Ivy Compton-Burnett - Elders and Betters

Their mother came out of some bushes and approached them. “What is the joke?” she said with a smile.

“We were having a comic dance round our Chinese temple,” said Dora, with an instinct to suppress the god.

“I saw you kneeling in front of that rock. That is the temple, is it?”

“Yes, we had to sacrifice to our priest,” said Dora, speaking as though the game were real to her.

“He takes his share of burnt offerings,” said Julius in the same tone.

“Does he live in the rock?” said Mrs. Calderon.

“Yes, it is his temple,” said Dora, with a faint note of impatience, as if at her mother’s inattention.

“And what do you sacrifice to him?”

“Flowers and grasses and acorns and things,” said Julius.

“I don’t see any of them there.”

“No, if we put them there, it would not seem that he had taken them.”

“Then how do you know what kind of things they are?”

“We have a store of them,” said Julius, “and take some out when there is time to clear them up.”

“And where is the store?” said his mother.

A communication passed between her children, best described by saying that it stopped short of a glance.

“In the cave of the secret offerings,” said Dora, with a touch of solemnity.

“We broach it at the appointed hour,” said Julius. “It is too near to lesson time to-day.”

“I should think it is,” said Mrs. Calderon, something troubled and searching leaving her face. “It is long past ten o’clock. I think you must have known. Now didn’t you really guess the time?”

Another interchange of thought occurred and decided the course.

“We … I didn’t until I heard the clock strike,” said Dora, in a suitably discomfited tone, raising her eyes to her mother’s.

“Well, but that was fifteen minutes ago,” said the latter, with the relieved reproof of one whose view of deceit made other sins virtues beside it. “You know you are wasting your time and keeping Miss Lacy waiting. Didn’t you know, Julius?”

“Yes,” said the latter, also raising his eyes. “After the clock had struck, I did.”

“And didn’t either of you say anything about it? Didn’t you, Dora?”

“No,” murmured Dora, dropping her eyes and stirring the gravel with her shoe. “I thought Julius mightn’t have heard.”

“And what about you, my boy? Did you think that Dora had not heard?”

“I didn’t know she had,” said Julius, in an abashed undertone.

“Oh, you guilty pair! I hope I shall not hear such a thing again. And now do you expect me to come and steer you through your interview with Miss Lacy?”

“Yes, please,” said Julius and Dora, putting each a hand into hers. “It would be better if you were there.”

“Now it must be the last time,” said Mrs. Calderon, walking between them to the house. “You make me feel that I am a party to disobedience.”

Jessica Calderon was a tall, spare woman of fifty-four; with dark, troubled eyes, thick, black hair so plainly bound that it escaped attention; a pale, even skin that was her only likeness to her brother, Benjamin Donne; and a fine, oval face whose signs of wear were so undisguised, that they became a personal characteristic. She gave the impression of being under some strain, and secretly preoccupied with it, so that those who were with her felt unsure of her full attention. She held the accepted faith and lived according to it, a trait that had possibly descended in another form to her children.

A small, grey-haired lady of sixty was seated in the hall, reading the paper. She glanced up as the group approached, but returned to the page. Her pupils were prepared for attention and reproof, but on relinquishing the paper she removed her glasses and polished them, and greeted them with a smile.

“I am afraid they are late, Miss Lacy,” said Jessica.

“I am not; I know they are,” said Miss Lacy, laughing and continuing to polish. “I am the better of it by a large part of The Times.”

“I have told them it must not happen again. I am sure you will not allow it.”

“I don’t know how I am to prevent it,” said Miss Lacy, in a low, sibilant, incisive voice, raising small, bright, blue eyes from a round, sallow, peculiar face. “I am not able to cast my spells upon them from afar. And I am afraid that afar was the word.”

“They are generally in the garden,” said Jessica.

“But I am not,” said Miss Lacy, so much on the instant that the feeling under her words was clear. “I come here to teach, not to find occupation in the garden.”

“If I put a bell here, will you ring it?” said Jessica, in a humbler manner.

“By all means, if it is where it will catch my eye. I will impersonate the muffin-man to the utmost of my power.”

“Now obey the bell at once, children,” said Jessica. “I am quite ashamed that Miss Lacy has waited for you.”

“I have not done so; I do not follow that practice; I do not recommend it. I am not sure that I do not regret my half-hours with The Times.”

“Does this happen often?” said Jessica.

“Often? Does it?” said Miss Lacy, wrinkling her brows in an effort to recall what did not make a deep impression. “No, I don’t think so; I must not do people an injustice. But I would not say that it strikes me as quite unfamiliar.”

Jessica turned to an elder daughter, who was with her brother in the hall.

“Might you not have fetched the children, Tullia, my dear?”

“I happen to be of Miss Lacy’s mind,” said the latter, in a slow, clear voice. “And when a young man is present, the errands are his affair.”

“What a cruel theory to hold about a class of unconscious creatures!” said the person named, remaining in his seat. “And Miss Lacy gave no sign that anything was amiss. She seemed to have come to read The Times, and to be attaining her end.”

Miss Lacy’s laughter was heard from the stairs, which she was mounting with her pupils.

“Is there any news in The Times?” said Tullia, as if giving no further thought to the matter.

“I did not like to take the paper from Miss Lacy. And I did not really want to. I cannot bear news. It is all about foreign countries that are separated by the sea, and that is so cheerless for a lover of an English fireside. And I am always afraid of meeting some sort of heroism; and that seems to consist of finding some dreadful situation and throwing oneself into it, or of finding oneself in it and wilfully remaining there. And then I imagine myself in it, behaving in just the same way, and my emotion is too much for me. And when I think of other people seeing me in it, the thought quite unfits me for real life. So I cannot hunt for two hardy children in the garden. I think I have made it clear.”

“And yet you are going to teach Reuben Donne.”

“I am trusting to his being a poor, lame boy. I hope he is not a great, hearty creature. If he is, I have been misled. I know he is thirteen, and that is a suffering age. And he won’t have the unconsciouus cruelty of real childhood. It is so shocking for cruelty to be unconscious. It makes it seem so deep and ingrained, as if it might lead to anything. And I believe it does. I once read a wicked book, called a school story.”

“What made you think of teaching him?” said Jessica. “I do not mean it is not a good idea.”

“I think it is a gross and humiliating one. All of you made me think of it, when you kept on saying that I had no regular work. I believe you said I was not earning a penny, though it sounds too crude to be believed. I do like the old-fashioned way of never mentioning money; it was much better not to know when there was not enough. And people really did not know, because they used suddenly to find themselves on the brink of ruin. There is a certain largeness about that. I believe that one of you referred to me as a strong young man, as if I were applying for a situation, and that is quite unjust.”