The Mighty and Their Fall (7 page)

“It will to us. There will be less difference for you.”

“A new mistress in the house, miss! It hardly precludes difference,” said Ainger, taking something from his attendant's hand without acknowledgement.

“Do the under servants feel the same as you do?” said Egbert.

“Well, the same is hardly the word between us, sir. As your term indicates.”

“What counts is the master's happiness. To him and all of us.”

“Yes, sir, in a high sense,” said Ainger, as if this must put a limit to the feeling.

“Nothing betrayed, Cook,” he said in the hall, putting his arm about her less in romantic feeling than in the assumption of its unlikelihood. “Nothing given away. The truth might be too precious to part with.”

“It is the convention among them. They cannot be beneath themselves.”

“What is the use of mouths that are kept shut?”

“It is a point you are blind to. You might take a lesson.”

“It is little good to take lessons, when you don't take anything else.”

“You should abandon that line. All things are not material. Higher ones are the same for all.”

“I doubt if everyone is so sure of it.”

“Your doubts do not bear on matters. It is certainties to which I allude.”

“Well, it is all at an end,” said Ninian, standing at the table with a letter in his hand. “Nothing remains of it. Nothing will come of it. The reason is that nothing was in it. It is as if it had not been. As the memory goes, everything will go with it. Nothing will be left. There has been nothing.”

He made as if to tear the letter, but checked himself, and stood, tossing it from hand to hand.

“Do you mean you are not going to be married?” said Egbert.

“You have followed me. Would you have meant anything else? Teresa means it, and we must mean it with her. Well, I never really thought it would come to pass.”

“Well, I did at first,” said Hugo. “And so did we all. So you were the wise one.”

“At first?” said Selina, looking at him.

“In the beginning,” said Hugo, turning from her to Ninian. “Are reasons given for the change?”

“My large family. My living past. I could not pretend it was dead. My giving only what was left. Her desire for a man who was untrammelled and had a lighter touch on life.”

“There almost sounds a message there,” said Selina.

“No, your ear is too sharp,” said Lavinia. “She said simply what she had to say.”

“Well, it made a break for me,” said Ninian. “And I admit I found it welcome. The time seemed to have come. But I can leave it behind. I have done so.”

“You have many to help you,” said Selina. “I wonder if she can say the same.”

“One piece of help I will ask. That one of you will tell
the children. I don't need to be present at the scene. I can imagine it.”

“I will tell them,” said his mother, deepening her tones. “And let no one forestall me. It is a thing to be done by one person, and one alone.”

“And that person you.”

“That person me, my boy.”

“You are silent, Lavinia,” said Ninian. “You don't know what to say. And I hardly know myself, though it is for me to say it. If we go back to our old life—and that is what it must seem—I will not expect the same of you. I shall not be the same. I should hardly wish to be. But we should not have lost everything. Something of the past should remain.”

“I shall not be different, Father. Any difference will be in you. It is from you that the difference came. It may be out of our hands. It is true that we know more, and more of each other.”

“And you know no harm,” said Selina. “Few of us can stand a test. Both of you should have known it.”

“Well, I will go and write my manly answer to the letter,” said Ninian, in another tone, tossing the envelope into the fire as he passed. “I must get it done, and turn to the future. After all, the prospect is familiar.”

Selina waited for the door to close.

“So she wants more than she is worth! Then she may seek it somewhere else. There is no one here to give it.”

‘“Are we sure it is over?” said Lavinia.

“Father is sure. We can see it,” said Egbert. “You the most clearly, unless you are too closely involved.”

“And her words were plain,” said Hugo.

“You did not see them,” said Selina.

“No, but we can guess what they were.”

“We feel there is a blank,” said Egbert. “Can it come from the loss of Teresa?”

“No,” said his sister. “It comes from the loss she has caused. And it has come to stay.”

“Not in the form you think,” said her grandmother. “It will change and take another. Things alter as we live with them. Even this is already different.”

“Father will get older,” said Lavinia. “And this has been too real to him to come again. But I shall know it is in him to do the same thing in the same way. I go back to him because anything is better than nothing, because I cannot choose. I can't explain my feeling. I see him differently now. It all seems out of my control.”

“All feeling is,” said Hugo. “Or we should not like people in spite of ourselves, as we are known to. I suppose it is what you are doing.”

“Am I to be with Father in the old way, Grandma?” said Lavinia, in a tone that came from the past.

“In what will appear the old way. You will really imitate the old, and so make a new one. I will only tell you what is true.”

“I wish we had never seen or heard of Teresa,” said Egbert.

“I am not quite sure,” said Hugo. “I cannot help loving experience. Even though it is unfortunate, as it always seems to be. I am supposed not to have had any. But I am a person who would be misunderstood.”

“I shall always avoid it,” said Egbert. “I begin to see what it is. This glimpse is a warning. I feel Lavin'a has been sacrificed to me. Of course I don't mean I think I matter. I know too well what I am.”

“I have learned it,” said Lavinia. “Or rather I have been taught.”

“Of course I feel Ninian's troubles as if they were mine,” said Hugo. “And I have told you how it is.”

“My poor son, his life has not gone well,” said Selina. “A mother cannot make up to him. I do not deceive myself.”

“That is what I have done,” said Lavinia. “And what I shall try to do again. For me there is only one thing.”

“You sound as if you were a woman grown,” said her grandmother, with a smile.

“I wonder if it will be decided what I am, before there is no longer any doubt.”

Selina rose and rustled from the room, with an air of resigned purpose. She went up to the schoolroom and stood just within it, her eyes fixed almost fiercely upon its occupants.

“Agnes and Hengist and Leah, lend me your ears. I come to bury something, not to praise it. The mistake your father has made will not live after him. I have come to end it with a word. It is a word you will hear in silence, with your eyes fixed on my face. Do not look at each other. Do not utter a syllable or a sound. Your father is not going to be married. He will be a widower, as he has always been. The reasons are not for you to seek. And you will not seek them. Do you hear and understand?”

There was silence.

“Should you not answer your grandmother?” said Miss Starkie, in a rather faint tone.

“She said we were not to speak,” said Leah.

“He can't always have been a widower,” said Hengist. “No one could begin by being that.”

“As long as you can remember,” said Miss Starkie.

“Always, as far as you are concerned.”

“Leah, did you hear me?” said Selina, not looking at her grandson.

“Why should I be the one not to hear? Is it our fault that Father is not going to be married? I mean, is it because of us? Didn't she like his having children?”

“She might not have liked his having Lavinia,” said Hengist.

“Hengist and Leah, the reasons are not for you to seek.”

“We can't help our thoughts. And it seems it is because of us. She must have liked Father for himself.”

“She!” just uttered Miss Starkie, not raising her eyes.

“Children, do you understand plain words?”

“Well, we know what they mean,” said Hengist. “But we don't always understand. Is it a good thing that Father will always be a widower? It doesn't sound as if it was.”

Selina looked at Miss Starkie and heaved a sigh.

“You must have understood that you were not to ask questions,” said the latter.

“Or have they no understanding?” breathed the grandmother.

“We shall have to know more,” said Leah. “Perhaps Father will tell us.”

“Leah, you will not ask him. He is not to be harassed by your questions. You will be silent as the grave.”

“We shall not ask him anything. I only said he might tell us.”

“Leah, he will tell you nothing. The subject will not be broached.”

“It sounds as if there was something wrong about it,” said Hengist.

“What does
broach
mean?” said Leah.

“Leah, it means what you are to know it means. That the silence will not be mooted, that there will be silence upon it.”

“Why do you keep saying our names?” said Hengist. “We know whom you are speaking to.”

“Is
moot
a real word?” said Leah.

“Come, I think you understand your grandmother,” said Miss Starkie.

“If they do not, Miss Starkie, will you force my meaning into their heads by any method known? Can I rely on its being battered into them?”

“I think you may depend on me, Mrs. Middleton.”

“And I will help, Grandma,” said Agnes. “They listen to what I say.”

Selina went to the door, signed sternly to Hengist to open it, and passed from sight.

“Well, I was not proud of you,” said Miss Starkie.

“Were you proud of Grandma?” said Hengist. “We were better than she was. And we oughtn't to be better than an old person.”

“It is not for you to criticise your elders.”

“We have to criticise Grandma,” said Leah. “You would yourself, if you were not in her power.”

“My dealings are with your father. And it is her opinion of you that matters. I don't know what she can have thought of you.”

“Why don't you know? It was not a secret. It was mooted.”

“And if you are not careful, Leah, it will not be a secret from your father,” said Selina's voice. “He will know the whole, and will never think the same of you.”

“I don't know what he thinks of me now,” said Leah to her brother. “So it wouldn't make much difference.”

Selina went down to her family, took a seat by the fire, and turned a benevolent eye on them.

“Have you done me the service I asked of you?” said Ninian.

“Yes, it is behind. It was a trivial scene. You need not give a thought to it.”

“Nothing is trivial to me,” said Hugo. “Let us give it a little thought.”

“I am willing to envisage it,” said Ninian. “Were the children surprised?”

“I don't know what they were. It does not mean or matter much!”

“Was Miss Starkie surprised?” said Hugo.

“I don't know,” said Selina, sounding surprised herself by this line of interest. “It is not her concern. And we never know what children feel, or if they feel anything.”

“I wonder your grandchildren like you as much as they do.”

“I have felt the same wonder,” said Ninian.

“They may know I am sound at heart,” said Selina with her lips grave.

“But how can they know? There would have to be some signs.”

“Well, we know what true instincts children and animals have. You must have heard about it. It is observant to couple them together.”

“They have in the books,” said Ninian. “But have they outside them? I should hardly have thought anything about children was sound. They seem so aloof and egoistic.”

“More than we can be?” said Egbert.

“You mean you found me such things? You can feel I went through a crisis. And you can hope it did not go deep.”

“I hope indeed it did not, Father,” said Egbert, gravely.

“We should be thinking of you, Mother,” said Ninian. “We forget you have not our strength.”

“Yes, the time has come to remember. And it will soon be over. You should not let it pass. I may be better than is thought.”

“So may many of us,” said Hugo. “Some of us feel we are.”

“Do we?” said Lavinia. “I should hardly have said so. We alone know our hidden selves.”

“They may be good as well as bad.”

“I did not mean the good ones. I don't think they are hidden. People are said to be ashamed of their better qualities. But they seem to face the exposure. Or how do we know they are there? And that there is anything to be ashamed of?”

“You talk as if you were fifty,” said Ninian, and broke off at the reminders in his words.

“I can return to my real self, Father. I am glad not to have to act another. I think I may say so once.”

“It is well that someone is glad of what has happened.”

“That is not what Lavinia said, Father,” said Egbert.

“Mother, you must be tired,” said Ninian. “I have never seen you so pale.”

“I hurried up the staircase to the schoolroom. It is a thing I must not do again. I must forget them both. And one will be glad to be forgotten.”

“You must forget the first. You must have the room off the hall. The other you will not forget.”

“I am eighty-seven. I married late. I am an old mother for my sons. People say I do not look my age. That shows they realise the age I am. And if I did not look it, I should have a duller face than I have. I watch it in the glass as often as I did in my youth. Where there are fewer marks of time, time must have held less. And I am willing for it to hold more. I would rather be alive then dead. When I die, people will say it is the best thing for me. It is because they know it is the worst. They want to avoid the feeling of pity. As though they were the people most concerned!”