‘Suppose we keep people apart, dear,’ said Matty in a light tone.
‘Oh, Aunt Matty, Miss Sloane has not a touch of that feeling. She would not mind being coupled with Miss Griffin. Even being with her once told me that. I should think it is not in her.’
‘But keep her apart, nevertheless, dear,’ said Blanche, in a low voice that was at once reproving and confidential. ‘She has nothing to do with anyone else.’
‘I am not sure that she would say that,’ said Justine audibly. ‘She has the connexion with Miss Griffin of a long friendship. I should say that she would be the first to recognize it.’
‘Well, well, dear, are you going to run down and ask them?’
‘No, no, not I this time,’ said Justine, shaking her head. ‘I am not always going to present myself as the bearer of such messages. It would mean that we thought too much of them altogether.’
‘Clement and I will go,’ said Mark. ‘That will give a trivial air to the errand. And we can imply that we think little of it.’
‘That should be easy,’ said his brother. ‘We have only to be natural.’
‘Ah, that is not always so easy as you seem to think,’ said Justine.
‘Perhaps you find it too much so.’
‘Well, run along, dears,’ said Blanche, in a neutral manner. ‘You can wait and bring them back.’
‘If they consent to come, Mother,’ said Justine, with a note of reproof.
‘Well, you thought they had no other engagements, dear. Let the boys go now. It will be a breath of fresh air for them after their exciting morning. We can’t have nothing but excitement.’
‘Do you know where to look?’ said Matty to Dudley, in a mischievous aside.
‘Mother talks as if we were guilty of some excess,’ said Clement to his brother as they left the house. ‘Our excitement has been for Uncle. Nothing has come to most of us.’
‘A good deal has come to Father, and in a certain sense to me.’
‘A good deal to you both. A house handed on intact is different indeed from one gaping at every seam, and sucking up an income to keep it over our heads. You are full of a great and solemn joy.’
‘And my happiness is not yours?’
‘Any satisfaction of mine must come out of my own life, not out of other people’s. But I ought to have some of my own. Father’s money will be set free and Uncle has no one to spend on but us.’
‘What are your personal hopes?’
‘Much as yours, except that they are on a smaller scale and yours are already fulfilled. I don’t want a place or could not have one. But I do want a little house of my own in Cambridge. I hate the college and I am obliged to live in the town. And a little income to add to what I earn. Then I should not need to spend my spare time at home. I cannot suffer much more of Aubrey and Justine.’
‘And I can?’
‘Your prospects are safe. You have no right to speak.’
‘I shall have nothing until Father dies, but the life which you must escape.’
‘Your future is bound up in the place. Mine has nothing to do with it. The house is a halting place for me.’
‘And for Justine and Aubrey what is it?’
‘Aubrey is a child and Justine is a woman. There is no comparison.’
‘Aubrey will not always be a child and Justine not always a young and dependent woman. I can imagine her in her own house as well as you.’
‘Mine is the need of the moment.’
‘So is mine. I could do with many things. But I don’t know if we can make the suggestions to Uncle.’
‘They may occur to him.’
‘Images will have to come crowding on his mind.’
‘I don’t see why they should not. He must have seen our straitened life.’
‘He must have lived it,’ said Mark.
‘You can make a joke of other people’s needs, when your own are satisfied. He can hardly go on for ever, spending all he has on the house. All sorts of demands must arise. We have been held very tight and insensibly the bonds will be loosened.’
‘When Father dies, you will have your share of what there is. Both he and Uncle must leave what they have to us.’
‘And how long will that be to wait?’
‘Clement, what manner of man are you?’
‘The same as you, though you pretend not to know it. You can go in here and offer this invitation. Explain that we observe a piece of good fortune for one of us as a general festival.’
‘I am in command of such a situation. You are right to imply that you are not.’
‘There is Miss Griffin at the window. She is there whenever we come.’
‘She sees the shadows of coming events. Such a gift would develop in her life.’
In due course the four emerged from the lodge and set off towards the house. Mark was ready to discuss the event; Clement was inclined to glance at Maria to judge of her view of it, and to try to talk of other things; Maria was lively and interested and Miss Griffin was alternately reflective and disposed to put sudden questions.
‘Here is a fairy-tale piece of news!’ said Maria, as she met the family. ‘I shall always be glad to have heard it at first hand. We must thank you for our experience as well as congratulate you on yours.’
‘Thank you, Miss Sloane. That is a pleasant congratulation indeed,’ said Justine, turning to her brothers to continue. ‘What a contrast to poor Aunt Matty’s! What a difference our little inner differences make!’
‘A quarter of a million pounds!’ said Miss Griffin, standing in the middle of the floor. ‘I have never heard anything like it.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Dudley. ‘It is about a twentieth of a million.’
‘A twentieth of a million!’ said Miss Griffin, in exactly the same tone.
‘About fifty thousand pounds.’
‘Fifty thousand pounds!’ said Miss Griffin, with the fuller feeling of complete grasp.
‘We ought not to keep talking about the amount,’ said Blanche. ‘We value the thought and the remembrance.’
‘But if we leave it out,’ said Dudley, ‘people will think it is so much more than it is.’
‘1 think it is better than that,’ said Maria. ‘It will not eliminate planning and contrivance from your life, and it will keep you in the world you know.’
‘Sound wisdom,’ said Justine. ‘Flow it falls from unexpected lips!’
‘I feel very comforted,’ said Dudley. ‘People may realize my true position after all.’
‘It was deep sagacity, Miss Sloane,’ said Justine. ‘I daresay you hardly realize how deep. Words of wisdom seem to fall from your lips like raindrops off a flower.’
‘Justine dear, was that a little frank?’ said Blanche, lowering her voice.
‘Well, Mother, pretty speeches always are,’ said Justine, not doing this with hers. ‘But I don’t think that a genuine impulse towards a compliment is such a bad thing. It might really come to us oftener. And Miss Sloane is not in the least embarrassed. It is not a feeling possible to her. I had discerned that, or I had not taken the risk.’
‘The impulse has come to Justine again,’ said Mark to his brother.
‘And embarrassment is a feeling possible to the rest of us.’
‘Well, I have not been saying words of wisdom, perhaps,’ said Matty, in a tone that drew general attention. ‘But I have done my best to show my joy in others’ good fortune. Though ‘others’ is hardly the word for people with whom I feel myself identified. Contrivance had not struck me as one of the likely results, but if they like to enjoy the poverty of the rich, we will not say them nay. It is only the poverty of the poor which we should not welcome for them. We have that enough in our thoughts.’ Matty’s voice died away on a sigh which was somehow a thrust.
‘I shall have to give to the poor,’ said Dudley. ‘It is a thing I have never done. It shows how nearly I have been one of them. I have only just escaped being always in Matty’s mind.’