Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“And what do you see in front?”

“What other men see. It is time I saw it. I must steer my own course, find work to serve myself and others. I will work for you here until you fill my place.”

“For me and not with me?” said Sir Edwin, almost with a smile. “Perhaps I need not fill it. It will be many years before my son — yes, that is what he is — is old enough to take it. He may never be suited to it. He may never wish to. The estate can carry the post, though the prospect must be different. It would solve your problem, and keep you together as a family.”

There was another silence.

“I accept the offer, Uncle. I should thank you for it. I have brought the change on myself. Without will or purpose, but by no fault of anyone else. I must face it as retribution. But what if I marry?”

“With your mother’s help you should be able. You will be glad that the boy is known as mine. We must have forgotten that he is not. He will send a difference through many lives. One should come at once. It will be best for you and your mother to leave this house.”

“For what reason, Uncle? I see there may be many.”

“When I die — and you realise I shall do so — my wife will be its mistress until her son’s marriage. As he grows up, he will expect it. She can no longer take matters into her own hands. And if you marry, a second family can hardly be here. It will be well to make the change.”

“I should have seen it, Uncle. But I have thought of things as established. They had always been as they were. My place will never be here again. As you say, it is a change through many lives.”

“It is a change through yours. And through mine in another degree. Your mother and I have talked of it. She saw what would be involved in my having a son. And she could not know I should have no other children. She did not speak of it to you, fearing to touch on a point that might be a sore one. But she assumed your thoughts were working on the same line.”

“I had better support the theory. She could hardly think anything else. I cannot explain that I was misled by the sense of my fatherhood. I see how simple I have been. She says I am in some ways simpler than other men. But I am not a man who must live a life based on inheritance. I should be ashamed to be.”

“You must discuss things with your mother. Her income will help you, as it has helped me. I shall face a certain straitness. But things should be possible for us all.”

“What is the boy to be called, Uncle?”

“Hamish,” said Sir Edwin, just glancing at his nephew’s face.

“I wonder at that. Though it bears out the supposed truth.”

“So you do not wonder at it. No one else will do so.”

“Uncle, may I ask you something once? Are you glad at all to be thought to have a son?”

“It is like you to ask it,” said Sir Edwin, and gave no answer.

Simon went to the room where his mother and brother were alone.

“I have had my talk with my uncle, and settled my fate. I am to continue my work here, on another basis. And we are to leave this house, we must suppose never to return. His wife is its mistress, as the mother of the heir. Nothing else would lead to the future. I am a humbler person, displaced, deposed. But I can make the best of it.”

“So am I,” said Julia. “And I can do the same. My son, I have not spoken of it. You were making the transition in your mind. I knew it was a hard and sad one.”

Simon was silent, seeing how his abstraction had been explained.

“I look up to you both,” said Walter. “I wish I could suffer something, so that I could quietly rise above it.”

“Your poetic talent may desert you,” said Simon, trying to be himself.

“No, it is a part of me.”

“As this house seemed of me,” said Simon, looking round. “Well, I am to leave it and lose it. And so are you, Mater, after as long a time. But it has not been so much your own.”

“As something of yours, my son, it has been mine. I have thought of you more than of myself.”

“So have I,” said Walter. “And that means a great deal of thought. I have shared the suspense that is worse than certainty. And I hardly think it is.”

Simon said nothing. His blindness to his coming displacement was the only error he never confessed to his brother.

“We shall have to find a house,” said Julia; “and one on the place, as you are to manage it. I cannot think of one.”

“There is Fanny’s house,” said Simon. “I do not know of another. Would it be well for me to marry her, and for all of us to live in it? It is fully large.”

“And it is good to have some reason for marrying,” said Walter.

“Simon, nothing will alter you,” said Julia. “You are more and more yourself.”

“Fanny would not want an emotional married life. She was not responsive with her sister. Marriages are arranged in other countries, and are often a success. They have a better basis than a passing emotion. I could get attached to Fanny, and I should make her a good husband.”

“Are we to consider her feeling for you?”

“Mater, you said that Simon was himself,” said Walter. “You must not be surprised by his being so.”

“She is lonely and unsettled,” said Simon. “She has no great feeling for anyone. It would make a better life for her. And I would say she had an affection for me, if I should not be accused of being myself.”

“For the moment you might almost be someone else,” said his brother.

“So I am to live as a member of her household, after being the mistress of this,” said Julia. “I said I thought of you more than of myself. I wonder if I can go on doing so.”

“You might manage the house, as your income is larger than Fanny’s. I daresay she would not mind.”

“I might not, and would not. I will order no other home that is not my own. And I should have no respect for her, if she did not mind. She would have no self-respect. Both things were really true in the other case.”

“I should have a particular respect for her,” said Walter. “I do not know what you mean.”

“Then you had one for Rhoda,” said his mother.

“I had. But somehow I lost it. I cannot give a reason.”

“You mean you will not. And I do not need one. We are saying the same thing.”

“When people do that, they always say such different things.”

“I mean no more than that people should fill their own place.”

“Well, they will do so,” said Simon. “But I think losing it imposes a greater strain.”

“I wonder if your uncle will have any more children,” said Julia.

“I do not think so. He and Rhoda are hardly on those terms.”

“That is what we thought. But we have had to think again. What would your father say to the course of things?”

“What would anyone say to what happens after his death? What happened before we lived, seems strange enough.”

“It is only when we are alive that things are normal,” said Walter. “It shows how important our presence is.”

“I wonder what they will call the boy,” said Julia.

“Hamish,” said Simon. “My uncle told me.”

“So you have been having some chat with him,” said Walter. “I somehow cannot imagine it.”

“He may feel some remorse towards you,” said Julia. “He has caused this change in your life. He should be grateful for the way you accept it. But when I spoke of you, he did not respond. I thought it was grudging of him. You are his brother’s son, and his brother has been the first person in his life.”

“And I think will remain so,” said Simon.

“He may get a strong feeling for his own son.”

“I think it will never be as strong.”

“You seem to be in his confidence, as we are not. I should not have expected it. It may be a sign of his compunction.”