Parents and Children

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘Is it too much for you, my dear?’ said Eleanor, looking at Isabel. ‘Then I will do it myself. Why should I put my duty on to those weaker than I? It is for their mother to spare them. James, will you bring them to me?’

  James began to run from the room, checked himself and subdued his pace, and looked in appeal at his brothers.

  ‘I can go and tell them, Mother,’ said Graham.

  ‘No, Graham,’ said Luce, moving forward with her eyes on her mother. ‘It is natural for them to hear the truth amongst us all. It will make one shock and one memory, and will spare them the meetings afterwards. We must think of the things that make children suffer.’

  ‘We cannot save them the one thing,’ said Eleanor, with a faint smile. ‘I should not think those will count beside it. But do as you will, my dear. I am grateful for any help.’

  A message was sent upstairs. Hatton entered with the children, and remained in the room, as though she would not withdraw the protection of her presence. James seemed to drift towards her, and stood at her side, suggesting the sphere with which he identified his life. Eleanor drew the children to her, and said the words she had said to the others. Honor wept in startled despair and grasp of a changed life; Nevill in abandonment to the general sorrow, and sympathy with it; Gavin did not weep, and looked at the older faces in resentment and question. Daniel put a hand on his head and said an encouraging word. His mother looked up, unsure of this line, but let her eyes fall, as if offering no judgement. Sir Jesse and Regan entered and went to their chairs by the hearth, acquiescing once again in the old customs in a different life. Sir Jesse laid his hand on Eleanor’s shoulder as he passed, and Regan gave her grandchildren a smile that did not touch her own experience beneath. Luce waited for the tension to relax, and then moved towards Daniel, who knew that she put him in his father’s place.

  ‘We must make an effort, Mother,’ he said. ‘It is the only thing. We must leave this moment behind. Life will not wait for us.’

  ‘When life has done what it has, it might have the grace just to do that,’ said Graham.

  Gavin gave a loud laugh, and his mother turned her eyes on him. She did not know that he was hailing the first break in the oppression. Nevill left Hatton and went up to Daniel.

  ‘He won’t cry any more,’ he promised, and looked round the room. ‘All stop now.’

  Venice took his hands as if in play, but he seemed to feel some lack in her, and returned to Hatton. Eleanor gave Venice the smile of approval that she gave to this child’s courage.

  ‘Did Father have an ordinary illness like an English one?’ said Gavin. ‘Or are the illnesses different there?’

  ‘We do not know yet, my boy,’ said Eleanor. ‘I think it was different. We shall hear soon.’

  ‘How do we know he is dead?’

  ‘He is not dead, my child. He is more alive than he has ever been.’

  ‘But how do we know he is what we call dead?’ said Gavin, with a faint frown.

  Eleanor explained and Gavin listened until he understood, and then moved away.

  ‘What is the good of his being more alive, when he is not with the people who belong to him?’ said Honor, in a tone that seemed to anticipate a mature one of the future. ‘And he is always more alive than other people. He ought not to be even what we call dead; he ought not to be.’

  ‘Mrs Sullivan,’ said Ridley, as if the words broke from him, ‘what a duty you have to live for! We see how much your husband had.’

  ‘I am not a person fitted to carry such a burden.’

  ‘I have my grandchildren,’ said Sir Jesse’s voice from the hearth. ‘I do not go empty to the grave.’

  Nevill looked in the direction of the voice, and going to a vase on a table, drew out some flowers and thrust them towards his grandfather.

  ‘They are all for Grandpa.’

  ‘Won’t you bring me some flowers too?’ said Regan, turning more slowly than usual, as if her response were feebler.

  Nevill returned to the vase, looked back at the flowers in Sir Jesse’s hands, and ran and transferred them to Regan’s.

  ‘All for Grandma,’ he said, wiping his hands down his garments, as though the office were distasteful.

  ‘Isabel dear, sit down and try to stop crying,’ said Eleanor. ‘You know you do not help us by making yourself ill.’

  Isabel obeyed as if all things were indifferent, and her mother gave a sigh as she withdrew her eyes.

  ‘I wonder when I shall be able to get to my own sorrow,’ she said to Ridley, with a faint smile.

  Ridley met her look and swiftly touched his eyes, and Nevill ran up to him and looked up into his face.

  ‘All stop now,’ he told him for his guidance.

  Ridley gave a smile at Eleanor.

  ‘“O sancta simplicitas”,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Gavin.

  ‘It means that childhood is sacred,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘You don’t think it is, do you?’ said her son.

  ‘What will happen when they have all stopped?’ said Graham to Daniel. ‘Is there anything left?’

  ‘Is there?’ said Eleanor to herself, in a tone only partly designed for the ears of others.

  Daniel led her to a seat; Ridley looked at him with a change in his face; Regan turned her eyes from the hearth, and rested them for a moment upon Ridley.

  Gavin detached himself from the group and went towards the door.

  ‘Where are you going, my boy?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘But you will be alone up there.’

  Gavin continued his way.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather stay down here with all of us?’

  ‘I don’t much like seeing people when they are like this.’

  ‘We cannot help being sad for Father. But we are going to do our best to be brave.’

  Gavin waited as if to weigh the evidence of this, and then proceeded.

  ‘Don’t you mind being alone?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be alone, if Honor came with me.’

  ‘Do you want to go up, Honor?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘It is all too much for them,’ said Luce.

  ‘Of course it is, my dear,’ said her mother, with a sharper note. ‘How could it not be?’

  ‘Always cry now,’ said Nevill, sadly. ‘It is because Father goes away.’

  ‘Mother, I think we must release them,’ said Luce. ‘It is all beyond their age.’

  ‘If release is the word, let them go, my dear, of course. But Nevill is the only one who is too young to understand.’

  ‘That does not make it better for them, Mother.’

  ‘It is him that is young,’ said Nevill.

  ‘We are so glad you are what you are,’ said Eleanor, smiling at him.

  ‘So better now,’ said Nevill, in a tone that lost its cheerfulness as he looked at Regan. ‘But not poor Grandma.’

  ‘Can’t you go to her and do something to make her better?’ said Luce.

  Nevill went up to Regan and paused at her knee, while he considered his course. His earnest eyes fixed on her face made her smile and finally give a little laugh, and he ran back to Luce to report on his success.

  ‘Grandma laugh now. All laugh now,’ he said, looking round to witness the change.

  Sir Jesse beckoned to him and lifted him to his knee.

  ‘What should we do without our little lad?’

  ‘Grandpa loves him too,’ said Nevill, in some surprise.

  ‘Hatton, I think you can take them,’ said Eleanor. ‘I am not being much help to them.’

  Nevill ran towards the door with a feeling of achievement; Gavin walked out of the room and towards the stairs; Honor looked round as if she hardly realized what was happening, and got off her chair in a dazed manner and followed.

  ‘Come and kiss your mother, Gavin,’ said Eleanor, as if this observance might be omitted with the others.

  Gavin returned, took a pass
ive part in the embrace, and retraced his steps.

  ‘You will like to think of Father when you are upstairs.’

  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.’