Parents and Children (26 page)

Gavin paused at a distance and looked into his mother's face.

‘We don't any of us seem much to like it.'

‘Of course it will make you sad. But we can hardly remember him unless we are that.'

Gavin paused for thought.

‘I think I can.'

‘Well, remember him in your own way. Good-bye, my Honor; you will think of Father too.'

‘I shan't ever think of anyone else now.'

‘You will think of your mother too, and remember that she is alone.'

‘We are all alone now. Father was the person who held us together. It is the father who does that.'

‘I know your father did. But you still have your mother.'

‘And you have Luce and Daniel and Graham. And Grandma has Grandpa. We all have someone. But it doesn't make it different. Father was the person who protected us.'

‘Take her upstairs, Hatton,' said Eleanor. ‘I can feel they are safe with you.'

‘Hatton will take care of her,' said Nevill, running at Honor's side. ‘He will too.'

James, with an almost capering movement, came to take leave of his mother, with a view to establishing a precedent of following Hatton himself.

‘Are you going with them, my boy?'

James made another movement.

‘Do you want to go?' said Eleanor, in a gentle, condoning manner.

‘No,' said James, in a light tone.

‘You would rather stay down here with me?'

‘Yes, I would.'

‘Then stay, my little son. I shall like to have you. You can leave him with me, Hatton.'

‘I should like his help with Honor, madam. She needs to have one of them older than herself. She can't take the lead today.'

‘Then go up, my boy, and comfort your little sister, and remember that you do it for your mother.'

James withdrew with a sense of having satisfactorily and even with credit laid the foundation of his future.

Mullet was awaiting the stricken group, and began at once to talk, as if she had been summoning her powers for their benefit.

‘Now here you are, safe and sound. And you have your home and Hatton and me. Some children lose it all when their father dies, but it is different with you.'

‘Why is it different?' said Gavin.

Hatton withdrew to liberate Mullet's gifts, and James quietly followed and went to his room.

‘Because this house belongs to your grandpa, and you will still live here with him. You won't have to move into a small house and face a changed life.'

‘Why do people do that?' said Gavin.

‘A dear little house,' said Nevill, coming up to Mullet.

‘Dear, dear, the collapses and crashes there have been in my family! You would hardly believe the tale of them. First prosperity and luxury and leisure, and then downfall and poverty and trouble. Poverty in a sense of course I mean; all things are comparative. And desertion by friends is always part of it. I am
thinking of a cousin of my father's, who was a well-known physician and lived in Harley Street, which is an address for people of that kind. And they kept a butler and a cook and the usual complement of under servants. And they did much as the mood took them. Yes, their lot was cast in pleasant places. And then the curse that was hanging over them gathered and fell. There has always been this something ill-fated about our family. My uncle died, and the end of it all came. They had to take shelter under a humble roof, and keep one servant; well, one good servant from the old days, and one or two young ones it really was, though to hear the family talk, you would have thought it was a state of penury; and move out of society and face a different future. Yes, I often think of them, moving in their shabby gentility about their second-rate social round, always with that air of having come down in the world, which a truer dignity would lay aside. A morning of trivial shopping, after an interview with the rather tyrannical cook; a dose of cavalier treatment from the tradesmen instead of the accustomed respect, for that class of person is the first to show a sense of difference; an afternoon over a dreary fire, missing the friends who used to attend their frequent functions; that is my cousins' life. I often think I have been wise in cutting right adrift from the past, that I have chosen the better part.'

‘I don't think you have,' said Gavin. ‘You don't have even as much as they have. And perhaps that is why they don't write to you.'

‘It may be; there are more unlikely things. I often think of those people who used to cross our threshold and accept our hospitality. How many friends have I from my old life? None. But I would not thank them to darken my horizon. They were fair weather friends.'

‘How do you pronounce horizon?' said Gavin, Mullet having put the emphasis on the first syllable.

‘Horizon,' said Honor, in a mechanical tone, placing it on the second.

‘Well, there are different pronunciations in different circles. And my education was broken off too soon for me to have the usual foundation. And my father never did believe in much
learning for girls. It was one of those old-fashioned ideas he had inherited from his ancestors. I was never to do anything, and what was the good of so much training? And there it was.'

‘But you might have been a governess instead of a nurse,' said Gavin.

‘It would have been all the same to him,' said Mullet. ‘A dependent position is a dependent position. That is what it would have been.'

‘I think your father was a rather foolish man.'

‘He had his vein of foolishness, according to modern ideas. . But I could not help loving him for it,' said Mullet, bearing out the theory that people love their creations. ‘And, after all, I owed him my being.'

Honor got off her chair and came up to Gavin with a faint smile.

‘Perhaps it is the other way round,' she said, as if feeling that the day broke some bond upon her tongue.

Gavin seemed puzzled, and at that moment Hatton returned to the room and at once looked at Honor's face.

‘Well, now,' she said in a cheerful tone, while her eyes met Mullet's, ‘it is time for you to have your dinner. I expect Mr Ridley is staying, and you will see him when you go downstairs.'

‘We have seen him,' said Gavin.

‘I don't want to go down,' said Honor.

‘It will make a change for you,' said Mullet.

‘It won't,' said Gavin. ‘We go down every day. It will be the same as usual.'

Honor raised her eyes to his face, dumbfounded by a knowledge that went no further.

‘Well, you will soon come up again,' said Hatton. ‘Now Gavin will have some meat, won't he?'

‘Yes.'

‘That is my sensible boy.'

‘He will eat it all up,' said Nevill, in a vigorous tone.

‘So I have two sensible boys.'

‘But he will eat the most.'

‘I shall see which of you does that. Now Honor will come and have her dinner on my knee.'

Honor went at once to Hatton.

‘Sit on Hatton's knee,' said Nevill.

‘No, Honor is my baby today.'

‘No, he is.'

‘You are my baby boy, and Honor is my baby girl.'

‘He is a girlie,' said Nevill, holding his knife and fork idle.

‘Poor Gavin can't be anything,' said Mullet.

‘Not anything,' said Nevill, sadly surveying his brother.

‘Honor is going to sleep,' said Gavin, in a rough tone.

‘She is tired out,' said Hatton.

‘He is tired,' said Nevill, laying his head on the table.

‘I am not,' said Gavin, loudly.

‘You are a brave boy,' said Mullet.

‘He is brave,' said Nevill, leaning towards Hatton, ‘a brave soldier boy.'

Honor sank into weeping, cried to the end of her tears, and stood pale and barely conscious while she was made ready to go downstairs. Hatton took them to the door and stood outside, with her ears alert. Mullet remained with her, as if any demand might arise.

‘Miss Luce will be a second mother to the children,' she said.

‘They will be the better for another,' said Hatton.

‘Don't you think the mistress does her part by them?'

‘She does all she can, but children hardly want what she gives them. In a way they need very little. They want at once more and less.'

‘Master Nevill will hardly remember his father.'

‘He has not been able to do much for them lately,' said Hatton, with a sigh. ‘And he can do nothing more.'

The children entered the room and stood aloof and silent. Nevill looked about for some employment. Honor was exhausted and Gavin in a state of inner tumult. Eleanor was talking to Ridley, and Regan was lost in herself. Honor sent her eyes round the faces at the table, and went and stood by Isabel. Fulbert's absence of the last months saved his family an empty place. Sir Jesse made a movement from habit towards the things on the table.

‘Can they eat them today?' he said, in a voice that simply implied that the day was different.

Gavin came up to the table.

‘Yes,' he said.

Sir Jesse pushed a dish towards him and seemed to forget his presence, and Nevill came to his brother's side. Eleanor turned her eyes on them.

‘You are having dessert, are you?' she said, in a tone that added nothing to her words.

‘Yes,' said Gavin.

‘Yes,' said Nevill, standing with his eyes and his hands at the edge of the table.

‘Would you like some, Honor?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘Have it, if you like, dear.'

Honor did not reply.

‘James, did you try to take care of Honor?'

James looked at his mother, with a wave of recollection sweeping over him.

‘Did you do what you could for her, my boy?'

James met his mother's eyes, and moisture came into his own.

‘She – I don't think – she didn't seem to want me.'

‘Never mind, dear,' said Eleanor, kindly. ‘She could not help it. I am sure you did your best.'

James looked at Honor, saw that she had hardly heard, and realized that even a fatherless boy might continue to have escapes.

‘Gavin, tell Hatton when you go upstairs that Honor is to lie down,' said Eleanor.

Gavin made no sign.

‘Do you hear me, my boy?'

‘Honor can tell her herself.'

‘But I asked you to.'

‘He will tell her,' said Nevill, to his mother.

‘Gavin, do you want to be less useful than Nevill?'

‘It is not useful when she can do it herself. And lying down doesn't make any difference. You always think it does.'

‘Not to Father's having left us. But it will make Honor's headache better.'

‘Have you got a headache?' said Gavin, to his sister.

‘No.'

Nevill looked round the table over his hands.

‘Poor Honor!' he said, in a rapid tone. ‘Poor Isabel! Poor Grandma!' He returned to his plate and looked up to add an afterthought. ‘Poor Luce!'

‘Nevill admits only feminine feeling,' said Daniel.

‘He has met more of it,' said Graham. ‘And there may be more.'

‘Poor Graham! Poor Daniel!' said Nevill, in an obliging tone.

‘Poor Mother!' said Eleanor, gently.

‘Poor Mother!' agreed her son. ‘But Father come back after a long time, and Mr Ridley stay till then.'

‘He must not eat too much,' said Venice, in a lifeless tone.

‘Not much today,' said Nevill, in grave tribute to the occasion.

Hatton opened the door and stood with her eyes on her charges. Nevill looked at her and back at the table, supplied his mouth with a befitting moderation, and went to her side; Honor slowly followed; James glanced from Hatton to his mother; Gavin continued to eat.

‘Go with Hatton, my six poor children,' said Eleanor. ‘She can do more for you than your mother. Go, James dear, if you want to.'

James could only hesitate at this imputation, which he realized was to be a recurring one.

‘Have you had your dessert?' said his mother, misinterpreting the pause.

‘Oh, no,' said James, with a lightness that disposed of the idea.

‘Did you not want any?'

‘No.'

‘Would you like some now?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘You weren't thinking about it today?'

‘No,' said James, as if his thoughts were still absent from it.

‘Then go, my little son. You will be safe with Hatton.'

Ridley waited until the door closed, and bent towards Eleanor.

‘There is something particular in our feeling for these old attendants, who have spent their lives in our service. They, if any, have earned our affection.'

‘My children have much more feeling for Hatton than they have for me.'

‘Mrs Sullivan!' said Ridley, a smile overspreading his face at this extension of the truth.

‘Hatton is not so much older than Ridley,' said Daniel.

‘He is not an attendant,' said his brother. ‘Attendants may age earlier. There are reasons why they should.'

‘I was older than most of these children when my feelings transferred, or rather extended themselves to my parents,' said Luce.

‘And we must not say that was long ago,' said Ridley.

Regan left the room, as if she could sustain her feeling only by herself. Ridley hastened to the door and stood, as she passed through it, with an air of putting the whole of himself into his concern.

‘There seems a hopelessness about the grief of the old,' he said, as he returned to Eleanor. ‘In proportion as it lacks the strength of our prime, it is without the power of reaction and recovery.'

‘You none of you think you do anything like the old,' said Sir Jesse. ‘You feel things in the same way as they do, just as you feel them in the same way as the young. We suffer according to ourselves.'

Ridley gave an uncertain glance towards the end of the table, where he had believed Sir Jesse to be sitting, lost in his grief.