Ivy Compton-Burnett: The Last and the First

“A quality she has had no reason to show so far. It has indeed not been proved.”

“I don’t know,” said Sir Robert, with a smile. “Perhaps it has been to-day.”

“Oh, I am not an autocrat. There was nothing to be afraid of.”

“What did you say, Mater?” said Angus. “You should think before you speak.”

“You all call me Mater now,” said Eliza with a frown. “The name was chosen for Hermia and Madeline, because they remembered their own mother. There is no point in it for anyone else.”

“But it is better not to have two names,” said Madeline. “And Mater has the maternal implication, and yet seems to avoid the deeper one. No doubt that was how Father thought of it.”

“It may have been,” said Sir Robert. “Anyhow it is established by usage.”

“Well, Mater or not, I am no tyrant,” said Eliza. “People are not afraid of me. Sometimes, I think, toolittle.”

“That is not likely,” said Hermia. “Fear goes a long way. I may or may not have courage, but I have not been quite free from it. I have been afraid of provoking your outbreaks. Perhaps more than of the outbreaks themselves. You may have made me afraid of myself.”

“Mater will soon be afraid of Hermia,” murmured Roberta.

“The outbreaks, as you call them, have their reason,” said Eliza. “Things that are wrong must be rectified.”

“Whatever I call them, they add to the wrong.”

“I did not know you were so much on the side of righteousness! I have not recognised the signs of it.”

“Most of us are on its side in a way.”

“Do you mean that I am not?”

“I daresay you believe you are. That is also true of most of us.”

“You take this occasion to say things you would not say on any other,” said Madeline. “You have caused it yourself. You should take no advantage of it.”

“They were innocent things to say. I might always have said them.”

“They were the most guilty things,” murmured Angus to Roberta. “And if she might have said them, we know she would have.”

“We are all afraid of Mater. Have we to be afraid of Hermia too? It is a pity they are not afraid of each other. I can’t think why they are not.”

“How soon is Hermia going?” said Madeline. “There will have to be adjustments in the house. I suppose she will take her books with her?”

“Yes, I shall,” said her sister. “They are all that I need to take.”

“They are all she has a right to take,” said Eliza, with a faint smile. “Roberta is to have her room. I have always imagined her in it. And if I had been like other women, she would always have had it. There need be no discussion or question. The matter is settled.”

“Would not Madeline like to have the room?” said Hermia.

“You heard what I said. The room is to be Roberta’s. She will have some advantage at last. I will hear nothing against it.”

“There is nothing against it, Mater,” said Madeline, gently. “I am quite content with my room. It has somehow become a part of me. That is a thing a room can do. I will help her to move into the other.”

“You have the stronger claim,” said Angus.

“No one has any claim,” said Eliza. “The room is mine, like everything else in the house. And I am giving it to Roberta. When Hermia comes home she can have one of the spare rooms. She can move into the smaller one tomorrow. That is her place in the house now. It is the one she has chosen herself. She wishes to be a guest and she can be one.”

“My place is to know me no more,” said Hermia. “And the small spare room does not know me either. So I shall be a stranger here. And there need be no talk of the past, as that would mean I was something else. I leave the house, the past forgetting, by the past forgot.”

“Come, what shallow, showy talk!” said Sir Robert. “You sound as if you were not human, and as if no one else was human either. We don’t forget thirty-four years. You know you have not forgotten them.”

“Not the first ten of them, Father. They are often in my mind. They are what I take with me.”

“The first ten years of life are largely forgotten by everyone,” said Eliza.

“Not by me. The change that came then cut them off and defined the memory.”

“Such a memory is chiefly made up of what is heard later.”

“Not in my case. It could not be. I have heard nothing of those years since they ended. They have hardly been mentioned.”

“You can’t really believe that.”

“I know it. No one could know it better. Who should know as well as I?”

“The two who were thinking of them, and think of them still. And will always think of them,” said Madeline.

“I know what your father is thinking. His mind is an open book to me. And you said yourself that those years were never mentioned. If he was thinking of them, they would have been.”

“They would not, as you know. You know they could not be. You know they can’t be now. The silence deepens the thought.”

“I am giving up,” said Eliza. “It is all too much. First, I have to be a step-mother, and put other children before my own. And then I am a tyrant, because I order the house for the good of us all. And now I can be dealt with as if years of thought and care had not been lived. I have indeed struck a rough road. Well, it is mine, and I must follow it.”

“Oh, come, you are overwrought,” said Sir Robert. “Of course you must follow it. Hermia is not to set a fashion. We could not get along it without you. All roads have their stony places. We don’t look for life to be smooth.”

“Why not?” said Roberta. “We are told that it is sweet. It is not fair that it should be so different.”

“That means life as opposed to death,” said Madeline.

“Well, anything might be sweet as opposed to that,” said Angus.

“No, I don’t agree. I can think of many things that would not. Death is anyhow natural and innocent.”

“And that is not much to be. The most congenial things may be neither.”

“And seldom both,” said Hermia. “I hardly think ever.”

“When will you be going to the school?” said Madeline, as if willing to change the talk. “It is best to know in good time.”

“As soon as I can. I should be there before the term. There will be things to learn before I can take my part in it.”

“There will be one thing,” said Eliza. “How to consider a number of people besides yourself. It would be less of a change for me.”

“Suppose you succeed in persuading me to stay! How will you feel then?”

“It is your life we are talking of, not mine.”

“We are talking of them both. They have been involved with each other. And it is better that they should not be. That is surely clear.”

“You are not being driven from your home. I will neither admit it nor have it said. And people are so prone to say that kind of thing.”

“Well, they would find it congenial. It is a normal human tendency. And I don’t care what they say.”

“When I have said I do care, that is not the right feeling. Well, may your indifference serve you in your new world. May you maintain it in the face of its trials. You have not shown it in much lesser ones here.”

“She may find it a help,” said Sir Robert. “She must know how to use it, and how not to misuse it. She must do both.”

“I have always done both, Father.”

“You are wrong. You have only done one,” said Eliza. “You are only doing one now.”

“Well, it is settled,” said Sir Robert. “We will leave the subject.”

“We will not,” said Angus. “We will continue it and return to it, and prove our appreciation of it. Subjects are rare things.”

“That may be as well,” said Roberta. “We could become exhausted before they were themselves. It is a thing a subject never seems to be.”