Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Present and the Past

‘Well, we knew that,’ said his father.

‘And if you all say it served me right, I say the same to you,’ said Cassius, his tones swelling. ‘You deserved to think you had driven me to my death, when you had done all you could to empty my life. It was the right and fair return; it was poetic justice. So I don’t want any solemn faces or speaking silences or exchange of glances. Things are fair and square between us, and there is an end of it.’

‘There is also a beginning,’ said Flavia. ‘Another conception of you, a mistrust of what you say and do, a question of your presentation of yourself. A difference that will go through our lives and die with us.’

‘And have you had so much trust in me? There has been little sign of it. We cannot lose what we have never had. I have not to face much there.’

‘Did Father pretend he had taken more pills than he had?’ said Megan.

‘He did, my child. That is what he pretended,’ said Cassius, going into further mirth. ‘And he does not regret it. And he hopes you will never be driven to a like course, and that if you are, you will achieve more by it.’

‘I don’t understand why you did it, or what you wanted to achieve.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Henry.

‘Neither do I,’ said Flavia.

‘No,’ said Cassius, looking at them. ‘You would not understand. The heart can only know itself.’

‘You let me know some of it, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

‘I did, my dear old father. And what I should have done without your listening ear I do not know.’

‘You could hardly have done more than you have.’

‘I could have done the whole thing.’

‘No, you could not, being as you are. We can only act according to ourselves.’

‘I really thought of it.’

‘We are not talking of thoughts. They cover a wide ground.’

‘You are a strange man, Cassius,’ said Flavia. ‘I see I have not known you.’

‘And you are a strange woman. And I have always known you. And now I know you better.’

‘You have put yourself in a class apart.’

‘No, I have not. I have put myself in the class of weak, erring mortals to which we all belong, to which you belong yourself. I am not removed from you by a single act. What about you, who drove me to it? What should be said of that? No, you are not to go, children. I refuse to be left alone with this woman. Father does not want to be left alone with Mater.’ Cassius changed his tone and put his hand on Toby’s head. ‘She is vexed with him and makes him afraid of her. Toby must stay and take care of him.’

Toby placed himself in front of his father and looked round in challenge, and Flavia glanced at him and looked away.

‘I think Mother is in the hall,’ said Fabian. ‘She was coming to see us today. May we go out to her, Father?’

‘You must ask Mater that,’ said Mr Clare.

‘Mater always lets us see her.’

‘Ask her in; ask her in,’ said Cassius. ‘We have nothing to hide. She may as well hear what she must hear in the end, and hear the truth instead of some distortion of it. Let her swell the chorus of my judges. Come in, Catherine, and join them in their verdict on me. I know you and Flavia have but one thought between you.’

‘They do not need more than one for this matter,’ said Mr Clare.

‘Well, Catherine, what have you heard of me? You need not be afraid to say. ‘I am not used to being spared.’

There was a pause.

‘I heard that you found things too much. I heard that you tried to end them.’

‘Well, well, it was not quite that,’ said Cassius, with another sound of mirth and his eyes turned aside. ‘I hardly know how to tell you. I have put myself in an awkward place. You may think in almost a ridiculous one; I can understand that view. Or rather it is chance that has done it; I thought things out myself. Ask Flavia to tell you. You would rather hear it from her. And she can put things in a word better than I can.’

‘No, it is your own history, my boy,’ said Mr Clare. ‘No one else can tell it from the first.’

‘Well, then, I did not take the full dose,’ said Cassius, looking in front of him and speaking easily. ‘Only enough to make me unconscious and do no more. I thought of taking it, and then the will to live, or the impulse of life, or whatever it was, checked me and led me to a compromise. Compromise; yes, that is the word. And I carried it through. I did not fail in my purpose. I hoodwinked my father and my wife. And they are not easy people to deceive;you must have found that. I mean you would understand it. They accepted the whole thing. And upon my word I was near to accepting it myself. It was a dire experience, recovering from that trance. I find myself feeling I have had a narrow escape. I find myself in a mood of thankfulness. It shows how near I was to the actual thing.’

‘It surely shows your distance from it,’ said Flavia.

‘Well, you ought to be glad of that. It ought to be a relief to you. You don’t seem to have taken any lesson from what I have done.’

‘But you seem to have taken one yourself,’ said Mr Clare. ‘And it is you who needed it.’

‘And you have not done it, Cassius,’ said Flavia. ‘We cannot go so far from the facts.’

‘Did you confess the truth?’ said Catherine to Cassius, in a tone that seemed to come from their life together.

‘Go on with your tale, my boy,’ said Mr Clare. ‘It is no one else’s.’

‘Well, no, I did not,’ said Cassius, with a little laugh. ‘I meant to carry the matter through and let the deception do its work. And I hope in a measure it has done it. But Toby found the bottle with the tablets that were left, and the number told their tale and exposed his father.’

‘You put it well, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

‘Yes, well, I can put things into words when I like,’ said his son, in a modest tone. ‘I can express myself when there is need. I seem to be able to. I don’t know if it is true of everyone.’

‘No one must talk of this outside the house,’ said Flavia.

‘No, it would swell to all kinds of proportions,’ said Cassius, as if not averse to the idea. ‘I should be said to have put an end to myself ten times over.’

‘You would be said to have tried to do so once,’ said Mr Clare. ‘No doubt you will be. And it is at once better and worse than the truth.’

‘The subject will be rife in the place for the next weeks,’ said his son. ‘Then it will die away. One cannot expect to be a hero — to be on people’s tongues for ever. It will remain with me, as our moments of danger do remain. And it was a moment of danger, Flavia, however much you look at me. You will never know how near I was to the end.’

‘It is you who seem not to know,’ said his father.

‘We have all been near to things that are beyond us,’ said Flavia, ‘in the sense that we imagine ourselves doing them, without any intention of it. And it is not very near. We have all stood on the edge of a cliff and pictured ourselves going over.’

‘I stood on the edge,’ said Cassius.

‘Poor Father!’ said Toby, pausing to look at him.

‘Yes, poor Father! No one seems to know how poor he is. There are unkind faces on every side. Well, Fabian, you are wearing a dark expression. What do you think of what has happened?’

‘I can’t help being surprised, Father.’

‘And shocked?’ said Cassius.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I am.’

‘By what you thought had happened, or by what has?’

‘It is a different kind of feeling. I think more by the pretence.’

‘So you are as straight as a die, are you? You could never leave the narrow path. And Guy is of the same mind. He could not be anything else.’

‘I could, but I do think the same about this.’