Ivy Compton-Burnett - Mother and Son

“Will Pettigrew be paid for the day he did not come?” said Adrian, in an aside.

“Come, come, the occasion is not a usual one,” said Mr. Pettigrew, suggesting what he accepted as this. “You seem to have a sense of it, and you should behave accordingly.”

“It is that, that makes him self-conscious,” said Alice.

The tutor looked at Adrian in enlightenment.

“It doesn’t,” said the latter. “I don’t think about myself.”

“Then you are an unusual person. Not that I should rank myself amongst those most subject to the tendency.”

“Will you go to Aunt Miranda’s funeral?”

“I shall be occupied with my work. Otherwise I should have been happy to attend.”

“Ought we to be happy at a funeral?”

“I think you do not misunderstand my use of the word.”

“Francis is going with Uncle and Rosebery.”

“It marks a step towards manhood for you, Francis. And I do not mean simply this observance. The change will take you all a step further in your lives.”

“Will it take you one too?” said Adrian.

“I am not so intimately concerned. But it will end a relationship that I valued as happy and familiar.”

“I think Aunt Miranda thought you ought to value it.”

“I have just stated that I did so.”

“Did she ever threaten to dismiss you?”

“I think, Adrian, that the emotions of the occasion have been too much for you.”

“She was supposed to insult the people she employed.”

“In the sense probably that she was obliged at times to remonstrate with her servants. It would hardly apply to other relationships. And in my professional capacity I have dealt with your uncle.”

“I knew he paid for our education. Perhaps Aunt Miranda would not have given us any.”

“Then he would wish you to profit by it. And you will turn your attention to doing so.”

“Will you be more at ease here, now that Aunt Miranda is gone?”

“Adrian, I can only think that must be the case with yourself.”

“So you suspected we were not at ease with her?”

“Miss Alice, do you think that Adrian is fit for his work to-day?”

“I expect it is the best thing for him.”

“I am inclined to agree. It may do him good to concentrate.”

“Ought we to be able to concentrate, when Aunt Miranda is dead?” said Adrian. “Perhaps she would rather we thought about her.”

“Then we will not prevent you from doing so. We will leave you to yourself, while we employ ourselves as usual.”

Time passed in this way until Julius entered, to say his first word in his new character.

“Well, Pettigrew, we are by ourselves now. We shall have to help each other. Miss Wolsey has agreed to stay and do her best for us.”

“I am glad to hear it, Mr. Hume. A lady at the head of things is most desirable in a house where there are young people. I confess I should have been glad of the advice of one this morning.”

“How do you find your pupils? Are they making their new beginning?”

“Francis and Miss Alice have made a good effort, one that commands admiration. Adrian does not find himself equal to emulating them.” The speaker did not quite repress a smile.

Julius turned his eyes on Adrian, who sat a little apart.

“Is he doing no lessons this morning?”

“He can give you his own reason.”

Adrian fidgeted and glanced about him, and at last looked in appeal at his sister.

“The reason is good, if it is the true one. And I do not wish to suggest that it is not.”

“Then why do you do it?” said Alice. “You are treating him as if he were a man. When he said he must think about Aunt Miranda, it was partly out of foolishness and partly because he almost meant it. He hardly knew what was in his own mind.”

“No, I did not know,” said Adrian, using a sincere note.

“You seem to have been able to express it,” said Julius.

“I really can’t concentrate,” said Adrian, sinking into tears.

“Well, you need not try to-day. Mr. Pettigrew understands.”

“He does so too well,” murmured Francis.

“Then he should do so better,” said his sister.

Julius heard and said nothing, and Mr. Pettigrew perceived it.

“I hope I have not misjudged the boy, Mr. Hume. But I have to be on my guard against pretexts for avoiding effort. If you were in my profession, you would understand it. Not that there was any likelihood of your being so, or indeed in any other. The demands of your life are different.”

“You have only partly misjudged him, which was more than he could expect.”

“If he is to take no part in our work, there is nothing gained by his remaining. It is useless to him, and distracting to the others.”

“I will take him with me, and relieve you of us both. I think it is Miss Wolsey’s province.”

Adrian accompanied his uncle with an absent expression, and presently glanced into his face. Receiving an ordinary smile, he began to run downstairs.

“Are you going to Miss Wolsey?”

“No, to Cook and Bates. Aunt Miranda said we might talk to them.”

Julius smiled again, and Adrian flushed and ran on.

As the former reached the hall, Rosebery came to meet him, holding something in his hands. He looked white and shaken, and stood with his eyes on his father’s face.

“Father! Let me call you that once more. I have no right to say the word. I am not your son, Father! Those are strange words to say. I shall have to face their truth. It is another breaking of my life. I said I had lost my mother and my father at one stroke. It is true in a sense I did not know.”

“What is it? Put it into words,” said Julius, and seemed to hear his wife saying the same thing to himself.

“Father — for that is what you have been to me — it is a strange thing I have to say. You bade me read my mother’s will and discover what she wished for us. And it is as you said. Her income is yours and mine for your life, and then the capital is mine. But there is something else, Father. ‘Father’, I must say the word again; soon it will be forbidden to me. Father, there was a letter in the desk; it was hidden by some broken wood; I came on it by chance. She could not have known it was there. It was written to her years ago, by someone I never knew, and did not know that she knew. She is still my mother; all is not lost; some of my life is left to me. Here is the letter; the photograph was in it. Let me read it to you, that I may grasp the truth.

‘My Miranda,

As you have always been wise, so you are wise now. It is time for the end between us. Anything else spells danger for you, and that is what must not be. The money is yours by deed of gift, so that nothing can arise to betray us. It must be for the boy in the end, but while you live it is yours. He can only live and die as your husband’s son. Some wrong must be done, when wrong has once been done. The photograph you will keep or not, as you decide.

Yours to the end, though in silence,

Richard.’”

“Your name is Rosebery Richard,” said Julius. “Her maiden surname and this name. And that is the thing I find to say.”

“Say something else, Father. Say something to help me. I am in need of help. Say something as man to man, if not as father to son.”

The photograph fell to the ground, and Julius retrieved it. It showed a large, heavy man, of a type that accounted for Rosebery’s. He seemed to catch an echo of Rosebery in the letter’s phrase.

“No wonder you have never seemed to me like my son.”

“Father, it is a hard word. You have seemed to me like my father.”

“Yes, you have done better than I. Your mother was more right than I knew. So we lived with this between us. We parted with it there. And I had revealed my life to her. And she said she thanked God that she had not dealt with me as I had with her!”