Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“Any behest of yours is safe with us, Edwin,” said Julia. “That is why I feel that mine is with you.”

Fanny was looking at Naomi, knowing her thought.

“You would like to go, my dear? I would come with you.”

“No, I can be here, as Hamish will be. We can both do what we must.”

“There is the carriage!” said Rhoda. “I was listening for it. I sent it to meet the later train, in case Hamish was on it. It joins the train from the coast. Yes, he is there! I hear him.”

Hamish’s voice came across the hall in greeting to Deakin.

“Mr. Hamish!” said the latter at the door.

“Why, everyone is here! Mother, it is good to see you. Father, I am glad to be with you again. I have made all the haste I could—”

“To be in time,” said Sir Edwin. “It was the thing to do. I am further downhill than you knew, nearly at the bottom. But it is my place, and I am easy in it. The hill has been a long one. You will be with me, as I go to the end.”

“I will always be with you, Father. How are you, Aunt Fanny and Aunt Julia? And Naomi and all of you? I am glad to be amongst you again. I am not happy away from my place. I find it is mine.”

“Exile has done its work,” said Sir Edwin. “It has taught you what you had to learn. There is to be some meaning in our years together. It is an old man’s wish, to leave his difference behind. But an old man is what I am.”

“It will be as you say, Uncle,” said Simon, “as we all see it, would all choose it to be. It is not an old or a young man’s wish. It is the wish of us all.”

“So I look at the years ahead, and see them as you will live them. But, Hamish, I want your word on it, your promise that you will take my place, to the best that is in you, to the end of your days. I have been waiting for it. And I should not wait too long.”

“I am to give it, Cousin Simon?” said Hamish, lowering his voice and just glancing at Simon. “I know this is how you wished it to be, that you would not accept my other word. You said you would wait for me to unsay it. You spoke the truth, as you seemed to speak it? I know you are what you seem to be. I am to give my father my promise?”

“You are to give it. I need not say again what I have said.”

“I promise it, Father,” said Hamish. “I will do my best. There is much that is beyond me, but I will try to reach it. And I am not to be without support.”

“So our great-uncle goes in peace,” murmured Ralph. “And Father is to stay where he is. He seems to be prepared for it. But he was also prepared for something else.”

“Hamish has suffered a sea change,” said Graham. “Into something that is strange, if nothing more. It has come of his travels. But I am not sure what it is.”

“Nor am I,” said Naomi. “Though I saw it in a moment, heard it in his first word. But we shall soon know.”

They were not to know at once. That evening Sir Edwin was weaker, and in the hour before daybreak he died. Rhoda and Hamish and Deakin were with him. The meeting and its questions had told on him, and they knew it and were at hand. He died with the ease of his great age, and it seemed more of a change than a grief. He had let them feel his life was past.

It was not until after the burial, that the families met in Hamish’s house.

“So you are our head now, Hamish,” said Julia. “You are in your father’s place — in the — the place that falls to you. You will find it a great change.”

“We are haunted by double meanings,” said Ralph to Naomi. “They hover about us.”

“No one else would speak of it,” said Simon, in a low, sharp tone. “Where is the need to do so?”

“This day brings another back to me,” said Julia. “The day when my husband was buried, Edwin’s younger brother! All those years ago! Life is a strange thing. It will soon be my turn to follow.”

“What ought we to say?” said Graham. “Silence means consent, and seems to mean it. And yet we can hardly disagree.”

“Say nothing,” said Simon.

“Father is in a sinister mood,” said Ralph. “It can hardly be the loss of his uncle at ninety-four.”

“You know what it is,” said Graham. “You are not the one of us in doubt. When Grandma used ambiguous words, you caught their meaning.”

“As she did,” said Ralph. “It is true that the meaning was there.”

“I am always happy in my old home,” said Julia, looking round. “It is the one house I know, where the present has not ousted the past. Everything is as it has been and will be. We can trust Hamish.”

“I would alter nothing of my own purpose, Aunt Julia. But I may be too sunk in the old tradition to judge. We can be too sure that the future can teach us nothing.”

“I think the past does more for us,” said Simon, looking at him. “It gives what has lasted, and so can continue to last.”

“Cousin Simon, the present has given me something. Something I did not think to have again. Something to take the place of what I lost. I hoped to tell my father, while you all heard me. It is in its way a hard thing for me to tell. But the moment was not good for him, and now is past. I move into a future he did not foresee. But we cannot stay where he left us. We must all go forward.”

There was a pause.

“You are going to be married!” said Graham. “I knew there was a difference. I had a — foreboding is not the word. You have the good wishes of us all.”

“My son!” said Rhoda. “What have you from your mother? Her promise of welcome, her joy in yielding her place. Ah, indeed you have it.”

“It is a piece of news indeed,” said Julia. “The surprise is almost too great. It is the last thing we thought of. We had been involved in different things.”

“This adds itself to them. It makes my life into a whole. I can look both back and forward and see so much.”

“It helped you with your promise to your father. Yes, we see that it did. You are glad to succeed him, and have so much to give. That is how you see the matter again. We understand it, and wish you well from our hearts.”

“That is what I should say,” said Walter, in a low tone to Simon, “if I dared to say it, if it would not mean too much from me. And it would mean it all.”

“My wife and I are glad for you, Hamish,” said Simon. “Marriage is for most of us the best thing.”

“Naomi, you are glad for me? Glad for yourself to have the help in banishing the past? For we have to forget it. This can be the last word.”

“Yes, I am glad,” said Naomi.

“I am not,” muttered Ralph. “I shall be a cynic for life. I suppose it had to be. There is the cynicism beginning. But it should not have been so soon. Cynicism cannot go too far. Hamish says it is his nature to be led. He need not say it again to me.”

“Naomi,” said Graham, “I wished the truth need not be told, that you and Hamish could marry. I feel I do not wish it now.”

“I saw the change. I saw and felt it from the first. Hamish thinks it will help me to forget. Of course it makes me remember. It is the change in him that will help me. And seeing it is not really a change.”

“I wish my father had lived to know,” said Hamish, looking round with the ease of confession past. “To know that his line would be continued, and to meet the woman who would do it. But I feel that perhaps he does know.”

“His very beliefs are different,” said Ralph. “He was a sceptic when he left us. The change goes right through him.”

“He is what he was,” said Naomi. “He is not a person to be always the same. He took his colour from us, and we could not know it was our own. It is we who have changed. We have come to a knowledge of him.”

“We can find no excuse for people who let us have that?” said Walter. “They would not deserve one.”