Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Present and the Past

‘Well, I hardly dare to do so.’

‘Has she any real feeling for us?’

‘She has the right feeling and conquers any other. She is true to her vision of herself. She is really true to it.’

‘What was the bond between her and Flavia, apart from their experience with Cassius?’

‘They wanted no other. That gave them the scope they needed. They could pity and suffer and forgive.’

‘So you are on Cassius’s side?’

‘Well, he is dead, and when he was alive, he could not live with my sister.’

‘Considering what we owe to the dead, and that everyone dies,’ said Elton, ‘it is a wonder we manage as well as we do. And we do a good deal for the living, considering we owe them nothing. But have we done anything for Catherine?’

‘We have simply gone on living with each other. I have been afraid she would notice it.’

‘Does she think she is necessary to us?’

‘It has not occurred to her that she could not be.’

‘Have you ever seen an expression cross my face, that reminded you of her?’

‘Well, I have not spoken of it, as I have seen the same thing in the glass. But you may speak of it. It will be easier to bear it together.’

‘Does it mean a likeness underneath?’

‘No, it is only skin-deep, as beauty would be, if we had it. It is fair that they should be the same.’

‘Do you think we have qualities in common? Are we all prone to admire ourselves?’

‘No, you and I live over a deep uncertainty. And Catherine does not admire herself until she has arranged some reason for doing so.’

‘She is coming up the path,’ said Elton. ‘And I don’t think she has arranged any reason. Can it be that for an hour she has been without one?”

‘I should hardly think for as much as an hour,’ said Ursula.

Catherine came into the room and paused in her usual way.

‘I have done it. I have been to my friend. I have broken our friendship. It was a strange one. Good has not come of it. It is time for it to end.’

‘I thought that friendships died of themselves,’ said Elton, ‘and that no one could explain it.’

‘Perhaps this one has done so. Perhaps it carried its death knell in it. It may be that ordinary things are the right stuff of life.’

‘Well, that would explain life as we find it,’ said Ursula.

‘We tried to steer a course beyond them. We thought we could do what others could not do.’

‘Don’t we always think that?’

‘We should not act upon it.’

‘I did not know we ever did.’

‘I did, and harm came of it. I harmed the man who was once my husband. I harmed him when he tried to serve me. And I thought I could not harm anyone. The common words are true. Pride goes before a fall.’

‘It goes after it,’ said her sister. ‘A fall involves tragedy, and it is so dignified to suffer.’

‘But not to cause suffering.’

‘Perhaps that is tragedy at its height.’

‘Humiliation at its depth,’ said Catherine, standing with her hands clasped. ‘The image of Cassius lives with me. Cassius harmed by his own hand, and that hand really mine. Cassius lying dead as the result of my return to his life.’

‘Surely that is not true,’ said Ursula.

‘The one thing followed from the other. I caused the first trouble, and but for that, help would have come in the second. I will not turn from the truth.’

‘I will,’ said Elton. ‘I see we were wrong about Cassius. But I will not be brave enough to admit it. Moral courage drags one down.’

‘He was not like other men,’ said Ursula. ‘We are supposed to think that of ourselves, and we think it of him. But Catherine was not to blame for his nature.’

‘Was he to blame for it?’ said her sister. ‘It had its claim. I knew him. We had cause to know each other. Knowing me, he served me to the end of his power. How did I serve him?’

‘Service is too much for anyone. It seems that people either fail in it or that it ends in their death. And we have to take the blame for our natures. Elton and I have always done so.’

‘Their demand should be met. It is the basis of human intercourse.’

‘That is at the bottom of everything. It is odd that we do not try to manage without it.’

‘It constitutes human life. And I have failed in it.’

‘Well, we all fail in life,’ said Ursula.

‘We miss success. But that does not matter.’

‘Do you really think Elton and I have missed it?’

‘And that it does not matter?’ said her brother.

‘You are good to me. You would lift my burden. But it is mine. I must carry it.’

‘Would it hurt anyone if you cast it down?’

‘It would hurt myself. It would harden my heart. And its hardness has done enough. I must suffer what I must.’

‘You make too much of it,’ said Elton. ‘Cassius had had a great deal of his life.’

‘Not as much as you think at your age.’

‘I am one of those people who have never been young.’

‘And I am sure I am one of those who were never a child,’ said Ursula.

‘I remember you both as children.’

‘We are talking of our memory of ourselves.’

‘Don’t you think you are making changes in it?’

‘Well, only for the better,’ said Ursula.

‘You were never old for your ages.’

‘Well, we should hardly have been precocious.’

‘I almost think you were behind them.’

‘Well, we may have been the kind of people to develop late.’

‘Cassius was not of the age to die,’ said Catherine.

‘What is the age?’ said her sister.

‘About seventy,’ said Elton, ‘when we have had our span, and people have not begun to think less of us.’

‘Do you think less of old people?’ said Catherine.

‘No, I admire them for having had their lives and being sure of them. But that is rare. Most people despise them for not being able to eat their cake and have it, even though it is only the chance of it.’

‘Do you feel that life is so uncertain?’

‘Well, I feel that mine is safe. But I like to talk of the uncertainty; it sounds so brave.’

‘It is braver than not being able to speak of it at all, like most people,’ said Ursula. ‘Speaking of a thing makes it real, and that does mean too much with such a subject.’

‘So much in life needs courage,’ said Catherine.

‘Almost everything,’ said her sister. ‘We even talk of daring to be ourselves. Though I expect we mean daring to show ourselves, and naturally that would need it.’

‘Some people dare to do that,’ said Elton, ‘though you might not believe it. Think of Miss Ridley.’

‘Must we think of her?’ said Ursula. ‘She shows a cheerful spirit, and she may be homeless at any moment.’

‘If I were a governess,’ said Elton, ‘and I do not mean a tutor, people would not feel the house was home without me. So the power would be mine, and I should use it.’

‘Well, if you did not, what good would it be? People think it natural to want power, and wrong to exercise it. They are inconsistent, or rather they have grudging hearts. I expect it is the same thing.’

‘It is hard to say where power has lain in that house,’ said Catherine.

‘What a dark way you speak of it!’ said Elton.

‘You forget it was once my home.’

‘Well, there is nothing to remind me of it.’

‘I was always an alien. I felt less so when I returned. And now I am an alien again. There is nothing to hold me to it. My link with it was Cassius, although we were estranged. Not Flavia, although we were friends. I ought to have eschewed that friendship. I see it was a furtive thing.’

‘We could not eschew things because of that,’ said Ursula. ‘We should have to give up so many of our small pleasures; some of them because they were so small.’