Ivy Compton-Burnett - Elders and Betters

“She did mind, of course,” said Dora, “but she thought that being fond of each other in our hearts was the chief thing.”

“But why not have better ways of showing it?”

“Our other ways are quite good,” said Julius,

“But isn’t it more of a pity, when people who are great friends try to hurt each other?”

“Our passions waxed strong within us,” said Dora, unconsciously falling into the idiom of another sphere of her life.

Julius gave her a nudge of warning.

“You did not hit your sister, did you, my boy?” said Thomas, struck by something battered in his daughter’s aspect, but assuming that his son would not transgress a certain limit.

“No,” said Julius, in a honest tone, producing no change on Dora’s face, and only a momentary one on Terence’s.

“Well, will you promise me never to fight each other again?”

“Yes,” said the children, concerned simply with ending the interview.

“Are you thinking what you are saying?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we will hope for the best,” said Thomas, rising with a smile and a sigh.

“Are you dull downstairs by yourself?” said Dora.

“Not more than I must be. Tullia is very good to me,” said Thomas, stroking her hair with the vaguely double purpose of caressing and smoothing it.

Dora flung herself into his arms.

“We do think about Mother; we think about her all the time.”

“I am sure you do,” said Thomas, reversing his opinions with what seemed to his children a commendable generosity. “And as you get older, you will think about her more and more.”

“And now sit down and get on with your tea,” said Tullia. “It will be bedtime before you have begun.”

The children laughed, and Thomas gave them a smile and followed his daughter.

Julius and Dora set to their meal in a rather formal manner, that arose from their sense of the latter’s outbreak and the impossibility of referring to it. Terence laid down his book and joined in the talk, and afterwards resumed it and remained at the table, feeling his presence a safeguard.

Julius fetched the notebook and laid it on the table before his sister.

“What is that for?” she said.

“The other entry,” said Julius, proffering a pencil.

“What about?”

“Hypocrisy.”

“What hypocrisy?”

“About Mother. Always thinking about her,” said Julius, on a patient note.

“Oh,” said Dora, after a slight pause, looking at her brother with widening eyes, “I can’t be held responsible for being caught up in a scene that had to be got through somehow. You didn’t help, did you? We could not worry the god with things like that. Everyone can’t simply stand apart and think they are superior because of it; we might make an entry about that. I don’t take you to task for doing nothing, and then being proud of it, and want us to take the matter to the god.”

Julius carried the notebook to the shelf and returned to the table.

“Shall we have a game?” he said.

Dora produced some boards and boxes from a drawer, and they settled to a game compounded of several, according to the proportion of pieces that survived. Presently Dora spoke in a preoccupied tone.

“I suppose our new life is fairly under way now?”

“There will be some more fits and starts,” said Julius. “We shall be supposed to be settled in a routine, and then condemned for being in it. Or we shall be supposed to be thinking about Mother, and then reproached for not putting our minds into our lessons. Oh, I know how it will be.”

“Perhaps Father will begin never to talk about Mother,” said Dora, holding a piece over the board.

“Well, I must say one sees the reason of it. If people can’t talk about their dead in a natural way, they had better be silent. It is an insult to their memories to indulge in the sort of talk that took place just now.”

Dora lifted her eyes.

“I mean that we heard from Father,” said Julius at once. “It is pure self-indulgence; that is what it is.”

“Of course we did fight,” said Dora.

“Well, and why not?” said her brother, with increasing violence. “Are we children or are we not? Are we likely to have the ways of a man and woman, or are we not? Had we been through an impossible day through no fault of our own, or had we not? Is it our fault that Mother is dead? I should like to hear Father answer those questions.”

“You did not ask them,” said Dora.

“The time was not ripe. The moment is not yet. But I hold them in store. And then let Father rue the day.”

“I don’t suppose you would dare to ask them. And it wouldn’t be any good to make him hate you.”

“There is such a thing as wholesome respect,” said Julius.

“We are in his power,” said Dora. “I suppose he could starve us if he liked.”

“Whatever base and dastardly thing he contemplates,” said Julius, striking an attitude, and losing sight as readily as his sister of Thomas’s having no inhuman tendencies, “whatever dark meditations have a place in his heart, there is no easy way for him towards them; there is no royal road. So let him keep the truth in his heart and ponder it.”

“He gives us food and clothes and has us taught,” said Dora, in a dubious tone, uncertain if mere fulfilment of duty should operate in her father’s favour.

“The minimum that a man could do,” said Julius. “The least amount of expense and thought, that would save him from the contempt of all mankind. Would you have him turn us out into the waste to starve? Would you have him cast us forth, as if no tie bound us?”

“As if we were not his kith and kin,” said Dora, falling into her brother’s tone. “As if we were penniless orphans, driven to seek a moment’s shelter within his doors. As if no sacred tie of blood bound us, hand and heart to heart.”

“Let him take thought for the dark retribution that is gathering,” said Julius, with a deep frown. “Let him take counsel with himself. That is all I have to say.”

“The bread he has cast upon the waters, will return after many days,” said Dora. “Then will he repent the grudging spirit that stayed his hand.”

Terence rose and left the room, disturbed by the activities of his brother and sister, whom he believed to be acting some kind of play, a view in which he was right.

“WELL, I HAVE a piece of news to break to you,” Said Anna, entering the drawing-room with her usual haste, but avoiding the eyes of her family. “Say what you will, it is going to come true, so you had better make up your minds to it.”

“Is it such unlikely news?” said Bernard.

“Well, it is of the kind that one’s own family may tend to find surprising. I don’t know that it is so in itself.”

“It concerns yourself, does it?” said Esmond.

“So the incredulity is starting from the bottom. I will wait for it to run its course.”

“It sounds as if you were going to be married,” said Jenney with a laugh, as if this were not a possible explanation.

“That is what I was going to say,” said Claribel.

“Right the first time,” said Anna, in a laconic manner.

“What?” said her brothers.

“I said you would think it improbable.”

“What are you saying, my daughter?” said Benjamin.

“So it is as unlikely as all that, Father?”

“Who is the fortunate man?” said Esmond.

“So family irony is about to begin,” said his sister, settling herself in a chair, as though to await it. “It will have to wear itself out. So I will let it go ahead.”

“We are entitled to know as much as that,” said Benjamin. “Indeed it can hardly be kept from us.”