Ivy Compton-Burnett - A God and His Gifts

“I don’t think I do to you.”

“There is no reason to do so to anyone. Put your thought into words. I suppose you are not ashamed of it?”

“I am in a way. You are my father. My thought is not only on myself. There may be reason to be ashamed.”

“You are young and ready to judge. I cannot help you there. You cannot help yourself. And you are the son of a man who lives in his imagination. If you are living for the moment in yours, it is no great wonder.”

“Is there to be an end of what I mean, or of what I imagine? That is all I ask?”

“There can be no end. There is nothing to be ended. In your sense there has been nothing.”

“Then I must make an end,” said Reuben, in a deeper tone, seeming another and older man, as he lost his command of himself. “I have no choice but to force one. What has happened can happen again. What sort of man should I be, if I took the risk? There is Henry before my eyes. And before any other eyes that are not blind. The daily reminder of the truth, the daily proof of it. Do not think you have not betrayed yourself. You have done so all the time. And once it was in open words, in Salomon’s hearing and mine. We had the proof of what we knew, and realised that we knew it. Yes, you can all hear me. I have betrayed the hidden thing. What was to remain hidden, what should have been hidden to the end. I was driven to it. I was helpless. And what have I betrayed? Only what you have known. You will find you have known it. And you will see the danger that I saw.”

“There was no danger,” said Trissie, with tears in her voice. “There was not anything. There would never have been. With him and me how could there be?”

“There was already something. My father was using his power. You were feeling it. You might not have withstood it. It had done its work before. Perhaps he cannot help it. He is not made up of strength. But does that lessen the danger? You must see it was too great. I could not face it. I would not. I could only force it to an end.”

“Salomon, what have you to say?” said Hereward. “You hear what Reuben says.”

“Father, it is a case for the truth. I cannot support both you and him. And the truth is on his side. It is true that your words betrayed you, that they were plain and meant one thing.”

“Well, of course they betrayed me. They would always have done so. I have come to see Henry as my son. I have spoken of him in that way often and of set purpose. You will see there is nothing there. When I adopted a boy, I resolved to be his father. I have tried to keep the resolve. I hope I have not failed. I think we can say I have not. I may have kept it too well, or in too literal a sense. But to my mind that does not matter, and could hardly be.”

“It could not,” said Reuben. “But you have not kept another. You meant to be always on your guard, and it was a thing beyond yourself. It would have been beyond most of us. Always is a long word.”

“A good many words are long,” said Hereward, with a faint smile. “But the end of all words comes. I have forborne to hasten it. But I hope it has come.”

“It has. And it is more than the end. The meaning and the memory remain. They will never be unsaid.”

“Well, that would be a waste of time and energy and invention. And it is a shadowy edifice, built out of fancy. It would shatter at a touch.”

“It is built out of truth and reason. It can be left to its life.”

“Are these your own words, Reuben?” said Hereward, looking full at his son. “Their ring is not a true one. It is unlike you to be fluent and high-flown. Unlike you to use prepared speech. It is not hard to explain it. It is this moment in your life. It puts everything out of scale. Small things loom large, and chance words take another meaning. That is what has happened to mine. And it is said that the words of genius hold more than the author meant. I am thought by some to use such words. It may be that it chanced then.”

“These were not words of genius. I don’t say that words of yours might not be. These were words of simple emotion, honest and deeply felt. In themselves they did you no discredit. But they betrayed the truth.”

“I will not ask you what they were. It would give reign to your fluency, your fancy, whatever it is. It would lead you further astray.”

“‘No other of my sons has seemed so much blood of my blood, so deeply derived from me’. They are not words of my fancy. They were not of yours. They came from your heart.”

“Salomon, what is your real feeling about this?”

“What I have said, Father. I cannot unsay it. The truth has gone beyond disguise.”

“Hetty!” said Merton, in a voice no more his own than Reuben’s had been. “So this is why you were silent, why you would not acknowledge Henry’s father, why you determined you never would. The man was my father. You and he fell to that. You were right not to tell me. It was better that I should not know. It would be better if I did not know now.”

“I did not mean you to know. I thought you never would. But I am glad you do. It ends the thing that lay between us. And I did not feel it was falling. At the time it was something else. I looked up to your father. I still look up to him. You look up to him yourself, or you should. I thought his feeling was an honour. I still think it was. I forgot he was your father. To me he was simply himself. I was lost to everything, and I know he was too. And then I was glad for him to take the child, for it to have its true father. I was its mother, and I could not be. And it has turned out well. I think it was not a wrong thing. I think I did right to consent to it, right to be silent. You say you wish you had not known. And what else could I do? What would anyone have done? What would have come from revealing the truth? What has come from it now?”

Hetty’s words had a sound of having been prepared, as though they were held in readiness in case of need.

“One thing has come,” said Merton, looking away. “One that there must be, that cannot be gainsaid. I cannot see my father again. This is the last time that I speak of him as my father, to him as another man. Henceforth to the end of our lives there will be silence between us. My wife says she looks up to him. It may be that I never have. Something seemed to hold me from it. Something holds me now. It is a sad word to say and hear. And it cannot be unsaid.”

Hereward turned away, as if accepting what was out of his power, and Salomon moved towards him.

“Father, is this wise? Is it a thing that should be? It would mean mystery and question. It might lead to the escape of the truth. It would bring trouble into our family life. It would help no one and harm us all. Is it not a case for thought?”

Hereward made a gesture towards Merton, as though the words should be for him.

“Merton, I need not say it again. You have heard it, and know its truth. The natural feelings of a moment are not those for a life. You have reason and judgement. I beg you to use both.”

“Then I will use neither,” said his brother, turning away. “I will neither think nor feel. I will keep my eyes from everything. I will forget I am alive. You speak of my reason. I will forget I ever had it. I must learn to have none. That is what you ask of me. I would ask it of no one. As you do so in the way you do, I will obey in the way I can. I have said what it is.”

“Merton, I am grateful,” said Hetty, going to his side. “I care for you more for this. I care in that way for no one else. The moment in the past is dead. I can hardly believe in the memory. I can’t wish that Henry was not with us. There is no one here who can wish it. But that is all that is left.”

“We know who Henry is,” said Merton, almost to himself. “We thought we should never know. It seems strange that we thought it. He will come to think in his time. When he asks who he is, who will answer him?”