The Elderbrook Brothers by Gerald Bullet Page B

arguing the point with a tire-somely persistent Emily, ‘he’ll have the whole place, my lass, and the best part of what goes with it.’ It seemed to Joe that Matthew was a very lucky fellow; and Matthew, being patient, bore with him, refrained from crossing him, and kept his own counsel. He was fond of his father: the bond between themwas deep. Yet there were times when if he could he would have broken away and set up on his own account, somewhere else. As his father grew more and more difficult—tachety was the Mercestershire word for it—he began to long for a farm and family of his own. A family of sons. He wanted sons before he was fully conscious of wanting a wife. He wanted sons (he said to himself) if only to show how they should be treated to get the best out of them. And that would be very differently from the way his father treated him. Three sons he would have, and perhaps two daughters; and he oddly failed to notice that that was precisely the pattern of the family in which he himself was part.
    Joe, in his ripe age, grew sententious. The enunciation of aged platitudes became a habit with him. If a difference of opinion arose about whether or not some new machine or method should be given a trial he would say: ‘What was good enough for my father ought to be good enough for my son.’ In this he did himself scant justice; for in fact, though he did not remember it, he had often enough disputed with his own father, and improved on that father’s ways whenever he had a chance. History, which is human nature writ large, was at its old trick. We live and do not learn.
§ 14
    Guy’s Aunt Dolly—for Guy was her favourite—lived in an outlying suburb of Mercester, on the very edge of the country, whence, about once a year, she visited Upmarden. She was Joe’s eldest sister and the widow of a Mercester jeweller known as ‘poor Morton’ or ‘your Uncle Morton’: a small, lean, leathery-faced old lady with bright birdlike eyes, nutcracker features, and a freedom of speech surpassing her brother’s. She insisted not merely on coming, but on being invited in due form, by Emily, in a series of letters that began by hoping that dear Dolly would soon be able to spare time to ‘pay usyour long promised visit’ and ended by assuring her that the day she suggested was more than convenient, it was perfect, that everybody was enchanted by the prospect of seeing her, and that the train would be punctually met by Joe or one of the boys. When this ceremony had achieved its purpose, and the guest been secured, Emily did not scruple to tell her, in her mild way, what she thought of it. ‘Why you always wait to be asked, Dolly, is a mystery and a wonder. Is Joe your brother or isn’t he?’ ‘Brother indeed, my dear,’ said Aunt Dolly, ‘and a rare scamp he was,
I
can tell you. But he’s only the man about the place here. You’re the one that counts.’ ‘Ah yes,’ Emily would retort, with a double irony. ‘And you’ve only known me six-and-twenty years. Almost strangers we are.’ Aunt Dolly took the banter in good part and admitted the justice of it, but it made no difference: the procedure had always to be followed, and in time the banter itself became a ritual part of it.
    In the eyes of the children Aunt Dolly was prodigiously old, so old that she apparently had difficulty in remembering that Joe was not still a little boy. ‘Well, Joey dear, how are the crops?’ she would say, in exactly the same tone, kindly and half-humorous, as she used towards Felix in asking if he still liked his wonderful grammar school and was he learning his lessons nicely. And on Joe’s assuring her in his genial barking voice that all was well on the farm she would answer indulgently: ‘That’s right, dearie.
There
’s a clever boy!’ This attitude to their father astounded the children, and as they