Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Family and a Fortune

‘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.’