The Mighty and Their Fall

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  “I meant what I said, Hengist. That is what a governess should be.”

  “Do other people think she is that?” said Leah.

  “Come, speak clearly,” said Miss Starkie.

  “She wouldn’t have liked it said so that they could hear,” said Hengist.

  “And she mightn’t like us to say it about her, as she seems to like her.”

  “Come, open the door, Hengist,” said Miss Starkie, indifferent to anything but exit. “And wait for your sister and me. You know how to behave.”

  “I have not met a governess before,” said Teresa. “Are they always built on this scale?”

  “There is scope for her qualities,” said Egbert. “We have made our own demand on them.”

  “Less than is made now,” said Lavinia. “Unless we idealise our earlier selves.”

  “Memory softens the truth,” said Ninian. “But no demand would be denied.”

  “Lavinia was beyond Miss Starkie,” said Egbert. “She read by herself, when she was with her.”

  “Pronouns worthy of our two youngest,” said his father.

  “You are gaining knowledge,” said Hugo to Teresa. “And though I have always lived here, so am I.”

  “We want more of everything, the more we have. I am impelled to an inquisitive question.”

  “Well, what other sort of question is there?”

  “Is Miss Starkie’s work worth while? I don’t mean in itself. I mean, can she ask enough return?”

  “Of course you mean that. I don’t think she asks anything. There are subjects she would not broach. I don’t know how much she has, though of course I should like to. It might be too little to be revealed. But Ninian will have no secrets from you. I daresay it would have to be a secret from everyone else.”

  “I will betray it to you one day,” said Teresa.

  “Betray what to him?” said Ninian.

  “Something you will tell me, that you have not told him.”

  “Well, there may be things of that kind.”

  “There must be in a marriage. No doubt you found it in yours. It is a pity the children can’t remember their mother.”

  “It may be better than remembering and missing her.”

  “It is better,” said Lavinia. “Egbert and I know it.”

  “Yours can only be an early memory. No doubt you have added to it.”

  “We have our picture of her. It may not be the true one, but it is our own.”

  “What will Egbert do in the end?” said Teresa.

  “He will support me here. He must learn to fill my place. In time it will be his.”

  “I shall also be here,” said Lavinia, looking at Teresa. “There is nothing else for me. Or for you.”

  “Do not answer things that are not said,” said Ninian.

  “The question was there, Father. And there was only one answer.”

  “Lavinia, are you doing your best for me?”

  “What are you doing for me? Can I feel this is your best? What have you said to me, and of me? And how have you said it?”

  “What I have said is true. It should have been said before.”

  “But it was not. It has been said too late. You should have known when to be silent.”

  “Lavinia, I will not suffer this again.”

  “There is no need. You will remember it.”

  “It is true that I shall not forget.”

  “Then it is over,” said Selina. “It may have had to come. But there can be no cause for it again.”

  “Egbert, you will have a care for your sister?” said Ninian, in a tone of genuine appeal. “You see how I am placed.”

  “Egbert does not need such a word, Father. Our lives are bound together. But there are some things I have tried to spare him. I have been taken further than he has. I have been used to a man.”

  “You force me to say it. I have not been used to a woman. I am glad to be with one now.”

  “Nothing should have forced you to say that, Father,” said Egbert.

  “Should not they leave us?” said Teresa. “They have their life with each other. I have not brought one with me.”

  “You hear?” said Ninian to his children. “We have heard you.”

  “I will go in my own time,” said Selina. “You cannot dismiss your mother. And my presence makes no difference. I am on no one’s side. I see with the eyes of all of you. It is as if no one was here.”

  “It is not to me,” said Ninian. “And so it is not to Teresa. But if you would like to follow the others, I will take you to them. They will be the better.”

  The two went out of the room, and Hugo turned to Teresa.

  “I am forgotten. But of course I should not like them to waste their thought on me.”

  “You feel that a waste?” said Teresa, raising her eyes. “How unlike you are to your brother!”

  “He is not my brother by blood. I was adopted by his father, and brought up with the name. And I have remained in the family. I have no other.”

  “Ninian has a great affection for you.”

  “Yes, he has been more than a brother to me.”

  “And Mrs. Middleton?”

  “She has been more than a mother. But I used to wish they were not any more. They would not have been so afraid of being any less.”

  “And how about the father?”

  “He was a little less than a father to me. He left me only just enough for my support. He could not take more from the family. I wish they had all been average.”

  “Do you feel I am harming Lavinia?”

  “I daresay not in the end. She has been more than a daughter to Ninian. And, as I say, that is not best.”

  “You have been a great help in his life.”

  “Yes, I have not been more than a brother to him. I have tried to be an ordinary one. But I am hardly bad enough for that.”

  “Are you very fond of Lavinia?”

  “Yes, more than of anyone. I wish I was young and better off. A competence is known to be a curse.

  “If it was not known, would you have guessed it? It is surely a step on the way. I understand your feeling for her. I think I could come to share it. She can’t want me at the moment. But perhaps she will.”

  “Remember she is mine,” said Hugo. “I would not be more than an uncle to her. And I was not an ordinary one. So there was nothing I could be. But she is mine.”

  “You have more to give than Ninian has.”

  “Well, I have had less. I am not so used to taking. But I will not be more than a brother-in-law to you. You need not fear.”

  “I should be glad for you to be more.”

  “More than what?” said Ninian, returning to the room. “What a deal you have to say! You might be long-lost friends.”

  “We are new-found ones,” said Hugo. “And brothers should share everything.”

  “Well, I hope, Teresa,” said Ninian, on a mock-serious note, “that our combined influence may do something for Hugo. There are signs of good in him.—And there are signs in my son and daughter, though you have not discerned them.”

  The two last had gone to the library to be alone, while Selina went up to the children.

  “So you have said it,” said Egbert. “Well, silence would have been no good. It would always have been unsaid.”

  “It will never be so now. I can never unsay it. Father will remember. It will always be between us.”

  “Not as you think. Things go less deep with him.”

  “We like to feel that about people. But I don’t know why. It is a thing that does us little good.”

  “He is thinking of his own life. And that he has not had what he now thinks he should have had.”

  “And does he think of no other life, when he is so given to thought?”

  “He believes he has done his best. I think he feels it is a poor one. And he is right that it should have been better.”

  “What is Teresa’s feeling for him? She does not show herself. There seems to be a ca
lm surface over unspoken things. But whatever she is or feels, what has this house to give her? It is filled with another woman’s family. And her husband must always be their father. Even though she has had one life herself, I wonder she could face this one.”

  “I wondered too,” said Ninian’s voice. “She is facing it for my sake. And finding so much could be done for me, I may have asked more of other people than it was in them to give. Do what you can; you cannot go beyond yourselves.”

  “Neither can anyone,” said Egbert. “Even she will want her own return.”

  “And she will have it,” said Ninian, with a flash of his eyes. “All will be done to make this house a home to her, and her own home. It is hers before it is yours or mine. I did not come to say that. It goes without saying. But it is better said.”

  “What did you come to say, Father?” said Lavinia.

  “That you and Egbert can go your way apart from us. You can make the change as great or little as you please. I shall depend on your thoughts for the children, as I always have. It is true that I forgot you were a child yourself, and that it was late to remember it. But neither can be helped now. And I doubt if either could have been helped.”

  “Well, neither was helped, Father. And both have served your ends.”

  “Lavinia, you have become a stranger to me.”

  “I might say the same to you. I do say it. And, as you might put it, it is better said.”

  “Well, no more will be said,” said Ninian, and left the room.

  “Well, there are things that have to be,” said Egbert.

  “And that is a pity. The worst seem to be included in them.”

  “Are we spoiling Father’s happiness?”

  “No, our happiness belongs to ourselves. Our own things are safe with us. That may be why it is little liked by other people.”

  “Teresa hardly seems a happy person.”

  “Perhaps it helped Father to fall in love with her. Though I see there might be other reasons.”

  Ninian’s exit led to the entrance of Ainger, bearing something carefully in his hands, and followed by the boy in mechanical submission.

  “The change will be great, miss,” he said, depositing what he held, and standing with considering eyes on it.

  “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.”

  CHAPTER IV

  “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?”