A Heritage and its History (16 page)

“I would rather die than have Hamish know.”

“I feel the same. I dare not tell my children. But I shall do so. And we know we shall not die.”

“My life is at an end,” said Sir Edwin. “My time of durance will be short. I can the better judge of yours.”

“You are both too self-righteous,” said Rhoda. “You should see yourselves as they would see you. And I will not consent to the confession. I have the right to decide. Such a thing is settled by the woman. You are anxious to do no wrong to anyone. Then see that you do none.”

“I must face the wrong I have done,” said Simon.

“I will not be there when you speak. I will not face the pain for others and myself. I meant what I said. It is needless and not only mine.”

“You had better be there,” said Walter. “The numbers will protect you. The meeting with Hamish afterwards will be saved from the worst. Everyone should be there, as it will ease things for all.”

“It is too great a retribution,” said Simon. “I see it with Rhoda's eyes.”

“It is,” said Sir Edwin. “Civilised life exacts its toll. We live among the civilised.”

“The conventions are on the surface,” said his wife. “We know the natural life is underneath.”

“We do; we have our reason. But we cannot live it. We know the consequences of doing so. If not, we learn.”

“I shall never think quite the same of you, Edwin.”

“The moment comes to most of us with each other. It came to me with you. I am happy in the time of my downfall. It is late.”

“I am not,” said Simon. “It could not be better chosen by a hostile fate.”

“Would you like me to say the word?” said Walter. “It would be better for me, as I am not involved.”

“No, I must say it myself. I could not stand by and hear it said, afraid to do my own penance, humbler than I had reason to be. I shall fall in the eyes of my wife, see my effort for my sons wasted, take from my daughter the meaning of her youth. And this to avoid something that in some days would have been lawful and right!”

“We live in our own,” said Sir Edwin.

“What Simon and I did, is done in all days,” said Rhoda.

“Hamish thinks you should be going,” said Fanny, coming into the room with her nephew and her children. “Simon and Walter have had the most of you, and it seems soon to say goodbye. Here is their mother come to say it with us.”

“I wondered if it would ever be said,” said Graham. “When have hours held so much?”

“They are to hold more,” said Walter, in a low tone. “You must be ready for it.”

“It cannot be said yet,” said Simon, standing still and seeming to hold his voice from defining his words. “I must keep you for a while. There is something else to be said. It is I who must say it. It will take only a moment. It is what will follow, that may be long. I dread it. I have reason to. I have thought of it for twenty-four years. I see now that I have. I trusted the time might never come. But it is here, and we must face it. It is I who have brought it on us. It is I who face the most.”

“Then say it, my son,” said Julia. “Do not ask more of yourself and us. A word is soon said, and waiting for it must be what it is. We shall imagine more than the truth, and the picture may never quite fade. Let us face it and forget it. That is best.”

“If it can be so,” said Simon. “But it cannot be. It is because it cannot be forgotten, that it must be said. It throws its light on much that has been dark, on much that has been so today. You have felt the need of light. —Hamish is my son. He is Rhoda's child and mine. We were together in my uncle's house after their marriage. They did not live as man and wife. My uncle accepted the child as his. He was its legal father. He has been one in every sense. He will remain so. Hamish will be his heir. But we must know the truth that lies beneath. There can be no marriage between Hamish and my daughter. They are half-brother and sister as well as sisters' children. The dangers would be too great.”

There was a pause.

“I thought my father was different,” said Hamish, as if the words broke out. “Not as other fathers were. I see it now. I see it all. But he will be my father.”

“I shall,” said Sir Edwin. “You will be my son. You have been so in spite of the difference. There has been no difference in you. We shall not change to each other. That is, you will not to me. For me of course there is no change.”

“Mother, you are my mother!” said Hamish.

“My son, how much more that I have harmed you! That I have taken from you something that was yours! That I have made for you the difference you have seen! I am doubly so.”

“Naomi, I am your father,” said Simon. “And more so for what you know.”

Naomi did not speak.

“We shall be the closer for the threat to us,” said Hamish, moving to her. “And it is no more than a threat. There is no need to act on a truth that might never have emerged. It would not have in most cases, should not have, to my mind. Many must lie unsaid. We can put it from us and go forward.”

There was a pause, as the denial of this seemed stronger, that it was silent.

“Simon, there has been this between us,” said Fanny. “This in your mind through all our years. The truth is taken from our marriage, more than if you had told it. You lost your inheritance. Now you have lost your wife. How much you have lost!”

“My dear, I should not have had you for a wife. Or I might not, and you know it. Your own words prove it, show the risk we should have run. And it was better that we should marry, for you as well as for me.”

“My sister!” said Rhoda. “How I have longed to tell you, needed your sympathy and your reproach! How much better I should have been for both! But it might have done harm to so many, prevented so much. It might have prevented much for you.”

“It might have been right to prevent it. The truth should have been allowed to take its course. But there are my five children. What is there for me to say?”

“That you are glad it did not take it,” said Simon, “glad you did not know. There is nothing else to be said.”

“My son,” said Julia, “I am always your mother. I am not less so for what I have heard. But I must say
today what I never thought to say. I am glad your father is not with us.”

“If he were, nothing would have happened, nothing of good or ill. My uncle would not have married. Hamish would not exist. Fanny might not have wanted to leave her sister. It has all followed from his death. And we can hardly wish it all undone. And of course you are less my mother, when that is what you say to me, at this moment in your life and mine. I hope I may not be less your son.”

“I suppose you knew, Walter?” said Julia. “You have always known?”

“I knew before Hamish was born, before Uncle Edwin knew. You see it was my right.”

“When Uncle Edwin knew!” said Ralph, before he thought. “That must have been a moment.”

“It was not what you think,” said Walter.

“It was not,” said Simon. “And you can surely think again. Your great-uncle is what you know.”

“Ah, how I have found it!” said Rhoda. “How I find it still! How I look always to find it!”

“What have you to say to me, Graham?” said Simon.

“What one man must say to another, sir. I understand it, regret it, feel for you that it has had to be revealed. That is a piece of ill fortune many would escape.”

“I did not look for talk from man to man,” said Simon, after a pause. “Speak to me as a son to his father. That is what I meant.”

“Then I feel that your words have meant little, sir.
And always less than they should have. I can hardly feel anything else, or expect to be believed, if I said it.”

“What have you to say to me, Ralph? Speak without temper, so that I can judge of it.”

“Very much what Graham has said, sir. It is the only thing we can say. I have thought you hard and self-righteous; and I now feel you were both, and should have been neither.”

“Hard and self-righteous! So that is what you feel we should not be,” said Simon, looking at his sons.

“This was only one stumble,” said Graham. “We must not judge it as more than it is.”

“Again as man to man,” said his father.

“Simon, if you ask for opinions, you will hear them,” said Fanny. “And what did you look to hear?”

“My Naomi, what do you feel?” said Simon.

“I think this should be forgotten, that it should not have been revealed. Men keep their early troubles to themselves. They behave as if they had not been. And in some times and places children of one father have married.”

“My dear, do not make it worse for me. It is bad enough. If you knew how I tried to take that view, how hardly I gave it up! It is for you, not for myself, that I have told the truth. For myself should I have done so? For myself I kept silence for twenty-four years. Thought of you has forced me to break it. And it was only one stumble, as my kind son has said.”

“I think he was kind, Father. I think you are not to them, that you often have not been.”

“Then be kind to me now. You judge the want of
kindness. And it is true that I have been embittered by the turn of my life, and betrayed it in dealing with theirs. Show me kindness now in my need of it.”

“Why were you so embittered? Hamish was your son. And everything would have gone to a son in the end.”

“I will tell the truth. I wanted for myself what was always to have been mine. The thought was the foundation of my boyhood. And I had looked to leave it to an acknowledged son. You think it all looms too large to me. I know it does. I do not deny or explain it. I accept it even from myself. I must be what I am.”

“I do not want the inheritance,” said Hamish. “I have not cared for the place in that measure. Your feeling for it makes it yours. And I have no real right to it. Yours is the first claim. When my father dies—you know whom I mean by my father—he will leave it to you, and make me a small provision. My needs will be slight. I shall never marry, as I cannot marry Naomi. I could not accept anyone else in her stead. I could never think of her as my sister. It is no help to me to feel she is that. It startles me that anyone should think so. That is my last word, the only one I have to say.”

“I have my word, Hamish,” said Sir Edwin. “It is my only one, as yours is. I shall leave the place to you, as what you are in name, and must not cease to be. If it is a millstone about your neck, you will carry it. You will fulfil your part in life, knowing it is yours. What we know further is not for us to pursue. It is not our own knowledge. We must not use it as such.”

“I see you are right, Uncle,” said Simon. “Nothing else would fill the need. The truth must lie underneath, as it has lain. How I wish it need not have been thrown into the light! How I tried to see another way! But we could not see one. There was none.”

“I will go away,” said Hamish. “I must go to other places, and must go far. I am going for Naomi's sake and mine. We cannot meet in our new character, until we have suppressed the old, learned to pretend it has not been. I shall never be resigned to the truth, never find it natural, never do more than act a part. But that I must do before I return. And that she must learn to do by herself. It would not help us to be together. It would indeed be of little good. It is a thing each must do alone.”

“You may go, my son,” said Sir Edwin, using the words for the first time in his life. “But return in time for us to part. This does not serve as our farewell. And as your road lengthens, mine grows short.”

“I must say the same,” said Rhoda. “You may go, my son. But return in the end to your mother.”

Simon turned to his daughter, knowing that for her there was no help; and she understood him and let him draw her to his side.

“I wish Shakespeare was here,” said Walter, to break the tension. “I mean, I wish I was he. If I was, I could make so much of the scene. It is sad that it has to be wasted.”

“Can you bring it to an end?” said Simon. “He would have done so. And it is not the easiest part.”

“I am jealous of you, Simon. I did not know you were so like him.”

“I will do it,” said Sir Edwin. “It is time for us to leave you. My method is not Shakespeare's, but it will serve. And his is not always so different. We will not offer our thanks; that can hardly be; but we have some cause to be grateful.”

Hamish looked after his parents, and did not follow them. Sir Edwin glanced at him and said nothing, and he turned to Simon.

“Cousin Simon—as you will be to me—I have a last word to say. I cannot dispute my father's decision. He is too old to contend with, to turn from his mind. But after his death I will make the change. I will transfer everything to you, and keep only a competence. You are the next in the line, where I have no place. I was born before your marriage. The empty legal right I do not count. And I do not want the position or the duty it carries. You know why I was glad to have it. I have not that reason now. Graham will be your heir, as he should be. And other things will be as they should have been. That is all I have to say.”

“Have a care,” said Simon. “Take thought for your words. That is how you feel now. It is natural that your mind should be disturbed. But the hour will pass, and the mood with it. You will want what is yours, as all men want it. You will have your use for it, as all men have. You are not as unusual as you think; none of us is. Forget what you have said, as I will forget it. Remember the claims that lie ahead. Go on your journey. Return to your father for his last days. That
is the duty to your hand. And leave the future, as we all leave it.”

“Cousin Simon, are you yourself so unusual? Cannot your mood pass, as you say mine can?”

“Be careful, lest it do so. I might remember your words. You might come to wish them unsaid.”