Ivy Compton-Burnett - The Mighty and Their Fall

“What would it do for you? That would be her thought.”

“It could only be ours, Father. She has no thoughts now.”

“You know I represent her. In so far as our thoughts would be the same, they should be hers to you.”

“She should be here to keep a hand on you,” said Hugo.

“Yes, she should be here,” said Ninian. “But I feel the hand.”

“We shall all feel it,” said Egbert. “And partly as she meant us to. We should know about things, Father. They will have to go on without her.”

“Without her! It will not seem like going on.”

“It is better than a standstill. We must learn what the changes are to be.”

“today?” said his father.

“Well, it is a difficult day to live. We may as well make some use of it. It will leave a better memory. And I need some light on the future. We have depended on Grandma’s money.”

“Some of it was your grandfather’s, and comes direct to me,” said Ninian, with his eyebrows slightly raised. “She has left what was her own also to me, knowing it would pass to her grandchildren. There are the natural bequests to dependants. And there is a legacy to your uncle, and a message to him added in her own hand on the day before she died. That has no legal significance. It will have the more for him.”

“Then you have seen the will, Father. You said you had not thought of it, since it was made.”

“And I have not,” said Ninian, smiling. “It is not I, who thought of it today. When I put it out for the lawyer, I caught sight of the message at the end. It is not embodied in the will. You are not my friend, my boy.”

“Tell me the message,” said Hugo. “Of course that is all I should think of.”

“It is short and simple. It stresses the meaning of the legacy. She felt it lessened the advantage of your marriage, and she trusted it would prevent it.”

“She did not make it a condition?”

“No, the message has no legal force. It comes simply from her to you. She felt it was enough.”

“She could have made it a condition, if she had meant it to be one,” said Lavinia.

“No, my dear, she was above it,” said Ninian, at once. “It would have been to fail you and your uncle and herself. He has her word of trust. He needs nothing more.”

“But she knew I was unworthy of trust,” said Hugo. “So the word means nothing.”

“It means what it says. What else could it mean? Why should she have written it in her last weakness?”

“She did not tell you about it?”

“No, her strength was gone. She used the last of it for you.”

“I wish she had had just a little less. She did always have a great deal.”

“We must forget the message,” said Lavinia. “There is no middle course.”

“Forget it?” said her father. “Her last words, her last wish? They mean no more than that to you? Did you act a part with her?”

“No, and I will not now. We cannot fulfil the wish. So it is best not to think of it.”

“Best?” said Ninian, keeping his brows raised.

“Yes, for us. For her we cannot do anything.”

“Well, you will do nothing. You still act a part.”

“I may as well show my full self,” said Hugo. “It will cause no surprise. Did you see the amount of the legacy?”

“I did not see the will. I already knew the amount. I had my mother’s confidence.”

“Ninian, would you force me to go further?”

“You would hardly wish to today. It is no occasion for facts and figures.”

“It is only the one little figure. Of course it is not a large one. And it is in your mind. I shall be no worse than you are.”

“It was not, until you recalled it. What was in my mind was her thought and hope for you. For today is not that enough?”

“It is too much. All I want is the one little thing that you would not count. And I will not count it either. I must know it, to dismiss it from my mind.”

“The legacy is in safe investments, and can be estimated,” said Ninian, in a full, cold tone, naming the sum. “It renders you independent of me and my home and my daughter. You see its significance.”

“I do. I can marry Lavinia without any feeling of guilt.”

“ Without any?” said Ninian.

“Without that of supposedly sordid motives. I shall be able to do my part.”

“You can forget my mother’s message to you?”

“Yes, if you never remind me of it. Let it be a pact between us.”

“It might be the more remembered.”

“Well, that would not matter so much.”

“I could not have believed the occasion would be taken in this spirit,” said Ninian, as if to himself.

“Neither could I. Things are never as bad as we expect. This one is not.”

“You mean the legacy means more to you, than the woman who was your virtual mother?”

“The legacy is all I can have. And all I can have of her, And it binds me closer to her. You can see it does.”

“But you would let it ensure the thing she meant it to prevent?”

“It must be one of life’s inconsistencies. Or perhaps it was one of hers. She would have been above mere consistency. I remember that she was.”

“Hugo, would it not be better to appear to be serious today?”

“I am really serious. I don’t dare to seem to be. I am so afraid of you.”

“I would rather have a plain word than all this evasive irony, if that is what it is.”

“I hope it is that. I meant it to be. A plain word is a dreadful thing.”

“You will take the legacy, and do what it in effect forbids?”

“I said it was dreadful,” said Hugo.

“Then there is no more to be said.”

“That is a relief, Ninian.”

“Your mother must have known it might work out like this, Ninian,” said Teresa.

“She added the message to ensure that it did not.”

“Hugo was to have the money in any case,” said Egbert.

“Money! She felt there were other things. It made her think too well of other people.”

“She did not do that,” said Teresa with a smile.

“In this case we must feel she did.”

“So there was someone who thought better of me than I deserved,” said Hugo. “It is a thing I did not expect to say.”

“It is not the one I would choose at this moment,” said Ninian.

“Well, that is fortunate, as you could not say it. She thought the same of you as you deserved.”

“My dear mother! There was nothing false between us. As there now is between you and her.”

“And between you and me, Ninian. And if you are not careful, there will cease to be.”

Ninian turned to his daughter and spoke as if in sudden recollection.

“I have been wondering whether to put a memorial tablet to your grandmother in the church. Do you feel she would wish it?”

“She did not think of it. I hardly see what it would do for her.”

“It would not do anything for you? You do not feel her life should be commemorated? You would not have felt it?”

“We should put up so many memorials, if we considered our personal feelings. People are usually commemorated for some public service.”

“And the years of personal service do not count?”

“Only to us. It was to us that it was given.”

“It is we who should place the memorial.”

“Well, so it is, Father. And it could do no harm.”

“That is hardly a ground for the time and trouble and cost.”

“Well, that is what I thought.”

“Would you always have thought it? Would you always have been dry and logical and without larger impulse? Is it the new interest in legacies and kindred things? Has there come to be nothing else?”

“Those are in our minds at the moment. You are glad of your own share.”

“Not for my own sake. But let her be glad of them for hers, if they are her concern now,” said Ninian, as he turned away. “Let her leave the deeper things. Perhaps they have been too deep. We may not have known her.”