Mother and Son (26 page)

Adrian was silent for a moment.

“Did you mind having to earn your living?”

“On the contrary, I realised it might develope gifts that would otherwise lie dormant.”

“What are the gifts?”

“Patience, perhaps, and tolerance of idle curiosity.”

“I don't call those gifts.”

“It does not do to underrate them.”

“Then why does everyone do it?” said Alice.

“Oh, you are all in the stage when you think that genius and fame are the normal human lot. You will have to learn your mistake.”

“As Pettigrew did, when he realised his gifts,” murmured Francis.

“I did not give you a list of them, in case patience was not amongst yours,” said Mr. Pettigrew, in a complex tone.

“I hope it is among Mrs. Pettigrew's, if she hears of the fortunes of our family.”

“I think, Francis, that that is a subject upon which you might learn to be silent.”

“I hope Pettigrew will follow his own suggestion,” said Francis, when the tutor had left them.

“I expect he has told everyone about Uncle and us,” said Adrian.

“Well, you set him the example and gave him the opportunity. You have no right to complain.”

“It is strange that Aunt Miranda did not know, until just before she died. It seems it was almost a pity to tell her then.”

“That might often be said of eleventh-hour confessions.”

“And said truly of them,” said Alice. “They are seldom of a pleasant kind, and it is hardly the time for unpleasantness.”

“Perhaps they hasten people's death,” said Adrian.

“That is really not their usual object,” said Francis.

“This seems to have hastened Aunt Miranda's.”

“You mean there are exceptions to every rule?”

“They are meant to do the opposite,” said Alice, “and make the most of the last moments. And in books they do make them go a long way.”

“It is strange that someone might have been in Aunt Miranda's place,” said Adrian.

“It never seemed real,” said his sister. “I wonder how it seemed to them. Perhaps Uncle had had enough of reality and wanted something different. And perhaps he would have had it, if it had not been for us.”

“Aunt Miranda would be glad of our existence at last,” said Francis.

“I would rather Uncle was glad of it,” said Adrian. “It is a pity they can't be glad of it together.”

The door opened and Rosebery entered, and came smilingly forward.

“Now in a sense we enter on a new chapter. The time of our uncertainty is past. I am at a stage between you and your uncle, and must do my best in it. Shall we try a game together? I have noticed that games play a part in your life.”

The occasion of which this was true, came into their minds.

“It is the others who play games,” said Adrian. “I would rather read.”

“It will do you no harm to take your part in one with them.”

“Our games are for two people. We haven't any other kind.”

“You must have some cards. There is a game for four with those, that you should learn. I suppose you know how to deal.”

They did not, but Francis and Alice soon did, and Adrian's incapacity was accepted.

“A game is like a lesson,” he said.

“While you are learning it,” said Rosebery. “It will not always be.”

“Is there anything wrong in not playing games?”

“It is unsocial to sit apart, and that is not a pleasant quality.”

“Games for four will not be any good to us,” said Adrian, realising his words too late.

Rosebery simply smiled.

“One person can take the place of two. I will explain that to you presently.”

He was as good as his word, and Adrian was confirmed in his view of games. When this one ended, the others were striving with mirth, and he with another emotion.

“Will Rosebery do things for us now, instead of for Aunt Miranda?” he whispered.

“What should we have thought of her death,” said Francis, “if we had known we were to take her place?”

“And what would she have thought?” said Alice.

“We will have many more games together,” said Rosebery, putting up the cards with this in view.

As he spoke, the door opened, and he saw the children's faces light.

“Father,” he said, rising, “I have tried and I have failed. I have done my best, and it is not enough. I have striven to the end of my strength, and it does not avail. I have no place in this house, on the scene of my mother's life and mine. So now there is something to be told. Do not fear; it is no great thing. I had a letter when my mother died; I did not tell you of it; you were having enough of me and my troubles, of another man and his sorry fate. The letter must have come from my father. It was a simple word, signed: ‘an old man whose thought must be on you'. I must go to him, Father. I care not who he is, what he is; he is the man who with my mother gave me life. And when he dies, I will order my own days. I will not fail you and return; I will not fail your children. They are with their father, as I shall be with mine. But this is no last farewell. We shall
always meet. For your sake, for mine, for my mother's, that must be. But for the moment it is a parting, if only of the ways. Father, goodbye; that is what you have been to me; we will not say something was wanting, though we know what we do.”

Rosebery gave his hand to Julius, and went to the door without looking at the children, as though he recognised he was nothing to them. Adrian spoke before he reached it.

“Shan't we ever see you again?”

“You did not listen?” said Rosebery, gently. “You did not hear? You will see me when I come to the house. You will be about it, as usual, more than you are now. You see I shall be gone. I shall realise that, when I return; that I am gone.”

Adrian broke into weeping.

“Ah, Adrian, we know your tears, and know they are soon dried.”

“Most tears are,” said Julius. “But some of us do not win them.”

“I want none, Father. Let me leave smiles behind. I know they smile at heart.”

“You know too much,” said Francis. “And we do not know enough. Why cannot you visit your father and return?”

“Return where?”

“Here, where you have spent your life.”

“Yes, it is late to begin again,” said Rosebery, in a quiet tone.

“What do you feel about his going?” said Alice to Francis.

“I believe I feel grief.”

“And I feel alarm. The family will be too small. We shall not be enough for Uncle.”

“Does Uncle love Rosebery?” said Adrian.

“Yes, in a way. He was his father for too long. He will never lose all the feeling.”

“And absence will make his heart grow fond,” said Francis. “The thought of it makes mine do so.”

“I believe my heart was always fond,” said Alice.

“Have you your father's letter?” said Julius to Rosebery.

Rosebery handed it to him.

“There is no address. I thought there might be none. After all these years there would hardly be one.”

“Let me see the letter, Father.”

“You knew it; you must have known. How could you make your plans, if you did not know your destination?”

“I had made no plans. There was need of none. I was going to the writer of the letter, wherever it might be. And I will go. Something will guide my steps.”

“What can do that?” said Alice.

“Nothing you would know, no voice that you would hear.”

“Well, listen to the voice,” said Julius, “and tell me where to send your letters and anything else you will need.”

Rosebery sat down and covered his face with his hands.

“Father, you will not believe me. But I did not think of the address. It mattered nothing to me where it was, what it was; I was simply going to it. Until I set
forth, I had no need to know it. But how can you believe such a word?”

“I believe it, my boy. No one else would do so. I wonder at myself, but I find it true. You did not think of going, until you felt urged to make a scene. And then the thought did its own work.”

“I meant to go, Father.”

“You would have gone and returned. Though perhaps not before your father's death.”

“He can't go now,” said Adrian to Alice.

“No, he must stay here. It is the only address he knows.”

“Are you glad he is not going?”

“Hardly as glad as I thought I should be.”

“I think that shows you are glad.”

“Well, our life will be easier with him. We recognise what he does for it.”

“Haven't we done him justice?”

“No, we have only just begun to do it. And no one could ever do him enough.”

“I have never known anyone who needed so much,” said Francis.

“I think he likes it as well as needs it,” said Adrian.

There was a silence.

“Father, will you join us in a game of cards?” said Rosebery, drawing out a chair. “We only need four players, but Adrian will make no demur to being left out.”

“Will nothing else absorb Rosebery's energy?” murmured Francis. “If only Aunt Miranda were alive!”

“Francis, that will be the epitome of my life.”

“Would she have liked us to play cards?” said Adrian.

“Was it that doubt, that prevented your playing?” said Rosebery, with a smile. “I can relieve you of it. She taught me to play herself, when I was a boy.”

“And now has left him partnerless,” murmured Francis.

“And now has left me as you say, Francis,” said Rosebery.

THE END

Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in Middlesex in 1884. Compton-Burnett was encouraged by her liberal and unorthodox father, homeopath Dr Burnett, to prepare to read classics at London university (neither Oxford nor Cambridge gave degrees to women at this time). She had dearly loved her father, who died without warning from a heart attack in 1901 when she was sixteen. Her closest brother died three years later, and Ivy Compton-Burnett went on to lose three more of heryounger siblings and her mother by the time she was 35, something she could hardly bear to speak about, but constantly explored in her novels.

Compton-Burnett published twenty novels, the first while she was in her twenties, in 1911. However, the first of her works to use her mature and startlingly original style was published when she was forty, in 1925. Compton-Burnett's fiction deals with domestic situations in large households which, to all intents and purposes, invariably seem Edwardian. The description of human weaknesses and foibles of all sorts pervades her work, and the family that emerges fromeach of her novels must be seen as dysfunctional in one way or another.

She was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1967, two years before her death in 1969.

A Family and a Fortune
A Heritage and its History
Dolores
Elders and Betters
Men and Wives
Mother and Son
Parents and Children
The Last and the First
The Present and The Past
Two Worlds and Their Ways

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader

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

First published in Great Britain, 1995, Victor Gollancz Ltd

Copyright © 1995 Ivy Compton-Burnett

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eISBN: 9781448209989

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