Ivy Compton-Burnett - A Heritage and its History

“Well, it does not matter, as it happens. It is one of those letters without much meaning.”

“It might have a hidden one. But ‘Marcia’ is the name at the end. And she is our relation. So it couldn’t be much.”

“She is still our cousin by marriage,” said Claud, “even though Hamish is dead. And she is your cousin as well.”

“A nearer one than to us,” said Emma. “I don’t think you could marry her, if Mother died. Though she might be the person you would think of.”

“Now your tongues are running away with you,” said Simon. “It is the work your legs ought to be doing. So let us see them do it.”

The children broke into mirth, glanced down at the limbs in question, and ran away to repeat the words.

“You must be glad of the friendship between Marcia and your sister, Fanny,” said Julia at once. “It will be an answer to many problems.”

“Her feelings and mine do seem to have followed similar lines.”

“Well, I must go to my work in the garden. I want help for a little while. Are my grandchildren coming to give it to me?”

“While we are on such matters, ma’am,” said Deakin, “is the creeper on the house to be cut back? Sir Simon dislikes it to encroach.”

“We will give it a respite, Deakin,” said Simon. “Encroachment seems to be its work. And we are so inured to the shadow, that we might be startled by the light.”

“Well, other light is thrown, ma’am,” said Deakin, smiling at Julia, as he left them.

“Fanny,” said Simon, when the others had gone, “you do not read more into that letter than was there?”

“I see how it was meant to be read.”

“We must help people in trouble as we can.”

“And it is good to help those who help themselves. But when Marcia was here, she was not in trouble.”

“She knew her real relation to me. That justifies anything that needs it.”

“Suppose something in my life did that! It would be a change. And you would find it so.”

“Fanny, I admire and envy you, that nothing in your life has needed excuse or ever will.”

“It is true of me, too,” said Walter. “Or has been since my getting into debt at Cambridge. And that had it, as my allowance was too small.”

“Walter, you and I have seen and done much together.”

“Well, Walter has seen it,” said Fanny. “And it has been a good deal.”

“Claud and Emma are more natural with me than the elder children were.”

“Well, what are you with them? You must see the reason.”

“I ought not to have let my personal trouble harm me as it did.”

“Well, you have allowed the ending of it to restore you. It is an honest confession that your character depends on your own content.”

“I could take a lesson from my Naomi there,” said Simon, looking out of the window at his children returning to the house. “I hope her brothers will do for her what mine has for me. They have taken that room off the hall for their sanctum. May they have many happy hours in it.”

“Let us have one now,” said Ralph, as they passed. “It is good to have a place where we can be by ourselves, in other words without Father. His new personality makes me ill at ease. Or I suppose it is his old one. I am the more disturbed, that I have had no part in our recent history. My life is untouched, and yet the workhouse has disappeared from it. And I suppose its descendant, the orphanage, has done the same. It shows how far they were the figment of Father’s brain.”

“People are supposed to love their own creations,” said Naomi. “It is disloyal of Father to be so unfaithful to his.”

“Unfaithful to what?” said Simon, in the doorway. “It sounds a grave charge. So this is your sanctum, your refuge from storm and stress. To what am I unfaithful?”

“To your conception of the future, sir,” said Ralph. “The workhouse has been banished. And in the case of some of us without any ground.”

“The reason is here,” said Simon, looking about him. “This is your background, your refuge in case of need. I had to think of you without them. Now your brother will be behind you. My death would not leave you destitute. I can live my own life at ease about yours. No one gives up the idea of the workhouse more willingly. No one else knows how real to me it was. Well, it cast the lesser shadow. I am glad the cloud was mine.”

“Is Father a noble man?” said Ralph, as the door closed. “Or is he a deceiver of himself and others? Or what is he?”

“A mixture of them all, as we all are,” said Naomi. “But exile exposed and stressed the parts. Suppose we had a similar love for our first home, and were affected by leaving it in the same way! He would hardly be able to complain. He may have been wise to darken our memories of it.”

“I still fear a reaction from the new spirit. His position will become normal to him. It was indeed the other that was not. And he will have nothing besides.”

“So that is what you think,” said Graham.

“Well, thinking needs so much courage.”

“I have enough,” said Naomi. “The something besides will be there. And I am glad it will. It is not good to live without it.”

“He is putting a memorial tablet to Hamish in the church,” said Graham. “Hamish is to be described as Uncle Edwin’s son. I daresay many people are not what they are thought to be.”

“Most of them what they are known to be,” said Naomi. “Secrets are not often kept. If they were, we should not know there were such things. And now we take more interest in them than in any others.”

“As people may in this one,” said Ralph. “And very likely do.”

“The heroine of our whole story is Mother,” said Graham.

“And who is the hero?” said Naomi.

“Hamish?” said her brother, in question.

“Uncle Walter might turn out to have been so all the time. But he is inclined to suggest it himself, and that is against it.”

“Father,” said Ralph. “It can be no one else. And if we think, it is no one else. Unless my saying it makes me the hero myself.”