Ivy Compton-Burnett: Elders and Betters

“You should have given us notice, sir,” said Ethel in grave reproach.

“So my home is not a place where I can walk in at any minute.”

“The furniture only arrived to-day,” said Jenney.

“Of course you have done wonders in the time,” said Bernard. “But those wonders are not as good as other kinds. Cook, will you join me in a muffin?”

“I should not dare, sir.”

“Why does it frighten you?”

“Cook means that muffins disagree with her,” said Jenney.

“It is an odd idea that muffins don’t get on with Cook. It seems to complicate the claims of her calling.”

“I don’t often take the risk myself,” said Ethel, in a dispassionate manner.

“You and I will face it together, Ethel.”

“I have had my tea, thank you, sir,” said Ethel, her tone indicating that Bernard’s view of consecutive meals was by no means her own.

“What have you done with your luggage, Bernard?” said Jenney in sudden thought.

“I added it to a pile that was waiting at the station.”

“Ours,” said Ethel and Cook, at one moment.

“Mine too now,” said Bernard. “We can have a cosy little unpacking together.”

“Did you walk from the station?” said Jenney.

“Walk? Me? If I had done that, I would have carried the luggage. I got a lift in a cart.”

“A tradesman’s cart?” said Ethel, in simple apprehension.

Cook paused in what she was doing, and waited for the answer.

“I think all carts have to do with trade,” said Bernard. “This one had. It was full of closed packages, so I could not tell what trade it was.”

“The man would have told you,” said Jenney, whose interest did not fail in any human matter.

“I don’t mean that I was uninterested, or thought it was not my affair. I just did not think to ask, and he did not think to tell me.”

“Well, the cart will not come to the house,” said Ethel.

“The man said it was going to come every morning,” said Bernard.

Cook and Ethel faced this prospect in silence.

“I had better go to Anna, Jenney. She will say that I have hardly spoken to her.”

“And you have not done much more, have you?” said Jenney.

Cook and Ethel followed Bernard with their eyes, as he left the room.

“He is always himself,” said Ethel.

“The tradesmen’s cart!” said Cook, with the ghost of a smile.

“Well, he does not look as if he had to,” said Ethel.

“It only wants the dignity to carry it off,” said Cook.

“I wish the luggage was here,” said Ethel, on a wistful note. “It is inconvenient to be kept in an unsettled state.”

“I have sent the master a card,” said Jenney, overcoming any obvious haste to reply. “He is sure to think of it to-morrow. It is the last time I shall send anything to that address.” She ended on a note of sentiment, forgetting that, as she never left the family, it might be also the first time; and Cook and Ethel also forgot it, and moved their heads in sympathy.

“We come to the end of chapters,” said Ethel.

“They go past us,” said Cook, sitting down at the table and laying her hand upon it.

Ethel took a seat at her side and closed her fingers over the hand, and Jenney accepted this as a signal for withdrawing. She also accepted it as the signal of a good deal more, and would have been taken aback by the talk that ensued.

“Miss Jennings will have a front place,” said Ethel, with a sigh.

“If anyone in the house,” said Cook.

“We can’t estimate the privilege of living with her,” said Ethel, using words that would have given Jenney not so much a sense of compliment as of security.

“Such an example. And before our eyes,” said Cook, with less feeling for an example in another place.

“You would think that Miss Anna would be influenced by it.”

“A leopard can’t change his spots,” said Cook, moving to the stove with an air of accepting the law of immutability for herself.

“The bell! Miss Anna’s, of course,” said Ethel.

“What can she want on the first night?” said Cook, with her own ideas of cause and effect.

Ethel returned with a grim smile on her face.

“The gentlemen’s rooms are to be done the first thing to-morrow. As if that couldn’t wait for the morning! Bringing a person up for it! She must do it to assert herself.”

“Those do that, who need to,” said Cook.

“If she thinks I am going to begin them to-night, she makes a mistake,” said Ethel, sitting down and locking her hands round her knees, as if to ensure their leisure.

“There are only four of them for dinner,” said Cook.

“And I daresay Miss Jennings would as soon be down here with us,” said Ethel, as if this partly disposed of Jenney’s needs. “To say nothing of Mr. Bernard. I hope the gentlemen will remember the luggage. It was best to bring none of it, as we couldn’t bring it all. And these things are nothing to gentlemen, are they?”

THESE MEMBERS OF the household arrived on the next afternoon, bringing the luggage that was nothing to them, by means of several cabs. But they appeared less concerned with it, than those who had left it behind.

“Well, my daughter,” said Mr. Donne, embracing Anna in a conventional but ironic manner, and introducing these qualities into his speech; “so we are united once again. A family roof will continue to hold us together.”

“As the necessary amount of thought and effort has come first,” said Anna, with blunt readiness.

Bernard strolled into the hall and confronted rather than met his father.

“Well, Bernard,” said the latter, in the same tone.

“Well, Father,” said Bernard, as though he found the filial term unsuitable but hard to avoid.

Benjamin Donne was a short, thickly-built man of sixty, with black hair that was not so much varied as confused by streaks of white; round, hazel eyes like his daughter’s, but of a darker shade, and set in a network of wrinkles from which hers might always be free; a nose that overshadowed and almost distorted his face; sudden, uncontrolled movements, and an expression rendered enigmatic both by nature and himself. He bent over Anna with his hand on her shoulder, and listened to Jenney with the interest accorded to a guest, the ironic atmosphere pervading all that he did. He was a man at war with himself, and tended to find himself in this relation to other people. His friends took different views of him, some seeing him as harsh and forbidding, and others as a man of natural, if suppressed affections, and both being right. He had been a widower for twelve years, and had not thought of marrying again, having found the conflicting elements of married life too much. He had greatly desired children, but was sufficiently provided with these.

His two younger sons, who had travelled with him, edged past him and disappeared into the house. Esmond, the elder, was four years younger than Anna, and taller and darker than she, with fairly good features, a developed head, unsettled, grey eyes, a drooping carriage, an irritable and often irritated manner, and a certain uncouthness in person and dress, that in her appeared in manner and speech. He gave a limp hand to the women of his family, less by way of greeting than of indicating that he did not intend an embrace, and turned his eyes on the house with an interest limited to its concern for himself.

Reuben, the youngest by a number of years, evinced the ungainly quality in his physique. He was a boy of thirteen, with coltish, uncontrolled movements, a lively, nervous face, defensive, dark eyes that were sadder than his feelings warranted, and a definite lameness resulting from an early accident. He had a straight but unobservant gaze and a confident, carrying voice, and thought less of his handicap than of what other people thought of it.