Ivy Compton-Burnett: Parents and Children

‘He does not think he is immortal, as Grandpa does.’

‘He does not need to yet. He has too good a span of life before him.’

‘The girls will share equally with us,’ said Daniel. ‘There is not enough for anything else.’

‘I see you do not think that Father is immortal.’

‘I feel that I am, and that I shall have to support myself through that eternity.’

‘And you think you will do it by coming out high on college lists.’

‘Well, what are your own anticipations?’

‘They are of an uneasy nature,’ said Graham. ‘I tell myself that the time of reckoning will be short; and I know that is said when things are very bad. But I would not change my last three years for yours.’

‘The moments to be exchanged are not yet.’

‘Moments instead of years. I hold to my opinion. And when people hold to things, they have not always lost them. Most great men have failed at the university.’

‘I do not miss the implication. But other kinds of men have done the same.’

‘What are you discussing?’ said Eleanor, coming into the hall.

‘Our own prospects,’ said Daniel.

‘Do you think you have good ones?’ said Eleanor, while Luce walked up with a noiseless step, and placing her hand on her mother’s shoulder, followed her eyes.

Eleanor had ambitions for her sons, and found herself assailed by doubts whether they were justified. She felt the position to be difficult for her, but had no uneasiness lest it might be the same for them.

‘If not, what have we?’ said Daniel.

‘You will make your mother proud of you?’ said Eleanor, who saw her preference for her eldest son as simple tribute to him.

‘I believe you see it as a discredit to me, that I have not won your interest in equal measure,’ said Graham.

Eleanor looked at him in faint surprise.

‘Do you think your ability is equal to Daniel’s?’

‘Yes, but different in kind.’

‘Any sign of self-respect is a good thing,’ said Daniel. ‘The respect of others may follow.’

‘I think it often comes first,’ said his brother.

‘Mother,’ said Luce, looking after the two young men, ‘do you know that you treat those boys quite differently?’

‘A mother often has an especial feeling for her eldest son.’

‘Isn’t that hard on the second one? It does not follow that he is inferior.’

‘He does not think he is,’ said Eleanor, in a tone of seeing a new light on the position. ‘So it has not had much effect on him.’

‘It may have had the more for that, Mother.’

‘I must try to be more impartial. I see that Graham has developed a good deal lately.’

‘Mother, you do honestly try to put right anything that is wrong,’ said Luce, looking at Eleanor with gentle appraisement.

‘I know you think my heart is in the right place,’ said Eleanor, with a note of dryness.

‘And why is that a poor compliment? It is the most fundamental of all things, in the sense that nothing counts without it.’

‘Perhaps that is why we never hear that a heart is anywhere else.’

‘Mother — you are a truer parent of your sons than you know,’ said Luce, going into silent laughter, with her eyes on Eleanor.

‘Hatton in a big bed, Nevill in a little bed,’ said Nevill Sullivan surveying the scene of which he spoke.

‘Lie still and go to sleep,’ said the nurse.

‘Hatton get up,’ said Nevill, in a tone of agreement.

‘Shut your eyes and try to sleep.’

‘Shut his eyes,’ said Nevill, keeping them shut with a trembling of the lids.

‘Don’t take any notice of me while I dress.’

‘Watch Hatton,’ said Nevill, turning on his side with the purpose.

‘Now you are wide awake. You must rest until I am ready. You went to sleep very late.’

‘As late as Hatton.’

‘Yes, nearly as late.’

‘As late as Hatton,’ said Nevill, on a higher note.

‘Yes, as late as that. That means you are tired this morning.’

‘He is tired,’ said Nevill, leaning back on his pillows.

‘Here are Honor and Gavin coming to see you.’

‘No,’ said Nevill, in a tone of repudiating the prospect.

‘Don’t you want to see them?’

‘No. Just Hatton and Nevill.’

‘They have come to say good-morning.’

Nevill looked his question of this purpose, and his brother and sister ran into the room at a halt in their morning toilet, followed by a nursemaid baulked in her intention of completing it. The girl was a solid, lively-looking child of ten, with a fair, oval face, observant, grey eyes made smaller by the roundness of her cheeks, thick bright hair, small hands and feet, and a benevolent, interested, rather complacent expression. Her brother was a ponderous, drab-coloured boy a year younger, with blunter features and large, pale, steady eyes; and Nevill was a brown-eyed, flaxen-haired child of three, with an ambition to continue in his infancy and meet the treatment accorded to it.

‘He is tired this morning,’ he said, looking at the others with an eye at once pathetic and observant. ‘He went to sleep as late as Hatton.’

‘And what does that signify?’ said Honor, giving a spring.

Gavin looked at her and followed her example, the method by which he gave the normal amount of activity to his life.

‘They shake the room,’ said Nevill, uneasily, to Hatton.

Honor and Gavin leapt about the floor, less damped by Hatton’s indifference than spurred by the nursemaid’s protests. Bertha Mullet was a freckled, healthy-looking girl of twenty-two, with eyes and hair and brows of the same fox-red colour, and something foxlike in the moulding of her face. She would sometimes push up her cheeks towards her eyes, and entertain the children with a representation of this creature, regarding the power as a simple asset, and supported in the view by Honor and Gavin, and more dubiously by Nevill, who found the performance realistic. Emma Hatton was a short, square woman of an age which had never been revealed, but revealed itself as about fifty-five, with a square, dark face, large, kind hands, deep, small, dark eyes, stiff, iron-grey hair, and a look of superiority, which was recognized and justified. She was a farmer’s daughter, who saw the training of children as her vocation and therefore pursued it. Honor and Gavin regarded her as the centre of their world, and Nevill expended on her the force of a nature diverted by nobody else. Her assistant looked up to her and bowed to her rule, but found in Honor a more equal, indeed a completely equal companionship.

‘Leap into the air,’ chanted Honor, proceeding by this method round the room.

Gavin repeated the words and the action.

‘Leap into the air,’ said Nevill to Hatton, in a tone that made his words a request to be assisted to follow the example.

‘No, you must rest a little longer.’

‘He must rest,’ said Nevill, in an explanatory tone to the others.

‘Why don’t you think of something to do yourself, Master Gavin?’ said Mullet, who had viewed the proceedings with a serious eye.

‘Because I don’t want to,’ said Gavin, giving an extra jump, by way of displaying a certain initiative.

‘He will think of something,’ said Nevill, nodding to Hatton in encouragement upon his own future.

‘How old are you, Hatton?’ said Honor, in an incidental tone.

‘Older than you, but not a hundred,’ said Hatton, automatically.

‘Hatton is a hundred,’ said Nevill, with pride. ‘Not yet, but very soon.’

‘Here is the mistress on the stairs! Here is your mother come to say good morning to you,’ said Mullet, in a rather bustling manner.

Honor began to fasten her garments, as if to be employed would give a better impression; Mullet drew her towards her and took the task into her own hands; Hatton and Nevill were unaffected; and Gavin’s unconcern was so marked that it became a positive condition.