Ivy Compton-Burnett - Two Worlds and Their Ways

“But I thought they were children above the average, and would naturally go beyond the others.”

“My dear, good wife, there you are again! We must accept what they do, not plan it ourselves beforehand. That is how the trouble came.”

“We are above the average in many ways,” said Clemence, with a pang for her mother’s baffled, disappointed face. “Miss Firebrace said we were. That is how it all began. We did do better than the others, and then we tried to keep it up more than we could.”

“If only you had been content to be true to yourselves! How proud I should have been! Even now I can’t help being proud of what you did at first. But nothing counts but trustworthiness. Or nothing counts without it.”

“Proud we cannot be, my pretty,” said Sir Roderick, bringing another pang to his daughter’s heart, and as he saw it, again tightening his hold. “We must be content without that. But there are better things that we can be. We can be loving and loyal enough for the feelings to hold through a test, and our children are not the people whom they should fail. We will let the dead past bury its dead, and go back to the old days and the old ways and the old happiness.” Sir Roderick glanced at his children, saw the admiration in their eyes, and felt that he and they were at one.

“But is that making it too easy for them? Will it lead to their taking too light a view of it? Is it really indulging ourselves? God knows, I should like to make it easy. But is that where the danger lies?”

“We need not avoid self-indulgence at their expense. And we need not fear it has been easy. There was the effort and suspense through the term, and at the end the shock and shame. And heavy guns were brought to bear on them. Account was not taken of their helplessness.”

At these words the children gave their mother her answer. They broke into convulsive tears, and at the sound the group outside the room turned and vanished up the stairs. Lesbia alone held her ground, and in a moment moved towards the door.

“Well, I will be guided by you, Roderick,” said Maria. “I suppose I often am, though I hardly realise it. I will leave the burdens on you and follow my own heart.”

“You will not be wrong, my pretty. And so the trouble belongs to the past. We shall remember its cost, and the memory will do its work. We shall not talk of it again. It will be as if it had never been. And now I hear Lesbia coming, I can always recognise that noiseless step.”

“Run up to the schoolroom, my dears,” said Maria, in her ordinary tones. “We do not want her to see you in tears. After all, you are in your own home and have a right to happiness there. And you have a right to your mother’s help in leaving a stumble behind. It is not the end of everything. Go up and settle back into the life that suits you, and lets you be what you are. It was breaking it that was the mistake; and the mistake was ours, not yours.”

Sir Roderick looked at his wife in admiration of the qualities of motherhood. Lesbia passed the children with her eyes held from their faces, as though she divined their mother’s wish; and a spasm of annoyance crossed the latter’s face at her observance of it.

“Well, the telegram is sent, and the way is clear,” said Lesbia, in an almost cordial tone, resuming her seat. “I shall be sorry not to see Clemence about the place. And I am sorry too, Roderick, for the pains and penalties of changing the plan. They must follow as the custom has it.”

“Do you mean that we have to pay for next term, even though they do not return?”

“Yes, that is what I mean,” said Lesbia, smiling. “And you make me feel I might have said it. Why not put a simple thing simply? The rule of a term’s notice cannot be broken. Of course Clemence can take the term with us, if you prefer it.”

“That would be a mistake, when she is going to leave you.”

“Yes, I think it would. Yes, it would be a mistake,” said Lesbia, her tone trailing away on a reflective note. “To return to variety in teaching and companionship, before resuming the routine of sameness. It would not be the right transition.”

“And I suppose we owe a term’s fees to Lucius too?”

“That is the position. But Lucius may be more corruptible. He may not observe the integrity of the law, as it exists between school and school. He may stoop to accepting the bribe of gratitude.”

“I do not wish any favour done me.”

“Then you owe him the fees. But I think in your place I should not object to it,” said Lesbia, giving her little laugh. “And I think I detected the inclination in you, pending the withdrawal of the word, favour. Is not that so, Roderick?”

“The word, favour, was my own.”

“A favour is what it would be,” said Lesbia, gravely. “By the way, what does Clemence think of the change of plan? Does she herself wish it? It is heedless of us to pass over the person most concerned.”

“I think she is too sad and ashamed to raise her voice in the matter,” said Maria.

“Poor Clemence! A concern for her will always remain with me, Maria, as it does for any of my pupils. The term behind us will be the term when Clemence was with us, or will be until further terms have superimposed their impression. Oh, and one more thing — it is the very last, and we may allow ourselves to be glad of it — how about the responsibility for Miss Petticott? It is a heavy one.”

“She does not shrink from it,” said Sir Roderick. “The fact that the children came to grief when they left her, and had never done so before, is in its way an encouragement. It does not suggest that there is much wrong with her methods.”

There was a pause.

“Are you speaking seriously, Roderick?”

“Yes. What is wrong with what I said?”

“What is education but a preparation for life?”

“A school is not life.”

“Then what is it?”

“A little artificial corner of it, designed to turn out people to pattern, who are already made to it. I do not claim that mine are average children.”

Lesbia appeared to give way to genuine amusement.

“Pride may go before a fall,” she said. “But it may also continue after it. Well, I daresay that is a happy thing. And it does not do to be too cast down by our falls and failures. They may not be much more than mistakes.”

“And we learn by our mistakes,” said Sir Roderick. “So what would happen to us, if we did not make them?”

“My pride has not survived this,” said Maria, wiping her eyes. “But now let us talk of something else. Wrong-doers are not the only people in the world.”

“Well, if we all do wrong, I suppose they are,” said her husband.

“These wrong-doers bore themselves well, considering how hard that was in their place,” said Lesbia. “Yes, they did, Maria. We recognise it. They would have been able to build on that foundation, the foundation laid by themselves. But they are to have the hard part and not its recompense. That in itself may be a lesson.”

“The hard part has been enough,” said Sir Roderick. “They do not need anything more.”

“No, it is not to be, Roderick,” said Lesbia.

“I thought for the moment it was all going to start again.”

“I do not think we, any of us, want that.”

“Well, what news have you of yourselves and your affairs?”

“This has been one of our affairs,” said Lesbia, simply. “And as for selves, I sometimes doubt whether I have one. It gets so merged in other people’s.”

“They survive in most of us,” said Sir Roderick. “Mine has done so in me. Or enough to enable me to take my children into their home, and keep them there, whatever the cost.”

“Well, we have counted that,” said Lesbia.