Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Present and the Past

‘We give what we can,’ said Catherine.

‘So your trust has quite gone,’ said her sister.

‘We have to learn to give.’

‘It seems that we do,’ said Elton.

‘You are both honest,’ said Catherine.

‘Well, we like facing the worst. We recognize the hopelessness of things.’

‘And you appreciate it,’ said Flavia.

‘Yes, other people cannot be too fortunate.’

‘It is something to feel that,’ said Ursula, ‘but I am afraid they can.’

‘Afraid is a very honest word,’ said Elton. ‘I am afraid some people are rich.’

‘Riches do not bring happiness. But I am afraid they do.’

‘And some have happy temperaments. There seems no end to it.’

‘Do you think that is true? Should we not sometimes meet them?’

‘Believe it or not,’ said Catherine, ‘I had one when I was young.’

‘It is hard to believe,’ said her sister.

‘Have you not happy temperaments yourselves?’

‘Catherine, how can you?’ said Elton. ‘Have you not looked into our eyes? We know they have their own melancholy, when we give it to them.’

‘What of your temperament?’ said Catherine to Flavia.

‘I have lost sight of it. It has long been overlaid.’

‘Perhaps ours have,’ said Elton. ‘I daresay that is it.’

‘I see mine has,’ said Catherine. ‘I must try to recover it. It is no longer only my own concern. That is a thing I have longed to say.’

‘Things do put you at such an advantage,’ said her sister. ‘We are never shown at our best. We hardly know what it is, and I don’t think anyone else even suspects.’

‘I believe I know,’ said Elton.

‘What is the good of an impulse to rise to heights, if it has to be wasted?’

‘You want to do something noble?’ said Flavia.

‘It is not as bad as that. We only want to be known to have done it. Why should it be known about other people and not about us, when hardly anything is noble really?’

‘You will tell me when I shall see you,’ said Flavia to Catherine, as she took her leave, ‘or if you wish to come without my doing so. It will be for you to say.’

The two women went into the hall and talked for some time before they parted.

‘So we ought to have left them,’ said Ursula, ‘but I am glad we did not. Virtue is its own reward, and we wanted another.’

‘Catherine is no longer a tragic figure,’ said Elton. ‘It seems unworthy of her. It is so ordinary for things to go well, though that is odd, when it is so unusual.’

‘Well, this is a nice position for a man,’ said Cassius. ‘Alone in the morning, alone at noon, alone until night! What is the good of a wife, when you never see or hear her? What is the good of having two wives, when they neutralize each other? I wonder there is a law against it, if it recoils on a man’s head.’

‘You said you might keep a harem, my boy. I don’t know how you would have managed with one.’

‘Yes, make a mock of me. It is what I expect. Leave me without a word of human kindness. I should be surprised by anything else.’

‘Then why be surprised by that?’ said Mr Clare. ‘But you need not fear I will not serve you. It is the one way left to me to serve myself.’

‘It is a hard thing,’ broke out his son, ‘this emptiness in my home. Silence instead of a familiar voice, silence instead of a familiar step, silence, silence, silence wherever I turn. Two women absorbed in each other like this! It is not a wholesome thing, apart from their being wives of the same man. It may set tongues to work.’

‘It is a long time since Catherine has been your wife.’

‘Well, she might almost be my wife again, now that she has a right in my house, or a right of way through it, or whatever it is she has. Whatever it may be, she makes the most of it. I am always encountering her, or her and Flavia together. I hardly dare to set foot in my own hall. They have no eyes or ears for anyone but each other. And I am left high and dry, with my children tossing a word to me out of pity. I wonder you like to see your son in such a plight. If I have no wife, I have the more need of a father.’

‘I wish I could meet the need, my boy. But time is running out. I have reached my useless days.’

‘You might let fall a word to Flavia at some time. Unless you are afraid of her. I believe a man is always afraid of a woman.’

‘We should be afraid of anyone to whom we let fall a word. Hell holds no fury like such a person.’

‘And you would think I might say the word for myself, a great, strong man in the heyday of my life. But my soul shrinks up within me when I think of those two pairs of eyes in those two women’s faces. I don’t want to see the noble souls behind them. They give nothing to me; they only tear my own soul out of its place. What I want is a little normal fellowship in my middle age. I thought that Flavia and I would go down the years together, just as I thought it about Catherine. I am not a man to go alone through life. And I get a look or a word thrown to me out of their kindness. Kindness! It is a quality I have come to despise. If ever a man had enough of it, it is I. And you are looking at me as if you hardly saw me. I suppose I must expect nothing.’

‘You must expect it from me, my boy. I am past being of use. I have to ask for your help to me. It is true that I hardly see you. I am in need of the drug that helps me in my bodily decay. It is kept in the drawer of the desk. I am to take one tablet, as it is said that more would harm me. My days of labour and sorrow are to be prolonged.’

‘Do you take them more often than you did?’ said Cassius, as he brought the flask.

‘I am not at an age to take less. It is a palliative, not a cure. And as such I am dependent on it. Ten is said to be fatal to us. It is written on the label to protect us from ourselves, or other people from us.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous to have such things about?’

‘We do not do so. They are kept under cover. They are necessary in certain cases. You know that, when you are one of them.’

‘It would be an easy way of putting an end to oneself. Why are we not allowed to take our own lives? It seems that they are our own.’

‘We are seen as mattering enough to be forbidden to do so. I agree we should not expect it. Human lives are sacred, and we all have one. A poor thing, but our own.’

‘So I could end my life by taking ten of these,’ said Cassius. ‘And I might do so for all anyone would care. It would be a shock to people, I suppose.’

‘But you would not be here to see them suffer it. So it would be wasted.’

‘So it would in a way. I don’t mean I want them to have it.’

‘Well, hardly enough to give your life for it.’

‘Oh, well, you have your own way of putting things. And I see it has a certain truth. But it is not the whole.’

‘A certain truth is our own truth, my boy. The whole seldom concerns us.’

‘This house would be a different place without me, though I am held to be of so little account.’

‘You would not see it in that state, however great a treat it would be.’

‘Oh well, well, you are still yourself. We don’t know what we shall be able to do in our future state.’

‘Would that be the sort of privilege afforded, things being as you would have them?’

‘I only meant we might be granted a wider range.’

‘Dead men tell no tales, my boy. And they would do that, if they could do anything. And I doubt the advantage of seeing things going on without us. You see, that is what they would be doing.’

‘But in a different way.’

‘No, in the same way, but without us.’