Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Mighty and Their Fall

“The more we ask, the more we have. And it is fair enough: asking is not always easy.”

“And it is said to be hard to accept,” said Lavinia. “So no wonder we have so little.”

“‘Nothing venture, nothing have’ is a heartless saying,” said Egbert. “Fancy recognising that we may have nothing.”

“And we are to value things more when they don’t come easily. There is no limit to the heartlessness.”

“When we really feel that everything is our due,” said Ninian.

“That ought to fill you with humility,” said Hugo. “As artists are filled with it, when they are praised.”

“Don’t they take praise as their due?” said Lavinia. “When they are not praised, they hardly seem filled with humility.”

“I suppose it means they are filled with pride,” said Teresa.

“Who said she could not use words like any one else?” said Ninian.

“I hope she will not go on doing it,” said Hugo. “Another person to put me into the shade!”

“Don’t you like the shade?” said Teresa.

“Well, no one is filled with humility to overflowing.”

“Now I am going to claim an hour with my wife alone,” said Ninian. “That is due to us on our first day.”

“As many hours as you like on every day, Father,” said Lavinia. “That is why we did not offer them on the first.”

“Will you come and share the hour with us?” said Teresa.

“No,” said Ninian, at once. “The hour is yours and mine. We will share others later.”

“What irony of fate!” said Egbert, looking after them. “The usurper of a place invites her predecessor to share it. Would that lead to less trouble or more?”

“More,” said Selina. “It is not a case for sharing. There are very few.”

“The very word repels me,” said Hugo. “Why should we not have what is our own? There is no good reason.”

“That is Father’s feeling,” said Egbert. “But Teresa seems to be without it. Perhaps she is a high type. We may meet one too seldom to recognise it.”

“Why are types only high and low?” said Hugo. “Cannot an ordinary person belong to them? Or do they only embrace extremes?”

“You can be a mediocre type,” said his mother.

“Oh, I am sure I can’t. I am sure nobody could. That is why we never hear of one. There is such a thing as going too far.”

“Father wants Teresa for himself,” said Egbert. “But he can hardly keep her from Lavinia. The feeling has no reason in it.”

“It has other things,” said Selina.

“You don’t mean I am to regard it, Grandma? He should be glad for Teresa to have a friend in me. It would ease the path for them both.”

“It might fill it, when he wants it free.”

“He is not a man to ask everything for himself.”

“No, but he asks one thing.”

“The whole of Teresa? She hardly seems to want the whole of him.”

“No, that is true. We remember her letter.”

“Her letter? Oh, yes he read it to us.”

“It was you who asked him to.”

“Yes, it was. It seemed best for us to hear it. I remember now.”

“It is easy to forget what we have not read ourselves.”

“Yes, but we remember the gist of it.”

“Perhaps not as well as Grandma does,” said Egbert in a whisper.

Lavinia seemed not to hear.

“Agnes!” said Miss Starkie’s voice. “What are you doing down here? Why did you not come with the others?”

“You didn’t tell me to.”

“You knew I meant all three of you.”

“I don’t see how I could know.”

“Agnes, you are not Hengist.”

“As near as makes no matter,” said Ninian. “What is the difference?”

“They are all themselves, Mr. Middleton. It is for me to remember it.”

“I am old enough to be here,” said Agnes. “I understand most of the talk.”

“Agnes, you are not Lavinia,” said Miss Starkie, true to her idea of her duty.

“How can I be like her, if we are kept apart? I don’t learn so much upstairs.”

“Well, tell us what you have learnt,” said Miss Starkie, as though disposing of the matter.

“They are not things that go into words.”

“There, I thought so. So there is an end of it.”

“And they are not things you would ever need,” said Agnes, as if to herself.

“They are not, if they cannot be expressed. True and definite things for me! The others can go by the board.”

“I thought you would think in that way. It is not only those things that are true.”

“Agnes, I don’t understand your mood.”

“A mood can’t be understood. I am not in one as often as the others.”

“I should have thought they were always in one,” said Selina.

Her grand-daughter gave a laugh.

“And how am I to get to know Mamma, if I am never with her?”

“You will know her in time,” said Miss Starkie. “She does not want you always at her elbow.”

“She would not say that kind of thing. I know that already about her.”

“Agnes!” said Selina, sitting up and deepening her tones. “Are you going to obey Miss Starkie or are you not? It is time we knew.”

“I shall have to. But it won’t be for always. I can think of that.”

“Agnes, you are not yourself today,” said Miss Starkie, as if finding this unnatural thought.

“I am beginning to be. That is what it is. Not my full self yet, of course,” said Agnes, following Miss Starkie, and leaving her to fill in the gap suggested.

“Which of them won?” said Egbert.

“Agnes,” said Selina. “She is growing up. And that is our first victory. I suppose it is right.”

“I should not have thought a victory was ever right,” said Lavinia. “To judge from what I have read. But sometimes it is essentially justified.”

“It is a pity the child is the father of the man,” said Hugo. “Its being the other way round is quite enough.”

“I would never acknowledge my early self as my father,” said Egbert “I should be ashamed.”

“What of yours, Lavinia?” said Selina.

“Well, there has been a certain change, Grandma. But shame is a strong word.”

“It is not only the early self that causes that.”

“Egbert felt it caused the most. And it may be true.”

“I think a later one may cause us more.”

“So it has come” said Selina, “come at last! What might have come each day for years. He will not let me die without him. That is how I have lived. Why is it thought that death is what counts? Why is the end of life the meaning of it?”

“Ransom is returning!” said Ninian. “After so much of his life and ours! Now we have so much to forget.”

“So I can say I can depart in peace,” said Selina, taking the initiative upon herself.

“This is not the time to say it,” said her son. “The letter will be his own. He will depend on a welcome, as if he had always wanted it.

‘My dear Mother,

I am returning to you, a man of fifty-two, to see you before I die. I shall not live longer than you, possibly not so long. I have sowed too many wild oats, and am reaping what I sowed. I have also reaped substance to serve me to the end, and to serve others after me. I have taken a house near yours, there to end my days. I waited to write until I was settled in it. You know I do things to please myself. I shall come to see you at my own time. You can feel I am still your second son. You will find me altered in body, but in nothing else. No one but a mother could have a welcome for me. No one but you will have one.

Your loving son,

Ransom Middleton’

So change is upon us. And he himself will find a change.”

“I wish I had altered,” said Hugo. “It will be humbling to be the same.”