‘I think so, dear; I have not heard anything else. Money seems somehow not to touch her. She seems to live apart from it like a flower, having all she needs and wanting nothing more.’
‘Flowers are plucked,’ said Aubrey.
‘They look better when they are not, dear.’
‘Money must touch her if she has all she needs,’ said Clement. ‘There must be continual contact.’
‘Well, I suppose she has some, dear, but I think it is not much, and that she does not want any more. When you see her you will know what I mean.’
‘We have all met people of that kind, and very charming they are,’ said Justine.
‘No, not anyone quite like this. I shall be able to show you something outside your experience.’
‘Come, Aunt Matty, think of Uncle Dudley.’
‘I could not say it of myself,’ said her uncle.
‘Yes, I see that you follow me, dear. But there is no one else who is quite as my Maria. Still you will meet her soon, and I shall be glad to do for you something you have not had done. I take a great deal from you, and I must not only take.’
‘Is she so different from other people?’ said Blanche, with simple question. ‘I do not remember her very well, but I don’t quite know what you mean.’
‘No, dear? Well, we shall see, when you meet, if you do know. We can’t all recognize everything.’
‘Would it be better if Mother and Aunt Matty did not address each other in terms of affection?’ said Mark. ‘Is it supposed to excuse everything else? It seems that something is.’
‘Well, perhaps in a way it does,’ said Justine, with a sigh. ‘Affection should be able to stand a little buffeting, or there would be nothing in it.’
‘There might be more if it did not occasion such a thing,’ said Clement.
‘Oh, come, Clement, people can’t pick their way with their intimates as if they were strangers.’
‘It is only with the latter that they attempt it.’
‘Father and Uncle behave like friends,’ said Aubrey, ‘Mother and Aunt Matty like sisters, Clement and I like brothers. I am not sure how Mark and Clement behave, I think like strangers.’
‘No, I can’t quite subscribe to it,’ said Justine. ‘It is putting too much stress on little, chance, wordy encounters. Our mild disagreement now does not alter our feeling for each other.’
‘It may rather indicate it,’ said Clement.
‘We should find the differences interesting and stimulating.’
‘They often seem to be stimulating,’ said Mark. ‘But I doubt if people take much interest in them. They always seem to want to exterminate them.’
‘I suppose I spend my life on the surface,’ said Dudley. ‘But it does seem to avoid a good deal.’
‘Now that is not true, Uncle,’ said Justine. ‘You and Father get away together and give each other of the best and deepest in you. Well we know it and so do you. Oh, we know what goes on when you are shut in the library together. So don’t make any mistake about it, because we do not.’
Edgar’s eyes rested on his daughter as if uncertain of their own expression.
‘Do you live on the surface, Aunt Matty?’ said Aubrey.
‘No, dear. I? No, I am a person who lives rather in the deeps, I am afraid. Though I don’t know why I should say “afraid”, except that the deeps are rather formidable places sometimes. But I have a surface self to show to my niece and nephews, so that I need not take them down too far with me. I have a deal to tell them of the time when I was as young as they, and things were different and yet the same, in that strange way things have. Yes, there are stories waiting for you of Aunt Matty in her heyday, when the world was young, or seemed to keep itself young for her, as things did somehow adapt themselves to her in those days. Now there is quite a lot for Aunt Matty to talk about herself. But you asked her, didn’t you?’ Matty looked about in a bright, conscious way and tapped her knee.
‘It was a lot, child, as you say,’ said Oliver.
‘Aubrey knew not what he did,’ said Clement.
‘He knew what he meant to do,’ said Mark. ‘Happily Aunt Matty did not.’
‘We both used to be such rebels, your aunt and I,’ said Blanche, looking round on her children. ‘We didn’t find the world large enough or the time long enough for all our pranks and experiments, I must tell you all about it some time. Hearing about it brings it all back to me.’
‘Being together makes Mother and Aunt Matty more alike,’ said Mark.
‘Suppose Mother should become a second Aunt Matty!’ said Aubrey.
‘Or Aunt Matty become a second little Mother,’ said Justine. ‘Let us look on the bright side — on that side of things. Grandpa, what did you think of the two of them in those days?’
‘I, my dear? Well, they were young then, as you are now. There was nothing to think of it and I thought nothing.’
‘We were such a complement to each other,’ continued Blanche. ‘People used to say that what the one did not think of, the other did, and vice versa. I remember what Miss Griffin thought of us when she came. She said she had never met such a pair.’
‘Miss Griffin!’ said Justine. ‘I meant to ask her to come in tonight and forgot. Never mind, the matter can be mended. I will send a message.’
‘Is it worth while, dear? It is getting late and she will not be ready. There is not much left for her to come for. We will ask her to dinner one night and give her proper notice.’
‘We will do that indeed, Mother, but there is still the evening. And she is just sitting at home alone, isn’t she, Aunt Matty?’
‘Why, yes, dear, she is,’ said Matty with a laugh. ‘When two out of three people are out, there must be one left. But I think she enjoys an evening to herself.’
‘I see it myself as a change for the better,’ said Oliver.
‘Now I rather doubt that,’ said Justine, ‘It is so easy, when people are unselfish and adaptable, to assume that they are enjoying things which really offer very little. Now what is there, after all, in sitting alone in that little room?’
‘Cosiness, dear, perhaps,’ said Matty, with a change in her eyes. ‘I have asked that same question and have had an answer.’
‘The size of the room is well enough for one person,’ said Oliver. ‘That is indeed its scope.’
‘Mother dear, I have your permission to send for her?’ said Justine, as if the words of others could only be passed over.
‘Well, dear, if you have your aunt’s. But I don’t know whom we are to send. The servants are busy.’
‘There is no problem there; I will go myself. I have eaten enough and I will be back before the rest of you have finished.’
‘One of the boys could go,’ said Edgar.
‘No, Father, I will leave them to satisfy their manly appetites. No one else will understand the exigencies of Miss Griffin’s toilet, and be able by a touch and a word to put things right, as I shall.’
‘Certainly no one else will undertake that,’ said Mark.
‘Should I come to help with the toilet?’ said Aubrey.
‘One of you should walk with your sister,’ said Edgar, without a smile.
Aubrey rose with a flush, stood aside for Justine to pass and followed her out of the room.
‘Oh, my baby boy has gone,’ said Blanche, not referring to the actual exit.
‘He has developed very much, dear,’ said Matty. ‘We shall have him like his brothers after all.’
‘Why should he not be like them?’
‘Well, he will be. We see that now.’
‘He has always seemed to me as promising as either of them. A little less forward for his age, but that is often a good sign.’
‘It must be difficult to judge of children’, said Mark, ‘when their progress must count against them.’