A Heritage and its History (23 page)

“And how Father is the same!” muttered Ralph. “Even at this moment I must say it.”

“Why must you?” said Walter. “No one else has had to.”

“The short, strange life!” said Fanny. “How much difference it brought, and how little it seems to leave! And how much will be left!”

“So the place and the title are united again,” said Graham. “And does either seem to matter?”

“Neither does,” said his father. “We are involved in things that do.”

The talk went on, lifeless, unrelated to the depths, until Simon and Fanny left them. There was a feeling that anything more must wait until they had gone, that it might delay their going. Julia watched them go, and then turned to her grandchildren.

“I have lost a grandson. I must say it once. I would not, while your mother was with us. I would not say it to you, if there was anyone else to hear. I know you have not lost a brother. But let me say once that I have thought of Hamish as what he is—what he was to me, and wished he could know I thought it. I wish I
had told him. To live is nothing but wishing. It is always too late.”

“I don't see how you could tell him,” said Graham. “It was what was not to be told. But for that reason he may have known.”

“So he is dead,” said Julia. “The boy who made so much trouble, brought so much change, whose nature had to be forgotten. It is over, what should not have been, what will never be as if it had not been. It is in the past.”

The words were true, and the past fell into its place. Things moved in the accustomed way and became a part of it. Simon returned for Hamish's burial in the family vault, and with his sons followed him to it. Fanny came home later, leaving Hamish's mother with his wife. The day came when the family gathered at the table, feeling they had reached a settled stage in their lives.

“So there can be no more change,” said Julia, “until one of us follows Hamish. I shall be the first.”

“It is a high destiny, Mater,” said Walter. “But do you sound as if your heart was in it?”

“I have dear ones here and dear ones there. This has added another to them. And there the truth will have its place. Nothing will have to be hidden.”

“Nothing should need to be,” said Graham. “Or the sphere you mean would hardly exist.”

“These are not matters for jest,” said Simon. “They are real to some of us. That should be enough. And perhaps it is hardly a time for jest at all.”

“Any time is good for that,” said Fanny. “A jest need be no more than it is.”

“Well, let it be the time. But let some subjects be forbidden.”

“So Marcia and Aunt Rhoda are to live together, like the pair in the Bible,” said Ralph.

“Yes,” said his father, without looking at him. “I have heard from Marcia. They are soon to return home. They will not remain in the other place without Hamish. And your aunt must be near your mother. They are thinking of the house by the river, where the roads meet. Our other house is too large for them.”

“Marcia is a Ruth indeed,” said Fanny. “Where Rhoda dwelleth she will dwell. Her people will be her people, and I daresay her God would be her God, if she felt there could be one.”

“Fanny, that is hardly talk for you,” said Simon. “And you will be glad to have your sister, and help her as you can. You know you felt her going.”

“She will have my help, if she needs it. She has always done so. This other dependence is a new one.”

“Such things are not a matter of time. Friendships are made in a moment; marriages are made. A feeling that will last a lifetime, may spring into being. We all know cases of it.”

“I do not. Tell me of one.”

“There is my feeling for you,” said Simon, smiling. “We were old friends when we married; but there was a time when there was a movement of one to the other. There must have been.”

“Well, then we can say there was.”

“There will be things to arrange, sir,” said Graham.
“Death duties will have to be met. And there will be another widow.”

“Hamish made everything over to me but a small competence. The duty that Marcia will pay, will not be large. That on Hamish's inheritance from his father has been decided. We are not the better for it, but with care we shall recover.”

“It is time that I died and made a widow less,” said Julia.

“And that many of us did, if the object is to save our expenses,” said Walter. “Mine are too small for it to be worth while. It will never be my time.”

“Either as a man or a poet,” said Ralph. “You should be doubly immortal.”

“Shall we ever learn that people's life ambitions are not humorous to them?” said Naomi.

“They ought to be,” said Walter. “We are forbidden to take ourselves seriously.”

“But who else would do so?” said Graham. “And what would happen, if no one did?”

“Nothing does happen,” said Walter.

The door opened and Claud and Emma entered, bearing a garland between them.

“It is to celebrate things being usual again,” said Claud, putting it over his mother's chair. “But we made it like a wreath, because of Hamish. And we like this house, now we are used to it. Of course it was a change for us to go up in the world.”

“How have you done that?” said Julia.

“Just by belonging to the family,” said Emma, lifting her brows. “We rise and fall together.”

“You can think of Hamish living in this house, when he was as young as you are.”

“Yes, we do; we shall always remember him. Of course he might have been our brother. I think some people say he was. But they must mean he would have been, if he had married Naomi.”

“It gives us a feeling for him,” said Claud. “But it is not our fault that he is dead. Perhaps Marcia did not keep an eye on him. Emma hardly dares to take hers off me.”

“He will always be a charge,” said Emma, with a sigh.

“We have not thanked you for the wreath,” said Fanny. “It is a very pretty one.”

“It is a simple offering,” said Claud. “But simple things are as good as any others.”

“It places people, if they don't think so,” said Emma.

“How are you doing with your lessons?” said Simon, reminded of these by the signs of advance. “Is Miss Dolton pleased with you?”

“Yes, I can read as well as Emma now. And she can almost read handwriting. Here is something she has read.”

“ ‘Dear Simon,' ” read Emma, opening a letter, “ ‘The bond between us is broken, but we have our own. And our lives will move on side by side. We shallhave help as we need it. There must be something to give——' ”

“You must not read letters,” said Simon, taking it from her. “Where did you get this one?”

“It was on the floor in the hall. Someone must have
dropped it. We have to read writing when we can, to get some practice. Or we shan't be able to read it, when we are grown-up.”

“And it will be no good for people to write to us,” said Claud.

“Well, it does not matter, as it happens. It is one of those letters without much meaning.”

“It might have a hidden one. But ‘Marcia' is the name at the end. And she is our relation. So it couldn't be much.”

“She is still our cousin by marriage,” said Claud, “even though Hamish is dead. And she is your cousin as well.”

“A nearer one than to us,” said Emma. “I don't think you could marry her, if Mother died. Though she might be the person you would think of.”

“Now your tongues are running away with you,” said Simon. “It is the work your legs ought to be doing. So let us see them do it.”

The children broke into mirth, glanced down at the limbs in question, and ran away to repeat the words.

“You must be glad of the friendship between Marcia and your sister, Fanny,” said Julia at once. “It will be an answer to many problems.”

“Her feelings and mine do seem to have followed similar lines.”

“Well, I must go to my work in the garden. I want help for a little while. Are my grandchildren coming to give it to me?”

“While we are on such matters, ma'am,” said
Deakin, “is the creeper on the house to be cut back? Sir Simon dislikes it to encroach.”

“We will give it a respite, Deakin,” said Simon. “Encroachment seems to be its work. And we are so inured to the shadow, that we might be startled by the light.”

“Well, other light is thrown, ma'am,” said Deakin, smiling at Julia, as he left them.

“Fanny,” said Simon, when the others had gone, “you do not read more into that letter than was there?”

“I see how it was meant to be read.”

“We must help people in trouble as we can.”

“And it is good to help those who help themselves. But when Marcia was here, she was not in trouble.”

“She knew her real relation to me. That justifies anything that needs it.”

“Suppose something in my life did that! It would be a change. And you would find it so.”

“Fanny, I admire and envy you, that nothing in your life has needed excuse or ever will.”

“It is true of me, too,” said Walter. “Or has been since my getting into debt at Cambridge. And that had it, as my allowance was too small.”

“Walter, you and I have seen and done much together.”

“Well, Walter has seen it,” said Fanny. “And it has been a good deal.”

“Claud and Emma are more natural with me than the elder children were.”

“Well, what are you with them? You must see the reason.”

“I ought not to have let my personal trouble harm me as it did.”

“Well, you have allowed the ending of it to restore you. It is an honest confession that your character depends on your own content.”

“I could take a lesson from my Naomi there,” said Simon, looking out of the window at his children returning to the house. “I hope her brothers will do for her what mine has for me. They have taken that room off the hall for their sanctum. May they have many happy hours in it.”

“Let us have one now,” said Ralph, as they passed. “It is good to have a place where we can be by ourselves, in other words without Father. His new personality makes me ill at ease. Or I suppose it is his old one. I am the more disturbed, that I have had no part in our recent history. My life is untouched, and yet the workhouse has disappeared from it. And I suppose its descendant, the orphanage, has done the same. It shows how far they were the figment of Father's brain.”

“People are supposed to love their own creations,” said Naomi. “It is disloyal of Father to be so unfaithful to his.”

“Unfaithful to what?” said Simon, in the doorway. “It sounds a grave charge. So this is your sanctum, your refuge from storm and stress. To what am I unfaithful?”

“To your conception of the future, sir,” said Ralph. “The workhouse has been banished. And in the case of some of us without any ground.”

“The reason is here,” said Simon, looking about him. “This is your background, your refuge in case of need. I had to think of you without them. Now your brother will be behind you. My death would not leave you destitute. I can live my own life at ease about yours. No one gives up the idea of the workhouse more willingly. No one else knows how real to me it was. Well, it cast the lesser shadow. I am glad the cloud was mine.”

“Is Father a noble man?” said Ralph, as the door closed. “Or is he a deceiver of himself and others? Or what is he?”

“A mixture of them all, as we all are,” said Naomi. “But exile exposed and stressed the parts. Suppose we had a similar love for our first home, and were affected by leaving it in the same way! He would hardly be able to complain. He may have been wise to darken our memories of it.”

“I still fear a reaction from the new spirit. His position will become normal to him. It was indeed the other that was not. And he will have nothing besides.”

“So that is what you think,” said Graham.

“Well, thinking needs so much courage.”

“I have enough,” said Naomi. “The something besides will be there. And I am glad it will. It is not good to live without it.”

“He is putting a memorial tablet to Hamish in the church,” said Graham. “Hamish is to be described as Uncle Edwin's son. I daresay many people are not what they are thought to be.”

“Most of them what they are known to be,” said
Naomi. “Secrets are not often kept. If they were, we should not know there were such things. And now we take more interest in them than in any others.”

“As people may in this one,” said Ralph. “And very likely do.”

“The heroine of our whole story is Mother,” said Graham.

“And who is the hero?” said Naomi.

“Hamish?” said her brother, in question.

“Uncle Walter might turn out to have been so all the time. But he is inclined to suggest it himself, and that is against it.”

“Father,” said Ralph. “It can be no one else. And if we think, it is no one else. Unless my saying it makes me the hero myself.”

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © I. Compton-Burnett 1959

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ISBN: 9781448204243
eISBN: 9781448203659

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