A Heritage and its History (11 page)

“As something of yours, my son, it has been mine. I have thought of you more than of myself.”

“So have I,” said Walter. “And that means a great deal of thought. I have shared the suspense that is worse than certainty. And I hardly think it is.”

Simon said nothing. His blindness to his coming displacement was the only error he never confessed to his brother.

“We shall have to find a house,” said Julia; “and one
on the place, as you are to manage it. I cannot think of one.”

“There is Fanny's house,” said Simon. “I do not know of another. Would it be well for me to marry her, and for all of us to live in it? It is fully large.”

“And it is good to have some reason for marrying,” said Walter.

“Simon, nothing will alter you,” said Julia. “You are more and more yourself.”

“Fanny would not want an emotional married life. She was not responsive with her sister. Marriages are arranged in other countries, and are often a success. They have a better basis than a passing emotion. I could get attached to Fanny, and I should make her a good husband.”

“Are we to consider her feeling for you?”

“Mater, you said that Simon was himself,” said Walter. “You must not be surprised by his being so.”

“She is lonely and unsettled,” said Simon. “She has no great feeling for anyone. It would make a better life for her. And I would say she had an affection for me, if I should not be accused of being myself.”

“For the moment you might almost be someone else,” said his brother.

“So I am to live as a member of her household, after being the mistress of this,” said Julia. “I said I thought of you more than of myself. I wonder if I can go on doing so.”

“You might manage the house, as your income is larger than Fanny's. I daresay she would not mind.”

“I might not, and would not. I will order no other
home that is not my own. And I should have no respect for her, if she did not mind. She would have no self-respect. Both things were really true in the other case.”

“I should have a particular respect for her,” said Walter. “I do not know what you mean.”

“Then you had one for Rhoda,” said his mother.

“I had. But somehow I lost it. I cannot give a reason.”

“You mean you will not. And I do not need one. We are saying the same thing.”

“When people do that, they always say such different things.”

“I mean no more than that people should fill their own place.”

“Well, they will do so,” said Simon. “But I think losing it imposes a greater strain.”

“I wonder if your uncle will have any more children,” said Julia.

“I do not think so. He and Rhoda are hardly on those terms.”

“That is what we thought. But we have had to think again. What would your father say to the course of things?”

“What would anyone say to what happens after his death? What happened before we lived, seems strange enough.”

“It is only when we are alive that things are normal,” said Walter. “It shows how important our presence is.”

“I wonder what they will call the boy,” said Julia.

“Hamish,” said Simon. “My uncle told me.”

“So you have been having some chat with him,” said Walter. “I somehow cannot imagine it.”

“He may feel some remorse towards you,” said Julia. “He has caused this change in your life. He should be grateful for the way you accept it. But when I spoke of you, he did not respond. I thought it was grudging of him. You are his brother's son, and his brother has been the first person in his life.”

“And I think will remain so,” said Simon.

“He may get a strong feeling for his own son.”

“I think it will never be as strong.”

“You seem to be in his confidence, as we are not. I should not have expected it. It may be a sign of his compunction.”

“I do not think it is.”

“Well, perhaps you understand each other.”

“I understand his feeling at the moment.”

“It is good of you to try to, my boy.”

“It does not need much effort.”

“Well, can you explain his aloofness? We have tried to show him sympathy.”

“His life is strange to him. He is not of an age to adapt himself.”

“It has turned out to his advantage. It gives him a stake in the future. Well, I must go and see his wife and son. You will both see them later.”

“That should have been in a play,” said Walter. “With the audience knowing the truth.”

“Well, it was, with you as audience.”

“I felt too much involved in it. I found it a perilous passage. I suppose there will be many.”

“Until we have forgotten the truth. We must see that we forget it.”

“I must ask it once, Simon. How will you feel to the boy?”

“I will answer it once. I feel I am giving him my place. It is a reasonless feeling, but I have it. And he will have a father.”

“How will it be, as time goes on?”

“I shall watch him with personal feeling. But in the end I shall be in thrall to him. I shall have my deserts, and hardly proportionate ones. It must make its difference.”

“How will you feel to Rhoda?”

“We shall become more distant. We have done so. Under my uncle's eye what else could be? And she may be my sister-in-law.”

“I suppose you will take steps to bring that about.”

Simon did so, and a week or two later led Fanny to his mother.

“Mater, you have wished for a daughter. Here I bring one to you. I told you my hopes. Now I have the better thing to tell.”

“My reproach is taken away,” said Walter. “I am justified in being what I am.”

“I have felt as Simon says,” said Julia. “Now my future opens in my daughter's house. I shall not be without a refuge, as I grow old. She shall not be without a mother.”

“What will your uncle say to it, Simon?” said Fanny.

“He can only give his consent. His feeling will not be
strong. He has little affection for me. We have little for each other. He could not forgive my realising that I should come after him. But now that is in the past, we may understand each other better.”

“Or forget you ever understood each other. That is what that usually means.”

“It was terrible to see their understanding,” said Walter. “Simon knew Uncle had to die, and did not disguise it.”

“Well, now he has to live,” said Fanny. “And anyhow he is going to.”

“I could not profess to think he was immortal,” said Simon.

“People cannot suffer our picturing things without them.”

“A man of seventy could hardly feel in that way.”

“You don't know how people feel. The old do not think how good it is to be young. They pity the young for not being what they are themselves. And the pity is real.”

“So everyone pities everyone else,” said Julia. “And I daresay with reason. Life can be a sorry thing.”

“That is true,” said Sir Edwin, entering the room. “But it responds in a measure to ourselves. I used to wonder if the difference in us would give out. But it never did.”

“What do you think, Deakin?” said Simon.

“As Sir Edwin does, sir. I am confronted by the lack of standard.”

“What do you say to the changes? No doubt you know of them.”

“It is for me to accept them, sir.”

“You will miss the mistress. You think of my mother as that.”

Deakin moved about his duties without reply.

“I daresay you would come with us. But you are above our level.”

“Deakin belongs to the house,” said Sir Edwin, easily. “You force us to your level, Simon.”

“Yes, Sir Edwin. Man and boy I have belonged to it.”

“And I come from outside,” said Julia. “I have no place.”

“It is what the lady must do, ma'am,” said Deakin.

“I am to hang up my hat in my wife's hall,” said Simon.

“No, you are not,” said Fanny. “The house will depend on your support. I can barely struggle along in it. And I shall rely on your mother and not acknowledge it.”

“What a change it all is! We must wonder what my father would say to it.”

“So in your place you do so,” said Sir Edwin. “In mine I know what he would say.”

“He will always be first to you, Uncle.”

Sir Edwin made no reply.

“Your son is so healthy and contented, Edwin,” said Julia. “He reminds me of Simon at his age.”

“They are first cousins,” said Fanny. “They are often more alike than brothers.”

“He might have been like Walter. But he makes me think of Simon. His eyes are set in the same way. I
shall like to watch him grow up. He somehow seems nearer to me than a nephew by marriage.”

“You may catch a likeness to Hamish,” said Sir Edwin. “That would not be unnatural.”

“I am glad he is to have his name, Edwin. It carries on the meaning of your lives.”

“You might have wanted the name for your own grandson.”

“He can have another,” said Simon. “But I hope I shall have a daughter. There is nothing for a son to inherit, and a girl means more to a father.”

“There is only this child between you and the place,” said Sir Edwin. “But it is not a line for your thought.”

“Yes, of course you will have no other children. But I do not know why I should say that.”

“No one can know why you say anything, Simon,” said Julia.

“If we have a child, it will be a first cousin to this one,” said Fanny. “And another cousin through you and your uncle.”

“Yes, they would be doubly related. A marriage would not be possible.”

“It would be legally so, but perhaps not desirable,” said Julia.

“It could not be allowed,” said Simon. “But the question is not urgent.”

“It is idle to plan the future. It is not in our hands. It may grow out of our actions.”

“Those are often hardly deliberate.”

“I hope not often,” said Sir Edwin. “We have reason, and should be governed by it.”

“What do you think, Deakin?” said Walter.

“I have found that people may be governed by other things, sir.”

“Lower things, you mean?”

“Well, sir, it is hard not to use the word.”

“Well, I must go home,” said Fanny. “To the house that will soon be that to me again.”

“I will come with you,” said Julia, “and talk of what has to be done. It is to be home to me as well.”

There was a minute of silence when the three men were alone.

“It was like a Greek tragedy,” said Walter. “With people saying things with a meaning they did not know, or with more meaning than they knew. It is not the first today. Will it always be like this?”

“It must not be,” said his uncle. “We are to forget the truth. It must not lie below the surface, ready to escape. It is strange enough, Simon, that you are the person whom we doubt.”

“You can hardly do so, Uncle. You know what I have at stake. What would be the cost to me, if the truth were known? In itself it has cost me enough.”

Sir Edwin left the room, and Walter turned to his brother.

“What kind of a man is our uncle?”

“He is no better than you or I. It is best for himself that the truth should be hidden. If it emerged, his dignity would suffer, a thing he has never faced. And he could hardly wish me to lose any more. I have lost enough. And I have done him no deliberate harm.”

“You must have made love to his wife.”

“If there are to be no more words, let there be none.”

“Tell me once what you feel about everything, Simon. Somehow it is hard to know.”

“I can put it in a word. The place is the thing I love. Above any man or woman, above you yourself, above all else. And I am cast from it, and shall see it pass further away. My feelings are dulled. You ask me what they are. To myself I seem to have none.”

“Did you not see your mother come into the room?” said Simon.

His son rose to his feet, glancing with a half-smile at his sister.

“And do not exchange glances with Naomi. You are too old to be so mannerless.”

“Eighteen years is hardly past youth,” said his daughter.

“I shall be going in and out,” said Fanny. “I have some things to arrange.”

“Then I must behave like a Jack-in-the-box,” said her son.

“The deportment required of you,” said his brother.

“And of you,” said Simon. “You may take what I said, to yourself.”

“Simon, is there any need to be so sour and sharp?” said Julia, in a tone that seemed to illustrate her words.

“I will not see my sons become boors. We can afford them no training and must act as mentors ourselves. It is not a choice I would have made. I am not cut out for the character. But certain things are forced upon me.”

“Do you think you and Walter were better at their age?”

“We had another background. They are more
dependent on their parents. It is no kindness to fail them.”

“It is not always clear where kindness lies.”

“I suppose it is real kindness,” said Ralph. “That does lie in unexpected ways.”

“Do not copy your uncle,” said Simon. “Whatever you can or cannot be, you can be yourself.”

“But that is the trouble, Father,” said Naomi. “They have to be someone else.”

“I like to be copied,” said Walter. “It is a proof of what I have been. I hope people will not forget who was the original.”

“Must you stand about in that conscious way?” said Simon, to his sons. “There are surely chairs in the room.”

“Mother is coming in and out, sir,” said Graham. “It is the line of least resistance.”

“What is that to do with it? Are you at a stage when energy fails?”

“I am sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Challoner,” said a lady at the door, looking from Fanny to Julia, as if hardly distinguishing between the owners of the name. “But now that Naomi is seventeen, should she go with her brothers to their tutor? It hardly seems a proper thing.”