Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“It is sticky,” said Miss Dolton, and said no more.

“No!” said Emma, with threat in her tone.

“I will make her a sandwich,” said Julia.

Emma watched the proceeding with concentration, took the sandwich with her eyes on it, and turned away.

“What do you say?” said Miss Dolton.

“No,” said Emma, in repudiation of formality.

“Whom do you love?” said Fanny, taking her up.

“Nurse,” said Emma, her eyes on the sandwich.

“But you love your mother too?”

“No,” said Emma, absently.

“Not even a little bit?”

“No,” said Emma, and looked at Miss Dolton, in anticipation of release.

“I must go to my uncle,” said Simon. “He grows more exacting with every hour. Of course he is nearly eighty-nine.”

“So you would not yet have been in his place, if he had not married,” said Julia.

“But in a different one of my own. That does not alter what I have said.”

“It is a pity it does not,” said Fanny. “We can only wish something would.”

“I must sometimes say a word of myself in my own house. People must realise that I exist. They tend to forget it.”

“Who does so? Your elder children?”

“You mean they are not at ease with me. That is a thing that cannot be helped. I was not so with my own father. And they should not be too much.”

“I am not so sure,” said Julia. “They might do better under less constraint.”

“They might do nothing. That is the danger. I am grateful for the compulsions of my boyhood.”

“I am not,” said Walter. “They rise up before me in the night. I might have been a less bitter poet without them.”

“People do expect eventual gratitude for early rigour,” said Fanny. “Only the opposite has aroused my own.”

“We will both face our deserts,” said Simon. “I shall not flinch before mine.”

“Your boys are young to begin calling you ‘sir’, Simon,” said Julia. “You never called your own father that.”

“It would have been as well if we had. All that ‘Father’ and ‘Uncle’ was effeminate. We were not daughters.”

“I wonder what made them think of it.”

“Their address of their tutor,” said Walter. “Another distant and authoritative male. I wonder how they dared to begin it. I suppose they could not any longer see Simon as a father.”

“Why do they never say goodbye to me?” said Julia, in a neutral tone.

“These unwritten laws grow up in families,” said Fanny. “They honour their father and their mother. Anything further would weaken it.”

“They shall do so to you, if you wish, Mater,” said Simon.

“No, I only value spontaneous remembrance.”

“What if we could see into our children’s minds?” said Fanny.

“It would confirm the wisdom of our course,” said Simon. “Their criticism would point to their own need of it.”

“They might say the same to you. Let us suppose we could hear them talk.”

“I can imagine Naomi taking the lead there.”

Naomi was walking in silence between her brothers, who were also silent. It was their habit to go in this way from their father’s presence. When they approached their great-uncle’s gate, a tall youth was standing by it, a plainer, etherealised copy of Simon at his age, and resembling Naomi and Graham.

“Good day to you,” he said with a smile. “I knew you would be passing. I came out to have a word with you before breakfast.”

“In our case it will be after it,” said Graham. “Miss Dolton has presided at ours and released us.”

“Yes, I remember you do not have meals with your parents.”

“We do nothing that would imply equality with them. We live in organised rigour two floors above.”

“What is the reason?” said Hamish, gently.

“To spare them our presence. And prepare us for the workhouse by accustoming us to its standard.”

“We are content to be ourselves,” said Naomi. “But being treated as what you are is different. Most of us are treated as if no one knew it,”

“And so can assume that no one does know,” said Graham.

“I hardly know what I am,” said Hamish.

“We can tell you,” said Ralph. “The son of the head of the family, and its future head.”

“We cannot foretell the future.”

“My father can. He foretold it again this morning. For us it remains as we said.”

“He seems to resent our prospect for us,” said Naomi. “And he should be grateful for a provision for us, that he cannot make himself.”

“I wonder why he thinks we shall be welcome,” said Graham. “It is not his usual view of us.”

“I have heard that the workhouse conditions are being improved,” said Hamish, smiling.

“I hardly think he can have heard,” said Graham. “Or it might not serve as our destiny.”

“It might suggest a higher standard on our floor,” said Naomi. “There seems to be an assumed correspondence with it.”

“I should hardly have thought your house was large enough for life on separate floors.”

“It is not,” said Naomi. “That may be why it is used for it. The workhouse is probably not large enough for the number of its inmates.”

“Where do the little ones live? I suppose on a still higher floor. I did the same at their age. Now I am with my parents. My father is eighty-nine today.”

“Wish him many happy returns of the day for us,” said Graham. “He will expect it the more for having got so used to it.”

“I have wished them for myself. And he did not seem surprised.”

“You will soon be the head of things,” said Ralph. “It would be my father’s prospect, if you had not been born. Perhaps he did not mean us to be of so little account.”

“Or meant only us to be,” said Naomi. “Now he has almost become so himself.”

“I should not have said so,” said Graham. “Either of him or Grandmamma. Sometimes I am afraid for Mother.”

“There is something in her that prevents it,” said Ralph.

“I hope there is indeed. It would be terrible for your mother to be so. Think what it would suggest about yourself! And Father would not be blind to it.”

“There is nothing in us to prevent it,” said Naomi. “Or if there was, it has been forced out of us. That is what underlies our training, that there might have been something in us to begin with like that.”

“It sounds as if your training may have been wasted,” said Hamish.

“It has been. It has made us feel we can rise above it. And if we feel we could be above anything, it is wasted indeed.”

“I suppose I have had no training.”

“Unless you give the name to Eton and Oxford,” said Graham.

“I do not. There is no comparison.”

“No, they lead you to think that things are due to you. And no one needs any training to think that.”

“Well, I must say goodbye. I should like to be coming with you.”

“Do not forget to say to your father for us: ‘O Great-uncle, live for ever.’ ”

“I will say it for you. And he does his best to obey.”

“Why is Hamish the pathetic one amongst us?” said Naomi, as they went on. “Perhaps the pathos is too settled in our case to count.”

“He is rich and can hardly enter the kingdom of heaven,” said Graham. “And by nature he belongs to it. Our true place is outside.”

“I should wish he was our brother, if I felt he could support being Father’s son.”

“Father is better to him than to us,” said Ralph. “But it may be because he is better than we are.”

“He ought to be,” said Graham. “We give back what we are given. We can hardly be high in the human scale.”

“Father can’t help being poor,” said Naomi. “It is clear that he would not have chosen it. That is why we are guilty in depending on him. It can only make him poorer.”