Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“Then be silent about it,” said Simon. “We have all in a way retraced our steps.”

“There will be a certain zest in going forward,” said Julia. “In knowing Hamish’s wife, and seeing their life together. We cannot say there will not.”

“Why should we want to say it?” said Walter. “It is the thing we have to sustain us.”

“If we were without it, we should not want it,” said Graham. “The truth creates its own need.”

Simon turned to his wife.

“I begin to feel almost glad I had to tell the truth. Hamish has become an uncertain figure. I feel I have not known him. And I think I see he has not known any of us.”

“Or he would not have made his confession at so little cost. We had to feel it was less than it might have been.”

“It is hard to forgive it,” said Walter. “I shall not even try.”

“We might say we had nothing to forgive,” said Fanny. “But it is a thing we seldom say, if it is true.”

“Hamish has betrayed himself,” said Graham. “I wonder if he knows it. His letting his mother hear the news with all of us! And the way she accepted it! It does throw its light.”

“There was no need of it on her,” said Julia. “Everything comes of the one thing. She has felt she has no right to her motherhood, no claim on him as a son. Her secret was the cause of it.”

“Do you make it explain more than is there?” said Simon.

“No,” said Fanny. “She sees what it is. My sister changed after her marriage, it may have been at that time. Up to a point it must have been.”

“Well, we are at home,” said Ralph. “In the house that is that to us, until we leave it for the other. We know it for certain now.”

“Did you mean the grave or the workhouse?” said Simon, in a changed tone. “Tell me the truth.”

“That — the grave,” said Ralph, not doing this.

Emma emerged from the bushes.

“You forgot to bring us home.”

“Oh, we did!” said Fanny. “Other things drove it from our minds. How did you get here?”

“Miss Dolton fetched us after you had gone. She thought you might forget. You didn’t even see us on the road.”

“I daresay not,” said Ralph. “We had things to talk about.”

“Well, everyone has. It was funny that seven people forgot. It was nine, if you count Aunt Rhoda and Hamish. But they were not responsible.”

“It was certainly remiss,” said Graham.

“What does that mean?”

“Neglectful of something that ought to be done.”

“Yes, it is exactly the word, isn’t it?”

Claud appeared beside his sister.

“We were left in the other garden. We might almost have been orphans.”

“I wonder how you would feel, if you were,” said Simon. “You would not overlook the difference.”

“It might not be very much. We should still have Miss Dolton.”

“Not if you were orphans. There would be no home for you or her.”

“It didn’t really seem as if there was.”

“You could have gone into the other house.”

“Not unless we were asked,” said Emma. “We have no claim on people, because we are children. It does not do to think along that line.”

“Hamish could have brought you home,” said Fanny.

“He didn’t think of it. And we could hardly expect him to. He has become a stranger to us, hasn’t he?”

“Mother, here she is!” said Hamish. “Here, where she is to be, where she and I are to be old together, where you will see us grow into our full selves! Our last, long chapter has begun.”

“And must go on,” said his wife, as she shook hands with Rhoda and glanced into her face. “And I have not had a wedding or appeared in any proper light. I have indeed not appeared at all. I am seen at once as a stranger and a son’s wife.”

“I want things as they are, and her as she is,” said Hamish. “I would not have anything different.”

“But I daresay your mother would,” said his wife, looking aside, as she hurried the words she had to say. “I am eleven years older than you, and full of opinions, they say, though most of us have them, and it might be no better to have none. Anyhow she sees me, such as I am; and for myself alone I would be a thousand times more fair, but perhaps no more rich, as it would not become me to have much.”

“I am thirty-nine years older than Hamish,” said Rhoda, as the rapid, deep tones ceased. “I shall see you become your full selves. You will see me fall away from mine.”

“I am myself now. Nothing is to come. You must take me as I am, as people say. As though that justified their being what they are, when probably nothing could!”

“This is the dining-room,” said Rhoda, leading the way across the hall. “I daresay you guessed it would be here.”

“I was wondering if it was anywhere, the hall was so wide. It has had a long history as what it is. How many people have sat here at a time?”

“Ah, many in the past. Very few sit here now. But our family from the other house will be with us tonight; Hamish’s two older cousins and their mother, and the elder one’s wife, who is my sister, and their sons and daughter. Then we shall be ten at the table, many for us now. But everyone is too anxious to know you to be left behind.”

“It is the daughter, whom Hamish would have married, if he could? I wonder if she does want to meet me. I want to meet her, though I shall have to feel humble in her eyes.”

“Marcia knows everything, Mother,” said Hamish. “I had nothing in my life to hide. And I did not make a mystery of this one thing, that was not my fault. It would have been a precarious secret. And the truth does all that needs to be done.”

“I would not have spoken of it,” said Marcia, keeping her eyes from Rhoda’s face, “except to let you know that I knew. It seemed you had to know.”

Rhoda answered at once.

“It has been so much to follow from so little. That is how I must see it. It is all I can say.”

“It is the thing to be said,” said Marcia, turning her eyes about the room. “It seems as if nothing had ever been altered here. I suppose nothing has.”

“Do you want to alter anything?” said Hamish.

“I could not think of it. Nothing could be different. It would be like changing something unearthed after ages. The time for it is past.”

“Don’t you like it as it is?”

“I like it in itself, but hardly for me. It does not offer me anything.”

“You will grow into it and become a part of it,” said Rhoda. “That is what our women do.”

“It will draw me into itself. I felt it would.”

“You would like something modern?” said Hamish.

“No, but something lighter and more on my level. And I don’t mean the level is low, or that I shall think of it. I am answering your questions.”

“When I was a boy, I felt as you do, or should have, if I had thought it possible. But I have learned to like it and live with it. You will do the same.”

“You have a long start. And time is longer in youth.”

“I am part of the lesson Hamish has learned,” said Rhoda. “I hope you can do as well as he.”

“I am glad to have someone to balance his youth and cover my lack of it. I feel less of a husk, with everything worn away.” Marcia glanced round the room, as though finding her words in tune with it.

“Hamish will show you the house. He feels it is his to give to you.”

“She does not want it,” said Hamish, looking at his wife. “She is as yet a stranger to it. But she will come to share it with me.”

“You may have the whole. I shall not see any part as mine. I will deal with it as something to pass on, as it came into my hands. Neither better nor worse; it would be wrong for it to be either. As we change, it will not change with us. It is like some fossilised thing, that has come to withstand time. That is what it is.”