Ivy Compton-Burnett: The Last and the First

“There are,” said Sir Robert’s voice. “And you must cease to break them, Hermia. You are having your wish granted, in the face of Mater’s doubt and mine, and should be grateful to me, and more to her. I should not have granted it, if she had pressed her view. She is showing forbearance and tolerance. What are you showing?”

“Neither at the time. But I have had to show them. And I should have to show them again. What I am showing is a resolve to live my own life according to myself. Whose life is it but mine? I am forced to show it and to go on showing it. I should be grateful to pursue my way in peace. There seems no end to it.”

“Well, well, there is an end. You have faced us and conquered us, and take the spoils of the victor. We may live to see you are wise. We hope we shall, my dear. That we did not want the change does not mean we don’t want your success in it. We want it as much as you do. You take that knowledge with you.”

He left them, as if bringing the matter to a fitting end, and Angus spoke at once.

“I wished I dared to praise myself. It seems a family gift. Father and Mater and Hermia all have it. And I think Madeline has it in a way of her own.”

“Then I should not ever use it. I am quite aware I am not all that I should be.”

“I am so much more than I should be that I am ashamed of it. I have the gift after all, and can use it.”

“We are all ashamed of it,” said Roberta. “There is no credit in not being free. If the compulsions of our life were lifted, I wonder what would break forth. It might not be a case for the family gift.”

“It might not,” said Madeline. “Father is right. A certain amount of restraint is a safeguard. Hermia may not find her new life as different in that way as she expects.”

“I shall find it different enough. It will be free from the forces that crush the impulse of life. That is all that I expect. I can hardly have learned to expect much.”

“I wonder how long the feeling will last. It seems a rather indefinite one.”

“As long as the conditions here remain. As long as there is the memory of them. And that will be while I live.”

“Which is the braver thing?” said Angus. “To do as Hermia has done, or what we are to go on doing?”

“What Hermia has done,” said Roberta. “The obvious can be true. What we should not dare to do. We can say that we show the deeper courage. But we know it is the depths of cowardice. Our hearts tell us.”

“Courage can take different forms,” said Madeline. “We can think of many examples of it.”

“Is your own life one of them?” said Hermia.

“We are not always thinking of ourselves and our own lives.”

“There is not often much thought left over from them.”

“There was one form of courage in this case,” said Angus. “And Hermia showed it.”

“I am glad I am without it,” said Roberta. “To think what I might have to do!”

“To think what Hermia did do!”

“I am not sure that courage is the right word,” said Madeline. “Or at any rate the only one.”

“I am sure it is,” said Hermia.

“Osbert, you ought to know how to cut a ham.”

“Then I do know, Grannie. I only dare to do what I ought.”

“Do you expect other people to eat the fat you have left?”

“Is it any good to expect it? Do you think they would?”

“The fat of ham is quite different from other fat.”

“That hardly seems worth while when it all has the same end.”

“You should cut the fat and lean together, and leave what you can’t eat.”

“I knew waste was not wicked. That is what I will do.”

“What good do you suppose the fat is by itself?”

“No good. Or with anything else. What good could it be?”

“A young man should eat whatever is provided. The fat of ham is quite a wholesome food.”

“How do you know? What means is there of knowing?”

“I know from my own experience.”

“Grannie, what words are these? Pray do not go any further.”

“Can’t we forget the ham?” said Osbert’s sister. “It dominates the sideboard, but it need hardly do the same to our lives.”

“You are late, Amy,” said Mrs. Grimstone, turning to the door as a girl of fourteen appeared and came to her seat. “And must you edge into the room as if you were ashamed of entering?”

Her grand-daughter did not explain that she was ashamed of entering at this hour.

“And what a time to come down! Were you not called?”

“Oh I think so, Grannie. Yes, I believe I was. I don’t remember.”

“I suppose you were so sunk in sloth that you forgot who you were,” said Mrs. Grimstone, speaking a true word, if hardly in jest.

“I fear your words may apply to me, Mamma,” said a slow, deep voice, as a middle-aged man entered and stooped to salute his mother. “The spirit may have been willing, but the flesh was weak.”

“Well, what will you have?” said Mrs. Grimstone, accepting this form of the account, and distinguishing by her tone between a son and a grand-child. “There is hot fish here, and a ham at the side.”

Hamilton Grimstone paused and bent his head before making a material choice. He was deliberate over the observance, and raised his eyes as if he had conferred and gained some benefit.

“We have said grace,” said his mother, just enunciating the words.

“But I had not, Mamma. And it is not an omission I care to make. One of the penalties of tardiness is the missing of the ritual that inaugurates our day, and without which the day itself is never the same to me.”

“What will you have, Amy?” said Mrs. Grimstone, turning from her son, whose beliefs she shared without sharing his pleasure in them.

“Oh, I think some ham please, Grannie.”

“I am of similar mind,” said Hamilton, with his slow smile. “But I hesitate to broach the oleaginous mass that obstructs it.”

“The fish should be used,” said Mrs. Grimstone, in a considering manner, supplying a plate of it for Amy, and meeting a silent acceptance. “It is Osbert who cuts the ham in that way. I have dealt with the matter.”

“When matters arise, that is what she does with them,” said Erica.

Erica alone of Jocasta Grimstone’s grand-children took her on equal terms, and was regarded as qualified to do so. Jocasta did not esteem people for being dependent on herself. She was a tall, upright woman of eighty-four with a small, alert, pallid face, small, penetrating eyes and an air of omniscience which had grown with its long exercise. Her Christian name had been chosen by a parent with more respect for the classics than knowledge of them; and she had accepted it and made it her own.

Her surviving son might have resembled her, had not his lineaments been so overlaid by flesh that the likeness had vanished with them. His pendulous cheeks and chin, pale, globular eyes and almost pendulous frame arrested many a glance. At fifty he might have been any later age, but was seldom guessed to be his own. He had inherited money from a godfather, and gave his time to studying and adding to it, and to consulting his advisers to this end. Jocasta felt to him as her son, but had her own view of him as a man, and was in no danger of her namesake’s history.

Her grand-children were of shorter and lighter build, with narrower features and livelier eyes, and a look of covert humour that was fostered by their life. Osbert’s features were set a little askew, and gave him an expression in accordance with himself. Erica alone attained to comeliness, and her uncle’s eyes recognised this as they rested on her.

The three were the orphan children of an unsuccessful son of Jocasta’s, and made their home in her house in default of any other. She had educated Osbert and his sister, and articled Osbert to a firm of lawyers nearby, not disposed to afford him more than this, or to esteem him more for his enforced acceptance of it.