Ivy Compton-Burnett: Mother and Son

“It is you who are coupled with Miss Burke, and your father with Miss Greatheart?” said Hester, contracting her brows.

Rosebery inclined his head.

“Well, what am I to say? I am not supposed to felicitate you? It is too much of a house upon the sand. I do not know how much to take as real.”

“The whole of it, as I have said.”

There was a pause.

“Poor Mrs. Hume!” said Hester.

“My mother is dead,” said Rosebery.

“That is what I mean. You felt she was not. And now she is.”

“She would rejoice in our happiness.”

“But she does not rejoice in it,” said Hester, raising her eyes to his with a hint of a smile. “She no longer commands the present tense. As I said, poor Mrs. Hume!”

“You have thought of her as dead,” said Julius.

“But you have not,” said Hester, flashing her eyes over his face. “She had a sort of life; she had it in your minds and hearts. She has it no longer.”

“This makes no difference to her. And you do not think it does.”

“I do not know what to think. It makes a difference to her memory. And that I suppose is a part of her.”

“It is a part of those who remember her.”

“I am bewildered and uncertain. What am I to take as truth? I cannot take this. There is something unsound about it. And I do not hear Emma’s voice. Why is it silent?”

“She does not venture to use it.”

“And she the person of courage! But I see she must have lost it now. Courage will not stand anything. Poor Emma, how she needs a friend!”

“I hardly think she has one.”

“Then be one to her, Mr. Hume, and rescue her from her plight. It is a simple and sorry one. You will not leave her in it.”

“I am to be to her more than a friend. Rosebery has said the truth.”

“Said the truth! Why use that scriptural phrase? It gives such a sense of unreality. But I suppose it is all unreal.”

“It is as my son has said.”

“Your son?” said Hester, again contracting her brows. “Oh, you call Rosebery your son. But he is to marry Miss Burke. And when people marry, there is truth between them. Or is there not, when it is truth like this?”

There was a silence.

“So you are not a friend,” said Julius.

“Not a friend? You will know better than that, when you come to look back on this. Not a friend, when I am saving you from a future based on falseness, and saving you at this expense! You will come to call me one indeed.”

“What future have I at my age? I can only grasp at the present.”

“Stop grasping; it is not a good thing; the very word shows it. Go back to your life in the past. It is the thing that is yours.”

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, moving forward, “may I remind you of your function in this house? It is not that of critic and authority. Grateful as we are to you for your service to us, we do not wish or authorise you to go beyond.”

“And do I wish it? How could I wish to appear in this light, and lose any feeling I have won from you? Who in her senses would wish it? But I cannot look on and see lives laid waste for want of a word in time. I have said the word and can be silent. Whatever happens, it will have been said.”

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, in a more deliberate tone, “would you be taking one line, if my father had made his offer to you instead of to your friend? I am not asking if you would have accepted it; that is beside the mark; but would you have been so convinced of its unfitness? Is there not some feeling that your own life will be the poorer, that in this way or another you yourself will be dispossessed?”

“Is there?” said Hester, looking him in the eyes. “It is true that this is estranging for us, but I must see the guilt as mine. It was I who broke up our life and brought it about. And so it is for me to deal with it. I can see no question there.”

“Well, Emma now follows a course of her own,” said Julius. “You will have to forgive each other.”

“I must sue indeed for forgiveness. To continue your scriptural phrase, I knew not what I did. But I can do my best to atone. We can go back to our life together. It was a life that satisfied her, and that I was wrong to end. I turned aside on a way of my own. I became involved with all of you here. I am interested in the young, and these children seemed to need what I could give. But I can put it behind me. I can close this chapter of my life. It is a thing that can be forgotten.”

“I shall not forget it. Emma and I will keep the memory. It has led to our knowledge of each other.”

“It has not done that,” said Hester, gravely. “It has done the opposite thing. It is easy to confuse them. It has led you to a misconception, and that in its turn has led you on. And Emma, the believer in freedom, the stickler for the untrammelled life! What are her real feelings? Let her speak for herself, if she dares.”

“I do not dare. No one would in my place.”

“I think no one would,” said Julius.

“Here is someone who would dare,” said Rosebery, laying his hand on Miss Burke’s shoulder. “What lies between her and me is open to the world.”

“And why should it not be?” said Hester. “A wish for safety and ease is a sound reason for marrying. But it is not Emma’s reason.”

“No, I had to have others.”

“You want to lose the disgrace of spinsterhood before you die?”

“Well, we have to do everything before that.”

“So your jests have been in earnest? Your gibes at yourself have been sincere? Your humour has been bitter, when I thought it was sound?”

“I do not think humour is ever sound. If it is, it is something else.”

“I wonder if anything is ever sound,” said Hester.

“Miss Wolsey,” said Rosebery, in grave tones, “you suggest a betrayal of yourself. We might imagine a voice saying: ‘Hell holds no fury like a woman scorned.’”

“I suppose that is the voice that Emma heard. And she suppressed her fury well. She kept the disguise so long, that I did not question it. And I must wish she had kept it to the end. But the moment of shock is passing. I must adapt myself to a different friend. I must be glad that her quarrel with life is healed, that the fury can die away.”

“Miss Wolsey, may we say the same thing of you? It is time it was said.”

“Why doesn’t Miss Wolsey want Uncle to marry Miss Greatheart?” said Adrian.

“So the children are in the room,” said Julius. “We have had an audience, when we were to have been one. Well, the curtain can fall now.”

“Will Miss Wolsey stay here, when Miss Greatheart is Uncle’s wife?”

“No, of course she will not,” said Hester. “There will be no need. Miss Greatheart will manage things for you. She will be your own relation. She will be a sort of stepmother. You can think of her as that.”

“They need not begin to-day,” said Julius.

“Why, I think it is a good day for the beginning. They will have to realise the demands on them. And they can also realise their own claims. I used the word, ‘stepmother’, without thinking. It seemed to come to my lips of itself. It was a true word spoken almost in jest.”

“You are not speaking in jest.”

“Well, there is the meaning underneath it. As I say, the word has essential truth.”

“What does she mean?” said Emma.

“Oh, what you know I mean. There are no secrets between you and Julius now. You know his life and what the children are to him. You have heard from his lips what I heard from them on the day when his wife died. I hope you will not take it as hard as she did, that anyhow it will not cause your death. But of course your bond with the family is a light and late one.”

“It was a shock to her,” said Julius, in a quiet tone. “But her heart would not have held out long. Emma does not know what the children are to me, but I have looked to telling her. It is true that I shall hide nothing.”