse,’ said Aubrey, blinking.
‘Yes, let us move away,’ said his sister, putting his words to her own purpose. ‘Let us turn our eyes on something fitter for our sight,’ She accordingly turned hers on her mother, and saw that Blanche was weeping easily and weakly, as if she had no power to stem her tears.
‘Why, little Mother, it is not like you to be borne away like this. Where is that stoic strain which has put you at our head, and kept you there in spite of all indication to the contrary? Where should it be now but at Father’s service? Where is your place but at his side? Come, let me lead you to the post that will be yours.’
Blanche went on weeping almost contentedly, rather as if her resistance had been withdrawn than as if she had any cause for tears. Aubrey looked on with an uneasy expression and Clement kept his eyes aside.
‘I am quite with Mother,’ said Mark. It is all I can do not to follow her example.’
‘Has the carriage been sent for Aunt Matty?’ said Aubrey.
‘Ought it to be?’ said Blanche, sitting up and using an easier tone than seemed credible. ‘We must ask Miss Sloane to stay to luncheon, and I suppose your aunt must come too. It is she who first brought her to the house. We little knew what would come of it. But not Miss Griffin, Justine dear. We had better be just a family gathering. That is what we shall be, of course, now that Miss Sloane is to be one of us.’
‘We will have it as you say, little Mother. I will send the message. And I commend your taste. It is well to be simply as we are. And in these days there is no risk of the promiscuousness and scantiness which did at intervals mark our board.’ Justine broke off as she recalled that her uncle’s open hand might be withdrawn.
‘Are we to take it as certain that Miss Sloane and Uncle are engaged?’ said Mark. ‘The evidence is powerful, but is it conclusive?’
‘Conclusive,’ said Justine, with a hint of a sigh. ‘Would a woman of Miss Sloane’s age and type be seen on the arm of a man to whom she stood in any other relation? Uncle is not her father or her brother, you know.’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Clement. ‘That should be a certain preventive.’
‘Come, Clement, it is in Uncle’s life that we shall be living in these next days. He has had enough of living in ours.’
‘It is odd that we are surprised by it,’ said Mark.
‘I suppose we are,’ said Justine, with another sigh. ‘But we have had an example of how to meet it. Father has given it to us. Don’t remind me of that scene, or I shall be overset like Mother.’
‘You were unwise to call it up, but I admit the proof.’
‘Wait one minute,’ said Justine, going to the door. ‘I will be back with confirmation or the opposite. I shall not keep you long.’
‘I must go and make myself fit to be seen,’ said Blanche in her ordinary tone. ‘I have been behaving quite unlike myself. I suppose it was thinking of your uncle, and his having lived so much for all of us, and now at last being about to live for himself.’
‘It is enough to overcome anyone,’ said Clement, when his mother had gone. ‘It puts the matter in a nutshell.’
‘You mean that Uncle may want his own money?’ said Mark.
‘It seems that he must. Nearly all the balance after the allowances are paid has gone on the house. It seemed to need all but rebuilding. Houses were not meant to last so long. Can things be broken off at this stage?’
‘They can at the end of it. I suppose they will have to be. Uncle had very little money of his own. There is so little in the family apart from the place. He was a poor man until he had this money. And he can only use the income; the capital is tied up until his death. And he will want to give his wife the things that go with his means. And she will expect to have them, and why should she not?’
‘Because it prevents Uncle from giving them to us,’ said Aubrey.
‘We do not grudge Uncle what is his own,’
‘We only grudge Miss Sloane what has been ours,’
‘How about your extra pocket money?’ said Clement.
‘I grudge it to her. And I thought she liked Father better than Uncle. She always looks at him more.’
‘I did not think about which she liked better,’ said Mark. ‘I thought of her as Aunt Matty’s friend.’
‘Perhaps she did not find Aunt Matty enough for her.’ said Aubrey. ‘I can almost understand it. Well, we shall have her for an aunt and she will be obliged to kiss Clement.’
‘Well, I bring confirmation,’ said Justine, entering the room in a slightly sobered manner. ‘Full and free support of what we had gathered for ourselves from the full and frank signs of it. It was not grudged or withheld for a moment. I was met by a simple and open admission such as I respected.’
‘And did they respect your asking for it?’ said Clement.
‘I think they did. They saw it as natural and necessary. We could not accept what we could not put upon a definite basis. They could not and did not look for that.’
‘So you did not have much of a scene?’
‘No - well, it was entirely to my taste. It was brief and to the point. There was a natural simplicity and depth about it. I felt that I was confronted by deep experience, by the future in the making. I stood silent before it.’
‘That was well.’
‘Are we all ready for Aunt Matty?’ said Aubrey.
‘Yes, we are not making any change,’ said Justine. ‘That would imply some thought of ourselves. We are meeting today in simple feeling for Uncle.’
‘Just wearing our hearts on our sleeves.’
‘Now, little boy, why are you not at your books?’
‘Penrose is not well. He sent a message. And directly his back was turned I betrayed his trust.’
‘Well, well, it is not an ordinary day. And I suppose that is the carriage. Are we never to have an experience again without Aunt Matty? Now what a mean and illogical speech! When we may owe to her Uncle’s happiness! I will be the first down to welcome her as an atonement.’
‘So you are not too absorbed in the new excitement to remember the old aunt. That is so sweet of all of you. And I do indeed bring you my congratulations. I feel I am rather at the bottom of this. So, Blanche, I have given you something at last. I am not to feel that I do nothing but receive. That is not always to be my lot. I am the giver this time, and I can feel it is a rare and precious gift. And I do not grudge it, even if it may mean yielding up a part of it myself. No, Dudley, it is yours and it is fully given. You and I are both people who can give. That is often true of people who accept. And you find yourself in the second position this time.’
‘There have to be people there or giving would be no good.’
‘We are all there together,’ said Blanche, who looked excited and confused. ‘Edgar’s sister will be a sister to me, as his brother has been my brother.’
‘We have always valued the relation,’ said Matty, taking Blanche’s hand. ‘And now we are to be three instead of two, we shall have even more to value. I must feel that I also am accepting. I shall try to feel it and not dwell upon what I relinquish.’
‘I do not feel that I am losing anything. I know Dudley too well.’
‘Well, if I feel I am giving up a little, I yield it gladly, feeling that others’ gain is more than my loss, or more important. For I have been a dependent person who has had to make demands; and now there has come a demand on me, I am glad to meet it fully. I have had my share of weakness and welcome a position where I have some of the strength.’
‘I need not talk about what I am accepting,’ said Maria, ‘in this house where it is known. I am giving all I have in return.’
‘Simple and telling, Miss Sloane, as we should have expected,’ said Justine. ‘But we did not need you to say it, and hope that it was not at any cost. And we will all give you on our side what is right and meet. And rest assured, Aunt Matty, that we are not unmindful of your sacrifice. If we seem to be a little distant today, it is because the march of affairs is carrying us with it. Let us make our little sally and return in course.’
‘Edgar, we must have a word from you,’ said Matty. ‘It may seem hard when you are giving up the most, but you are a person from whom we expect much.’
‘Surely not in that line,’ said Clement.
‘Well, Aunt Matty, I think it is hard,’ said Justine. ‘And you have given the reason. Well, just a word, and then we must make a move. We must eat even on the day of Uncle’s engagement. Uncle’s engagement! Who could know what the words mean to us?’
‘I think that will do for my speech,’ said Edgar.
‘Then that is enough,’ said Justine, taking his arm and setting out for the dining room.
‘Dudley must sit by Miss Sloane,’ said Blanche, ‘and then that is the whole duty of them both.’
‘Shall I say my little original word?’ said Aubrey.
‘Now, little boy, silence is the best kind of word from you.’
‘I should like to see Clement come out of himself.’
‘You go back into yourself and stay there.’
‘Does Miss Sloane know how bad notice is for Clement?’
‘You must forgive him, Miss Sloane; he is excited,’ said Justine, giving an excuse which both satisfied the truth and silenced her brother.
‘Blanche, your cough is worse,’ said Matty. ‘I believe you ought to be in bed.’
‘I could not be, dear, on a day like this. What would happen to them all? I am indispensable.’
‘You are indeed, my dear. That is what I mean.’
‘Mother was condemned to remaining in one room,’ said Justine, ‘but I had not the heart to carry out the sentence. Our little leader shut up alone, with the rest of us observing this celebration! My feelings baulked at it.’
‘It is a mistake to be all heart and no head,’ said Clement.
‘I am quite well,’ said his mother. ‘I am only a little worked up. I cannot sit calmly through a day like this. I was never a phlegmatic person. I feel so keenly what affects other people. I get taken right out of myself. I almost feel that I could rise up and float above you all. I don’t know when I have felt so light all through myself. I don’t believe that even your uncle feels as much lifted above his level.’
‘I see that people really do rejoice in others’ joy,’ said Dudley.
‘You have done your share of it, Uncle,’ said Justine. ‘And it is well that something else has come in time. A spell of natural selfishness will do you good. Give yourself up to it. We have schooled ourselves for the experience. It will be a salutary one. And a proportion of your thoughts will return to us, supported by someone else’s.’
‘So for the time I have no uncle,’ said Aubrey.
‘You will have a second aunt, dear,’ said Matty. ‘Come and sit by your first one. Aunts can be a compensation, and you shall find that they can.’
‘Perhaps I shall be Miss Sloane’s especial nephew.’
‘You do not deserve it, but I have an idea that you may be,’ said Justine. ‘Naughty little boy, to have a way of being people’s favourite and knowing it! Confess now, Miss Sloane, that you already look upon him with a partial eye.’
Maria smiled at Aubrey but was not in time to check a glance at his brothers.
‘Ah, now, you may not be so much the chosen person this time. You can take it to heart and retire into the background,’ said Justine, as Aubrey did both these things.
‘Mother, you don’t seem to know what you are doing,’ said Mark. ‘You keep on beginning to eat and forgetting and beginning again. You have not accomplished a mouthful in the last ten minutes.’
‘I am a little wrought up, dear. I can’t treat this as an ordinary day. Your uncle has never been engaged before.’
‘Never and may not be again,’ said Clement. ‘He will not spoil Mother’s appetite many times.’
Blanche began to laugh, pursuing something with her fork and continuing her mirth as she had continued her tears, as if she had not the strength to overcome it.
‘Mother, you are over excited,’ said Justine. ‘You are on the point of becoming hysterical. Not that that is any great matter. It is pleasant for Uncle in a way to see how you feel yourself involved in his life. It is not your own interest that looms large to you, is it?’
Blanche looked up as if she did not follow the words.
‘You are faint from want of food, Blanche,’ said Edgar. ‘You ate nothing at breakfast. You must make an effort.’
‘I can’t make an effort,’ said his wife, in another tone. ‘I don’t feel well enough. And I do not like being told what I am to do. I am used to doing what I choose. I am able to judge for myself.’ She thrust her plate against her glass, and sat watching the result in a sort of childish relief in having wreaked her feeling.
‘Mother is not herself,’ said Justine, rising to deal with the damage, and speaking for her mother s ears, though not directly to her. ‘She is at once more and less than herself, shall we say?’
Blanche watched the process of clearing up with vague interest.
‘That is one of the best table napkins,’ she said, reaching towards it. ‘That wine does not stain, does it? I only put them out last week,’ Her voice died away and she sat looking before her as if she were alone.
‘We must take - it would be well to take her temperature,’ said Edgar.
‘That was in my mind, Father. I was waiting for the end of luncheon.’
‘Send Jellamy away,’ said Blanche suddenly. ‘He keeps on watching me.’
‘Jellamy can fetch a thermometer,’ said Mark, giving an explanatory smile to the man. ‘That will kill two birds with one stone.’
Jellamy vanished in complete good-will towards his mistress, and Blanche gave a laugh which passed to a fit of coughing, and sat still and shaken, with her eyes moving about in a motionless head.
‘Mother’s breathing is very quick and hard,’ said Clement.
‘She must have been feverish all day,’ said Mark.
‘We all see that now,’ said Justine sharply. ‘It is no good to wish that someone had seen it before. That will not help. We can only deal with things as they are.’
‘I thought perhaps no one would notice, if I did not speak,’ said Blanche, as if to herself. ‘Sometimes people don’t see anything.’
Edgar had come to his wife’s side. Dudley and Maria had risen and were talking apart. Matty sat with her eyes on her sister, her expression wavering between uneasiness and irritation at the general concern for someone else. Aubrey looked about for reassurance. There was the sudden stir and threat of acknowledged anxiety.
The thermometer told its tale. Blanche lost her patience twice and delayed its action. Matty and Dudley talked to amuse her while she waited. She was interrupted by her cough, and they all realized its nature and its frequency. Her sister’s face became anxious and nothing else.
‘I heard Mother coughing in the night like that,’ said Aubrey.
‘Then why did you not say so?’ said Clement.
‘That is no good, Clement,’ said Justine. ‘We all wish we had taken earlier alarm. It was not for Aubrey to give us the lead.’
Blanche was found to be in high fever, and seemed to take pleasure and even pride in the discovery.
‘I never make a fuss about nothing,’ she said, as she sat by the fire while her room was warmed. ‘I have always been the last to complain about myself. When I was a child they had to watch me to see if I was ill. I never confessed to it, whatever I felt.’
‘That was naughty, dearest,’ said Matty. ‘And you are not a child now.’
‘An ignorant and arrogant boast, Mother,’ said Mark.
‘Poor Uncle!’ said Justine, in a low tone, touching Dudley’s sleeve. ‘On your engagement day! We are not forgetting it. You know that.’
‘I am oblivious of it. I am lost in the general feeling.’
‘I often kept about when people less ill than I was were in bed,’ continued Blanche, her eyes following this divergence of interest from herself. ‘I remember I once waited on my sister when my temperature was found to be higher than hers. I daresay Miss Sloane remembers hearing of that.’
‘Don’t tell such dreadful stories, dear,’ said Matty.
‘But I often think that not giving in is the best way to get well,’ said Blanche, putting back her hand to a shawl that was round her shoulders, and glancing back at it as a shiver went through her. ‘Staying in bed lowers people’s resistance and gives the illness a stronger hold. Not that I am really ill this time, though a bad chill is something near to it. I shall not give in for long. I am a person who likes to do everything for herself.’
‘It is not always the way to do anything for other people, dear.’
‘You will do it once too often, Mother,’ said Clement, glad that his words were broken by the opening door.
The room was said to be ready. The doctor was heard to arrive. It seemed incredible that an hour before the household had been taking its usual course, even more incredible that the course had been broken as it had.
Blanche sat still, with her eyes narrower than usual and her hands and face less than their normal size, stooping forward to avoid the full breath which brought the cough.
‘I think people know what suits themselves. I have never done myself any harm by keeping about. I shall not stay in bed a moment longer than I must. The very thought of it makes me feel worse. I am worse now just from thinking about it. People’s minds do influence their bodies.’ Her tone showed that she was accounting for her feelings to herself.
The doctor gave his word at a glance. Blanche was wrapped up and taken to her room. Her sons returned with the chair which had carried her, and glanced at each other as they set it down.
‘What a very light chair!’ said Clement, giving it a push.
‘People who are light are often stronger than heavier ones,’ said his brother.
Aubrey began to cry.
‘Come, come, all of you,’ said Justine. ‘Mother can’t have got any lighter in the last days. She can never have weighed much. I always feel a clodhopper beside her.’
‘When is the nurse coming?’ said Mark.
‘As soon as she can,’ said Matty, who had returned from seeing the doctor. ‘That is good news, isn’t it? And I have some better news for you. We are sending for Miss Griffin. Your uncle and Maria have gone to fetch her, and she is the best nurse I have ever known. That is why I am yielding her up to you. So Aunt Matty provides the necessary person a second time.’
Miss Griffin arrived with her feelings in her face, concern for Blanche and pleasure in the need of herself, and settled at once into the sickroom as her natural place. She had more feeling for helpless people than for whole ones, and it was Matty’s lameness rather than the length of their union, which made the bond she could not break. She began to talk to Blanche of Dudley’s engagement, feeling it an interest which could not fail, and making the most of the implication that Blanche was bound up with ordinary life.
But Blanche had taken the news more easily than Miss Griffin, and had a lighter hold on the threads of life, though she seemed to have so many more of them. Her lightness of grasp went with her through the next days, working for her in holding her incurious about her state, against her in allowing her less urge to fight for life. With petulance and heroism, childishness and courage she lived her desperate hours, and emerged into peace and weakness with remembrance rather than realization of what was behind.
Her family was new to such suspense and lived it with a sense of shock and disbelief. After the first relief they accepted her safety and resented that it had been threatened.
When Matty and Maria came to share the rejoicing, they found it took the form of reaction and silence. The first evening after the stress might almost have been one at the height of it.
Justine extended a hand to her uncle as though she had hardly strength to turn her eyes in the same direction.
‘We must seem selfish and egotistic, Uncle, in that we do not remember your personal happiness.’
‘Just now we are sharing yours,’ said Maria.
‘And I am afraid we cannot be showing it,’ said Dudley.
‘We can all share each other’s,’ said Matty. ‘I can give my own illustration. My joy for my sister tonight only gives more foundation to my joy for my friends. Yes, that other happiness which I feel here is very near to my heart.’
‘You are fancying it,’ said Dudley. ‘Maria and I have laid it aside.’
‘You have pushed it deeper down. Into a fitter place.’
‘I am appalled by the threat and danger of life,’ said Mark. ‘It may be good for us to realize that in the midst of life we are in death,’ said his sister.
‘What benefit do we derive from it?’ said Clement.
‘Oh, don’t let us talk like that on this day of all days. It is not suitable or seemly. Our nerves may be on edge, but we must not hold that an excuse for crossing every bound.’
‘We may have no other excuse’, said Edgar, ‘but our guests will accept that one, We have been tried to the end of our strength and I fear beyond.’
‘We are not guests, dear Edgar,’ said Matty. ‘As a family we have been in darkness, and as a family we emerge into the light. And perhaps it is a tiny bit ungrateful not to see the difference.’
‘We do not find the light dazzling,’ said Clement.
‘No, so I see, dear. Now I do find it so, but to me the darkness has been so very dark.’ Matty was easily tried by depression in others, being used to support and cheer herself. ‘You see, my sister and I are so very near. From our earliest memories our lives have been bound in one. And not even the mother’s tie goes back so far.’
‘Really, Aunt Matty, that is too much,’ said Justine. ‘Or I should say it was, if it were not for the occasion.’
‘It is that which makes it so,’ said Mark.
‘So the occasion does mean something, dears?’
‘Aunt Matty, if you do not beware, you will have us turning from you with something like shrinking and contempt, said Justine, allowing her movements to illustrate these feelings.
‘Something very like,’ said Clement.
Edgar looked up as if weariness held him silent.
‘Well, well, dear, perhaps I betrayed something of such feelings myself. We are all wrought up and beyond our usual barriers. We must forgive each other.’
‘I do not see why,’ said Clement.
‘And I am indulging in personal joy all through this,’ said Dudley. ‘And Matty said that she shared it. So I suppose this is what joy for others is like. No wonder people rather avoid feeling it.’
‘Miss Sloane, come to our rescue,’ said Justine. ‘We need some sweetness and sanity to save us from ourselves.’
‘It is the anxiety that is to blame. A happy ending does not alter what has gone before.’
‘That is what I say,’ said Clement. ‘Why should we hold a celebration because Mother’s life has been threatened and just saved?’
‘Poor little Mother! Are we in danger of losing her experience in our own?’
‘Surely not, dear,’ said Matty. ‘No, I do not think that you and your brothers would find yourselves coming to that.’
Justine gave a laugh which was openly harsh in its acceptance of her aunt’s meaning.
Matty raised her brows in perplexed enquiry.
‘Come, come,’ said Edgar.
‘No, I shall not come, Father. I shall not rise to that bait any more. I shall not rise to those heights. I will not be forbearing and tolerant through any strain. It is not a fair obligation on anyone. I shall be hard and snappish and full of mean and wounding insinuation like anyone else. Oh, you will find a great difference. You will find that I mean what I say. I feel the strain of temper and malice which is in the family, coming out in me. I am a true daughter of the Seatons, after all.’
‘Well, you are your mother’s daughter,’ said Matty. ‘And we will ask nothing better, if you can be that.’
‘But I cannot. I am not even now saying what I mean. I am not Mother’s daughter as much as your niece. That is what I should have said; that is what I did say in my heart. I have nothing of Mother in me. That strain of heroism and disregard of self is wanting in me, as it is in you, as it is in all of us.’
Edgar made a sound of appeal to Maria, and she rose and came to his daughter and allowed her to throw her arms round her neck and weep.
‘I hope I am not the cause of this,’ said Matty.
‘What is your ground for hope?’ said Clement.
Edgar threw his son a look of warning.
‘I am not surprised to hear that heroism is not one of my qualities,’ said Mark, trying to be light. ‘I have always suspected it.’
‘Heroism and disregard of self,’ said Matty, giving a little laugh. ‘Has my poor little sister had to show such things?’
‘Oh, what will you all think of me? wept Justine. ‘What of my poor little boy who is looking at me with such baffled eyes? What is he to do if I fail him?’
‘We think you have had more strain than other people, and been of more use,’ said Maria.
‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Edgar. ‘The chief demand has fallen on Justine and Miss Griffin. My wife is not happy with strangers, and the actual nursing is a small part of what has been done?’
‘Father has surpassed himself,’ said Justine, sitting up and using a voice which became her own as she spoke. ‘There, I am myself again. I have had my outburst and feel the better for it. And I don’t suppose anyone else is much the worse.’ She wiped her eyes and left Maria and returned to her place.
‘I am very shaken,’ said Aubrey, speaking the truth.
‘You have all been very good,’ said Miss Griffin, who had witnessed the attack on Matty with consternation, pity, and exultation struggling through her fatigue, and now lifted eyes that seemed to strive to see.
‘You are very tired, Miss Griffin. You had better go home and rest,’ said Matty, somehow betraying a desire to deprive the family of Miss Griffin’s service.
Miss Griffin looked up to speak, assuming that words would come to her and finding her mistake.
‘It cannot be good for you or for anyone else, for you to go on in that state.’
‘It is the best thing for Mother,’ said Justine. ‘She will be happier if she knows that Miss Griffin is sleeping in the next room. We shall see tonight that it is real sleep.’
‘Well, that is a good way of feeling indispensable. Too sound a way to be given up. We shall all be useful like that tonight. I shall be able to sleep for the first time, and I shall be glad to feel that I am doing some good by doing it.’
‘Well, I think you will be, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, who was right in her claim that she was again herself. ‘Doing what we can for ourselves does make the best of us for other people. And not sleeping is the last thing to achieve either.’
‘We are certainly more useful - have more chance of being of use when we are not tired out,’ said Edgar, though it is only Miss Griffin who seems to be indispensable at the moment of sleep.’
‘Then she is continually useful,’ said Matty, glancing at Miss Griffin and using a tone at once light and desperate.
Miss Griffin rose with a feeling that movement would be easier and less perilous than sitting still.
‘I will go and take Mrs Gaveston’s temperature. That was the doctor’s bell. I will bring it down so that she need not be disturbed again tonight.’
‘You see us all human again, Dr Marlowe,’ said Justine.
‘He would hardly have a moment ago,’ said Clement.
‘We could not be more human than we have been in the last week,’ said Dudley. ‘We have sounded the deeps of human experience. I am very proud of all we have been through.’
‘Father, you were going to say some formal words of gratitude to Dr Marlowe,’ said Justine. ‘But there is no need. He is no doubt as skilled in reading people’s minds as their bodies.’
‘Then it is well that he was not here just now,’ said Aubrey.
‘So, little boy, you have found your tongue again,’ said Justine, stooping and putting her cheek against his.
‘Weren’t you glad to hear my authentic note?’ said Aubrey, glancing at the doctor.
‘I meant to sound mine too,’ said Dudley.
‘We heard it, Uncle, and happy we were to do so. But you have had your own support in the last days.’
‘My feelings have been too deep for words like anyone else’s.’
‘I think we hear our Justine’s voice again,’ said Matty, with an effort to regain a normal footing.
Justine crossed the room and sat down on the arm of her aunt’s chair.
‘What a thing affection is, as exemplified between Aunt Matty and Justine!’ said Mark.
‘A thing indeed but not affection,’ said Clement.
‘I think this thermometer must be wrong,’ said Miss Griffin, in the measured tones of one forcing herself to be coherent in exhaustion. ‘I used it myself and it has gone up like this. I don’t know what can be wrong with it. It has not had a fall.’
The doctor took it, read it, shook it, read it again, and was suddenly at the door, seeming to be another man.
‘Come with me, anyone who should. There may be no time to be lost. The temperature has rushed up suddenly. I hoped the danger was past.’
The family followed, at first instinctively, then in grasp of the truth, then with the feelings of the last days rushing back with all their force. The late hour of reaction might have been an imaginary scene, might have been read 01 written.
They reached the bedroom and Edgar took his daughter’s arm. Justine pushed Aubrey back into the passage and then walked forward with her father. Her brothers stood with them, and Dudley a step behind. Maria drew back and waited with Aubrey on the landing.
‘You feel hot, Blanche, my dear?’ said Edgar.
‘Yes - yes, I do feel hot,’ said his wife, looking at him as if she barely saw him and hardly wished to do more. ‘What have you all come for?’
‘To say good night to you, Mother dear,’ said Justine.
‘Yes, I am better,’ said Blanche, as if this accounted for their presence. ‘I shall soon feel better. Of course it must be slow.’
‘Yes, you will be better, Mother dear.’
‘But I don’t want Miss Griffin to go,’ said Blanche, with a sharpness which was her own, though her voice could hardly be heard. ‘I don’t want to have to get well all at once. I am not going to try.’
‘Of course you are not,’ said her husband. ‘You must just lie still and think of nothing.’
‘I don’t often think of nothing. I have a busy brain.’
Edgar took her hand and she drew it away with a petulance which was again her own.
‘Is Aubrey in bed?’
‘He will be soon. He wanted to come and see you, but we thought you were too tired.’
‘Yes, I am very tired. Not so much tired as sleepy.’
‘Shut your eyes, Mother, and try to sleep,’ said Mark.
Blanche simply obeyed but opened her eyes again.
‘I want Miss Griffin to be where I can see her. You make her go away.’
Miss Griffin drew near and Blanche gave her a smile.
‘We are happy together, aren’t we? My sister does not know.’
‘I am very happy with you.’
‘My bed is right up in the air. Are you all up there too?’
‘We are with you, dear,’ said Edgar. ‘We are all here.’
‘It is too many, isn’t it?’ said Blanche, in a tone of agreement. ‘Has Matty been here today?’
‘She is downstairs, waiting to hear how you are.’
‘She cannot come up here,’ said his wife, with a note of security.
‘No, she will wait downstairs.’
‘Her brain is not really so much better than mine.’
‘No, we know it is not.’
‘Father does not know that I am really a nicer person. But it does not matter, a thing like that.’
‘We all know it, Mother,’ said Mark.
‘But you must be kind to Aunt Matty,’ said Blanche, as if speaking to a child.
‘Yes, we will be, Mother.’
‘She wants too much kindness,’ said Blanche, in a dreamy tone.
‘Shut your eyes, dear, and try to sleep,’ said Edgar.
‘Are you that tall man who asked me to marry him?’ said Blanche, in a very rapid tone, fixing her eyes on his face.
‘Yes, I am. And you married me. And we have been very happy.’
‘I did not mind leaving Father and Matty. But I don’t think that Father will die.’
‘No, not for a long time.’
‘Dr Marlowe is watching me. A doctor has to do that. But I don’t like it when Jellamy does it.’
‘He shall never do it again,’ said Edgar, stumbling over the words.
The doctor moved out of her sight, and Dudley felt his brother’s hand and came to the bed.
‘They are not really so alike, when you get to know them,’ said Blanche to Miss Griffin.
‘Mother, try to rest,’ said Mark.
‘Try to rest,’ echoed his mother, looking before her.
‘Perhaps you are a little near to the bed,’ said the doctor.
They moved away.
‘Where have you all gone?’ said Blanche at once.
‘We are here, dear,’ said Edgar. ‘You are not alone.’
‘Alone? That would be an odd thing, when I have a husband and four children.’
‘We are all here, Blanche, all with you.’
‘Matty does not mind not having any children. Some women do not mind.’
Justine came closer and her mother saw her face.
‘Are you my beautiful daughter?’ she said, again in the rapid tone. ‘The one I knew I should have? Or the other one?’
‘I am your Justine, Mother.’
‘Justine!’ said Blanche, and threw up her arms. ‘Why should we want her different?’
‘I am here, dear,’ said Edgar, bending over her, and saw that his wife was not there.
For another minute they were as silent as she.
Then Miss Griffin spoke.
‘I got to love her so much. She was so good. She never made a murmur and it must be dreadful not to be able to breathe. We could hardly wish her to linger like that.’
The speech, with its difference of thought, of word, of class, seemed to shock them back into life. Edgar turned from the bed, as if forcing himself to return to the daily world. Clement moved towards the door. Dudley turned to speak to the doctor. Mark tried to lead his sister away. Aubrey met them in the passage and stood with the expression of a man before he broke into a child’s tears. Maria went down to tell Matty the truth. The day which had been at an end was ending again. Another end had come.
‘We must go down and say good night to Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, as if feeling that normal speech and action were best. ‘And then Miss Griffin must go to bed. Uncle, you have Father in your charge. Dr Marlowe will understand us. We cannot say much tonight.’
Matty was sitting in her chair, waiting for them to come. She held out her arms to them, one by one, going through an observance which she had had in her mind, and which seemed to suggest that she offered herself in their mother’s place.
‘My poor children, your mother’s sister is with you. That is the light in my darkness, that I am here to watch over you. It must have been put into my thoughts to come to your gates, that you might not be alone when your sorrow came.’
They stood about her, heedless of what she said, and her voice went on on the same note, with another note underneath.
‘There is one little comfort I can give you, one poor, sad, little comfort. You have not suffered quite the worst. You have not sat still and felt that you could not go to her side. You were able to obey your hearts.’
They did not answer, and as Matty’s face fell from its purpose a look of realization came. Her world would be different without her sister; her place in it would be different. She rose to go and found that she must wait while Dudley and Maria took their leave.
‘Come, dear, I must get home to my father. I have more to go through tonight. And if I do not face it now, my strength may fail. I feel I have not too much.’ She broke off as she remembered that Blanche would not hear and suffer from her words. They would fall on other ears and she must have a care how they fell.
‘Well, I must leave you to take care of yourselves, of yourselves and Miss Griffin and each other. I must believe that you will do it. And I will go home and take some thought for myself, as there is no one else to do that.’
‘There is not, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine, in a clear, slow, almost ruthless voice. ‘We cannot tell you that there is. We have all lost her who watched over us. We are all desolate. We cannot tell you that that place will be filled.’