Parents and Children

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  Regan threw a glance at his face and then at his house clothes, released his hand and pursued her way. He walked back to the house and mounted to the nursery.

  ‘Grandma has gone to fetch Father. So Mother will know that I saw him. Everyone will.’

  ‘What are you saying, Master Gavin?’ said Mullet.

  ‘Things will be like they used to be. Father will be here again, even if he isn’t the same. And we shall get used to his being different. And I don’t think he is so very. I don’t know if Mother will be here. She may go with Mr Ridley. But Grandma will love Father, whatever he is like. And one person who really loves him, is enough.’

  ‘I would rather have a father than a mother,’ said Honor. ‘I think all this family would.’

  ‘He would rather have Father,’ said Nevill. ‘But he would rather have poor Mother too. And she won’t come every day.’

  The carriage was heard to pass the house on its way to the gates.

  ‘It is Grandma going to the town to find Father,’ said Gavin. ‘I told her where I saw him, and what he was like. And she knew it was him.’

  ‘You did not, Master Gavin!’ said Mullet. ‘It was a cruel thing to do. You don’t mean her ladyship believed you? That you have sent her by herself to find him? It is a dreadful thing to happen. Whatever can we do?’

  ‘I didn’t send her. She went of her own accord. Children don’t send grown-up people. You know that. She was glad that Father had come back. No one could have been more glad. She didn’t mind going by herself. She didn’t mind even if he was back from the dead.’

  ‘Grandma loves people, doesn’t she?’ said Nevill.

  ‘Well, you must play quietly this afternoon, if you really think what you say,’ said Mullet.

  ‘We ought to be glad he has come back,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Of course you would be. But it would be a solemn occasion.’

  ‘Why should it? Solemn things are sad. We were solemn when he was dead. We ought not to be the same when it is the opposite. And Nevill is not being quiet.’

  ‘He is a coachman,’ explained the latter, handling imaginary reins and also impersonating the horse. ‘He will drive Grandma to find Father. He will drive her fast.’

  ‘He is too young to understand,’ said Mullet.

  ‘But if it isn’t true, there isn’t anything to understand.’

  ‘And you pretended you thought it was true,’ said Mullet, with reproach.

  ‘He didn’t pretend,’ said Honor, in a tone that made Hatton turn and look into her face.

  ‘People only pretend ordinary things,’ said Gavin.

  ‘They can make a mistake about the others,’ said Hatton. ‘And the cleverer people are, the sooner they see they have made one. And it is easier to see that out of doors.’

  ‘I am going to stay in,’ said Honor. ‘Then I can go down, if Father comes back and sends for me. He will want to see me, even if he is back from the dead. If he is so very different, he wouldn’t remember enough to come home. And I want to see him, whatever he is like. I don’t mind if he is a ghost.’

  ‘He is not a ghost,’ said Gavin, in his ordinary voice. ‘He is like he always was. Only he is pale and his face is smaller.’

  ‘He couldn’t be smaller, if he is the same.’

  ‘He could, if he had got thin.’

  ‘Would you like to go out, Gavin?’ said Hatton, in an easy tone.

  ‘I don’t mind. I can see Father when I come in.’

  ‘He will stay in,’ said Nevill. ‘No, he will go for a walk and hold Mullet’s hand. He will find a little nest.’

  Honor waited until Mullet and her brothers had gone, and then threw herself into Hatton’s arms in a passion of tears.

  ‘I don’t want it to be a mistake. For a minute I thought it was true. I thought Father would come back.’

  ‘You know he can’t do that. You must know, if you think. But you have a great many people to love you.’

  ‘I haven’t. Only Grandma and Luce.’

  ‘You know how Gavin loves you.’

  ‘Does he?’ said Honor, lifting her head at the idea.

  ‘More than anyone else in the world. And you know that I love you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Honor, relaxing her body against Hatton’s.

  ‘And Nevill loves you too.’

  ‘I don’t count Nevill. And James doesn’t like people much better than they like him. I don’t think people do. And that isn’t very much.’

  ‘You can’t think that Isabel does not love you.’

  ‘She would, if I were as old as she is. But I never shall be, shall I? Because she will get older too. And Venice only loves Isabel.’

  ‘And there are your big brothers.’

  ‘Do you mean Daniel and Graham?’ said Honor, as if Hatton were hardly likely to mean these.

  ‘And Mother loves you. You know that.’

  ‘She feels I belong to her. Gavin is the one she loves. But Mother does her duty by her children.’

  ‘Would you like me to read to you?’

  ‘If you read a book I know. Then I can half listen to the reading, and half to hear if Father comes back.’

  ‘Which is a book that you know?’

  ‘I know them all,’ said Honor. ‘You won’t read in a loud voice, will you?’

  Hatton read, and Honor divided her attention as she had said, and presently slipped from Hatton’s knee and stood with an air of intense listening.

  ‘Father has come back,’ she said, with a sigh of simple and great relief. ‘Gavin did see him. I don’t mind if he is back from the dead. I can hear his voice, and it is the same as it used to be. I don’t mind anything as long as he is here.’

  Hatton went on to the landing, and stood suddenly still, her face growing white.

  ‘I shall go down,’ said Honor. ‘No, I shall wait until they send for me. No, I shall go down now. I have heard his voice, and now I have heard it, I must want to see him, mustn’t I? I shall run straight up to him; I don’t mind what he is like. He will lift me up as he used to, and if he can’t do it like an ordinary man, if it is like a ghost, it will be the ghost of Father.’

  She ran down the stairs and broke into the library, where Fulbert was standing with his mother. He turned and came to meet her and lifted and kissed her in his old way, and after the first onset of tears, she subsided in simple content.

  ‘You are the same,’ she said; ‘you are not a ghost; you don’t look so very different.’

  ‘I am grateful for the assurance,’ said Fulbert. ‘I hardly know how to explain myself on any other ground. I must be prepared for people’s coming to the opposite conclusion.’

  ‘You will always be here now. It will be like it used to be,’ said Honor, as she heard the old note. ‘But if you were alive why didn’t you come before?’

  ‘Father has been ill,’ said Regan, who was leaning back in her chair, pale and still but hardly spent. ‘So ill that he could not remember anything. But he will soon be well now.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make him a ghost. He is only like other people who have been ill.’

  ‘You tell people that,’ said Fulbert, ‘if they throw any doubt on my authenticity. I am of flesh and blood like themselves, even if a little less of them.’

  ‘Do the others know?’ said Honor, beginning to jump and quiver in anticipation. ‘I will go and tell them; I am the one to know first. They won’t think it is true at first. Only Gavin will believe it.’

  ‘Gavin will have his own position in future,’ said Fulbert.

  Regan smiled as if she were apart from words.

  Honor encountered Graham in the hall, and crying the tidings, went on to find Daniel. The young men entered, half-braced for the truth, half-prepared for some travesty of it.

  ‘Honor should be here with her assurance,’ said Fulbert, as he shook hands with his sons and then drew them into his embrace. ‘She protested that I was not a ghost.’

  Graham turned aside, white and shaken, and
Daniel stood ready to give his support to any who required it. He glanced at his grandmother, but Regan had what she needed.

  Luce entered, driven by Honor, started and paled, took some steps towards her father, and threw herself on his breast. Regan surveyed the scene in sympathy, almost at ease. Regan’s tears had been shed.

  ‘Grandma,’ said Luce, in a hardly audible tone, as if compelled to the words, ‘does Grandpa know?’

  ‘Yes, he knows. He has seen your father. He will soon be here.’ Regan needed to say no more of Sir Jesse’s meeting with his son.

  ‘Father,’ said Luce, in a gentle tone, ‘would it be too much for you to have Isabel and Venice and James ? They are having needless moments of feeling they are fatherless.’

  ‘It is too much, and it is not enough. Let them all come. It is the healthy and natural way.’

  Honor rushed upstairs with the summons, and her sister went to the door.

  ‘Children,’ she said, ‘your life is going to be whole again. The cloud is lifted. Honor has told you the truth.’

  She led them to their father, Isabel white and trembling, Venice crimson and with staring eyes, James uncertain and almost afraid. Fulbert embraced them in a natural way, keeping his old manner with each. Isabel staggered and nearly fell, but recovered and sat with her eyes on her father, almost in the manner of Regan. Venice’s face relaxed and her eyes began to glow instead of stare. Daniel gave them seats and treated Graham as one of them. James fidgeted round his father’s chair in his old way, until, also in the old way, enjoined to be still, and the natural words seemed to break the tension and set on foot the old life.

  ‘The chief actor must bear the heaviest part,’ said Daniel. ‘May we hear the tale to be told?’

  ‘In a word,’ said his father, while Regan’s unmoved and satisfied face showed it had been put in many to herself. ‘You read the letter I wrote to Ridley, and the other from my servant, confirming my death. I had no equals about me. The second was written and sent while I lay unconscious; they thought I was near enough to my end. I lived for months, remembering nothing, and when I came to myself and found that no letters came, I questioned the men and found how things had gone. They were in awe of your father and had not dared to confess. They had even sent my effects to your mother. I wrote and told Ridley to prepare you for the truth, followed the letter myself, and waited at the inn to recover and to hear that the way was clear. I dreaded the shock for your mother, for mine, and for you all. That letter cannot have reached him.’

  ‘Grandma,’ said Luce, in a desperate whisper, as if the words were wrung from her, ‘does Father know about Mother and Ridley?’

  Regan nodded almost with indifference, as though this were a secondary thing.

  ‘I can face the natural results of my disappearance,’ said Fulbert, turning on his daughter his old unflinching gaze. ‘I should wish no one to go through life alone. But I hope my wife will find it a relief not to replace me after all.’ He turned and put his arm round Isabel, as though here was someone who would never have done so.

  ‘Father,’ said Luce, in a faltering manner, ‘Mother had her hard time after you had gone.’

  ‘That was the trouble, no doubt,’ said Fulbert. ‘I wish I could have spared you all. But our life may be better, that we know what it is to lose it.’

  ‘It is a method of enhancement I can only deplore,’ said Daniel.

  ‘You are yourself again, my son. You have had some hard months. Your own work must have suffered. I shall be thankful to take up my duty again and leave you to yours.’

  ‘I hope that disgrace for failure will be balanced by credit for feeling,’ said Graham.

  ‘There is greater credit in the greater feeling, that made you go on as if I were here,’ said Fulbert. ‘I am touched by the signs of the unbroken life in my home. It has held as though my eyes were on it. I find no change in any of you. There is no gulf to be bridged. James does not open doors and he is remaining away from school. And I would have had it so. I have no sense of missing steps in my family history.’

  James gave a little jump, uncertain whether he had met success or not.

  ‘Grandma,’ said Luce, in a low tone, ‘the little boys have come in. Is it better for them to be prepared?’

  ‘Gavin does not need preparation,’ said Fulbert. ‘He has done his best to perform the office for you all. And no doubt he has done so for Nevill. Let it happen in its own way. I ask nothing that is not spontaneous and natural.’

  Nevill ran into the room and towards his grandmother, caught sight of his father, paused and rested his eyes on him, and then ran on and laid something on Regan’s lap.

  ‘A bird’s nest,’ he said. ‘Where the little birds used to live.’

  ‘What will they do without their home?’

  ‘All fly away,’ said Nevill.

  ‘The little birds had a father and mother bird,’ said Regan, guiding his head towards Fulbert. ‘And the father bird has come back to the nest.’

  Nevill cast his eyes about in quest of this visitor, and dropped them to the nest, in case Regan’s words might be true.

  ‘Where?’ he said, bringing them back to her face.

  ‘Look and see,’ said Regan, turning his head again in the right direction.

  ‘Outside,’ said Nevill, as some sparrows chirped by the window. ‘He has come back. Hark.’

  ‘Nevill is showing to the same advantage as James,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Do you see who is standing by Isabel?’ said Regan.

  ‘Father,’ said Nevill, in a light tone, as if he would not emphasize what might be in doubt.

  ‘He would like to see his little boy.’

  Nevill detached himself from Regan, as if this would aid his father’s view.

  Nevill detached himself from Regan, as if this would aid his arms and laughed and whimpered alternately, touching his cheek and withdrawing his hand, as though uncertain whether he caressed the authentic person.

  ‘I have congratulated myself that my family has not changed,’ said Fulbert. ‘I must remember to wonder if the same thing can be said of myself.’

  ‘Dear Father!’ said Luce, for the guidance of Nevill.

  ‘Dear Father,’ he agreed, using a more confident hand, and allowing himself to look definitely into Fulbert’s face. ‘Dear Father has come back after a long time. He won’t go away again today.’

  ‘He will never go away again,’ said Luce.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nevill, struggling down from Fulbert’s arms and nodding his head. ‘He will. But Mr Ridley will always stay.’

  ‘I can’t live down my bad name all at once,’ said Fulbert. ‘And now where is my son, who helped me to get to my home?’

  Gavin approached and raised his face, as for a daily greeting.

  ‘You knew I should come back one day, didn’t you?’

  ‘No. We thought you were dead.’

  ‘You did not seem so very surprised to see me.’

  ‘Did you know that I saw you?’ said Gavin, lifting his eyes to his father’s.

  ‘I realized you had, after you had passed. You did not come back and speak to me.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to us. And it would be for people back from the dead to speak first. They might not still understand.’

  ‘You were an observant boy to recognize Grandpa’s old coat.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was his. It was Grandma who knew. I thought it was yours.’

  ‘Father may get tired of this changelessness in his sons,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Poor Father is very tired,’ said Nevill, casting a look at Fulbert. ‘He won’t be able to come back another day.’

  ‘Grandma dear,’ said Luce, ‘Grandpa is crossing the hall. But I suppose he knows what he can bear.’

  Sir Jesse entered and came up to his son, and taking both his hands, stood thus for some time, and then passed on to his chair and sank into it.

  ‘Now I can say my “Nunc dimittis”,’ he said to himself, or rather to
the assembled company.

  There was a pause.

  ‘What did Grandpa say?’ said Gavin.

  ‘They are Latin words,’ said Honor.

  ‘Grandpa can say them,’ said Nevill, with pride in his relative.

  ‘Would you like to be able to?’ said Luce.

  ‘Yes, but he will some day.’

  ‘Ask Father if he will teach you,’ said Luce, hoping to make a bond where one was needed.

  ‘No, Miss Pilbeam will teach him.’

  ‘Has Grandpa seen Father before?’ said Gavin.

  ‘Yes, but not for long,’ said Luce.

  ‘Grandpa is glad that Father has come back,’ said Nevill.

  ‘Grandma,’ said Luce, in a shaken tone, ‘it is on us, the desperate moment. Mother and Ridley are in the hall. What are we to do?’

  ‘We can do nothing,’ said Regan, seeming almost to repress a smile.

  ‘One of you go and prepare your mother,’ said Fulbert to his sons, in his old manner.

  ‘We should have thought of that, if we were not petrified,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I will go, Father,’ said Luce, and went swiftly from the room.

  ‘The occasion of Ridley’s discomfiture is spoiled by its tragedy,’ said Daniel.

  ‘It is hard on us,’ said Graham. ‘But nothing can spoil it for Grandma. And she has had few pleasures of late.’

  ‘Hope and Paul are there as well,’ said Regan, again with an unsteadiness about her lips.

  ‘Another circumstance of our life unchanged,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘It is a good thing that family is not any larger,’ said Isabel.

  Regan laughed with noticeable heartiness, almost as though to cover some other cause for mirth.

  ‘Faith is not there,’ said Venice.

  ‘She will remedy the matter,’ said her sister.

  ‘Will Mother be able to marry Mr Ridley now?’ said James.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Isabel. ‘Father was glad to see no change in you, but he will alter his mind, if you don’t take care.’

  Hope entered and began at once to talk, as if to give time to those who followed.

  ‘Fulbert, I wish I could say I knew this would happen. But I did not know. I am afraid you will see signs of it.’