Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“I shall,” said Sir Edwin. “You will be my son. You have been so in spite of the difference. There has been no difference in you. We shall not change to each other. That is, you will not to me. For me of course there is no change.”

“Mother, you are my mother!” said Hamish.

“My son, how much more that I have harmed you! That I have taken from you something that was yours! That I have made for you the difference you have seen! I am doubly so.”

“Naomi, I am your father,” said Simon. “And more so for what you know.”

Naomi did not speak.

“We shall be the closer for the threat to us,” said Hamish, moving to her. “And it is no more than a threat. There is no need to act on a truth that might never have emerged. It would not have in most cases, should not have, to my mind. Many must lie unsaid. We can put it from us and go forward.”

There was a pause, as the denial of this seemed stronger, that it was silent.

“Simon, there has been this between us,” said Fanny. “This in your mind through all our years. The truth is taken from our marriage, more than if you had told it. You lost your inheritance. Now you have lost your wife. How much you have lost!”

“My dear, I should not have had you for a wife. Or I might not, and you know it. Your own words prove it, show the risk we should have run. And it was better that we should marry, for you as well as for me.”

“My sister!” said Rhoda. “How I have longed to tell you, needed your sympathy and your reproach! How much better I should have been for both! But it might have done harm to so many, prevented so much. It might have prevented much for you.”

“It might have been right to prevent it. The truth should have been allowed to take its course. But there are my five children. What is there for me to say?”

“That you are glad it did not take it,” said Simon, “glad you did not know. There is nothing else to be said.”

“My son,” said Julia, “I am always your mother. I am not less so for what I have heard. But I must say today what I never thought to say. I am glad your father is not with us.”

“If he were, nothing would have happened, nothing of good or ill. My uncle would not have married. Hamish would not exist. Fanny might not have wanted to leave her sister. It has all followed from his death. And we can hardly wish it all undone. And of course you are less my mother, when that is what you say to me, at this moment in your life and mine. I hope I may not be less your son.”

“I suppose you knew, Walter?” said Julia. “You have always known?”

“I knew before Hamish was born, before Uncle Edwin knew. You see it was my right.”

“When Uncle Edwin knew!” said Ralph, before he thought. “That must have been a moment.”

“It was not what you think,” said Walter.

“It was not,” said Simon. “And you can surely think again. Your great-uncle is what you know.”

“Ah, how I have found it!” said Rhoda. “How I find it still! How I look always to find it!”

“What have you to say to me, Graham?” said Simon.

“What one man must say to another, sir. I understand it, regret it, feel for you that it has had to be revealed. That is a piece of ill fortune many would escape.”

“I did not look for talk from man to man,” said Simon, after a pause. “Speak to me as a son to his father. That is what I meant.”

“Then I feel that your words have meant little, sir. And always less than they should have. I can hardly feel anything else, or expect to be believed, if I said it.”

“What have you to say to me, Ralph? Speak without temper, so that I can judge of it.”

“Very much what Graham has said, sir. It is the only thing we can say. I have thought you hard and self-righteous; and I now feel you were both, and should have been neither.”

“Hard and self-righteous! So that is what you feel we should not be,” said Simon, looking at his sons.

“This was only one stumble,” said Graham. “We must not judge it as more than it is.”

“Again as man to man,” said his father.

“Simon, if you ask for opinions, you will hear them,” said Fanny. “And what did you look to hear?”

“My Naomi, what do you feel?” said Simon.

“I think this should be forgotten, that it should not have been revealed. Men keep their early troubles to themselves. They behave as if they had not been. And in some times and places children of one father have married.”

“My dear, do not make it worse for me. It is bad enough. If you knew how I tried to take that view, how hardly I gave it up! It is for you, not for myself, that I have told the truth. For myself should I have done so? For myself I kept silence for twenty-four years. Thought of you has forced me to break it. And it was only one stumble, as my kind son has said.”

“I think he was kind, Father. I think you are not to them, that you often have not been.”

“Then be kind to me now. You judge the want of kindness. And it is true that I have been embittered by the turn of my life, and betrayed it in dealing with theirs. Show me kindness now in my need of it.”

“Why were you so embittered? Hamish was your son. And everything would have gone to a son in the end.”

“I will tell the truth. I wanted for myself what was always to have been mine. The thought was the foundation of my boyhood. And I had looked to leave it to an acknowledged son. You think it all looms too large to me. I know it does. I do not deny or explain it. I accept it even from myself. I must be what I am.”

“I do not want the inheritance,” said Hamish. “I have not cared for the place in that measure. Your feeling for it makes it yours. And I have no real right to it. Yours is the first claim. When my father dies — you know whom I mean by my father — he will leave it to you, and make me a small provision. My needs will be slight. I shall never marry, as I cannot marry Naomi. I could not accept anyone else in her stead. I could never think of her as my sister. It is no help to me to feel she is that. It startles me that anyone should think so. That is my last word, the only one I have to say.”

“I have my word, Hamish,” said Sir Edwin. “It is my only one, as yours is. I shall leave the place to you, as what you are in name, and must not cease to be. If it is a millstone about your neck, you will carry it. You will fulfil your part in life, knowing it is yours. What we know further is not for us to pursue. It is not our own knowledge. We must not use it as such.”

“I see you are right, Uncle,” said Simon. “Nothing else would fill the need. The truth must lie underneath, as it has lain. How I wish it need not have been thrown into the light! How I tried to see another way! But we could not see one. There was none.”

“I will go away,” said Hamish. “I must go to other places, and must go far. I am going for Naomi’s sake and mine. We cannot meet in our new character, until we have suppressed the old, learned to pretend it has not been. I shall never be resigned to the truth, never find it natural, never do more than act a part. But that I must do before I return. And that she must learn to do by herself. It would not help us to be together. It would indeed be of little good. It is a thing each must do alone.”

“You may go, my son,” said Sir Edwin, using the words for the first time in his life. “But return in time for us to part. This does not serve as our farewell. And as your road lengthens, mine grows short.”

“I must say the same,” said Rhoda. “You may go, my son. But return in the end to your mother.”

Simon turned to his daughter, knowing that for her there was no help; and she understood him and let him draw her to his side.