Ivy Compton-Burnett: The Last and the First

There was a pause, and Sir Robert looked down with a disturbed expression. He was normally on the side of his wife, hardly believing that she could be wrong, and caring especially for her children; but he kept the feelings of a father and the memory of the days when Hermia stood high in his life.

“This house is my home,” said his daughter. “I remain in it as I have no other. I am entitled to human comfort under its roof.”

“Oh, come, you will have to meet each other,” said her father. “Hermia will ask you another time, and you will arrange what she needs. That settles it for both of you.”

“If I feel disposed to arrange it. It is for me to decide. Whose house is it? Hers or mine?”

“Yours in the main. And a little everyone else’s as well. If you will allow it to be. And we know you will. We know you better than you know yourself. We have learned where to put our trust.”

“I feel that is true,” said Eliza. “Or it is not without its truth. It is what gives me my place, and makes it possible for me. I don’t mean that I would change it. I chose it, and it is mine. And you would see it simply as the best in the house. And that is what it is; that is why it can be no one else’s. But the yoke is not always easy, or the burden light.”

“Why is it not the best?” said Angus. “It is the choice many people would make.”

“Not many people, my boy, if they knew it and knew themselves. But they don’t know either. The surface is what they see. Is my own son among them?”

“The surface might easily be seen,” said Roberta. “It is hardly a thing to pass over.”

“I admit that I see it,” said Angus. “I should delight to have a place of power, and fall into the pitfalls that beset it.”

“As I do, my son?” said Eliza, half sadly. “As I do, I suppose? Well, I must try to do better. And you will all try to do better too. We will all try together. It is not only your mother who has pitfalls in her path.”

“No one can do much in daily life,” said Madeline. “We simply do our best in the sphere that happens to be ours.”

“Not a very great best is asked of you,” said Eliza, with a faint smile. “I sometimes wonder if I am right in letting you all go on so easily, taking everything and giving nothing, indeed having nothing asked of you. But I don’t see how I can help it, being as I am. I am not a person to expect much. Perhaps I have learned not to be. If a mistake is being made, it is mine.”

“We take the necessities of life,” said Hermia. “And ask nothing beyond them. It is Father who gives us everything we have. We take nothing from anyone else.”

“How material things fill your horizon!” said Eliza, in a musing tone, resting her eyes on her step-daughter. “I should not have thought they would loom so large. They never have with me. But I may not be like other people. I begin to see I am not. You forget the effort and thought that support the even tenor of your life. But what your father has and can give you would be of little good without them.”

“We could manage for ourselves if things were in our hands. There would be no trouble.”

“Well, they are not in your hands,” said Eliza, with a little laugh. “It is a contingency that need not be considered, as it will not arise. Who and what do you imagine you are?”

“I know what I am. A woman of thirty-four, with no scope and no chance of having any. It is not likely I should forget. Would it often be out of my mind?”

“What are your ideas for your life?” said Sir Robert, whose eyes were on her. “It seems you must have them, if you have thought and felt as you say. Put it in words that we understand. We are in the dark.”

“I will lighten your darkness. I could hardly not have my ideas. There has been time to form them. They have come to be comprised in a wish for a definite thing. The large school in the town is not doing well, and the principal would like a partner. It would mean an outlay, but not, I believe, a prohibitive one. If that could be managed for me, I should be happier and more useful. I feel I have no place here.”

“What kind of place do you want?” said Eliza. “You share the family home and life. Why have you a right to more? And the position would not be the same. You will be seen in another way. You would have to be prepared for it.”

“I don’t know how I am seen now. Or rather I do know; it is as I see myself. And I am ready for it to end.” Hermia kept her eyes turned from Eliza as she voiced unutterable words. “The household will be happier without me. I can only be a discordant element. I am a reminder to Mater of the life Father had before he knew her. And a reminder to him of it too. And it is often in my own mind. How often no one knows.”

“Of course no one does,” said Eliza. “No one knows what is in anyone else’s mind. You don’t know what is in mine; you do not indeed. And why should people think about your mind? Do you give a thought to theirs? Perhaps they are hardly as much concerned with you as you are with yourself.”

“We know your views,” said Hermia’s father. “But think before you give up your home and your place in it. They are things that do not come again.”

“I know that, Father. I am ready to give them up. I feel I have hardly had them.”

“You have had the place that was yours. Mater has given it to you, given it for all these years. You must recognise it, Hermia. What have you given in return? No one would choose to have step-children.”

“I have given nothing. I have had nothing to give. And who would choose to have a step-mother? There was no choice for either of us there. We have done what we were forced to do. Mater may be grateful to me for going. That is where the gratitude will lie.

“I don’t know why my name is brought into this,” said Eliza, in a cold tone. “I have nothing to do with it. The change is being made without reference to me. Hermia has had her full rights here. She would have had no more with her own mother. I don’t know why she is a martyr.”

“She is not,” said Sir Robert. “She is an able young woman, who needs an outlet for her gifts. Her energy has been accumulating and has broken forth. That is all it is.”

“Gifts?” said Eliza, drawing in her brows. “Are they to be depended on? Does she know what they are?”

“She may. And others will know, when she begins to use them. We shall hear of her success, if it comes. And she will have her freedom, if that is what it is. Some people would give it another name.”

“They would and will. That is a thing she will have to face. I don’t know how she will like it. From what I know of her, not much.”

“I shall not know anything about it,” said Hermia. “No one will say the thing to me. Or I shall not be at home to hear them. And the people I am with will not say them. I shall be quite safe.”

“I don’t know why I am regarded like this,” broke out Eliza. “As someone who has failed in some way, when what I have done is to think and manage more than other people. I wish I had not done it. I would not do it again. I will not go on doing it. I will follow Hermia’s example and think of myself. And the result for other people need not matter to me. It does not matter to her.”

She sank into tears, and her husband rose and put his arm about her, signing to his children to leave them.

They withdrew to a refuge at the back of the hall, a small room furnished with discards from other rooms with a view to their occupation of it.

“Well, Mater is weeping on Father’s shoulder,” said Hermia. “Over a change that is as welcome to her as it is to me. I might as well cry over it myself.”