The Last and the First (13 page)

“No, don't connect two different things,” said Sir Robert. “They do not bear on each other. Each stands by itself.”

“It does,” said Angus. “But they have come so near together. And guilty though the thought is, they seem to fit each other. How much does Hermia inherit? Is it known?”

“Not exactly,” said his father. “But these things are never quite unknown. A fortune came to Grimstone, and has been accumulating. Hermia is not in an easy place.”

“What do you feel she should do?” said Eliza.

“I have said. I find it hard to be sure.”

“I don't find anything hard. I am fully capable of certainty. Things should be left to women. They are so much more equal to them than men.”

“Well, this matter is left to a woman. And to one who may well be more equal to it than this man.”

“Well, here is the heroine,” said Eliza, “the heiress, or whatever she is. I don't know what to call her. I hardly expected her to look the same. But I can't see any change.”

“It is soon for that,” said Sir Robert. “But change is on the way. It is the event of a lifetime and must be going deep. We will see it as it is.”

“I have hardly done so yet,” said Hermia. “It was sudden, and I was unprepared. And I had given up hope of change. But this is not the old sameness with a surface difference. Change is the real word here.”

“I hope not too much the word,” said Madeline. “The matter should not go too deep. Money is an accidental thing.”

“Not in the case of a will,” said Roberta. “The rendering up of all we have. There is no element of accident there. I daresay there is almost everything else.”

“How did you hear the news?” said Eliza. “We heard it in a roundabout way. I suppose it came formally to you?”

“Yes, from Hamilton Grimstone's lawyer. There was a letter and a copy of the will. I had not heard of his illness. It all seemed so distant from me, for so much to come of it. More and more, as I come to think. It makes a break across my life. I hardly know in which part I live and breathe.”

“I can tell you. In the second part. That is to be the one now. The other will sink into the past. This is a
matter for the future and must take you forward. You will be another person with another life.”

“She will not to me,” said Sir Robert. “She has been what she is for too long. She will be the same person with another part to fill. It is true that she will be that. This is a turning-point, and should be seen as such. We will not shut our eyes to it.”

“We will not,” said Angus. “We will keep them riveted to it. They don't often have such an object.”

“I am half-inclined to shut mine,” said Madeline. “Money is simply itself to me. I put it and leave it where it should be.”

“You do well,” said Roberta. “For we find that is where it is. In the pocket and purse of Hermia.”

“I wonder what Miss Murdoch thinks about it. I feel she might see it as I do. I suppose she was very surprised?”

“I am sure she sees it as you do,” said Eliza. “And of course she was surprised. No one could be anything else. But it will make no difference to her. There will be no change in her life.”

“Well, there will in a way,” said Hermia. “I am giving up the school. This has somehow led me to it. I don't quite know how or why. I can't give a reason.”

“I can,” said Eliza. “All this fills your horizon and leaves no room for anything else. It is natural. I should have expected it.”

“Now I hardly should,” said Madeline. “I feel rather sorry in a way. It seems that your feeling for the school was hardly what we thought.”

“It was not what I thought myself, and the thing itself not what I hoped. I needed something, and it was what was there. I will return the money to Father, and the matter can sink into the past. Miss Murdoch can transfer
the partnership; and if there is a mild money loss, it hardly matters, as things are.”

“So the legacy is large,” said Eliza. “The loss would probably not be mild to us.”

“It is large. The figures took me aback. I hardly like to state them. I will give them to Father later.”

“How I shall like to hear them!” said Angus. “I am so seldom taken aback. Things are always what I expect. I have so much knowledge of life.”

“I have even more,” said Roberta. “I have tried to avoid it, and that gives us more than anything. It makes us suspicious, and suspicions are always justified.”

“I have my share of it,” said Madeline. “And of course money is a part of life. I grant it its own place.”

“We can trust it to take it. I think it seems to know it. It does not need any help.”

“Oh, come, it is not a live thing.”

“It is not,” said Sir Robert. “But it underlies live things. It is involved with them. We have to accept it.”

“What are you going to do with it, Hermia?” said Madeline. “I know the time has been short. But have you any plans?”

“You do give it its place,” said Eliza, “and are the first to do so. The future must have time to take its shape. It can't form in a moment.”

“It is taking it,” said Hermia. “It seems to do it of itself. I hardly have to think of it.”

“There is the question of the Grimstones,” said Madeline. “What do you think about them? They must feel their position is a strange one.”

“As I feel mine is in another way. I know what I think about both. There seems no room for doubt. I recognise their moral claim, as I recognise my legal one. I shall make over half of the money to them, as a former
will was in their favour. And the rest is mine to use as I will, for my own or family purposes. That is how I see the matter.”

“And as I do,” said her father. “I think it is a good way to see it. If I did not agree with your view I should not dispute it. You have a right to it, and the power to form it. But I see the matter with your eyes. It is to me as it is to you.”

“She has always been able to judge for herself,” said Eliza. “And this calls for the power and brings a use for it. It seems she has been working towards her destiny.”

“I am glad the Grimstones are not to suffer,” said Madeline. “It would have been the unwelcome drop in the cup for me. It seemed so undeserved.”

“It is my part in things that seems to be that,” said Hermia. “But I am not going to be troubled. Good fortune has come to me, and I have only welcome for it. I have not always had it. And it will not only serve myself.”

“The unwelcome drop in the cup for me is that you are not to have the whole of it,” said Angus.

“And for me,” said Roberta. “And half of it seems rather a large drop.”

“They want you to have all you can,” said Eliza, smiling at her children. “It is a good way to feel and would not be everyone's. I suppose it is the right amount for you to give up? Are you sure about it? Have you taken advice?”

“You know she has not,” said Sir Robert. “When have you known her take it? This will not alter her, simply give her scope for being what she is. We do not always have it. It is a thing we can't depend on.”

“I think I have had it, and been forced to use it. It might have been better for me to have less. It would have saved me from a good deal.”

“Have you thought any further, Hermia?” said Madeline. “Or will you live in the moment and leave the future? It seems a natural course.”

“It is the right one,” said Sir Robert. “The future will move of itself. It holds its own life. There is no need for us to urge it. And there may not be any future. She need not be thinking of any change.”

“What I have to do is to prevent one, Father. The one that was coming here. I did not know it was upon us, though I had had my fears. That gives me the line of the future, and there is no need of more than one. I will end the money troubles, and so end the need for the move. That will serve you and me and all of us, and be the thing that is most worth doing, and most asks to be done.” There was silence as she paused, and her hearers looked at each other.

“But have you thought?” said Eliza, speaking with her eyes on her husband, as though the words came from them both. “Are you quite sure you have? Thought of yourself and your future? Of your life in the years to come? Regret in the end would be regret on the same scale for us all. You may not want or seek advice, but you need it here.”

“The words might be mine,” said Sir Robert. “I feel they should have been. See that you hear and heed them. This may be the climax of your youth. You must not lose its meaning for yourself in the onset of family claims, strong and worthy though they be. We can regret our good actions, and it is an unhappy kind of regret. Take care that you do not suffer it. A thing of this kind once done is not easy to undo.”

“I should not want to undo it. What is the good of anything that is undone? Few people have any great object in their lives, and I have none. I ask ease and
independence, and I could ensure those. And the main thing would be as I have said. Surely too good a thing for there to be any need of a better.”

“It is a good thing,” said her father. “Too good to accept without doubt. Taking so much from you at such a time must arouse questions in ourselves and of ourselves. I don't know how to answer them. And there is something else to be said. What will be the end for yourself? What might you feel, when other lives were moving on and yours was standing still or running down? The time might come when you saw things as they were. Indeed the time would come. It is possible to be blinded by the zest of giving, when the object is so good. You must think as you have never thought before.”

“I have thought, Father. It was clear in my mind from the first. I foresaw the trouble, and could do nothing to help it. It is the better to be able to help it now. As for my own life's doing as you say, it is natural and usual for all lives. I should not think of it.”

“Mater and I must think the more. And there is still something else. The position of benefactor might not last. When the money is transferred, the status in a way goes with it. It would be a real giving up. The memory would live, but the ways of memory are what we know. The truth might be in your thought, when it was in no one else's. It would be at times. It is almost a certainty.”

There was a pause and Hermia spoke without changing her tone.

“Well, the money need not be legally transferred, if that is too definite a giving up. And if the position of benefactor would be better kept by holding it. I have not anything against the position. I don't suppose anyone would have. And the money could be depended on. There would be no doubt.”

“It is for you to say,” said Sir Robert. “We should anyhow be taking it from you.”

“It is,” said Eliza. “And it has been said. By the person who has a right to say it. We know how it is to be.”

“We do,” said Angus. “And how good it is. We take it from Hermia's hands as from those of a goddess.”

“We do. That is how we are to take it. It is not often that something falls from nowhere and confers the place.”

“From nowhere? Well, from Hamilton Grimstone. Did he know he was creating a goddess?”

“He recognised one,” said Roberta. “And was enabling her to be herself.”

“In the event of his death. But he might have lived for years. Why did he not give her some of his wealth in some way?”

“In what way?” said Sir Robert. “By marriage, of course. But the method failed.”

“I hardly support the goddess conception,” said Madeline. “Hermia is enough for me in herself. Of course I am glad and grateful. It need not be said. But the aloofness is there. I don't disguise it.”

“Had you not better try to?” said Roberta. “It seems that would be best. Aloofness from what meets expenses is aloofness from a good deal. It is a great thing that we have a goddess.”

“I wish I knew we ought to have one,” said Sir Robert. “It is a daughter, a single woman, who holds the place. It is much to be on her, much to take from her, much to owe her in the end. We can hardly know our own thoughts.”

“We had better settle them,” said Eliza. “They are naturally in confusion. Yours and mine are those that may count the most. Perhaps we could be left to get them clear.”

Madeline led the way to the door, and the married pair were alone.

“So this is what it is, Robert. This is the change that has come. Hermia is to be over us, to be the giver and the goddess, and have us at her feet. I wish it had not happened. I would rather that things went on as they were, that you changed your home and remained its head. I would rather go to the other house and hold my own and be myself. She did not want to make the sacrifice. I knew she did not want to. She saw the chance to evade it and took it at once. What she is doing is not sacrifice. It is something else. We shall find what it is. We are not to be ourselves, and she is to be more than herself. She is paying for the position. She has been given the means to pay for it. Madeline is right. Money holds too large a place.”

“Everything has to be paid for, Eliza. Times and customs change and that does not. I fear it is the truth.”

“Only on the surface. We see how little depth it has, when a thing like this comes on us.”

“Or how much depth is given it. We know it must be said. And there are other things for me to say. This matter means more to me than it does to you. You fear you will lose as much as you gain; I do not fear it. The house will pass to your descendants and mine; it also comes from my forebears. I should be glad for my son to marry and continue the line; I should not have a mother's loss. In asking you to rejoice with me I am asking much. It is my daughter who is serving us, and not yours; I am asking more. And I ask it, Eliza. Could I offer a greater tribute?”

“You could offer a different one. And one that might serve us all. But you will have what you ask. Hermia will be lifted above us; your daughter and not mine; after all
our years together! It is true that you are asking much.”