Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“It all seems to settle into something we accept and do not question. We learn to live with it.”

“Because for you there is no escape. You are bound to this place, that shadows you with a dead past and a threatened future. But as I am added to your other women, I suffer something more than they. I can never send my roots down here, only move on the surface, uneasy and aloof. It is so much less than they have given.”

“It is a good deal from you,” said Simon. “It would come to be more. And Hamish promised his father to take his place.”

“He had made an earlier promise. That claim is the first.”

“I could not accept it. I waited for it to be withdrawn. I was glad when it was.”

“You were glad to allow it to be, to do what you owed to yourself, feeling you owed more, because of the one betrayal. That is not gladness.”

“It was the kind I could have. The other was not for me. I have only the right to forget it. Here are the children come to greet you, before they go to bed. Come and say ‘how-do-you-do?’ to Cousin Marcia.”

“Is she really our cousin?” said Claud.

“She is your cousin by marriage. That is what you will call her.”

“I don’t expect we shall call her anything,” said Emma. “You can speak to people without a name.”

“I shall know whom you mean,” said Marcia. “Am I what you thought I should be?”

“Well, you are older,” said Claud. “And taller and not like Naomi. When you are really instead of her, it is strange for you to be so different.”

“It might seem that Hamish couldn’t like both of you,” said Emma. “But of course we know he did.”

“No one is instead of anyone else,” said Julia. “Everyone has his own place.”

“Don’t you mean her place?” said Claud. “There was really only one for both of them. Unless one of them was a concubine, and we know they weren’t that. Then he might have had hundreds.”

“I don’t think he might,” said Emma. “Solomon was a king.”

“Are you glad that Hamish has given you this house?” said Claud. “He was going to give it to Naomi. But as she didn’t marry him, there is nothing unfair.”

“I think it is too large and old a house for me.”

“It is not what you are used to,” said Emma, in sympathy. “We never want to stay in it. Though it is better than an orphanage would be.”

“Well, you may leave it,” said Simon. “And your nurse is waiting. So say good-night and run away.”

“Why do people say ‘run’, when they don’t mean it?” said Claud. “Must we say good-night to everyone at the table?”

“No, only to Cousin Marcia and Grandma and Mother.”

“Shan’t we say it to Uncle Walter? He is getting old.”

“Well, you can say it to him, though he is younger than I am.”

“But you are giving the directions,” said Emma. “So you would not say anything was due to yourself.”

“Why were they thinking of an orphanage?” said Marcia.

“We all have to think of an alternative shelter,” said Ralph. “We are not to depend on our present one.”

“Oh, it corresponds to the workhouse at their age.”

“These are boyish young men,” said Simon, as they rose from the table.

“They scarcely seem so,” said Marcia. “The thought of the workhouse has come soon. In youth it is an end for other people.”

“Not in our youth,” said Ralph.

Marcia glanced at Simon’s face and said no more.

“You see it all,” said Hamish, moving to her. “My birth dispossessed Cousin Simon and broke up his future. And my promise to withdraw on my father’s death changed things and gave it back to him. But he accepted my later word to my father, and wished me to keep it, indeed looked for the change. And he knows he caused his displacement himself, and has no grievance.”

“So it means so much to him?” said Marcia. “Does Graham feel the same?”

“He might, if he allowed himself to. But he sees things as they are.”

“Your cousin does too, and cannot bear the sight. You do not love the place as they do?”

“Not as much. My mother did not help me. She has hardly felt at home in the house, or felt it to be her home. She found it as you do, oppressive to a stranger. But you will cease to be so. Cousin Simon will help you. I think he has begun.”

Marcia looked at Simon’s tall, set figure, dark, grave eyes and firm, controlled face, and looked again about her.

“This is his place,” she said. “It is time he had it. And it is not for him. That is his tragedy. That is the reason of the talk of the workhouse and the orphanage, and the jests that have something behind them. His family is not where it should be, or should have been; he is not there.”

Walter came up to Marcia.

“Do you like sitting in your place at table, and displacing Hamish’s mother? I ask because I want to know. It is not petty curiosity. Petty is the last word. It is great and deep.”

“I like it no more than she does. I daresay less. I don’t want to be there, or anywhere under this roof. I wonder how anyone comes to rest beneath it. What is your feeling?”

“To me it is my background. Coming here is coming home. I see my brother as the head, and Hamish as a herald of the future, come to it out of due time.”

“I see it as you do, and Hamish as you see him. This home in the past has no meaning for me. I want to have one I can hold and help to grow. The time for it had come, and I let it pass. And Hamish in his heart is with me. I am doing him no service.”

“Your position here will give you something of its own.”

“Perhaps it will, but I would choose something else. I am not proud of being the mistress here. I see no cause for pride. I see Hamish’s mother unseated, and know I may be myself one day. I have no roots here, no rights here, only the right of occupation and service until my use is past. Hamish himself has nothing here except on a life tenure. It is not enough for us, just as it is too much. And his father would be in his place, fulfilled and useful, ready to yield it in his time in the way the past has sanctified. Which is the better thing?”

“You must not speak of my brother as Hamish’s father.”

“It is how I think of him, how you know I do. His supposed father is only a name to me. And in some ways he was to Hamish only a name.”

“He came to be more. And Hamish promised at his deathbed to take his place.”

“Another promise came first. Which is it better to break? One must be broken.”

“You would not suggest that Hamish should transfer the place to my brother?”

“It would not be my suggestion. It was his own. I would suggest that he should keep his first word.”

“My brother would not accept it. He is what he is. He would not live except on terms with his conscience.”

“He makes his own terms,” said Marcia, smiling. “He can cast a gloom over his family, show them a warped outlook and expect another, because of his own frustration. So he could surely mend matters by accepting a promise, that stood by itself. The second could not really be given.”

“He does not know he does what you say. Of course, I do not deny it.”

“He would be different in his own sphere. He once was different.”

“How do you know it?”

Marcia did not reply.

“He knows that things will go down through Hamish to his own descendants,” said Walter.

“He knows it and cannot feel it. Just as he knows and cannot feel that Hamish is his son. Just as Hamish knows and cannot feel it. The long darkness has deprived the truth of its life.”

“You and my brother would make a good pair,” said Walter, looking from one to the other. “One could think of another story.”