Ivy Compton-Burnett: Mother and Son

“Everything must be forgiven us,” said Alice. “We can never be to blame. Pettigrew ought to know about it.”

“Father,” said Rosebery, “I have often meant to ask you if you remember my cousins’ mother, and if you see any resemblance in them to her. It is a matter of interest to me. I do not know why it has hitherto escaped my memory.”

“Because it was not of enough interest to you. I remember her well. We were intimate with each other. Adrian and Alice remind me of her, though they are all more like their father.”

“And so like you, Father, a thing I cannot claim to be.”

“Perhaps my face is my fortune,” said Adrian, “as I have no other.”

“The first can hardly be said of me,” said Rosebery, with his slow laugh. “Perhaps it is as well that the second cannot either.”

“Your appearance does us credit,” said Francis, looking at his cousin’s evening clothes. “You know what is due to yourself.”

“Rather do I know, Francis, what is due to my mother’s presence. As I have said, I am protected from the imputation of personal vanity.”

“Appearance has not much to do with that,” said Julius.

“Well, well, you know your own reasons for dressing, Father.”

“Why should they not be the same as yours?”

“Father, I am sure they are,” said Rosebery, with grave compunction. “I must plead guilty to speaking with levity. The companionship of my young cousins may dispose me to it.”

“It does not have any great success,” said Alice.

“Does it not?” said Rosebery. “I sometimes find an idle note creeping into my talk, that is not natural to it.”

“I suppose Miss Burke is at home by now?” said Miranda. “I don’t know where she lives.”

“Then how can you assume she has arrived there?” said Julius.

“I understood her to say she had no home,” said Rosebery, on a faintly reproachful note. “And she was to visit another house in the neighbourhood before ending her day.”

“To apply for another post?” said Miranda.

“That is the presumption, Mother. Our acquaintance did not warrant my putting the question. But she had, if I may so express it, the light of battle in her eye.”

“It was very late to go anywhere. What will the people think?”

“If they think what I do, they will estimate the spirit that carries her on in the face of convention and discouragement,” said Rosebery, with the light also appearing in his.

“She ought to have been your companion,” said Alice.

“Well, she was so for a suitable period,” said Rosebery, smiling.

“Pettigrew took a great interest in her,” said Francis. “He saw you escorting her to the village, and was full of curiosity.”

“There is a freemasonry between these people,” said Miranda.

“Now, Mother, whom do you include in that term? I should not have applied the same to the two in question.”

“Other people would. Unless you mean that one is a woman.”

“It seems strange that you will never see Miss Burke again,” said Adrian to his cousin.

“I gave the conclusion of the matter in my own words: ‘a ship that passed in the night’.”

“The boys need not have that wine,” said Miranda, as she rose from the table. “Do not ply them with it, Julius. They must not depend on such things. They are only downstairs because the kitchenmaid is away.”

“As I am accused of giving preference to women,” said Rosebery, also rising, “I will deserve the reputation and indulge the propensity. I do not grudge my cousins my share of the wine, which to me means nothing.”

“Rosebery will marry some woman one day,” said Francis. “I don’t see how he can avoid it. Unless through the impossibility of marrying all women.”

“Aunt Miranda does not know that the heart supposed to be hers is so divided,” said Alice.

“She seems to know everything,” said Adrian.

“Well, she may see it as a safeguard. If he liked one woman, she would lose him. If he liked none, she would never have had him.”

“So you know everything too,” said Francis.

“Yes, I have caught it from Aunt Miranda. And Adrian has begun to. It is a poor foundation for earning his bread. Suppose she had to earn hers! She does not know how bad her influence has been.”

Julius listened to his nephews and niece in silence. He never checked the use of their wits or noticed the signs of inexperience. He accepted the mingled precocity and childishness that was the result of their life.

“We ought to know a little of one thing and rise to fame,” said Francis. “Eminent people always explain how many things they don’t know; and how little they know of the one thing, indeed how little is known of it.”

“What if one knows a little of a good many things?” said Adrian. “That is how it would usually be.”

“Then one is like Pettigrew,” said Alice, “and able to earn a living. It is a good thing it is usual.”

“We will share this wine,” said Julius. “I will not drink it alone, and Rosebery does not know it from any other.”

“And admires himself for it,” said Francis. “How people admire themselves for everything! I find it hard to do so.”

“And admire yourself for it,” said his sister.

“Well, it is something to be a human being,” said Adrian, “and be better than other creatures.”

“You need not put your glass down, Adrian,” said Miranda’s voice. “I presume you do not do behind my back what you would not do to my face; so you may go on with what you are doing.”

Adrian did not comply, and Miranda kept her eyes on him.

“Go on with your wine. If you can drink it when I am not here, you can do so in my presence.”

Adrian raised the glass to his lips.

“I suppose the truth is that you cannot drink it at all. You wanted to be independent and sophisticated. Well, are you having your wish?”

“Adrian is called upon to be other things,” murmured Francis.

“We were saying you knew everything, Miranda,” said Julius. “And it appears we were right.”

“Well, I knew what was happening here. I did not see your faces, when I spoke about the wine, without foreseeing that. I am not an easy person to deceive.”

“And you came back to catch us in the act?”

“Or to give you the chance of showing me my mistake. You have not taken it.”

“No, we have not your gift of foresight.”

“So I can trust no one. No one but my son. Not my husband, not the children whom I took into my house as homeless babes. What would have been their fate, if I had not?”

“What it has been,” said her husband. “I should have taken them in. This house is mine and their natural home. But you have done well by them, and enabled me to do better. We are all grateful to you.”

“You seem to feel nearer to them than to your son.”

“They are more of my nature. No father has had a son more unlike himself. I gave Rosebery up to you. Indeed I think you took him.”

“He was a man when the children came to us. You were never to him what you have been to them.”

“He was not the child I had thought of. And these children gave me back my boyhood. I was helpless in the matter. So were you; so were they.”

“And so was he,” said Miranda, her voice deepening. “He has never had a father. Few sons would have forgiven it as he has.”

“And had I not things to forgive? Did he not take what was mine, my place in your heart and in your life? Few fathers would have yielded it as I have.”

“Your yielding it tells its tale. I had to give him what I could; or what would he have had? And he has given it back to me. He would not betray my trust. He would not do little wrong things behind my back; he would not do them any more than the great ones; and that is a rare thing.”