The Present and the Past Read online

  IVY COMPTON-BURNETT

  THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 1

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear!’ said Henry Clare.

  His sister glanced in his direction.

  ‘They are pecking the sick one. They are angry because it is ill.’

  ‘Perhaps it is because they are anxious,’ said Megan, looking at the hens in the hope of discerning this feeling.

  ‘It will soon be dead,’ said Henry, sitting on a log with his hands on his knees. ‘It must be having death-pangs now.’

  Another member of the family was giving his attention to the fowls. He was earnestly thrusting cake through the wire for their entertainment. When he dropped a piece he picked it up and put it into his own mouth, as though it had been rendered unfit for poultry’s consumption. His elders appeared to view his attitude either in indifference or sympathy.

  ‘What are death-pangs like?’ said Henry, in another tone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said his sister, keeping her eyes from the sufferer of them. ‘And I don’t think the hen is having them. It seems not to know anything.’

  Henry was a tall, solid boy of eight, with rough, dark hair, pale, wide eyes, formless, infantine features, and something vulnerable about him that seemed inconsistent with himself. His sister, a year younger and smaller for her age, had narrower, deeper eyes, a regular, oval face, sudden, nervous movements, and something resistant in her that was again at variance with what was beneath. Tobias at three had small, dark, busy eyes, a fluffy, colourless head, a face that changed with the weeks and evinced an uncertain charm, and a withdrawn expression consistent with his absorption in his own interests. He was still pushing crumbs through the wire when his shoulder was grasped by a hand above him.

  ‘Wasting your cake on the hens! You know you were to eat it yourself.’

  Toby continued his task as though unaware of interruption.

  ‘Couldn’t one of you others have stopped him?’

  The latter also seemed unaware of any break.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said the nursemaid, seizing Toby’s arm so that he dropped the cake. ‘Didn’t you hear me speak?’

  Toby still seemed not to do so. He retrieved the cake, took a bite himself and resumed his work.

  ‘Don’t eat it now,’ said Eliza. ‘Give it all to the hens.’

  Toby followed the injunction, and she waited until the cake was gone.

  ‘Now if I give you another piece, will you eat it?’

  ‘Can we have another piece too?’ said the other children, appearing to notice her for the first time.

  She distributed the cake, and Toby turned to the wire, but when she pulled him away, stood eating contentedly.

  ‘Soon be better now,’ he said, with reference to the hen and his dealings with it.

  ‘It didn’t get any cake,’ said Henry. ‘The others had it all. They took it and then pecked the sick one. Oh, dear, oh, dear!’

  ‘He did get some,’ said Toby, looking from face to face for reassurance. ‘Toby gave it to him.’

  He turned to inspect the position, which was now that the hens, no longer competing for crumbs, had transferred their activity to their disabled companion.

  ‘Pecking him!’ said Toby, moving from foot to foot. ‘Pecking him when he is ill! Fetch William. Fetch him.’

  A pleasant, middle-aged man, known as the head gardener by virtue of his once having had subordinates, entered the run and transferred the hen to a separate coop.

  ‘That is better, sir.’

  ‘Call Toby “sir”,’ said the latter, smiling to himself.

  ‘She will be by herself now.’

  ‘Sir,’ supplied Toby.

  ‘Will it get well?’ said Henry.

  ‘I can’t say, sir.’

  ‘Henry and Toby both “sir”,’ said Toby. ‘Megan too.’

  ‘No, I am not,’ said his sister.

  ‘Poor Megan, not “sir”!’ said Toby, sadly.

  ‘The last hen that was ill was put in a coop to die,’ said Henry, resuming his seat and the mood it seemed to engender in him.

  ‘Well, it died after it was there,’ said Megan.

  ‘That is better, miss,’ said William.

  ‘Miss,’ said Toby, in a quiet, complex tone.

  ‘They go away alone to die,’ said Henry. ‘All birds do that, and a hen is a bird. But it can’t when it is shut in a coop. It can’t act according to its nature.’

  ‘Perhaps it ought not to do a thing that ends in dying,’ said Megan.

  ‘Something in that, miss,’ said William.

  ‘Why do you stay by the fowls,’ said Eliza, ‘when there is the garden for you to play in?’

  ‘We are only allowed to play in part of it,’ said Henry, as though giving an explanation.

  ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear!’ said Eliza, in perfunctory mimicry.

  ‘William forgot to let out the hens,’ said Megan, ‘and Toby would not leave them.’

  Toby tried to propel some cake to the hen in the coop, failed and stood absorbed in the scramble of the others for it.

  ‘All want one little crumb. Poor hens!’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Eliza, again grasping his arm.

  He pulled it away and openly applied himself to inserting cake between the wires.

  ‘Toby not eat it now,’ he said in a dutiful tone.

  ‘A good thing he does not have all his meals here,’ said William.

  ‘There is trouble wherever he has them,’ said Eliza. ‘And the end is waste.’

  The sick hen roused to life and flung itself against the coop in a frenzy to join the feast.

  ‘It will kill itself,’ said Henry. ‘No one will let it out.’

  William did so and the hen rushed forth, cast itself into the fray, staggered and fell.

  ‘It is dead,’ said Henry, almost before this was the case.

  ‘Poor hen fall down,’ said Toby, in the tone of one who knew the experience. ‘But soon be well again.’

  ‘Not in this world,’ said William.

  ‘Sir,’ said Toby, to himself. ‘No, miss.’

  ‘It won’t go to another world,’ said Henry. ‘It was ill and pecked in this one, and it won’t have any other.’

  ‘It was only pecked on its last day,’ said Megan. ‘And everything is ill before it dies.’

  ‘The last thing it felt was hunger, and that was not satisfied.’

  ‘It did not know it would not be. It thought it would.’

  ‘It did that, miss,’ said William. ‘And it was dead before it knew.’

  ‘There was no water in the coop,’ said Henry, ‘and sick things are parched with thirst.’

  ‘Walking on him,’ said Toby, in a dubious tone.

  ‘Eliza, the hens are walking on the dead one!’ said Megan, in a voice that betrayed her.

  ‘It is in their way, miss,’ said William, giving a full account of the position.

  Megan looked away from the hens, and Henry stood with his eyes on them. Toby let the matter leave his mind, or found that it did so.

  ‘Now what is all this?’ said another voice, as the head nurse appeared on the scene, and was led by some instinct to turn her eyes at once on Megan. ‘What is the matter with you all?’

  ‘One of the hens has died,’ said Eliza, in rapid summary. ‘Toby
has given them his cake and hardly taken a mouthful. The other hens walked on the dead one and upset Miss Megan. Master Henry has one of his moods.’

  Megan turned aside with a covert glance at William.

  ‘Seeing the truth about things isn’t a mood,’ said-Henry.

  ‘It all comes of playing in the wrong place,’ said Miss Bennet. ‘You should watch the hens in the field.’

  ‘How can we, when they are not there?’

  ‘You know they are there as a rule.’

  ‘Very nice place today,’ said Toby, who had heard with a lifted face and a belief that the arrangement was for his convenience. ‘All together in a large cage.’

  ‘Well, it has been a treat for you,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Because very good boy,’ said Toby, in a tone of supplying an omission.

  ‘A strange kind of treat,’ said Henry. ‘A hen pecked to death, and hungry and thirsty at the last.’

  ‘Hens don’t mind dying; they die too easily,’ said Bennet, with conviction in her tone, if nowhere else.

  ‘It was worse than being pecked to death. It was pecked when it was dying.’

  ‘They always do that, sir,’ said William, as if the frequency were a ground for cheer.

  Toby stood with his eyes on the dead hen.

  ‘William put him in a cage by himself.’

  William carried the hen away, smoothing its feathers as he did so.

  ‘William stroke him,’ said Toby, with approval.

  ‘The hen didn’t know about it,’ said Henry.

  ‘He did know,’ said Toby.

  ‘It couldn’t when it was dead.’

  ‘So William stroke him,’ said Toby. ‘Poor hen! Toby saw him know.’

  William resumed his work, and Toby applied himself to attendance upon him, a duty that made consistent inroads upon his time. When William signified his need of a tool, he fetched it with a light on his face and his tongue protruding, and thrust its prongs towards William in earnest cooperation.

  ‘What should I do without you, sir, now that I have no boy?’

  ‘William have one now. Not Henry.’

  ‘You grow such a big lad, sir.’

  ‘Not lad,’ said Toby, with a wail in his tone.

  ‘Such a big boy, sir.’

  ‘As big as Henry. Just the same. No, the same as Megan,’ said Toby, ending on an affectionate note.

  ‘Shall I help William?’ said Henry, getting off his log.

  ‘No, Toby help him. Today and tomorrow.’

  ‘Isn’t it time for your sleep, sir?’

  Toby flickered his eyes over Eliza and Bennet, and smoothly resumed his employment.

  The latter were engaged in talk so earnest that it might have been assumed to relate to their own affairs. Their interest was given to the family to whom they gave everything. In Bennet’s case it was permanent, and in Eliza’s susceptible to change. Megan sometimes listened to them; Henry had not thought of doing so; and Toby heard their voices as he heard the other sounds about him.

  Eliza was a country girl of twenty-six, with the fairness that results in eyes and brows and lashes of a similar pallor, and features that seem to fail to separate themselves from each other. She had an uneducated expression and an air of knowledge of life that seemed its natural accompaniment. Bennet was a small, spare woman of forty-five, with a thin, sallow face marked by simple lines of benevolence, long, narrow features and large, full eyes of the colour that is called grey because it is no other. She took little interest in herself, and so much in other people that it tended to absorb her being. When the children recalled her to their world, she would return as if from another. They loved her not as themselves, but as the person who served their love of themselves, and greater love has no child than this. She came of tradesman stock and had no need to earn her bread, but consorted with anyone in the house who shared her zest for personal affairs.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Bennet,’ said another voice. ‘Good morning, Megan. Good morning, Henry. Is Toby coming to say good morning today?’

  ‘No,’ said Toby, in an incidental tone.

  ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Good morning, Eliza,’ said the governess, with a fuller enunciation that she had omitted the greeting before.

  ‘Have you said good morning to Miss Ridley?’ said Bennet.

  ‘Enough people have said it,’ said Henry, ‘and the others did not say it to you.’

  Bennet did not comment on the omission, indeed had not been struck by it, and the two boys who accompanied Miss Ridley did not seem aware of what passed.

  ‘Well, what a beautiful day!’ said Miss Ridley.

  ‘It is the same as any other day,’ said Henry, raising his eyes for his first inspection of it. ‘Though not for the hen.’

  ‘A hen has died and upset them,’ said Bennet, in a low, confidential tone that the children heard and found comforting. ‘It will soon pass off.’

  ‘Not for the hen,’ said Henry. ‘It won’t have any day at all.’

  ‘We do not quite know that,’ said Miss Ridley. ‘Opinions vary on the difference between the animal world and our own.’

  ‘Opinions are not much good when no one has the same,’ said Megan. ‘They don’t tell you anything.’

  ‘That again is not quite true. Many people have the same. There are different schools of thought, and people belong to all of them.’

  ‘How do they know which to choose?’

  ‘That may be beyond your range. It takes us rather deep.’

  ‘What is the good of knowing things, when you have to get older and older and die before you know everything?’

  ‘You will certainly do that, Megan, and so shall I.’

  ‘Are animals of the same nature as we are?’ said Henry. ‘Monkeys look as if they were.’

  ‘Yes, that is the line of the truth. A scientist called Darwin has told us about it. Of course we have developed much further.’

  ‘Then weren’t we made all at once as we are?’ said Megan. ‘Eliza says that would mean the Bible was not true.’

  ‘It has its essential truth, and that is what matters.’

  ‘I suppose any untrue thing might have that. I daresay a good many have. So there is no such thing as truth. It is different in different minds.’

  ‘Why, you will be a philosopher one day, Megan.’

  Miss Ridley was forty-seven and looked exactly that age. She wore neat, strong clothes that bore no affinity to those in current use, and wore, or had set on her head an old, best hat in place of a modern, ordinary one. She was fully gloved and booted for her hour in the garden. Her full, pale face, small, steady eyes, nondescript features and confident movements combined with her clothes to make a whole that conformed to nothing and offended no one. She made no mistakes in her dress, merely carried out her intentions.

  The two boys who were with her wore rather childish clothes to conform with Henry’s. Fabian at thirteen had a broad face and brow, broad, clear features and pure grey eyes that recalled his sister’s. Guy was two years younger and unlike him, with a childish, pretty face, dark eyes that might have recalled Toby’s, but for their lack of independence and purpose, and a habit of looking at his brother in trust and emulation.

  ‘Well, here are the five of you together,’ said Miss Ridley, who often made statements that were accepted. ‘Are you going to have a game before luncheon? It is twelve o’clock.’

  ‘That would mean that we amused the younger ones,’ said Fabian.

  ‘And is there so much objection to that?’

  ‘To me there is too much.’

  Henry and Megan showed no interest in the enterprise, and Guy looked as if he were not averse from it. Toby, at the mention of the time, had turned and disappeared into some bushes behind him. Eliza went in pursuit, and naturally gained in the contest, as she did her best in it. Toby glanced back to measure her advance, stumbled and fell and lay outstretched and still, uttering despairing cries. His brothers did not
look in his direction, and his sister did no more than this. Bennet waited until he emerged in Eliza’s arms, his lamentations complicated by his further prospects, and reassured by what she saw, entered into talk with Miss Ridley.

  ‘Have you seen anyone this morning?’ she said, in a tone at once eager and casual.

  ‘Mrs Clare came in to ask about the children. She takes an equal interest in them all. And the tutor came and went. Guy does not do too well with him. I think he is nervous.’

  Bennet turned eyes of concern on Guy. She had reared the five from the first and saw the infant in all of them.

  ‘Have Mr and Mrs Clare been together this morning?’

  ‘Yes, for a time, but old Mr Clare was with them.’

  ‘And that prevented trouble?’ said Fabian.

  ‘Why, what trouble should there be?’ said Miss Ridley.

  ‘There should not be any, but there would have been. You know what has happened.’

  ‘Why, things happen every day, Fabian.’

  ‘This has not happened for nine years. My own mother has returned to the place. You must know that.’

  ‘Well, I believe I had heard something about it.’

  ‘You are right in your belief, as it is likely you would be. You would hardly be the only person not to hear.’

  ‘It is nothing for you to think about,’ said Bennet, in an easy tone that was belied by her eyes.

  ‘It is the only thing. What would anyone think about in our place?’

  ‘You have your mother here.’

  ‘We have our stepmother.’

  ‘What is a real mother like?’ said Guy.

  ‘Like Mater to her own children,’ said his brother.

  ‘You know that no difference is made,’ said Miss Ridley.

  ‘The difference is there. There is no need to make it.’

  ‘Are all fathers like our father?’ said Guy.

  ‘No father is like him,’ said Fabian. ‘We have no normal parent.’

  ‘He is devoted to you in his way,’ said Miss Ridley.

  ‘I daresay a cat does the right thing to a mouse in its way.’

  ‘Doing things in your own way is not really doing them,’ said Megan.

  ‘Why, Fabian, what a conscious way of talking!’ said Miss Ridley. ‘And it leads the others to copy you.’