Parents and Children

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘He doesn’t want it. He has a house of his own. I suppose he will still live there.

  ‘Yes, he will,’ said Nevill. ‘That is a nice house too.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Miss Pilbeam likes it,’ said Nevill.

  ‘Do you like it?’ said Gavin, to Miss Pilbeam. ‘I don’t think it is at all nice.’

  ‘I have not thought how it appears to other people. It has always been my home.’

  ‘Perhaps your stepmother will turn you out,’ said Gavin.

  ‘No, I don’t think she will do that,’ said Miss Pilbeam, with a smile.

  ‘You would laugh on the other side of your face, if she did.’

  ‘Miss Pilbeam would live here with Hatton and Mullet,’ said Nevill.

  Honor and Gavin looked at each other, and burst into laughter at this estimation of Miss Pilbeam’s place.

  Miss Pilbeam looked towards the window.

  ‘I am “he”; you are “she”; Miss Pilbeam is “it”,’ said Gavin, to his sister, seeming to receive an impetus from Nevill’s words.

  Miss Pilbeam turned sharply towards him.

  ‘I suppose your father will like your stepmother better than you,’ said Honor, quickly.

  ‘He will have a different feeling for us.’

  ‘No, he will like Miss Pilbeam best,’ said Nevill.

  ‘I see you are determined to waste your time this morning.’

  ‘Well, it is natural,’ said Honor.

  ‘Yes, I think it is. Perhaps I had better read to you.’

  Nevill at once ran to a book that lay on the sofa, brought it to Miss Pilbeam, and stood waiting to be lifted to her knee.

  ‘We don’t want that book,’ said Honor.

  Nevill put it on Miss Pilbeam’s lap, turned the leaves until he came to his place, and began to read aloud to himself.

  ‘No, no, that is not the page,’ she said, putting her hand over it. ‘You are saying it by heart.’

  Nevill turned the pages again, reached one that he actually recognized, and resumed his recitation.

  ‘No, you are not doing it properly. I will read a chapter of Robinson Crusoe. We are coming to the part where he sees the footprint on the ground.’

  Nevill carried his book to the sofa and continued to read, resorting to improvization when his memory failed.

  ‘Now this is an exciting part,’ said Miss Pilbeam.

  ‘Sometimes you miss things out,’ said Honor. ‘I know, because I read the book to myself.’

  ‘It would be better not to read the book I am reading to you.’

  ‘I like reading things a lot of times.’

  ‘Well, this book is certainly worth it.’

  ‘Then why did you tell her not to?’ said Gavin.

  ‘I thought it might make my reading dull for her. But nothing could make Robinson Crusoe dull, could it?’

  ‘I think something makes it dull sometimes,’ said Gavin, in such a light tone that Miss Pilbeam missed his meaning as he half intended.

  Miss Pilbeam began to read, and Nevill raised his voice to overcome the sound, and remained absorbed in the results of his imagination. Neither Honor nor Gavin appeared to be conscious of his presence.

  When things had continued for some time, Eleanor and Fulbert entered.

  ‘Well, Miss Pilbeam,’ said the latter, ‘I have come to give you proof of what you have heard. We don’t want you in danger of thinking a ghost has sprung on you.’

  ‘I am rejoiced to see the proof, Mr Sullivan,’ said Miss Pilbeam, as she shook hands.

  ‘Show Father what you are doing,’ said Eleanor, to the children.

  ‘They are hardly in a state to apply themselves. I am just reading aloud. That will steady their nerves.’

  ‘Poor little things! They will be more themselves tomorrow. And what is Nevill doing?’

  Nevill just glanced at his mother and maintained his flow of words, drawing his finger down the page with an effect of keeping his place.

  ‘Are you reading, dear?’

  ‘Yes, him and Miss Pilbeam. Honor and Gavin aren’t.’

  ‘What is the book about ?’

  ‘Don’t talk to him while he reads,’ said Nevill, and resumed the pursuit.

  ‘It is a very good imitation,’ said Fulbert.

  His son gave him a look, and turned the page as his finger reached the bottom of it.

  Hatton entered the room, and he looked at her and hesitated, and then took the open book in both his hands and came to her side.

  ‘It is time for your rest,’ she said.

  ‘He will read in bed,’ said Nevill.

  ‘No, you must go to sleep in bed,’ said Eleanor, at once.

  ‘He will read first,’ said her son.

  ‘He is still a little shy of me,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘Come and say good-bye to Father and me,’ said Eleanor.

  Nevill approached her, keeping his eyes from Fulbert.

  ‘Mr Ridley will come back soon. Not stay away a long time like Father. And then Mother will have a nice house.’

  ‘He tried to comfort me after you had gone. He has got into the habit of saying all the comforting things he can think of,’ said Eleanor, hardly giving enough attention to her words.

  ‘Miss Pilbeam’s father is really going to marry again,’ said Gavin.

  Eleanor turned inquiring eyes on Miss Pilbeam.

  ‘Yes, I heard the news last night,’ said the latter, in a conversational, interested tone. ‘And I shall not have my father so much on my mind. I can look forward to a time when I can think more of myself. I have not been able to be quite selfish enough in the last year.’

  ‘A healthy resolve, Miss Pilbeam. See that you hold to it,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘Miss Pilbeam’s stepmother won’t turn her out,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Of course she will not,’ said Eleanor. ‘Why should she?’

  ‘Well, it would hide the fact that she was not the father’s first wife,’ said Honor, with a slight spacing of the words. ‘I wouldn’t marry a man who had had a wife before me. If I had been Mr Ridley, I shouldn’t have liked to marry you.’

  ‘But Mr Ridley will marry her,’ said Nevill, in a reassuring tone to his mother.

  ‘I am the man married to Mother,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘No, Father didn’t marry her. He didn’t come back for a long time. But Mother will come and see poor Father.’

  ‘Mr Ridley is not coming here any more.’

  ‘No, because he has a house. This one is Grandma’s.’

  ‘Mother doesn’t want the house now,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘Father can live in it too,’ said Nevill, struck by a solution of all the human problems.

  ‘Mother and I are both staying here.’

  ‘Yes, until tomorrow.’

  ‘No, we are staying here for always.’

  Nevill met his eyes.

  ‘Yes, dear Father can stay here,’ he said, and ran after Hatton.

  ‘Nevill wants to get rid of me,’ said Eleanor, her tone showing that she did not believe her words.

  ‘He doesn’t know what the word, marry, means,’ said Honor.

  ‘I hope he will know some day,’ said Fulbert, putting his arm in his wife’s.

  Honor looked after them, as they left the room.

  ‘What is it like to have a father and no mother?’ she said to Miss Pilbeam. ‘But you liked your mother better than your father, didn’t you?’

  ‘I think perhaps I did.’

  ‘You would think so now, because your father is marrying someone else,’ said Gavin. ‘That does make people think they don’t like the person so well.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t argue any great depth of nature,’ said Honor.

  ‘We cannot lay down rules in these matters,’ said Miss Pilbeam.

  Gavin looked at his sister.

  ‘Do you like Father as much as you thought you did, when you believed he was dead?’ he said in a natural tone.
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  Honor hesitated, or rather paused.

  ‘Well, I don’t think so much of him; I thought he was a more remarkable man. But I am quite reconciled to his being of common clay. I think that is better for those in authority over us?’

  ‘Would you mind as much, if he died now?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think it was as great a loss. But I should mind more. I couldn’t ever bear it again.’

  ‘Would you die?’ said Gavin, in a grave tone.

  ‘If that is what people do, when they can’t bear the things that have happened.’

  ‘Come, don’t forget you are children,’ said Miss Pilbeam, who believed that his conversation had been unchildlike.

  ‘Our experience has gone beyond our age,’ said Honor, who shared the belief.

  ‘Something has,’ said Miss Pilbeam, smiling.

  ‘Well, go on reading,’ said Gavin in a rough tone.

  ‘That is not the way to ask.’

  ‘I am not asking; I am telling you to go on.’

  ‘And something has not,’ said Miss Pilbeam, deciding to continue to smile and resuming the book.

  Eleanor and her husband went on to the schoolroom.

  ‘Well, Miss Mitford, I have come to see you,’ said Fulbert, ‘and to give you proof that I am flesh and blood like yourself.’

  Miss Mitford rose and shook hands.

  ‘It is kind of you to say so,’ she said.

  Fulbert laughed though his tone had hardly been without the suggestion.

  ‘The situation puts you at a loss, does it?’ he said observing or rather assuming that this was the case, and accordingly regarding her with eyes of enjoyment.

  ‘Well, it is quite outside my experience.’

  ‘An experience need not be so narrow, that it does not include it,’ said Fulbert, giving encouragement, where it might be needed. ‘Yours has taken place within four walls, but some of the deepest has done that.’

  ‘Mine has not been of that kind,’ said Miss Mitford.

  ‘Well, well, some of us must deal with the smaller things of life.’

  ‘Education is not among those,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Indeed it is not. These youngsters owe you a great deal, Miss Mitford.’

  ‘I am sure they realize it. Don’t you, James?’ said Eleanor, appealing to her son from force of habit, as his debt was less than his sisters’.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are you not at school, my boy?’

  James felt that all the difficult moments of his life culminated in this one. He had accepted his father’s return to family life as too solemn an occasion for the personal interest of his own education to have a place, and had remained at home in a grave and quiet spirit, and was reading a book to which these terms would apply.

  ‘It is Father’s first day at home,’ he said, in a low, uncertain voice, that awaited his parents’ interpretation.

  ‘But not James’s,’ said Fulbert, in an amused, rallying tone, that gave his son his answer.

  ‘And how are the others spending their time?’ said Eleanor. ‘I see that lessons are not in progress.’

  ‘I am doing nothing,’ said Isabel, at once.

  ‘Is that the way to make the most of your holiday?’ said her mother, her last word showing James the extent of his misapprehension.

  ‘I daresay it is,’ said Fulbert, resting his eyes on his daughter. ‘People must relax when they have been wrought up too far.’

  ‘Well, what is Venice doing?’ said his wife.

  Venice revealed a piece of embroidery, or rather took no steps to hide it.

  ‘You need not be ashamed of it, my dear. I am not such an advocate of doing nothing. Let me see it.’

  Venice laid it out, appearing hardly to see it herself.

  ‘Sewing,’ said her father. ‘Another way of resting.’

  Venice’s face cleared, and she looked at her mother for her opinion.

  ‘You are improving very much. I wish Isabel would learn to do a little needlework. As Father says, it would do her good.’

  ‘Did I say so?’ said Fulbert. ‘Well, if it would, I hope she will take to it. And how is James passing his time?’

  James handed his book to his mother with a smile, feeling a reluctance to show it to the parent responsible for it.

  ‘That is a very nice book for today. I think James is developing, Fulbert.’

  ‘This continual process in James should take him far,’ said Isabel.

  ‘I won’t put him through his paces this morning,’ said Fulbert, looking at his son with his old, quizzical air.

  ‘The world is a different place to all of them,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘And to me it is the same place, and I would ask no more. Well, good-bye, Miss Mitford. It is good of you to let us intrude on your province.’

  ‘Now you will settle down to a life where you have nothing to wish for,’ said Eleanor, addressing her children at the door. ‘That is a pleasant thought for your mother and for you.’

  There was silence after she had gone.

  ‘Nothing that could conceivably be realized,’ said Isabel.

  Her sister looked at her, and for a moment they held each other’s eyes; then they suddenly rose and staggered to a distant sofa and fell on it in a fit of mirth.

  James glanced up from his book, for once completely at a loss. Miss Mitford made a survey of her pupils and looked down with curiosity essentially satisfied. The two girls leant towards each other and spoke in tones audible to no one else.

  ‘Our imagination ran away,’ said Isabel. ‘It is so rarely put to the proof. People have never lost what they think they have. And if they recover it, the moment comes.’

  ‘Do you mind much?’ whispered Venice.

  ‘Not now the shock is over. In a way it is a relief. I can be at ease with everyone in the house. There is no one superior to me.’

  ‘I am not like you,’ said Venice.

  ‘I can always protect you,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Mother will always be here as well as Father,’ said James, closing his book.

  ‘It is a small price to pay for Father’s coming back,’ said Isabel, causing Miss Mitford to raise her eyes. ‘And she will be a great deal with him.’

  ‘She will at first,’ said James, and took up another book, as if he could leave the future.

  ‘We can’t have Father without his wife. And Mother has nothing contemptible about her.’

  ‘You talk like Honor,’ said James, in an absent tone.

  ‘She and I are said to be alike.’

  ‘I don’t think you are,’ said Venice.

  ‘No one is really like anyone else.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Miss Mitford. ‘We are struck by a little likeness because it is imposed on so much difference.’

  ‘Venice is not like anyone. She is almost a beauty,’ said Isabel, as if this precluded resemblance.

  Venice fixed her eyes in front of her, while a great pleasure welled up within her, and James looked almost troubled by such an idea in connection with anyone so intimate.

  Eleanor returned to the room.

  ‘Father is worried about you, Isabel. Are you really exhausted?’

  ‘No, only feeling a slight reaction, Mother.’

  ‘That is my good girl,’ said Eleanor, with surprised approval. ‘I heard all that laughing, and I did not think it sounded much like exhaustion.’

  ‘It was a schoolroom joke, Mother.’

  ‘I expect you have all sorts of nonsense among yourselves,’ said Eleanor, little thinking how much more worth her while such jests might be, than those she pursued downstairs.

  ‘Is Venice really a beauty?’ said James.

  ‘Who has been saying she is?’ said Eleanor, giving a deprecating look at Venice and suspecting Fulbert of the indiscretion.

  ‘Isabel,’ said James.

  ‘Oh, Isabel,’ said Eleanor, as if this testimony hardly counted. ‘Why, what a flattering sister to have! What has Venice to say ab
out her in return?’

  ‘She often says she is clever,’ said James. ‘A lot of people do.’

  ‘Well, so she is,’ said Eleanor, thinking more easily of tribute along this line. ‘And what of James? Are people going to say the same thing about him?’

  James was taken aback by this result of his generosity, though he should have been learning that most things gave rise to it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in a light tone.

  ‘And what grounds are they going to have for saying it?’

  James could not refer to his choice of books for an occasion, as it had already been forgotten; or to the poems which to himself were proof of it, as he had revealed them to no one, and was postponing publication until his maturity; and merely made uneasy movements.

  ‘Well, we won’t talk about it on Father’s first day,’ said Eleanor, allowing that it was an awkward subject.

  James returned to the book he had been reading when his parents entered.

  ‘I should not read while your mother is in the room, my boy.’

  James kept his eyes on the page until he seemed to reach a climax, put in his marker and smiled at his mother, while he put out his hand to the other book, whose appearance might need explanation.

  ‘You were just reading to a place where you could stop.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you are going to have a change,’ said Eleanor, with a condoning smile and a sense of relief, as solemn spirits on seriously joyful occasions affected her as they did most people. ‘And now I hear Father calling me. I must remember who has the right to my time. I may not be able to visit you again today.’

  She descended to the hall and came upon Fulbert and Luce engaged in talk. Her daughter turned to meet her.

  ‘Mother, the Cambridge results are out. They really came some days ago, but they have only transpired today. Daniel has a first, and Graham a low third. It is what they expected, so do not let us make a disturbance.’

  ‘Was anyone showing any tendency to do so, my dear?’

  Fulbert jerked his thumb towards the door of the library with an air of giving an answer.

  Sir Jesse emerged and walked in to luncheon, looking at no one. His grandsons followed him and paused to join their parents.

  ‘Well done, my boy,’ said Fulbert, bringing his hand down on Daniel’s shoulder. ‘Some people belittle this kind of success, but I am not one of them. This is a happy chance on my first day with you all.’