The Mighty and Their Fall (20 page)

“If Grandma dies, wouldn't you have to remember her last words to you?” said Leah.

“I am afraid I already forget them. And we hope they are not her last.”

“Does she really hope it?” said Leah.

“It is a strange feeling,” said Ninian. “To be no longer a son. It is the deepest of all changes. It has torn up my roots, thrown me solitary into the future. It will be hard to feel anchored again.”

“I should be proud if it did so much to me,” said Hugo. “The part it has done shows me what the whole must be.”

“Proud? I am lonely, bereft, uncertain. In a measure it must be so with you all.”

“There is a cause for pride, Father,” said Lavinia. “To be such things beyond a measure.”

“Ah, you would once have been with me. At a time not so far away. Now I must see you move to a distance. Well, in a sense I shall go with you.”

“Why do you keep saying how proud you are, Father?” said Egbert. “We can all see it.”

“To me it is no occasion for jest. It is the first when the voice will not sound, that I have always heard. And the first of many. That is the heavy part.”

“We all miss Grandma, and shall always miss her. It hardly needs to be said.”

“Then it has had good measure,” said Hugo. “And from you both.”

“Hardly the same,” said Ninian. “Words are not so powerless. Other words arise from other feeling. They come from within. My future is a sea of change. My mother gone from me, my daughter going, my brother that to me no longer.”

“All our lives are changing,” said Teresa. “Even Leah can hardly say there will be no difference.”

“You and Ninian will have each other,” said Hugo.
“That foolish thing that is said, when that is all people have. As if they did not know it! It is the whole trouble.”

“It is not only trouble,” said Ninian, smiling at Teresa. “Or it is trouble shared and therefore less.”

“Did Grandma leave a will?” said Egbert. “I suppose there is no doubt of it.”

“No doubt at all,” said Ninian, sounding surprised and looking at his son. “She left nothing undone that needed doing.”

“Do you know the terms, Father? No doubt you helped her to make it.”

“No doubt again. She would not have been without my help. I was never without hers.”

“I daresay she knew her own mind.”

“There is again no doubt,” said Ninian, smiling. “But I have not thought of the will since it was made. She and I were of the same mind. That is what I remember.”

“Well, it disposes of everything else,” said Hugo. “It must be a calming memory.”

“I have other memories,” said Ninian.

“Do you feel she had a happy life?” said Teresa.

“A full one. And that must mean some losses. She met them with her own courage.”

“I am glad I am a coward,” said Hugo. “Courage is another strain added to the rest. It does nothing for anyone.”

“Hers did much for me,” said Ninian. “I am the better for it. I found it uplifting.”

“Can everything be Grandma's fault?” murmured Egbert.

“Pride should go before a fall,” said Hugo. “But it does not seem to.”

“Yes, I am the better,” said Ninian, looking at him. “And it should also be true of you. You know her mind, and will follow it. You could have no truer aim.”

“You don't mean I should give up my marriage? So that she will not have died in vain?”

“What else should I mean? I have not changed. And you know she had not.”

“We have not either. So a religion would have had its use. We could have said that she now understood.”

“You know she understood this. And you know you yourself understand it. What does my honest daughter feel?”

“Not that we should follow a wish, now she is dead, that we did not follow in her life. What would it do for her?”

“What would it do for you? That would be her thought.”

“It could only be ours, Father. She has no thoughts now.”

“You know I represent her. In so far as our thoughts would be the same, they should be hers to you.”

“She should be here to keep a hand on you,” said Hugo.

“Yes, she should be here,” said Ninian. “But I feel the hand.”

“We shall all feel it,” said Egbert. “And partly as she meant us to. We should know about things, Father. They will have to go on without her.”

“Without her! It will not seem like going on.”

“It is better than a standstill. We must learn what the changes are to be.”

“today?” said his father.

“Well, it is a difficult day to live. We may as well make some use of it. It will leave a better memory. And I need some light on the future. We have depended on Grandma's money.”

“Some of it was your grandfather's, and comes direct to me,” said Ninian, with his eyebrows slightly raised. “She has left what was her own also to me, knowing it would pass to her grandchildren. There are the natural bequests to dependants. And there is a legacy to your uncle, and a message to him added in her own hand on the day before she died. That has no legal significance. It will have the more for him.”

“Then you have seen the will, Father. You said you had not thought of it, since it was made.”

“And I have not,” said Ninian, smiling. “It is not I, who thought of it today. When I put it out for the lawyer, I caught sight of the message at the end. It is not embodied in the will. You are not my friend, my boy.”

“Tell me the message,” said Hugo. “Of course that is all I should think of.”

“It is short and simple. It stresses the meaning of the legacy. She felt it lessened the advantage of your marriage, and she trusted it would prevent it.”

“She did not make it a condition?”

“No, the message has no legal force. It comes simply from her to you. She felt it was enough.”

“She could have made it a condition, if she had meant it to be one,” said Lavinia.

“No, my dear, she was above it,” said Ninian, at once. “It would have been to fail you and your uncle and herself. He has her word of trust. He needs nothing more.”

“But she knew I was unworthy of trust,” said Hugo. “So the word means nothing.”

“It means what it says. What else could it mean? Why should she have written it in her last weakness?”

“She did not tell you about it?”

“No, her strength was gone. She used the last of it for you.”

“I wish she had had just a little less. She did always have a great deal.”

“We must forget the message,” said Lavinia. “There is no middle course.”

“Forget it?” said her father. “Her last words, her last wish? They mean no more than that to you? Did you act a part with her?”

“No, and I will not now. We cannot fulfil the wish. So it is best not to think of it.”

“Best?” said Ninian, keeping his brows raised.

“Yes, for us. For her we cannot do anything.”

“Well, you will do nothing. You still act a part.”

“I may as well show my full self,” said Hugo. “It will cause no surprise. Did you see the amount of the legacy?”

“I did not see the will. I already knew the amount. I had my mother's confidence.”

“Ninian, would you force me to go further?”

“You would hardly wish to today. It is no occasion for facts and figures.”

“It is only the one little figure. Of course it is not a large one. And it is in your mind. I shall be no worse than you are.”

“It was not, until you recalled it. What was in my mind was her thought and hope for you. For today is not that enough?”

“It is too much. All I want is the one little thing that you would not count. And I will not count it either. I must know it, to dismiss it from my mind.”

“The legacy is in safe investments, and can be estimated,” said Ninian, in a full, cold tone, naming the sum. “It renders you independent of me and my home and my daughter. You see its significance.”

“I do. I can marry Lavinia without any feeling of guilt.”

“
Without
any?” said Ninian.

“Without that of supposedly sordid motives. I shall be able to do my part.”

“You can forget my mother's message to you?”

“Yes, if you never remind me of it. Let it be a pact between us.”

“It might be the more remembered.”

“Well, that would not matter so much.”

“I could not have believed the occasion would be taken in this spirit,” said Ninian, as if to himself.

“Neither could I. Things are never as bad as we expect. This one is not.”

“You mean the legacy means more to you, than the woman who was your virtual mother?”

“The legacy is all I can have. And all I can have of her, And it binds me closer to her. You can see it does.”

“But you would let it ensure the thing she meant it to prevent?”

“It must be one of life's inconsistencies. Or perhaps it was one of hers. She would have been above mere consistency. I remember that she was.”

“Hugo, would it not be better to appear to be serious today?”

“I am really serious. I don't dare to seem to be. I am so afraid of you.”

“I would rather have a plain word than all this evasive irony, if that is what it is.”

“I hope it is that. I meant it to be. A plain word is a dreadful thing.”

“You will take the legacy, and do what it in effect forbids?”

“I said it was dreadful,” said Hugo.

“Then there is no more to be said.”

“That is a relief, Ninian.”

“Your mother must have known it might work out like this, Ninian,” said Teresa.

“She added the message to ensure that it did not.”

“Hugo was to have the money in any case,” said Egbert.

“Money! She felt there were other things. It made her think too well of other people.”

“She did not do that,” said Teresa with a smile.

“In this case we must feel she did.”

“So there was someone who thought better of me than I deserved,” said Hugo. “It is a thing I did not expect to say.”

“It is not the one I would choose at this moment,” said Ninian.

“Well, that is fortunate, as you could not say it. She thought the same of you as you deserved.”

“My dear mother! There was nothing false between us. As there now is between you and her.”

“And between you and me, Ninian. And if you are not careful, there will cease to be.”

Ninian turned to his daughter and spoke as if in sudden recollection.

“I have been wondering whether to put a memorial tablet to your grandmother in the church. Do you feel she would wish it?”

“She did not think of it. I hardly see what it would do for her.”

“It would not do anything for you? You do not feel her life should be commemorated? You would not have felt it?”

“We should put up so many memorials, if we considered our personal feelings. People are usually commemorated for some public service.”

“And the years of personal service do not count?”

“Only to us. It was to us that it was given.”

“It is we who should place the memorial.”

“Well, so it is, Father. And it could do no harm.”

“That is hardly a ground for the time and trouble and cost.”

“Well, that is what I thought.”

“Would you always have thought it? Would you always have been dry and logical and without larger impulse? Is it the new interest in legacies and kindred things? Has there come to be nothing else?”

“Those are in our minds at the moment. You are glad of your own share.”

“Not for my own sake. But let her be glad of them for hers, if they are her concern now,” said Ninian, as he turned away. “Let her leave the deeper things. Perhaps they have been too deep. We may not have known her.”

“She can hear no more,” said Teresa. “No one else would have heard so much. It does harm and will leave a memory.”

“If you are equal to it, Egbert,” said Ninian, turning to his son, “we might go and review the new position. I
would not suggest it today, but this talk has taken our minds from their natural course, and made it hardly fitting to return to it.”

“We have had enough of it all,” said his wife. “We will go out of doors and forget it. Your feelings need a rest, and not only yours.”

Ninian laid his hand on Egbert's shoulder, paused for the women to precede him, glanced at his daughter as she waited for Hugo, and went from the house.

“Lavinia, what can be done? Shall we always be in his power? Will he always have it all?”

“Yes, always most of it. We could never cast him off.”

“I will say the truth. I think I could. He does all he can to help us. We will live at a distance from him.”

“No, I must be near him. I can't help my feeling. I have tried to lose it and I have lost a part. But something remains and holds me to him. To give it up would tear up the roots of my life.”

“I have never believed in God. I believe in him now. We have known he is a father. And I see that he is yours. There are the anger, jealousy, vaingloriousness, vengefulness, love, compassion, infinite power. The matter is in no doubt.”

“If simplicity is our object, here is our scene,” said Ninian in a cold tone, as they approached the garden assigned to the children. “Let us see what is taking place.”

Leah was holding a tombstone in position, while Hengist piled up some earth to keep it secure. Agnes lay on the grass at hand, writing with a preoccupied expression.

“What are you doing?” said Ninian. “Where did you get the stone?”

“From the back of the churchyard,” said his son. “We are putting up a monument to Grandma. It is quite proper, as the tombstone is a real one. The words are worn away, and Agnes is writing some more.”