Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Present and the Past

‘Mrs Frost, you fail to do Mr Ainger justice,’ said Kate.

‘Ah, never mind, Kate,’ said Ainger. ‘I do not stake any claims. No, Simon, you may keep your seat. The bell is my prerogative today. I feel it is my heritage from the master. It comes to me as a bequest.’

‘It is his legacy to you,’ said Kate.

‘I would rather have the ordinary kind,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘Well, Mrs Frost, if you want to know, you have it,’ said Ainger, pausing and speaking almost fiercely. ‘The master has remembered both you and me in his will. He reposed his trust in me on the point. And the others benefit to a proportionate extent, priority receiving its due.’

‘But Mrs Frost spoke without ulterior thought,’ said Kate.

‘So now you know what to think of him,’ said Ainger.

‘So I do,’ said Mrs Frost, ‘and I am thinking it. But I did not know before.’

‘I am glad I did not speak against him,’ said Kate. ‘Not that it should exert an influence.’

‘I never will again,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘I find it is exerting one.’

‘I have been here nearly fifty years, boy and man,’ said Halliday. ‘If things are to be taken into account.’

‘So that is your instinctive response,’ said Ainger. ‘Surely the amount is negligible.’

‘I hope not,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘Mrs Frost, I meant it was secondary, as you know.’

‘It is the thought,’ said Kate.

‘But the thought must have an object,’ said Halliday.

‘I am in a position to state figures,’ said Ainger. ‘But I refrain from doing so. It is not the occasion. I was wrong to broach the topic.’

‘You did it to uphold the master,’ said Kate. ‘It must emerge in the end,’ said Halliday. ‘It is not your secret.’

‘That will seem strange to me, when it has been so for so long.’

‘You must sometimes have felt the impulse to divulge it,’ said Kate.

‘You are mistaken, Kate. It was dependent on the master’s passing. I held my thoughts apart.’

‘If he had lived the normal time, I should have gone before him,’ said Halliday. ‘There would have been no reward for a lifetime.’

‘Anyone would think it was the matter of the moment,’ said Ainger. ‘I regret that it escaped me.’

‘I suppose it was meant to interest us.’

‘It was meant for that, Halliday. The master thought of our advantage at the time when he would have nothing. There is something that grips the heart.’

‘People have to make their wills. They are not heroes for that.’

‘I think they are,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘I made my will, and I was a hero.’

‘You can’t take anything with you.’

‘I said I was a hero.’

‘The master had choice,’ said Ainger. ‘He could have left everything to the family without further thought.’

‘Perhaps they are heroes,’ said Mrs Frost. ‘I hope they are.’

‘Oh, it is not on that scale,’ said Halliday.

‘There is the bell again, Mr Ainger,’ said Kate, in surprise at Ainger’s delay.

‘It is strange,’ said the latter, standing straight and still, ‘how I miss something in the master’s ring, something firm and masculine that spoke from him to me- ‘He turned and vanished as the bell rang again.

‘Something firm and feminine spoke to him,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘That is what we have now,’ said Halliday. ‘And we shall have more of it.’

‘Aren’t ladies as good as men?’ said Simon.

‘They tend to be subject to themselves,’ said Kate.

‘And that means other people are subject to them,’ said Halliday.

‘If ever anyone carried a grief, it is Mr Ainger,’ said Kate. ‘The way he does not protrude it tells its tale. His presence should act as a restraint.’

‘Ah, we are a thought worked up,’ said Halliday.

‘The note of hysteria,’ said Kate. ‘We must not judge each other.’

‘Mr Ainger judged me,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘I can imagine his bearing as he reaches the drawing-room,’ said Kate. ‘It would stand as an example.’

Ainger was doing his best to make it do so.

‘Yes, ma’am? Yes, sir?’ he said, without raising his eyes.

‘There are messages to be taken,’ said Mr Clare.

‘I have seen that the word is passed, sir.’

‘And directions to be given. Your mistress must be spared.’

‘I was not proposing to approach her, sir. Matters are on foot.’

‘And the children should be told,’ said Flavia. ‘They must not hear from anyone but me.’

‘Then it should be soon, ma’am. Ill news travels apace.’

‘Perhaps you will bring them to us.’

‘If I may suggest it, ma’am, would not their own quarters be the right background?’

‘What do you think?’ said Flavia, to her father-in-law.

‘I should say that those are better without the memory. Wé cannot make it a good one.’

‘It is a point of view, sir,’ said Ainger, turning to the door.

‘Only our own,’ said Mr Clare, ‘but we will hold to it. As the young man dealt with my son, so will I deal with him. But he must fill his own place.’

The children entered the room, their faces pale with apprehension. The change in the atmosphere of the house had seemed to come to meet them. Henry and Megan hung back, as though in fear of some ordeal. Bennet closed the door and remained within it, not withdrawing the support of her presence.

‘My little ones,’ said Flavia, opening her arms to the five, ‘I have something sad to tell you, something so sad that you will not guess what it is.’

‘Is it Father?’ said Megan at once. ‘Didn’t he get better this time?’

‘My little girl, it is Father. But this time was not like the last. He had an ordinary illness and did not recover.’

‘Is he dead?’ said Guy. ‘Shan’t we ever see him again?’

‘You will not, my little son. You only have your mother now.’

‘Fabian and Guy have another mother,’ said Henry, after a pause. ‘That will make it better for them. They still have two parents. They are not left with only one.’

‘Yes, it gives them more to depend on. But it will not make up for their father. This is a trouble we must all share together.’

Toby looked inquiringly from face to face, and Flavia took him on her knee and rested her cheek against his.

‘My baby boy, you always loved your father.’

‘Yes, Toby love him. Not Henry and Guy.’

‘Yes, you all loved him.’

‘No, only Toby.’

‘Father has gone to sleep and will not wake up any more.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Toby, getting off her knee. ‘Toby lie down too. But both quite well again.’

‘Where has Father gone?’ said Henry.

‘No one can know that.’

‘I don’t think he wanted to go away from here,’ said Megan. ‘I think he liked it better than he thought.’

‘Did his illness hurt him?’ said Henry, causing his sister to shrink into herself.

‘No, not at all,’ said his mother. ‘He just felt ill and tired.’

‘Was he a very old man?’

‘No, only middle-aged. He will never know what it is to be old.’

Fabian came up and laid his hand on his stepmother’s shoulder, and Guy began to weep and threw himself against her.

‘I haven’t had a mother like other boys. And now I haven’t a father. Why does it have to be like that?’

Flavia kept him within her arm, and Toby soberly regarded the occupation of his place.

‘Eliza says people go to heaven when they die,’ said Henry. ‘But only if they are good enough.’

‘Father was good enough,’ said Megan. ‘Everyone is supposed to be in heaven, and they can’t all be better than he was. And I think he was better than he seemed to be.’