The Last and the First

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  THE LAST AND THE FIRST

  IVY COMPTON-BURNETT

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter I

  “What an unbecoming light this is!” said Eliza Heriot, looking from the globe above the table to the faces round it.

  “Are we expected to agree?” said her son, as the light fell on her own face. “Or is it a moment for silence?”

  “The effect is worse with every day. I hardly dare look at any of you.”

  “You have found the courage,” said her daughter, “and it is fair that you should show it. You appointed the breakfast hour yourself.”

  Lady Heriot did not suggest that anyone else should appoint it.

  “Well, good morning to you all,” she said, her plural phrase suggesting she did not greet rare creatures. “So you are all in time to-day.”

  “As we are on most days,” said her son. “You imply a thing that is not.”

  “Good-morning, Mater,” said the younger of her step-daughters, her quiet tone challenging any cause for criticism. “Yes, we are all in time, and happy in the firelight until the daylight intervenes.”

  “The fire must have been lighted early to be as forward as this,” said Eliza, with her eyes on it. “I must go into the matter later.”

  “The fire in this grate is never slow,” said her elder step-daughter. “It was cold and black when I saw it half-an-hour ago.”

  “I will go into the matter later,” said Eliza, as though untouched by the words.

  “It takes time for a fire to grow. If it fails in that purpose it is lost in another way. It is another kind of waste.”

  “I will go into the matter later,” said her step-mother. “Hermia, do you eat no fat at all?”

  “None, as you know. I am not a stranger to you.”

  “Well, you almost are,” said Eliza with a sigh. “I hardly understand this intensity of feeling over food. It is not such a great matter.”

  “I might say the same to you. Though we are talking of fat not food.”

  “Well-behaved people betray no feeling about such things.”

  “Likes and dislikes go a little deeper than that, Mater,” said Madeline.

  “Nothing goes deeper than manners,” said Eliza, in an instructive tone. “They are involved with the whole of life. It is they that give rise to it, and come to depend on it. We should all remember it.”

  “It might be well to forget it,” said her son, “if it in any way suggests the whole of life. Our own share of that is enough, and we know you are equal to the rest.”

  Eliza almost laughed at the compliment in the words, and turned her eyes in maternal feeling on her own children, her expression revealing that it was strong and deep. She was a fair, almost handsome woman of fifty-five, with solid aquiline features and a short, upright frame, and active hands that seemed their natural complement.

  Her daughter and second child was like and unlike her, with another strain showing in her lighter form and face, and something both weaker and stronger in the impression she made.

  The only son, Angus, was as short for a man as his mother for a woman, broad and heavy and almost plain, with a likeness to his father that gave him his family place. They both had more expressive eyes than Eliza, grey in Roberta and hazel in Angus; and Roberta had also what were known as the Heriot hands, while Angus’s recalled Sir Robert’s. Though now between the ages of twenty and twenty-four, they were conscious of Eliza and under constraint in her presence.

  Hermia, her elder step-daughter, bore the strongest likeness to the father, which was noted by strangers and ignored by Eliza, who passed over family resemblances, was indeed hardly alive to them. Hermia was a tall, dark, restless woman of thirty-four, with a look of being personally unusual, inherited from her father and recognised by herself. She looked her full age and saw nothing against it, indeed had this attitude to most of what she was and did, but failed to share it with Eliza who simply saw no ground for it.

  Madeline, four years younger, was taller and fairer and more ordinary, with pale eyes, a compressed nose and mouth, long, rather lifeless hands and limbs and her own self-esteem, which Eliza was inclined to accept, indeed almost saw as justified.

  The power in the family was vested in Eliza, as her husband left it wholly in her hands, and had moreover willed the property to her, in trust at her death, but subject to her control during her life. She wielded the power as she thought and meant, wisely and well, but had not escaped its influence. Autocratic by nature, she had become impossibly so, and had come to find criticism a duty, and even an outlet for energy that had no other.

  Hermia resented her power and her use of it, and failed to grasp her father’s feeling for her; and Madeline cultivated an affection for her, feeling it in some way a tribute to herself. That their father would hardly have made the will if he had fully known her was believed by Hermia and suspected by her children, though it had not occurred to herself.

  Sir Robert Heriot entered the room, an impressive old man, looking less than his eighty-two years, and otherwise much as the father of Angus and Hermia would be expected to look. He took the seat at his wife’s side, renouncing the end of the table, and leaving other places empty, as she would assign them to no one else. Roberta had the seat on his other hand, by virtue of being his chosen child. The position was accorded her by her mother, and could not be questioned, as the date was that of her birth.

  “Hermia,” said Eliza, “I gave you money to pay the tradespeople, on your errand to the village yesterday.”

  “They were paid,” said Hermia.

  “I have a sense of grievance,” said Eliza, in a light tone. “Something must be owing to me.”

  “Often an untrue belief, Mater,” said Hermia. “This time it is not. I left your change in the library.”

  Eliza signed to her son, who left the room. There was a pause.

  “And I took it to pay a parish subscription,” said Madeline. “Angus is perplexed and taking time to find it.”

  Her brother returned and laid some coins at his mother’s hand.

  “Why, where did you get it, my boy?”

  “Oh—Hermia said the library.”

  “It was not there. It had been taken and used.”

  “Oh well, I thought you wanted it.”

  “Not those particular coins. Just some change for my purse. Why did you not say it was not there?”

  “Oh, I thought perhaps it ought to be.”

  “What an empty episode!” said Eliza. “It seems to have no meaning.”

  “It has none,” said Sir Robert. “So we will not give it one. We will not pretend that something has happened when nothing has. Another time deal openly, my son.”

  “As things are, Angus is paying the subscription,” said Madeline.

  “I will pay it as a penalty. I took too much on myself. It is all a storm in a teacup.”

  “If it stays there,” said Roberta. “I never think teacups can be equal to the tempests they contain.”

  Eliza used another tone. “Did you have a fire in your room last night, Hermia? I saw the ashes in the grate as I passed the door.”

  “Then you know I had one. And you must have opened the door. I shut it when I came down.”

  “I open any door in my house when and where I please. That is not what I said. I asked if you had a fire in your room, and I am waiting for an answer.”

  “There is no ne
ed of one. You have seen that I did. It was too cold to be without one.”

  “Did you ask me if you could have a fire? You know my rule.”

  “The words would have had no meaning.”

  “You gave an order to servants of mine in my house, and said no word on the matter. What can be said to that?”

  There was a pause, and Sir Robert looked down with a disturbed expression. He was normally on the side of his wife, hardly believing that she could be wrong, and caring especially for her children; but he kept the feelings of a father and the memory of the days when Hermia stood high in his life.

  “This house is my home,” said his daughter. “I remain in it as I have no other. I am entitled to human comfort under its roof.”

  “Oh, come, you will have to meet each other,” said her father. “Hermia will ask you another time, and you will arrange what she needs. That settles it for both of you.”

  “If I feel disposed to arrange it. It is for me to decide. Whose house is it? Hers or mine?”

  “Yours in the main. And a little everyone else’s as well. If you will allow it to be. And we know you will. We know you better than you know yourself. We have learned where to put our trust.”

  “I feel that is true,” said Eliza. “Or it is not without its truth. It is what gives me my place, and makes it possible for me. I don’t mean that I would change it. I chose it, and it is mine. And you would see it simply as the best in the house. And that is what it is; that is why it can be no one else’s. But the yoke is not always easy, or the burden light.”

  “Why is it not the best?” said Angus. “It is the choice many people would make.”

  “Not many people, my boy, if they knew it and knew themselves. But they don’t know either. The surface is what they see. Is my own son among them?”

  “The surface might easily be seen,” said Roberta. “It is hardly a thing to pass over.”

  “I admit that I see it,” said Angus. “I should delight to have a place of power, and fall into the pitfalls that beset it.”

  “As I do, my son?” said Eliza, half sadly. “As I do, I suppose? Well, I must try to do better. And you will all try to do better too. We will all try together. It is not only your mother who has pitfalls in her path.”

  “No one can do much in daily life,” said Madeline. “We simply do our best in the sphere that happens to be ours.”

  “Not a very great best is asked of you,” said Eliza, with a faint smile. “I sometimes wonder if I am right in letting you all go on so easily, taking everything and giving nothing, indeed having nothing asked of you. But I don’t see how I can help it, being as I am. I am not a person to expect much. Perhaps I have learned not to be. If a mistake is being made, it is mine.”

  “We take the necessities of life,” said Hermia. “And ask nothing beyond them. It is Father who gives us everything we have. We take nothing from anyone else.”

  “How material things fill your horizon!” said Eliza, in a musing tone, resting her eyes on her step-daughter. “I should not have thought they would loom so large. They never have with me. But I may not be like other people. I begin to see I am not. You forget the effort and thought that support the even tenor of your life. But what your father has and can give you would be of little good without them.”

  “We could manage for ourselves if things were in our hands. There would be no trouble.”

  “Well, they are not in your hands,” said Eliza, with a little laugh. “It is a contingency that need not be considered, as it will not arise. Who and what do you imagine you are?”

  “I know what I am. A woman of thirty-four, with no scope and no chance of having any. It is not likely I should forget. Would it often be out of my mind?”

  “What are your ideas for your life?” said Sir Robert, whose eyes were on her. “It seems you must have them, if you have thought and felt as you say. Put it in words that we understand. We are in the dark.”

  “I will lighten your darkness. I could hardly not have my ideas. There has been time to form them. They have come to be comprised in a wish for a definite thing. The large school in the town is not doing well, and the principal would like a partner. It would mean an outlay, but not, I believe, a prohibitive one. If that could be managed for me, I should be happier and more useful. I feel I have no place here.”

  “What kind of place do you want?” said Eliza. “You share the family home and life. Why have you a right to more? And the position would not be the same. You will be seen in another way. You would have to be prepared for it.”

  “I don’t know how I am seen now. Or rather I do know; it is as I see myself. And I am ready for it to end.” Hermia kept her eyes turned from Eliza as she voiced unutterable words. “The household will be happier without me. I can only be a discordant element. I am a reminder to Mater of the life Father had before he knew her. And a reminder to him of it too. And it is often in my own mind. How often no one knows.”

  “Of course no one does,” said Eliza. “No one knows what is in anyone else’s mind. You don’t know what is in mine; you do not indeed. And why should people think about your mind? Do you give a thought to theirs? Perhaps they are hardly as much concerned with you as you are with yourself.”

  “We know your views,” said Hermia’s father. “But think before you give up your home and your place in it. They are things that do not come again.”

  “I know that, Father. I am ready to give them up. I feel I have hardly had them.”

  “You have had the place that was yours. Mater has given it to you, given it for all these years. You must recognise it, Hermia. What have you given in return? No one would choose to have step-children.”

  “I have given nothing. I have had nothing to give. And who would choose to have a step-mother? There was no choice for either of us there. We have done what we were forced to do. Mater may be grateful to me for going. That is where the gratitude will lie.

  “I don’t know why my name is brought into this,” said Eliza, in a cold tone. “I have nothing to do with it. The change is being made without reference to me. Hermia has had her full rights here. She would have had no more with her own mother. I don’t know why she is a martyr.”

  “She is not,” said Sir Robert. “She is an able young woman, who needs an outlet for her gifts. Her energy has been accumulating and has broken forth. That is all it is.”

  “Gifts?” said Eliza, drawing in her brows. “Are they to be depended on? Does she know what they are?”

  “She may. And others will know, when she begins to use them. We shall hear of her success, if it comes. And she will have her freedom, if that is what it is. Some people would give it another name.”

  “They would and will. That is a thing she will have to face. I don’t know how she will like it. From what I know of her, not much.”

  “I shall not know anything about it,” said Hermia. “No one will say the thing to me. Or I shall not be at home to hear them. And the people I am with will not say them. I shall be quite safe.”

  “I don’t know why I am regarded like this,” broke out Eliza. “As someone who has failed in some way, when what I have done is to think and manage more than other people. I wish I had not done it. I would not do it again. I will not go on doing it. I will follow Hermia’s example and think of myself. And the result for other people need not matter to me. It does not matter to her.”

  She sank into tears, and her husband rose and put his arm about her, signing to his children to leave them.

  Chapter II

  They withdrew to a refuge at the back of the hall, a small room furnished with discards from other rooms with a view to their occupation of it.

  “Well, Mater is weeping on Father’s shoulder,” said Hermia. “Over a change that is as welcome to her as it is to me. I might as well cry over it myself.”

  “If she is we can only regret it,” said Madeline. “It is not a good opening to a new regime.”

  “Mater sees and hears herself,”
said Hermia. “That ends my pity for her, and transfers it to Father. He sees and hears her too.”

  “I feel pity for all of us,” said Angus. “How could we know what was in store? If Hermia escapes without further stress she has done better than I could have believed. I realise her courage and my want of it.”

  “Suppose we all had it!” said Roberta. “It may be a good thing it is rare.”

  “If courage is the word,” said Madeline.

  “I can hardly believe in what I did,” said Hermia. “I could not do it again.”

  “I am glad of that,” said Angus.

  “You need not fear. I feel that virtue has gone out of me. All that was in me. There is nothing left.”

  “If that is the word again,” said Madeline. “It is perhaps not the only one.”

  “I don’t mind about the word. You will have to show the quality. You are to inherit my place and be a success in it. You can hardly be more of a failure.”

  “I have my own place,” said Madeline quietly. “And it may be better for other people for me to keep it.”

  “It is,” said Angus. “We value its protection.”

  “The blank I leave has always been there,” said Hermia. “My thoughts have been on my own problems. On myself, if you like it better. I am not ashamed of it.”

  “You evidently are,” said Roberta. “I suppose it shows that no one is all bad.”

  “Why is it wrong to think of oneself? What is more natural and more necessary?”

  “We do what is natural to us,” said Madeline. “Obedience to our natures. It is a part of life.”

  “A very small part,” said Roberta.

  “Nearly the whole of life.”

  “A very good thing it is,” said Angus. “It is what prevents its being quite the whole of other people’s lives.”

  “It is the whole of mine,” said Hermia. “Nothing could be a preventive. It has not been even a part of it. I am to have it at last. I can hardly believe it.”

  “I can believe it,” said Roberta. “I think we have evidence of it.”

  “It is a great deal to have,” said Angus. “And the evidence is on a scale with it.”