A Heritage and its History (13 page)

“Yes, my mother had your place for many years,” said Simon. “Even after it was yours.”

“She taught me to fill it. How I watched her there! It was a lesson I do not forget.”

“I always think of my father in this house.”

“As is natural,” said Sir Edwin. “He was here until you were a man.”

“Ah, the other Hamish!” said Rhoda. “How he is with us! How he is in our lives! How he will live to the end of them! My Hamish knows there is an example for him in our hearts.”

“Your Hamish is more like Simon,” said Julia. “They always remind me of each other. Especially when they are tired or ill. Not that they are often either.”

“Hamish does seem rather sick at heart,” said Graham to his sister. “And for that matter so does Father.”

“What did you say?” said Simon.

“Oh, nothing, sir. It was nothing that mattered.”

“I throw no doubt on it. But you will not mutter at this table. What was your reason for doing so?”

“I thought perhaps my voice should not be heard.”

“Then let it not be. You know the way to avoid it.”

“I wish no guest to be silent at my table,” said Sir Edwin. “I am grateful to those who celebrate my living another year beyond my span. It is kind to appear to be glad of it.”

“And how easy that is!” said his wife. “How good a thing it is to us! In itself how good a thing!”

“So what did you say, Graham?” said Sir Edwin.

“It is not worth repeating, Uncle.”

“We will still ask to hear it.”

“I said that Hamish and my father both seemed rather sick at heart.”

“They seem to you so? But I wonder you voiced the thought.”

“As my father said, I hardly did so. I have been forced to it. I feel some wonder on my side.”

“Pray let someone else utter his thoughts,” said Simon. “We have heard Graham's.”

“Perhaps I am a little sick at heart,” said Hamish to Naomi. “More than you are, though you may feel you have more reason. Something is wanting in my life, that is not in yours.”

“Do you feel the verdict is true of you, Simon?” said Julia.

“Well, I am often a tired and harassed man.”

“Tired you can hardly be,” said Sir Edwin. “Your work for me does not warrant it.”

“I have other demands on me, Uncle. Some of them are here.”

“I refuse to be a demand,” said Julia.

“So do I,” said Fanny, “though it may be what I am.

“I wonder if I can refuse,” said Naomi.

“You can all three do so,” said Simon. “A woman has her own rights and makes her own return.”

“And neither can be said of us,” said Ralph to Graham. “And neither is said.”

“Who put you two together?” said his father.

“Aunt Rhoda, I suppose, sir. We were in her hands.”

“I will ask her to let you change places with Hamish.”

“May I keep my place by Naomi, Cousin Simon?” said the latter. “It is a promise I have made to myself.”

“It is Ralph and Graham whom I want to separate. But they can remain where they are, on condition of silence.”

“I think they do not merit that,” said Julia. “I see no reason.”

“They can take it as the outcome of my being sick at heart. That is what I am to them.”

“Is Cousin Simon often like this?” said Hamish to Naomi.

“He is always strange, when he is in this house. Either silent or as you see him. He seems to feel he has lost his rights, and to forget they are no longer his. Losing them seems to have torn away a part of him. He is not what he was meant to be.”

“I have a strange father in another way. He hardly
seems to see me as what I am. His feeling for his brother is the real one in his life. There again a part of him has been torn away. I used to hope I might grow into his heart, as something young and his own. But it was an empty hope. The thing was not to be.”

“He has been good to you?” said Naomi.

“Too good. Too considerate and kind for a father to a son. I would have chosen a more natural relation. Yes, I would have chosen yours. But I must take what falls to me.”

“What are you discussing so earnestly?” said Julia.

“Fathers and their sons,” said Hamish.

“I am glad I am only an uncle,” said Walter. “I should not dare to be more.”

“The position of a father involves many things,” said Simon.

“That of the children also. They confront someone in power.”

“It is the young who have that,” said Julia.

“So people say,” said Graham. “I have no idea on what ground.”

“Neither have I,” said his father. “Power is for those who have earned it.”

“The young have the rights in the future,” said Julia.

“But they live in the present,” said her grandson. “And they have few there. And the future is not represented as affording many. Indeed only the one.”

“I hope our great-uncle is having a happy birthday,” said Naomi. “We are here to ensure it, and I suppose this is our best.”

“He is the better for having you here,” said Hamish. “He seems to miss you, though you have never lived in his house. You are his brother's descendants. He does not see me as apart from you. I am one amongst you, no more to him than you are. I hope I am as much.”

“Edwin, you are such a handsome man,” said Julia. “Each time I see you, your looks have gained. I wish my Hamish could meet you as you are now. He would have even more to see than he once saw.”

“I wish he could. I wish we could meet each other.”

“I think Naomi is like her great-uncle,” said Simon.

“In a way she is. But his looks are so much his own. I cannot think of anyone equal to him.”

“Do you think about your looks, Father?” said Hamish.

“No, I take them for granted. They are of a high order, and remain so. But I would rather say it of other things; of brain or personality or character.”

“Ah, how we say it for you!” murmured Ralph, in mimicry of his aunt. “And how we all mean it! Ah, how we do!”

“What did you say, Ralph?” said Simon.

There was a pause.

“Is this a silence that speaks?” said Graham.

“If only it was!” said Naomi. “Or if only something would do so!”

“What did you say, Ralph?” repeated Simon.

“What I might have said, what I am glad has been said,” said Rhoda, in easy, fluent tones. “Why should I find fault with it?”

“You know the reasons,” said Simon. “It is kind not
to give them. The boy is dependent on the kindness, and I am so for him.”

“You are my guests, and have a right to it.”

“We are what you say, and should not presume on it.”

“I don't think your young people lack brains, Simon,” said Sir Edwin, continuing from his words, as if he had not heard the last ones.

“Well, I hope they have the character to use them.”

“In order to avoid the accepted alternative,” said Graham.

“Why do you think it a matter for jest?” said his father. “Poverty is a test few people can stand. You have no idea what it means. Your life is easier than most.”

“It is the first time he has told us,” said Ralph. “How did he find it out?”

“Hamish does not have to listen to these warnings,” said Fanny.

“My Hamish! Ought he to hear them?” said Rhoda, with a glance at Ralph. “No, his mother will not say it.”

“He is in no need of them,” said Simon. “His future is different.”

“The future that was yours, sir,” said Hamish. “There was a displacement of the line. I should not have existed.”

“Are you glad that you do?”

“I suppose I am. It is a difficult question to answer.”

“I should not have thought it. You do not seem to find it so. The answer is the one you give.”

“We are all glad,” said Fanny.

“My sister! I know you are,” said Rhoda. “How glad I am of all your children!”

“Well, I hope you will remain so. I hear some more of them.”

“The nurse is here with the little ones, my lady,” said Deakin. “They have come to wish Sir Edwin many happy returns.”

The guests gave no sign of this or any purpose, as they stood within the door. Claud remained by his nurse, and Emma showed a tendency to vague advance.

“Many happy returns of the day, Great-Uncle,” said Julia.

“No,” said Emma.

Claud made no response.

“You know it is his birthday.”

“Not birthday,” said Claud, looking at Sir Edwin, as though something in him precluded such an occasion.

“Poor Uncle Edwin!” said Emma.

“Would you like to live for nearly ninety years?” said their uncle.

“Oh, yes,” said Claud.

“But you think I should die, now I have lived for so long?”

“Not die!” said Emma, with emotion.

“Ah, what a stage!” said Rhoda. “How I remember Hamish in it!”

“Dear little girl!” said Emma, in agreement.

“You are not behaving very nicely,” said Julia.

“But have it,” said Emma, looking at the table and alluding to a system of rewards for doing so.

Claud's eyes followed hers.

“Well, choose something and say goodbye,” said Simon.

The guests obeyed the first injunction, passed over the second, and went to the door.

“There will be demands on you in the future, Simon,” said Sir Edwin.

“I hope Graham will be off my hands, before Claud comes on to them. The gap in years should help us.”

“The workhouse may also benefit,” said Graham. “I may be dead before the date of Claud's admittance.”

“I forbid any more of that talk,” said Simon. “It is becoming a performance. And as such it should entertain.”

“You must keep your own rule, Simon,” said Julia.

“I am a law to myself. What do you think is my place in the family? The subject was mine, and this travestying of it is senseless. Graham is too old for it.”

“For the subject of our final stage?” said Naomi. “We can never get beyond it.”

“Have you any alternative ideas for your sons' future, Simon?” said Sir Edwin.

“They will go to Oxford. We have cut out the expense of a public school to ensure it. And some sort of self-support should result from it. Must result, I should say.”

“To keep the climax at bay,” said Ralph.

“Did you hear what I said?” said his father. “Will this brilliance be put to any purpose, besides hounding one point to death? You cannot afford to waste your talents. There can only be one end to it. And I do not
want a boyish joke made out of that. It is a poor sense of humour that must be exercised on family subjects. If it has no general use, it is worth nothing.”

“The workhouse is at once granted and grudged its place in the family,” said Naomi.

“Edwin, it is good to see you at the head of your table,” said Julia. “With Hamish at your side, ready to take your place. If my Hamish could see it, he would be content for his son to yield to yours.”

“It is the kinder to say it, that we may doubt its truth. And we should not lay too much stress on being followed by a son. It is no man's right.”

“That is how my father feels,” said Hamish to Naomi. “I have done little for him by being in his life. If it were not for my mother, I should feel I had no place in it. And I sometimes think she has hardly had what is her due.”

“He was an old man when you were born. It was late to make the change.”

“He is not old now, except in years. His heart and feelings are alive. And they are fixed on his brother, as they have always been. It is a strange life story. It is for us all a strange, difficult thing.”

“We hardly have a place in our father's life. Our empty places are in the home and the life that once were his. It is almost true to say that he does not live.”

“Your place is here, always empty to me, always yours. I hope it will not wait too long.”

“What are you talking about so gravely?” said Simon.

“About our different homes,” said Naomi. “I daresay we should have come to the final one in time.”

“Have you a great feeling for your home, Hamish?”

“Not as great as you have, sir. It has not been mine for as long. I have a sense of being an after-thought.”

“You will lose the feeling. You should never have had it. I do not know why you have.”

“It is no place for me alone. Or even for my mother and me. It seems to be empty, bereft of something, waiting for someone.”

“You talk as if you were not a boy, and had never been one.”

“My Hamish, my son!” said Rhoda. “He has been more for his mother's sake.”

“Do you ever imagine your descendants here, Cousin Simon? You must once have had the picture in your mind.”

“I have lost it. I have left my home. I do not look back or think of it. I move forward like any other man.”

“Our own home has an unsettled feeling,” said Ralph. “It can be seen as a halfway house.”

“You can hardly feel that,” said Fanny. “It is the only home you have known.”

“The ones that come before and after seem to have more claim.”

“I must thank you all for coming to honour my birthday,” said Sir Edwin. “I am old to make a speech, but I feel and acknowledge the honour. I have the guests I should have chosen, my brother's family. I have been
in my place very long. It is soon to know me no more. I thank you who have helped me in it.”

“It will always be empty to us, Edwin,” said Julia. “Hamish will fill another. And that in its turn will be empty, until memories die.”

“What is wrong about lofty words,” said Walter, “is that other people have said them. And when I think of some myself, the moment is past.”

“Do we really think of them?” said Graham. “Or do we just feel the impulse? We should not enjoy it so much, if the effort was involved.”