Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Mighty and Their Fall

“All feeling is,” said Hugo. “Or we should not like people in spite of ourselves, as we are known to. I suppose it is what you are doing.”

“Am I to be with Father in the old way, Grandma?” said Lavinia, in a tone that came from the past.

“In what will appear the old way. You will really imitate the old, and so make a new one. I will only tell you what is true.”

“I wish we had never seen or heard of Teresa,” said Egbert.

“I am not quite sure,” said Hugo. “I cannot help loving experience. Even though it is unfortunate, as it always seems to be. I am supposed not to have had any. But I am a person who would be misunderstood.”

“I shall always avoid it,” said Egbert. “I begin to see what it is. This glimpse is a warning. I feel Lavin’a has been sacrificed to me. Of course I don’t mean I think I matter. I know too well what I am.”

“I have learned it,” said Lavinia. “Or rather I have been taught.”

“Of course I feel Ninian’s troubles as if they were mine,” said Hugo. “And I have told you how it is.”

“My poor son, his life has not gone well,” said Selina. “A mother cannot make up to him. I do not deceive myself.”

“That is what I have done,” said Lavinia. “And what I shall try to do again. For me there is only one thing.”

“You sound as if you were a woman grown,” said her grandmother, with a smile.

“I wonder if it will be decided what I am, before there is no longer any doubt.”

Selina rose and rustled from the room, with an air of resigned purpose. She went up to the schoolroom and stood just within it, her eyes fixed almost fiercely upon its occupants.

“Agnes and Hengist and Leah, lend me your ears. I come to bury something, not to praise it. The mistake your father has made will not live after him. I have come to end it with a word. It is a word you will hear in silence, with your eyes fixed on my face. Do not look at each other. Do not utter a syllable or a sound. Your father is not going to be married. He will be a widower, as he has always been. The reasons are not for you to seek. And you will not seek them. Do you hear and understand?”

There was silence.

“Should you not answer your grandmother?” said Miss Starkie, in a rather faint tone.

“She said we were not to speak,” said Leah.

“He can’t always have been a widower,” said Hengist. “No one could begin by being that.”

“As long as you can remember,” said Miss Starkie.

“Always, as far as you are concerned.”

“Leah, did you hear me?” said Selina, not looking at her grandson.

“Why should I be the one not to hear? Is it our fault that Father is not going to be married? I mean, is it because of us? Didn’t she like his having children?”

“She might not have liked his having Lavinia,” said Hengist.

“Hengist and Leah, the reasons are not for you to seek.”

“We can’t help our thoughts. And it seems it is because of us. She must have liked Father for himself.”

“She!” just uttered Miss Starkie, not raising her eyes.

“Children, do you understand plain words?”

“Well, we know what they mean,” said Hengist. “But we don’t always understand. Is it a good thing that Father will always be a widower? It doesn’t sound as if it was.”

Selina looked at Miss Starkie and heaved a sigh.

“You must have understood that you were not to ask questions,” said the latter.

“Or have they no understanding?” breathed the grandmother.

“We shall have to know more,” said Leah. “Perhaps Father will tell us.”

“Leah, you will not ask him. He is not to be harassed by your questions. You will be silent as the grave.”

“We shall not ask him anything. I only said he might tell us.”

“Leah, he will tell you nothing. The subject will not be broached.”

“It sounds as if there was something wrong about it,” said Hengist.

“What does broach mean?” said Leah.

“Leah, it means what you are to know it means. That the silence will not be mooted, that there will be silence upon it.”

“Why do you keep saying our names?” said Hengist. “We know whom you are speaking to.”

“Is moot a real word?” said Leah.

“Come, I think you understand your grandmother,” said Miss Starkie.

“If they do not, Miss Starkie, will you force my meaning into their heads by any method known? Can I rely on its being battered into them?”

“I think you may depend on me, Mrs. Middleton.”

“And I will help, Grandma,” said Agnes. “They listen to what I say.”

Selina went to the door, signed sternly to Hengist to open it, and passed from sight.

“Well, I was not proud of you,” said Miss Starkie.

“Were you proud of Grandma?” said Hengist. “We were better than she was. And we oughtn’t to be better than an old person.”

“It is not for you to criticise your elders.”

“We have to criticise Grandma,” said Leah. “You would yourself, if you were not in her power.”

“My dealings are with your father. And it is her opinion of you that matters. I don’t know what she can have thought of you.”

“Why don’t you know? It was not a secret. It was mooted.”

“And if you are not careful, Leah, it will not be a secret from your father,” said Selina’s voice. “He will know the whole, and will never think the same of you.”

“I don’t know what he thinks of me now,” said Leah to her brother. “So it wouldn’t make much difference.”

Selina went down to her family, took a seat by the fire, and turned a benevolent eye on them.

“Have you done me the service I asked of you?” said Ninian.

“Yes, it is behind. It was a trivial scene. You need not give a thought to it.”

“Nothing is trivial to me,” said Hugo. “Let us give it a little thought.”

“I am willing to envisage it,” said Ninian. “Were the children surprised?”

“I don’t know what they were. It does not mean or matter much!”

“Was Miss Starkie surprised?” said Hugo.

“I don’t know,” said Selina, sounding surprised herself by this line of interest. “It is not her concern. And we never know what children feel, or if they feel anything.”

“I wonder your grandchildren like you as much as they do.”

“I have felt the same wonder,” said Ninian.

“They may know I am sound at heart,” said Selina with her lips grave.

“But how can they know? There would have to be some signs.”

“Well, we know what true instincts children and animals have. You must have heard about it. It is observant to couple them together.”

“They have in the books,” said Ninian. “But have they outside them? I should hardly have thought anything about children was sound. They seem so aloof and egoistic.”

“More than we can be?” said Egbert.

“You mean you found me such things? You can feel I went through a crisis. And you can hope it did not go deep.”

“I hope indeed it did not, Father,” said Egbert, gravely.

“We should be thinking of you, Mother,” said Ninian. “We forget you have not our strength.”

“Yes, the time has come to remember. And it will soon be over. You should not let it pass. I may be better than is thought.”

“So may many of us,” said Hugo. “Some of us feel we are.”

“Do we?” said Lavinia. “I should hardly have said so. We alone know our hidden selves.”

“They may be good as well as bad.”

“I did not mean the good ones. I don’t think they are hidden. People are said to be ashamed of their better qualities. But they seem to face the exposure. Or how do we know they are there? And that there is anything to be ashamed of?”