‘If Grandpa had had the choice of sacrificing himself for Mother,’ said Mark to Clement, ‘I should have taken it ill if he had not done so.’
‘I wonder if he would have. There are only records of the opposite feeling.’
‘Mrs Middleton, this is kind,’ said Justine, ‘and I ought to have greeted you. But I instinctively waited for someone else to do it.’
‘My dear, if kindness could do anything!’
Thomas stood aside, as if he would suppress a possibly unwelcome presence.
‘Well, dear ones,’ said Matty, looking at her nephews as though uncertain of her new position with them. ‘Now is anyone good and brave enough to say that he has had a good night?’
‘Brave in what sense?’ said Clement.
‘I am not going to admit that I have no heart and no feeling,’ said Mark. ‘I think that is the sense.’
‘So you slept well, dear?’ said Matty.
‘They are still in a daze,’ said Sarah with compassion.
‘I wish I could have taken refuge for longer in that first numbness. But it has passed and left me without defence. I have nothing left to me but courage, and I am sure my boys and girl have that. Is it enough for them to tell me that they are better and brighter this morning?’
‘We seem to have told her,’ said Mark.
‘Because I have not been able to summon mine as yet,’ said Matty, lowering herself into a chair with a weakness at once assumed and real. ‘No, I cannot give a very good account of myself. I am not much of an example.’
‘We none of us are,’ said Justine. ‘It is rather soon to expect it.’
‘Yes, it is, dear, but I catch a return of spirit in those words, a note of hope and resolve for the future. I fear that I have not got so far. I feel today as if I may never do so. There is a confession to make. That is not much of an aunt to boast of.’
‘We should be out of sympathy with any other feeling.’
‘That is kind, dear. And I must try to sympathize with your hope and looking forward.’
‘We must be allowed to live in the moment, Aunt Matty.’
‘But I must be in sympathy with your moment. I must not feel that it is like my eternity.’
Justine gave her aunt a glance and turned away, and Matty sank lower in her chair, in apprehension and remembrance.
‘Can’t you occupy yourself, little boy?’ said Justine.
Aubrey began to cry. Matty looked up and held out her arms, and he faltered towards her and stood within them. Justine did not speak; she would take no more on herself. Sarah sent her eyes from face to face and then put up her hand to steady them.
‘What will Father do without either Mother or Uncle?’ said Clement to Mark. ‘I can’t imagine his life.’
‘I shall have to spend more time with him.’
‘And that will fill the double blank?’
‘It will be doing what I can. More than you will do by living your time for yourself.’
‘If I had it carried on for me, as you have yours, I could be more free with it.’
‘Boys, boys!’ said Justine, with a hand on their arms. ‘It is a dreadful day, a day which puts more on us than fits our strength, but we shall gain nothing by being conquered by it.’
‘Will you come into the library?’ said Edgar to his father-in-law. ‘We can do no better than keep to our old ways.’
‘I will do what you tell me. I have not come here, seeing any good in myself. I must take what is done for me. And who but you will do anything?’
‘Whatever is done, is really done by Mother, Grandpa,’ said Justine, accompanying him to the door.
‘I am in no doubt about the bond between us, child.’
‘Are we to hear your uncle’s voice today?’ said Matty. ‘Is he to give us anything of himself?’
‘He is in the garden with Miss Sloane,’ said Aubrey. ‘Perhaps he has given all of it.’
‘Little boy, I like to see you try to do that with yourself,’ said Justine in her brother’s ear. ‘We know who would have liked it.’
‘We do not grudge them to each other,’ said Matty. ‘I do not, who gave them. But it seems that they might spare a little of what they have today. I might feel now that I went almost too far in giving. I must rise above the feeling, but today it seems far to rise.’
‘They may hesitate to intrude their happiness on our sorrow,’ said Justine.
‘They might give us a little of the one, dear, and share a little of the other. Your uncle lived with your mother for thirty years. It might be that he missed her. If he knew how I envy him those years!’
‘Oh, Aunt Matty!’ said Justine, shaking her head and turning away, and then turning impulsively back again. ‘Poor Aunt Matty, you are old and helpless and alone, and we give ourselves to our own sorrow and forget your greater need. For your need is greater, though your sorrow is less.
‘Yes, that is how you would see me, dear. That is how I should seem to you all, now that my sister is gone. I must thank you for trying to feel kindly towards what you see.’
Clement gave a faint laugh, and Matty looked at him as if in surprise at such a sound.
‘They keep on passing the library window and looking in,’ said Mark.
‘Oh, I know,’ said Justine. ‘They are waiting for Grandpa to go, so that Uncle may go in to Father. Their minds are full of us, after all. Miss Sloane is waiting to yield up Uncle to his brother. They say that sorrow makes us sensitive to kindness, but I am touched by that.’
Matty sat with her lips compressed and her hands on her chair, as if trying to face the effort of rising. Sarah watched her but did not offer her aid, knowing that it would not be welcome.
‘Well, we will go, dear, if they are waiting for that, if that is what we can do to help you. We came to try to give our help.’
‘Dear Aunt Matty, I believe it would be doing what you can. Grandpa has had his word with Father, and can go, strengthened by it. And Father can have the support of Uncle’s companionship. He is hardly in a state to give virtue out himself today.’
Matty turned and went to the door, hardly looking at her niece.
‘Where is Miss Griffin?’ she said, in a tone of asking for something that went as a matter of course.
‘I don’t know. She may not be up yet. We leave her to sleep late. She may not know that you are here.’
‘Well, no, dear, not if she is not awake. If she were, she would know that I should not have stayed away.’
‘I will go and see if she can come down.’
‘She can come down, dear.’
‘Well, I will go and see.’
‘Send her down, and then your grandfather can come with me. Until she comes he had better stay with your father.’
‘She may not be ready, Aunt Matty, Would not Miss Sloane go home with you?’
‘We are talking about Miss Griffin, dear,’ said Matty, with a smile and a sigh.
‘We may have to keep you waiting.’
Matty turned and went back to her place, loosening her cloak and drawing off her gloves in preparation for this period.
She sat down with her nephews, and began to distract their thoughts with lively accounts of their mother’s youth, which neither saddened them nor required them to suppress their feelings, seeming to forget her own trouble in her effort to help them in theirs. When Justine returned she hardly looked up, and maintained her talk as if fully occupied with it.
‘Miss Griffin will be ready quite soon. She has only to put her things together.’
Matty gave two bright nods in her niece’s direction, as if in reference to something that went without saying, and continued to talk.
Miss Griffin came down, a little abashed, a little out of heart, a little the better for her time under another roof. Matty just threw her a glance and gave herself to ending a tale. Then she looked round in faint question, as if expecting something to be taking place.