A Heritage and its History (2 page)

“Do you know the name of the creeper on the house, Deakin?” she said, as the butler entered.

The latter mentioned two Latin words in an even tone.

“What is the popular name?” said Simon.

“I am not aware of that, sir.”

“Neither am I,” said Walter. “And I find I am proud of it.”

“Could not the gardener tell us?” said Hamish.

“He does not make use of popular names, sir.”

“So I am equal to him,” said Walter.

“What do you feel about the creeper itself, Deakin?” said Julia. “You would not like to see it go?”

“Well, ma'am, it would be a piece of life gone. But we are used to yielding it, little by little.”

“I never become so,” said Hamish. “Not even as I yield it more fully. I am always surprised by the lowering cloud.”

“And we cannot depend on the silver lining, sir,” said Deakin. “I have seen many clouds without it.”

“I have never seen one with it,” said Walter. “My clouds have been so very black.”

“Well, the lighter the lining, sir, the darker the cloud may seem.”

“You pride yourself on pessimism, Deakin,” said Julia.

“Well, ma'am, when we are told to look on the bright side of things, it is not generally at a happy time.”

“But it is good advice for daily life.”

“Daily life harbours everything, ma'am. All our troubles come into it.”

“You are a subtle talker, Deakin,” said Walter.

“Well, sir, there may be a tendency. And I have had examples.”

“I could never copy anyone,” said Simon.

“I think that is true,” said his father.

“Copy was not a term I employed, sir,” said Deakin.

“Father said a generous word to you, Simon,” said Walter.

“Well, I am content with my own level. And I am sure Deakin is with his.”

“Well, sir, if we had the choice of position, it might not have fallen on mine. Indeed we might say it would not. But I do not quarrel with fate. It is not a contest in which we should emerge victorious.”

“I meant you were content with your personal standard.”

“Well, sir, it is hardly for me to comment there.”

“I wonder how many of us are dissatisfied with it,” said Hamish.

“Very few of us,” said Julia. “We like to be ourselves. And often it is what other people like us to be,”

“Yes, for many reasons,” said Walter.

“They may not welcome encroachment, sir,” said Deakin, almost with a smile.

“We have forgotten about the creeper,” said Simon.

“I think not,” said Sir Edwin. “Anyhow you have remembered it. But it might be as well forgotten.”

Deakin was an angular, middle-aged man, with pale, hollow eyes and a hollow-cheeked face, whose look of complete resignation was the key to his nature. He had been for years with the family, and had as high an opinion of it, as it was in him to hold. He had a peculiar regard for Julia, whose aloofness from household matters he approved; and much that might have been her province, he attended to himself, without intensifying his demeanour. He looked at her now with a sympathetic eye, as she addressed her younger son, feeling that in any difference right would be on her side.

“When are you returning to Oxford, Walter?”

“I am not doing so, Mater.”

“What do you mean? The term must almost have begun.”

“It has done so. Simon will tell you about it. I am too tender a plant for such a harsh wind.”

“He has been expelled,” said Simon, in his easy manner.

“Oh, I have not. You should temper the wind to us. It was intimated that I should not return, as the life
was not suited to me. Deakin looks as if he understands.”

“Life is not exactly adapted to any of us, sir. The conforming is not on that side.”

“That is what you did not realise, Walter,” said Julia.

“I could not conform, Mater. I am not on the usual line. You would not wish to have an average son.”

“Tell us about it fully,” said Hamish.

“Father, do not speak to me in short, terse tones. Remember that I owe you my being. And all is told.”

“Why did your tutor not write to us?” said Sir Edwin.

“Because I begged him not to. I mean I forbade him to. And the course was nearly at an end.”

“Surely you could have finished it, and taken your degree,” said Julia. “What was the object of your being there?”

“I have never known, Mater. But I could not be examined. The very word seemed to degrade.”

“Examiners are not inquisitors,” said Sir Edwin.

“What makes you say that, Uncle?”

“I hardly see a reason,” said Hamish, smiling.

“I hope you are really ashamed of yourself,” said Julia.

“I am ashamed of my position, Mater. It is most embarrassing. If my shame communicates itself to you, we will suffer it together. What does Deakin feel about it?”

“We have to render what is required of us, sir,” said the latter, continuing his duties.

“How did you spend your time at Oxford?” said Hamish, in simple question.

“I wrote poems, Father.”

“Amongst other things?”

“No, I just wrote poems. What do you imply? Of course I am not a wild young man.”

“Were the poems good ones?”

“Yes, but not so good, when I went back to them. And I had the courage to recognise it.”

“And so you destroyed them?”

“Father, they are easy words. Few people have the strength to reject their early efforts.”

“There must be many instances of it,” said Julia. “There can be no record.”

“It probably means you are a critic and not a poet,” said Sir Edwin.

“Does it, Uncle? It is a terrible meaning. But I am pleased that you can talk to me in respectful terms.”

“We are not proud of you, Walter,” said Julia.

“I thought mothers were proud of their sons in spite of everything.”

“Poetry will not take you far in life. Anyhow it will not support you.”

“What I shall have, will be enough for me. I ask but little.”

“What will happen, if you marry?”

“Disaster. But I shall not do so.”

“You cannot know at your age.”

“He does know,” said Hamish. “It is like the poems. He may find later that it is different. But I am not sure.”

“Did you ever write poems yourself, Father?” said Walter, looking at him.

“Yes, good ones, as you have, and then showed the same courage. It must run in the family. As your mother says, it may be in many.”

“And you see yourself as a critic and not a poet,” said Sir Edwin.

“What you said to me,” said Walter. “I do like it to be the same.”

“Well, we are most of us critics of many things,” said Hamish, putting the matter more generally.

Deakin raised his shoulders with a faint smile, as though feeling this unavoidable.

“I am a critic of Walter's poems,” said Simon, lightly.

“And you feel it exalts you,” said his brother. “But if that is what you want, you should be the first to recognise them.”

“That position is occupied,” said Simon, with a laugh.

“It is better to be generous than to be gifted,” said Julia.

“But it is not so congenial,” said Hamish. “The generous person has to give more admiration than he feels. And he has such a different sort himself.”

“A terrible sort,” said Walter.

“Well, I shall not have any,” said Simon.

“You will have another kind,” said Walter. “You will be esteemed for your place.”

“It seems to be honest esteem,” said Hamish. “Well, I suppose we are to humour you, Walter.”

“Well, I should like it, Father.”

“There is something I should not disguise from you,” said Sir Edwin. “Your father's health makes him reluctant to fail you at this time.”

“It somehow seems better to disguise it,” said Hamish.

“I shall be happy to have both my sons at home,” said Julia. “But I am not sure how to take the good fortune.”

“You and I will share it, Mater,” said Walter. “And we will not forget that Simon is one of us.”

“I am not afraid of your feeling for each other.”

“Simon, do you feel you deserve this?”

“Do you expect to earn anything by your poems?” said Sir Edwin.

“Well, Uncle, I do imagine it.”

“Poets may live in the world of imagination,” said Hamish.

“Destroying the poems is not the way to earn by them,” said Julia.

“Isn't it, Mater? It is supposed to be in the end.”

“I hope you have no bills from Oxford?” said Sir Edwin.

“No, none, Uncle. I destroyed them with the poems.”

“All that pile that I saw?” said Simon.

“The bills,” said Walter. “The poems were not a pile. Or not those I destroyed.”

“Did you destroy the bills without paying them?” said Julia.

“If I had paid them, they would not be bills, Mater. They would be receipts. And I put those in a drawer.”

“You are very boyish, Walter.”

“Mater, if you meant to wound me, you have done so. But it is a sad kind of success.”

“They will come in again,” said Julia.

“So they will. So my destroying them does not matter.”

“You will not ask your mother to pay them,” said Sir Edwin.

“Indeed no, Uncle. Of course we do not ask.”

“The tradesmen have to live,” said Julia. “Did you think of that?”

“No, but I found they did. They told me about it. And if they die, the bills come in. They live on in them.”

“They are trifling bills,” said Simon. “Mine were much larger. Uncle Edwin paid them.”

“Your position is different,” said his mother.

“So it is,” said Walter. “And I have never had a grudging thought.”

“Perhaps it is fair that you should live in your own way. It is a freedom Simon will not have. It may be worth while to make sacrifices for it.”

“It is a good thing Mater feels that, as she is to make them,” said Simon.

“Mater, how deeply you speak!” said Walter.

“Well, I am not a stupid woman. It may be from me that you inherit your gifts. Talented men often have remarkable mothers.”

“So we know where to place you both,” said Sir Edwin.

“Uncle, those words were better not said. You should not speak with an ironic note.”

“Is there any way in which we may speak?”

“Very few ways. Most of them shock me so much.”

“Are we to remain at the breakfast table until luncheon is put upon it?”

“It would save our coming back for it,” said Simon.

“I should require time for the adjustment, sir,” said Deakin, without raising his eyes.

“Ought you not to be finding something to do?” said Julia, to her sons.

“Simon will not find that hard,” said Hamish. “I am no longer equal to much. And Edwin wants him to get an insight into things. The future must be remembered.”

“And we have seen that he does not forget it,” said Sir Edwin.

“How do you feel this morning, Father?” said Simon, in a tone of concern.

“I feel no difference day by day. It is every month or so that I know a change. When a heart begins to go downhill, it knows no turning.”

“I shall talk like that one day,” said Walter. “I like to imagine it. It puts people in a very becoming light.”

“In what way?” said his father.

“It shows them as dignified and courageous and not over-regardful of self. And what could be better?”

“To be quite unregardful of it, I suppose. But a bodily state may prevent it.”

Julia leaned forward and put her hand on her husband's. She loved him less than she loved her sons, but wished to be and to seem a devoted wife. He accepted what she gave, knowing she gave what she could, knowing he gave no more. His brother had always been the centre of his life.

He waited for Julia and her sons to withdraw, and then turned to Sir Edwin.

“How poor a thing human feeling seems, to anyone forced to test it! And how strong the love of the things that last our life! I feel I have only just known it.”

“We have had our help today.”

“Well, nothing can last any longer. It is natural to want them at their time. My boy is more open than many people. He shows the feelings they try to hide. It may not prove they are so deep.”

“It shows that he is not. And we must take him as he is, as people say. As if we had the choice!”

“Though my life is ending, yours is not. The future is in no one's hands. And he imagines it in his.”

“Yes, for him his place is not the best.”

“It is the one he would choose, the one you would have chosen. You have never regretted having it. We talk of its snares, but other lives have them. And they are met more often.”

“Walter thinks he will avoid them. I suppose you must let him choose his path?”

“We should be glad he has made a choice. We cannot give him many. We must accept the difference in the lives of my sons, as they accept it.”

“I hope their friendship will stand it, as ours has done. Having that, they cannot have nothing. We have not had it. But would your wife have done better in a life that asked more of her?”

“None of us escapes demands. She has not done so. She would hardly wish she had had more. We need not wish it for her. I am not in a mood to exalt demands. My last and longest is upon me.”

“And upon me too. I am to live without you, Hamish, in a sense to die alone. No one will meet it with me. There the fault may be yours and mine. I shall carry you with me, consult you in the questions that arise. I know you enough to know what you would say. I shall say it to myself for you. But the silence of your voice will be silence for me. It is a thing that you will not suffer. Is that someone outside the door? Are your two lads listening?”