Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“I do not think it is.”

“Well, perhaps you understand each other.”

“I understand his feeling at the moment.”

“It is good of you to try to, my boy.”

“It does not need much effort.”

“Well, can you explain his aloofness? We have tried to show him sympathy.”

“His life is strange to him. He is not of an age to adapt himself.”

“It has turned out to his advantage. It gives him a stake in the future. Well, I must go and see his wife and son. You will both see them later.”

“That should have been in a play,” said Walter. “With the audience knowing the truth.”

“Well, it was, with you as audience.”

“I felt too much involved in it. I found it a perilous passage. I suppose there will be many.”

“Until we have forgotten the truth. We must see that we forget it.”

“I must ask it once, Simon. How will you feel to the boy?”

“I will answer it once. I feel I am giving him my place. It is a reasonless feeling, but I have it. And he will have a father.”

“How will it be, as time goes on?”

“I shall watch him with personal feeling. But in the end I shall be in thrall to him. I shall have my deserts, and hardly proportionate ones. It must make its difference.”

“How will you feel to Rhoda?”

“We shall become more distant. We have done so. Under my uncle’s eye what else could be? And she may be my sister-in-law.”

“I suppose you will take steps to bring that about.”

Simon did so, and a week or two later led Fanny to his mother.

“Mater, you have wished for a daughter. Here I bring one to you. I told you my hopes. Now I have the better thing to tell.”

“My reproach is taken away,” said Walter. “I am justified in being what I am.”

“I have felt as Simon says,” said Julia. “Now my future opens in my daughter’s house. I shall not be without a refuge, as I grow old. She shall not be without a mother.”

“What will your uncle say to it, Simon?” said Fanny.

“He can only give his consent. His feeling will not be strong. He has little affection for me. We have little for each other. He could not forgive my realising that I should come after him. But now that is in the past, we may understand each other better.”

“Or forget you ever understood each other. That is what that usually means.”

“It was terrible to see their understanding,” said Walter. “Simon knew Uncle had to die, and did not disguise it.”

“Well, now he has to live,” said Fanny. “And anyhow he is going to.”

“I could not profess to think he was immortal,” said Simon.

“People cannot suffer our picturing things without them.”

“A man of seventy could hardly feel in that way.”

“You don’t know how people feel. The old do not think how good it is to be young. They pity the young for not being what they are themselves. And the pity is real.”

“So everyone pities everyone else,” said Julia. “And I daresay with reason. Life can be a sorry thing.”

“That is true,” said Sir Edwin, entering the room. “But it responds in a measure to ourselves. I used to wonder if the difference in us would give out. But it never did.”

“What do you think, Deakin?” said Simon.

“As Sir Edwin does, sir. I am confronted by the lack of standard.”

“What do you say to the changes? No doubt you know of them.”

“It is for me to accept them, sir.”

“You will miss the mistress. You think of my mother as that.”

Deakin moved about his duties without reply.

“I daresay you would come with us. But you are above our level.”

“Deakin belongs to the house,” said Sir Edwin, easily. “You force us to your level, Simon.”

“Yes, Sir Edwin. Man and boy I have belonged to it.”

“And I come from outside,” said Julia. “I have no place.”

“It is what the lady must do, ma’am,” said Deakin.

“I am to hang up my hat in my wife’s hall,” said Simon.

“No, you are not,” said Fanny. “The house will depend on your support. I can barely struggle along in it. And I shall rely on your mother and not acknowledge it.”

“What a change it all is! We must wonder what my father would say to it.”

“So in your place you do so,” said Sir Edwin. “In mine I know what he would say.”

“He will always be first to you, Uncle.”

Sir Edwin made no reply.

“Your son is so healthy and contented, Edwin,” said Julia. “He reminds me of Simon at his age.”

“They are first cousins,” said Fanny. “They are often more alike than brothers.”

“He might have been like Walter. But he makes me think of Simon. His eyes are set in the same way. I shall like to watch him grow up. He somehow seems nearer to me than a nephew by marriage.”

“You may catch a likeness to Hamish,” said Sir Edwin. “That would not be unnatural.”

“I am glad he is to have his name, Edwin. It carries on the meaning of your lives.”

“You might have wanted the name for your own grandson.”

“He can have another,” said Simon. “But I hope I shall have a daughter. There is nothing for a son to inherit, and a girl means more to a father.”

“There is only this child between you and the place,” said Sir Edwin. “But it is not a line for your thought.”

“Yes, of course you will have no other children. But I do not know why I should say that.”

“No one can know why you say anything, Simon,” said Julia.

“If we have a child, it will be a first cousin to this one,” said Fanny. “And another cousin through you and your uncle.”

“Yes, they would be doubly related. A marriage would not be possible.”

“It would be legally so, but perhaps not desirable,” said Julia.

“It could not be allowed,” said Simon. “But the question is not urgent.”

“It is idle to plan the future. It is not in our hands. It may grow out of our actions.”

“Those are often hardly deliberate.”

“I hope not often,” said Sir Edwin. “We have reason, and should be governed by it.”

“What do you think, Deakin?” said Walter.

“I have found that people may be governed by other things, sir.”

“Lower things, you mean?”

“Well, sir, it is hard not to use the word.”

“Well, I must go home,” said Fanny. “To the house that will soon be that to me again.”

“I will come with you,” said Julia, “and talk of what has to be done. It is to be home to me as well.”

There was a minute of silence when the three men were alone.

“It was like a Greek tragedy,” said Walter. “With people saying things with a meaning they did not know, or with more meaning than they knew. It is not the first today. Will it always be like this?”

“It must not be,” said his uncle. “We are to forget the truth. It must not lie below the surface, ready to escape. It is strange enough, Simon, that you are the person whom we doubt.”

“You can hardly do so, Uncle. You know what I have at stake. What would be the cost to me, if the truth were known? In itself it has cost me enough.”

Sir Edwin left the room, and Walter turned to his brother.

“What kind of a man is our uncle?”

“He is no better than you or I. It is best for himself that the truth should be hidden. If it emerged, his dignity would suffer, a thing he has never faced. And he could hardly wish me to lose any more. I have lost enough. And I have done him no deliberate harm.”

“You must have made love to his wife.”

“If there are to be no more words, let there be none.”

“Tell me once what you feel about everything, Simon. Somehow it is hard to know.”