Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Present and the Past

‘Well, it has been a treat for you,’ said Eliza.

‘Because very good boy,’ said Toby, in a tone of supplying an omission.

‘A strange kind of treat,’ said Henry. ‘A hen pecked to death, and hungry and thirsty at the last.’

‘Hens don’t mind dying; they die too easily,’ said Bennet, with conviction in her tone, if nowhere else.

‘It was worse than being pecked to death. It was pecked when it was dying.’

‘They always do that, sir,’ said William, as if the frequency were a ground for cheer.

Toby stood with his eyes on the dead hen.

‘William put him in a cage by himself.’

William carried the hen away, smoothing its feathers as he did so.

‘William stroke him,’ said Toby, with approval.

‘The hen didn’t know about it,’ said Henry.

‘He did know,’ said Toby.

‘It couldn’t when it was dead.’

‘So William stroke him,’ said Toby. ‘Poor hen! Toby saw him know.’

William resumed his work, and Toby applied himself to attendance upon him, a duty that made consistent inroads upon his time. When William signified his need of a tool, he fetched it with a light on his face and his tongue protruding, and thrust its prongs towards William in earnest cooperation.

‘What should I do without you, sir, now that I have no boy?’

‘William have one now. Not Henry.’

‘You grow such a big lad, sir.’

‘Not lad,’ said Toby, with a wail in his tone.

‘Such a big boy, sir.’

‘As big as Henry. Just the same. No, the same as Megan,’ said Toby, ending on an affectionate note.

‘Shall I help William?’ said Henry, getting off his log.

‘No, Toby help him. Today and tomorrow.’

‘Isn’t it time for your sleep, sir?’

Toby flickered his eyes over Eliza and Bennet, and smoothly resumed his employment.

The latter were engaged in talk so earnest that it might have been assumed to relate to their own affairs. Their interest was given to the family to whom they gave everything. In Bennet’s case it was permanent, and in Eliza’s susceptible to change. Megan sometimes listened to them; Henry had not thought of doing so; and Toby heard their voices as he heard the other sounds about him.

Eliza was a country girl of twenty-six, with the fairness that results in eyes and brows and lashes of a similar pallor, and features that seem to fail to separate themselves from each other. She had an uneducated expression and an air of knowledge of life that seemed its natural accompaniment. Bennet was a small, spare woman of forty-five, with a thin, sallow face marked by simple lines of benevolence, long, narrow features and large, full eyes of the colour that is called grey because it is no other. She took little interest in herself, and so much in other people that it tended to absorb her being. When the children recalled her to their world, she would return as if from another. They loved her not as themselves, but as the person who served their love of themselves, and greater love has no child than this. She came of tradesman stock and had no need to earn her bread, but consorted with anyone in the house who shared her zest for personal affairs.

‘Good morning, Miss Bennet,’ said another voice. ‘Good morning, Megan. Good morning, Henry. Is Toby coming to say good morning today?’

‘No,’ said Toby, in an incidental tone.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Eliza.

‘Good morning, Eliza,’ said the governess, with a fuller enunciation that she had omitted the greeting before.

‘Have you said good morning to Miss Ridley?’ said Bennet.

‘Enough people have said it,’ said Henry, ‘and the others did not say it to you.’

Bennet did not comment on the omission, indeed had not been struck by it, and the two boys who accompanied Miss Ridley did not seem aware of what passed.

‘Well, what a beautiful day!’ said Miss Ridley.

‘It is the same as any other day,’ said Henry, raising his eyes for his first inspection of it. ‘Though not for the hen.’

‘A hen has died and upset them,’ said Bennet, in a low, confidential tone that the children heard and found comforting. ‘It will soon pass off.’

‘Not for the hen,’ said Henry. ‘It won’t have any day at all.’

‘We do not quite know that,’ said Miss Ridley. ‘Opinions vary on the difference between the animal world and our own.’

‘Opinions are not much good when no one has the same,’ said Megan. ‘They don’t tell you anything.’

‘That again is not quite true. Many people have the same. There are different schools of thought, and people belong to all of them.’

‘How do they know which to choose?’

‘That may be beyond your range. It takes us rather deep.’

‘What is the good of knowing things, when you have to get older and older and die before you know everything?’

‘You will certainly do that, Megan, and so shall I.’

‘Are animals of the same nature as we are?’ said Henry. ‘Monkeys look as if they were.’

‘Yes, that is the line of the truth. A scientist called Darwin has told us about it. Of course we have developed much further.’

‘Then weren’t we made all at once as we are?’ said Megan. ‘Eliza says that would mean the Bible was not true.’

‘It has its essential truth, and that is what matters.’

‘I suppose any untrue thing might have that. I daresay a good many have. So there is no such thing as truth. It is different in different minds.’

‘Why, you will be a philosopher one day, Megan.’

Miss Ridley was forty-seven and looked exactly that age. She wore neat, strong clothes that bore no affinity to those in current use, and wore, or had set on her head an old, best hat in place of a modern, ordinary one. She was fully gloved and booted for her hour in the garden. Her full, pale face, small, steady eyes, nondescript features and confident movements combined with her clothes to make a whole that conformed to nothing and offended no one. She made no mistakes in her dress, merely carried out her intentions.

The two boys who were with her wore rather childish clothes to conform with Henry’s. Fabian at thirteen had a broad face and brow, broad, clear features and pure grey eyes that recalled his sister’s. Guy was two years younger and unlike him, with a childish, pretty face, dark eyes that might have recalled Toby’s, but for their lack of independence and purpose, and a habit of looking at his brother in trust and emulation.

‘Well, here are the five of you together,’ said Miss Ridley, who often made statements that were accepted. ‘Are you going to have a game before luncheon? It is twelve o’clock.’

‘That would mean that we amused the younger ones,’ said Fabian.

‘And is there so much objection to that?’

‘To me there is too much.’

Henry and Megan showed no interest in the enterprise, and Guy looked as if he were not averse from it. Toby, at the mention of the time, had turned and disappeared into some bushes behind him. Eliza went in pursuit, and naturally gained in the contest, as she did her best in it. Toby glanced back to measure her advance, stumbled and fell and lay outstretched and still, uttering despairing cries. His brothers did not look in his direction, and his sister did no more than this. Bennet waited until he emerged in Eliza’s arms, his lamentations complicated by his further prospects, and reassured by what she saw, entered into talk with Miss Ridley.

‘Have you seen anyone this morning?’ she said, in a tone at once eager and casual.

‘Mrs Clare came in to ask about the children. She takes an equal interest in them all. And the tutor came and went. Guy does not do too well with him. I think he is nervous.’