The Mighty and Their Fall Read online

  “But there would only be what was yours,” said Ninian, contracting his brows. “What was hers is put to other purposes. Both you and she know it.”

  “There has been no change. She has taken no legal step. It has simply to remain in her hands.”

  “Yes, we must ask that, Father,” said Lavinia.

  “But what do you ask?” said Ninian, with a bewildered air. “It cannot be withdrawn now. Its uses are mapped out and settled as your uncle wished.”

  “Nothing has been done,” said Teresa. “It has not been put to any use. Lavinia sees it as hers.”

  “This series of steps!” said Ninian, smiling. “And the same money! How many times can it be given away?”

  “It is not to be given, Father. We have our freedom again. I must have what is mine and use it. I want to give Hugo another life, and to share it with him. You think there will be nothing new in it. But for us there will.”

  “No, my dear,” said Ninian, gravely. “I must assert my authority. For your sake, for my sake, for the sake of us all. But for your sake the most.”

  “You can only make it hard for me. You know the truth.”

  “Did she mean to have everything then?” said Ninian, with gentle raillery. “She wanted to give a thing and take a thing, like the wicked man in the rhyme? Well, it does not trouble her father. He understands his natural girl.”

  “Do you mean you would use the money for yourself?”

  “No, of course I do not. I have said what I shall do. Use it as my brother wished, before illness clouded his mind. That wish is sacred to me, as his real one. And I shall save you from a fatal step. That wish is my real one, my dear.”

  “I can hardly believe you, Father. Is this the man you have been?”

  “It is the man I am. The man who will suffer misjudgement to save you. In other words your father.”

  “There would be many other words,” said Hugo. “Happily there will be no cause for them.”

  “Hugo, I have lost you as a brother. Am I to lose you in every sense?”

  “No, I am to be nearer, Ninian. I will try to be a son to you.”

  “So you have given your answer,” said Ninian, without a smile.

  “You are sure, my son?” said Selina, in a voice that sounded far away. “The money is apart from the marriage. It is not all one thing.”

  “Mother, our thoughts should be on you,” said Ninian, turning as if in compunction. “I spoke of a brother. You are feeling you have lost a son. A long tie is broken.”

  “No, I am glad to know the truth. I am glad it is what it is. Glad that your father never turned from me. I wish I had always known.”

  “Have you always known, Grandma?” said Lavinia.

  “I have known nothing,” said Selina, dreamily. “I could not ever be sure. I was not sure about what I said. It might have been true. I often thought it was. You must have known I could not be sure.”

  “Why did you put it as a certainty?”

  “I wanted to save you,” said Selina, in a deeper tone, leaning forward and looking into her face. “Hugo does not care for you enough. You are a person who inspires deep feeling. That is a thing we don’t explain. He has not the depth in him that you have. I wanted to save you both. And I may do it, if I go on thinking. I have my thoughts.”

  “Well, I must take up my cross,” said Ninian. “I must be a resolute father. It is not an easy course.”

  “Nor a credible one,” said Egbert. “And it can avail you nothing.”

  “It is a question of our lives, Father,” said Lavinia. “If we are living for ourselves, it is time we did. I am not a lofty character. That is too well recognised for it to be expected.”

  “The past is forgotten. Anyhow by your father. Why do you remind people of it?”

  “It is what you are doing,” said Teresa.

  “We cannot prove you are not honest, Father,” said Egbert.

  “And you want to prove it?” said Ninian, gently. “It is a sad thing to have to say. More and more I see where the power should lie. The suspected person may be the one above suspicion. I am not afraid to claim the place. My mind is open to you all. I have hidden nothing. I have nothing to hide.”

  “If only he would hide some of it!” murmured Egbert.

  “Now the one thing has been found out,” said Hugo. “You intended that to be hidden.”

  “Tell me what that is,” said Selina, in a petulant tone. “I have heard whispers about it. I have asked before. I should not ask, if I did not want to know.”

  “It was to do with Ransom’s will,” said Hugo. “As Ninian’s activities tend to be.”

  “Anyone who speaks of my will may get nothing from it,” said Selina, nodding her head. “I shall know who it is. It is the kind of thing I know. But I have thought about it. I have done one thing. And I am thinking of another.”

  “Mother, what are you saying?” said Ninian. “Yours is a life we never imagine ended.”

  “It will not be left to imagination. No one knows what it is to be a memory. No one will ever know.”

  “Mother, you are tired. Our talk has been too much. And it has been a waste of words. Most of them were better unsaid.”

  “I am often tired,” said Selina, putting her hand to her head. “But not in this way before. I have heard without knowing anything. And that is not a thing I do. It is as if I were someone else. It all goes by as though it had no meaning.”

  “It has not had much,” said Ninian. “You chose your absent moment well. It was wise not to try to follow it.”

  “I could not follow. That is what I said. It may not have been worth it. But you all seemed to feel it was.”

  “There are the children,” said Ninian. “I will call them in. They will be a change for you.”

  “A change?” said Selina, drawing in her brows. “I often see them.”

  “They will help you to forget what you should not have heard. Their world is still an honest one.”

  “Agnes and Hengist and Leah!” said Selina, sitting up, and then breaking off with an empty look in her eyes.

  “Come in and talk to your grandmother,” said Ninian. “Say something to interest her.”

  “Did you not hear what your father said?” said Miss Starkie, speaking from safety herself.

  “I did not hear,” said Selina, shaking her head. “Not so that I knew what it was.”

  “Grandma, you are tired,” said Agnes. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

  “She told you to say it,” said Selina, looking at Miss Starkie.

  “Oh, I could have managed better than that, Mrs. Middleton.”

  “You tell us a good deal about yourself. It never comes to an end.”

  “Leah, you can say something,” said Miss Starkie, hesitating to go any further herself.

  “So you put it on to her. That is not doing so well. And it is the other who says the right thing, and knows it is better than the wrong one.”

  “It might not be true,” said Hengist.

  “Would you like me to die?” said Selina, as if catching his meaning.

  “No, I don’t think so. Why should I?”

  “You know you would not,” said Miss Starkie, hardly able to fall short of this.

  “When I am dead, will they remember me?” said Selina, to herself.

  “Yes, we shall,” said Hengist. “Father will be sad, and so will Lavinia. And that will remind us.”

  “You would not need reminder,” said Miss Starkie.

  “I only said we should have it.”

  “Tell us what you think of our real question, Grandma,” said Egbert.

  “You mean the money? It must happen as it will. They all want everything. We don’t know who should have it.”

  “There are always different claims,” said Ninian. “And always the one real one.”

  “You must not be selfish, Ninian,” said Selina, as if saying an accustomed word to a child.

  “That is true. I have a chance to serve th
em all. I must not lose it.”

  “It is easy to give what falls into your hands.”

  “It might be easier to keep it. But I am not one of your people who want everything.”

  “You always seem to have it,” said his mother.

  “And we seldom do that without wanting it,” said Hugo.

  “Hugo, I have never said what I hesitate to say now. This house is mine. I have never grudged you a place in it. You have not found the talk of my grudging true. Do not force it to be so now.”

  “Your parents gave me the place and enough to keep it. I have cost you nothing.”

  “Money!” said Ninian, sadly. “So there is nothing else. No affection, no sharing of deeper things, no place in family life. And I must answer your words with my own. I have not gained anything either. Not that I wished to gain.”

  “You knew I had nothing over. Anything I had, you would have taken. You have given the proof.”

  “You all want it all,” said Selina. “And Ninian has the most. He has had the chance, and that is what it is. No one gives until he must. We find that is true when we make a will. I have tried to do it wisely. And I think I have been wise. But you all want everything, and no one can have it or give it. I will go now.”

  She rose from her chair, and as Ninian went to help her, looked up into his face.

  “I wish it was yours, my son. It would be better so. But if it is not, you will give it to them. They will have what is theirs.”

  “Yes, yes, I will,” said Ninian, stooping over her. “It is mine, but I will not remember. I will say no more, and that means that it is given. And that it is taken. That is the certain thing. And I should not have used it for myself. It is other people who give. And it is my daughter who takes. I am content, if others are.”

  “I am content,” said Hugo to Lavinia. “But I did not know I should be so ashamed of it. Can it be true that self-denial is its own reward? Even when it is forced on us.”

  Selina went to the door, and her son followed with his eyes on her, as if oblivious of anything else. Miss Starkie manœuvred her charges in front of them, and urged them to the stairs.

  “Why is there a hurry?” said Hengist, on an upper floor.

  “You might not have known what to say to your grandmother. She is overtired.”

  “She didn’t seem to like you, did she?” said Leah.

  “She is not herself today,” said Miss Starkie, in explanation of this.

  “She seemed to be herself,” said Hengist.

  “No one who cared for her could think so.”

  “Do you care for her yourself?” said Leah.

  “I appreciate what she is. Of course she is not my grandmother.”

  “No. She couldn’t be as old as that.”

  “Well, it would be possible,” said Miss Starkie, seeing no reason to disregard the truth.

  “Would it?” said Hengist. “You haven’t even any parents.”

  “Well, they did not live to be old.”

  “Did your being a governess break their hearts?”

  “And bring their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave?” said Leah. “That would have been a pity, if they weren’t even grey.”

  “What kind of a person is Grandma?” said Hengist. “Very good or very bad?”

  “She is good, of course. No one can be perfect,” said Miss Starkie, forced to a reservation in Selina’s case.

  “Why isn’t she perfect? Because she does not like you?”

  “We are good friends when she is herself.”

  “Can people be good friends, when one is despised and rejected of the other?”

  “You don’t attend to what I say,” said Miss Starkie, with justification.

  “I have always been Grandma’s favourite,” said Agnes.

  “When people are that, they sometimes deserve to be,” said Miss Starkie, tired of too little effort in this direction.

  “Leah and I would not stoop to fawn on people.”

  “Some people’s level does not admit of much stooping.”

  “She means our level is low,” said Leah.

  “Well, so is everyone’s. Only some people have more power. People are really all the same.”

  “Indeed they are not,” said Miss Starkie. “There can be a great difference.”

  “Well, Grandma said they were,” said Leah. “She kept on saying it.”

  “I should not remember what she said today,” said Miss Starkie, in favour of a general forgetfulness.

  “Do you mean what she said about you?” said Hengist.

  “No. What did she say? I hardly recall it. I meant what she said about you, if I am to speak the truth.”

  “We might not recall that.”

  “No. It is best to put it all out of your minds,” said Miss Starkie, on a sympathetic note.

  “If Grandma dies, wouldn’t you have to remember her last words to you?” said Leah.

  “I am afraid I already forget them. And we hope they are not her last.”

  “Does she really hope it?” said Leah.

  CHAPTER XII

  “It is a strange feeling,” said Ninian. “To be no longer a son. It is the deepest of all changes. It has torn up my roots, thrown me solitary into the future. It will be hard to feel anchored again.”

  “I should be proud if it did so much to me,” said Hugo. “The part it has done shows me what the whole must be.”

  “Proud? I am lonely, bereft, uncertain. In a measure it must be so with you all.”

  “There is a cause for pride, Father,” said Lavinia. “To be such things beyond a measure.”

  “Ah, you would once have been with me. At a time not so far away. Now I must see you move to a distance. Well, in a sense I shall go with you.”

  “Why do you keep saying how proud you are, Father?” said Egbert. “We can all see it.”

  “To me it is no occasion for jest. It is the first when the voice will not sound, that I have always heard. And the first of many. That is the heavy part.”

  “We all miss Grandma, and shall always miss her. It hardly needs to be said.”

  “Then it has had good measure,” said Hugo. “And from you both.”

  “Hardly the same,” said Ninian. “Words are not so powerless. Other words arise from other feeling. They come from within. My future is a sea of change. My mother gone from me, my daughter going, my brother that to me no longer.”

  “All our lives are changing,” said Teresa. “Even Leah can hardly say there will be no difference.”

  “You and Ninian will have each other,” said Hugo. “That foolish thing that is said, when that is all people have. As if they did not know it! It is the whole trouble.”

  “It is not only trouble,” said Ninian, smiling at Teresa. “Or it is trouble shared and therefore less.”

  “Did Grandma leave a will?” said Egbert. “I suppose there is no doubt of it.”

  “No doubt at all,” said Ninian, sounding surprised and looking at his son. “She left nothing undone that needed doing.”

  “Do you know the terms, Father? No doubt you helped her to make it.”

  “No doubt again. She would not have been without my help. I was never without hers.”

  “I daresay she knew her own mind.”

  “There is again no doubt,” said Ninian, smiling. “But I have not thought of the will since it was made. She and I were of the same mind. That is what I remember.”

  “Well, it disposes of everything else,” said Hugo. “It must be a calming memory.”

  “I have other memories,” said Ninian.

  “Do you feel she had a happy life?” said Teresa.

  “A full one. And that must mean some losses. She met them with her own courage.”

  “I am glad I am a coward,” said Hugo. “Courage is another strain added to the rest. It does nothing for anyone.”

  “Hers did much for me,” said Ninian. “I am the better for it. I found it uplifting.”

  “Can everything b
e Grandma’s fault?” murmured Egbert.

  “Pride should go before a fall,” said Hugo. “But it does not seem to.”

  “Yes, I am the better,” said Ninian, looking at him. “And it should also be true of you. You know her mind, and will follow it. You could have no truer aim.”

  “You don’t mean I should give up my marriage? So that she will not have died in vain?”

  “What else should I mean? I have not changed. And you know she had not.”

  “We have not either. So a religion would have had its use. We could have said that she now understood.”

  “You know she understood this. And you know you yourself understand it. What does my honest daughter feel?”

  “Not that we should follow a wish, now she is dead, that we did not follow in her life. What would it do for her?”

  “What would it do for you? That would be her thought.”

  “It could only be ours, Father. She has no thoughts now.”

  “You know I represent her. In so far as our thoughts would be the same, they should be hers to you.”

  “She should be here to keep a hand on you,” said Hugo.

  “Yes, she should be here,” said Ninian. “But I feel the hand.”

  “We shall all feel it,” said Egbert. “And partly as she meant us to. We should know about things, Father. They will have to go on without her.”

  “Without her! It will not seem like going on.”

  “It is better than a standstill. We must learn what the changes are to be.”

  “today?” said his father.

  “Well, it is a difficult day to live. We may as well make some use of it. It will leave a better memory. And I need some light on the future. We have depended on Grandma’s money.”

  “Some of it was your grandfather’s, and comes direct to me,” said Ninian, with his eyebrows slightly raised. “She has left what was her own also to me, knowing it would pass to her grandchildren. There are the natural bequests to dependants. And there is a legacy to your uncle, and a message to him added in her own hand on the day before she died. That has no legal significance. It will have the more for him.”

  “Then you have seen the will, Father. You said you had not thought of it, since it was made.”