The Mighty and Their Fall Page 9

  “More,” said Selina. “It is not a case for sharing. There are very few.”

  “The very word repels me,” said Hugo. “Why should we not have what is our own? There is no good reason.”

  “That is Father’s feeling,” said Egbert. “But Teresa seems to be without it. Perhaps she is a high type. We may meet one too seldom to recognise it.”

  “Why are types only high and low?” said Hugo. “Cannot an ordinary person belong to them? Or do they only embrace extremes?”

  “You can be a mediocre type,” said his mother.

  “Oh, I am sure I can’t. I am sure nobody could. That is why we never hear of one. There is such a thing as going too far.”

  “Father wants Teresa for himself,” said Egbert. “But he can hardly keep her from Lavinia. The feeling has no reason in it.”

  “It has other things,” said Selina.

  “You don’t mean I am to regard it, Grandma? He should be glad for Teresa to have a friend in me. It would ease the path for them both.”

  “It might fill it, when he wants it free.”

  “He is not a man to ask everything for himself.”

  “No, but he asks one thing.”

  “The whole of Teresa? She hardly seems to want the whole of him.”

  “No, that is true. We remember her letter.”

  “Her letter? Oh, yes he read it to us.”

  “It was you who asked him to.”

  “Yes, it was. It seemed best for us to hear it. I remember now.”

  “It is easy to forget what we have not read ourselves.”

  “Yes, but we remember the gist of it.”

  “Perhaps not as well as Grandma does,” said Egbert in a whisper.

  Lavinia seemed not to hear.

  “Agnes!” said Miss Starkie’s voice. “What are you doing down here? Why did you not come with the others?”

  “You didn’t tell me to.”

  “You knew I meant all three of you.”

  “I don’t see how I could know.”

  “Agnes, you are not Hengist.”

  “As near as makes no matter,” said Ninian. “What is the difference?”

  “They are all themselves, Mr. Middleton. It is for me to remember it.”

  “I am old enough to be here,” said Agnes. “I understand most of the talk.”

  “Agnes, you are not Lavinia,” said Miss Starkie, true to her idea of her duty.

  “How can I be like her, if we are kept apart? I don’t learn so much upstairs.”

  “Well, tell us what you have learnt,” said Miss Starkie, as though disposing of the matter.

  “They are not things that go into words.”

  “There, I thought so. So there is an end of it.”

  “And they are not things you would ever need,” said Agnes, as if to herself.

  “They are not, if they cannot be expressed. True and definite things for me! The others can go by the board.”

  “I thought you would think in that way. It is not only those things that are true.”

  “Agnes, I don’t understand your mood.”

  “A mood can’t be understood. I am not in one as often as the others.”

  “I should have thought they were always in one,” said Selina.

  Her grand-daughter gave a laugh.

  “And how am I to get to know Mamma, if I am never with her?”

  “You will know her in time,” said Miss Starkie. “She does not want you always at her elbow.”

  “She would not say that kind of thing. I know that already about her.”

  “Agnes!” said Selina, sitting up and deepening her tones. “Are you going to obey Miss Starkie or are you not? It is time we knew.”

  “I shall have to. But it won’t be for always. I can think of that.”

  “Agnes, you are not yourself today,” said Miss Starkie, as if finding this unnatural thought.

  “I am beginning to be. That is what it is. Not my full self yet, of course,” said Agnes, following Miss Starkie, and leaving her to fill in the gap suggested.

  “Which of them won?” said Egbert.

  “Agnes,” said Selina. “She is growing up. And that is our first victory. I suppose it is right.”

  “I should not have thought a victory was ever right,” said Lavinia. “To judge from what I have read. But sometimes it is essentially justified.”

  “It is a pity the child is the father of the man,” said Hugo. “Its being the other way round is quite enough.”

  “I would never acknowledge my early self as my father,” said Egbert “I should be ashamed.”

  “What of yours, Lavinia?” said Selina.

  “Well, there has been a certain change, Grandma. But shame is a strong word.”

  “It is not only the early self that causes that.”

  “Egbert felt it caused the most. And it may be true.”

  “I think a later one may cause us more.”

  CHAPTER VII

  “So it has come” said Selina, “come at last! What might have come each day for years. He will not let me die without him. That is how I have lived. Why is it thought that death is what counts? Why is the end of life the meaning of it?”

  “Ransom is returning!” said Ninian. “After so much of his life and ours! Now we have so much to forget.”

  “So I can say I can depart in peace,” said Selina, taking the initiative upon herself.

  “This is not the time to say it,” said her son. “The letter will be his own. He will depend on a welcome, as if he had always wanted it.

  ‘My dear Mother,

  I am returning to you, a man of fifty-two, to see you before I die. I shall not live longer than you, possibly not so long. I have sowed too many wild oats, and am reaping what I sowed. I have also reaped substance to serve me to the end, and to serve others after me. I have taken a house near yours, there to end my days. I waited to write until I was settled in it. You know I do things to please myself. I shall come to see you at my own time. You can feel I am still your second son. You will find me altered in body, but in nothing else. No one but a mother could have a welcome for me. No one but you will have one.

  Your loving son,

  Ransom Middleton’

  So change is upon us. And he himself will find a change.”

  “I wish I had altered,” said Hugo. “It will be humbling to be the same.”

  “It will not only be you,” said Ninian. “Ransom is not different, and does not claim to be.”

  “Why can he be proud of his failings? Most of us have to disguise them. That may be his reason for pride. He dares to be himself.”

  “It might need courage. But he is what he has always been. He says it himself, and we need not doubt him. My mother is to wait in suspense until he comes. His mother too, and a woman of her age! And her age is a thing he does not forget or expect her to.”

  “I don’t want him to be different,” said Selina. “I want him as he was, as I have thought of him. Why should you all be the same? You are yourselves and must be what you are.”

  “If we were the same as Ransom, you would have had no sons. We accept the exaltation of the wanderer. He was lost and is found. And we are glad he is to give you what he has left, and has something left to give. But those who have not forsaken you have given more.”

  “My sons, you are ever with me. All that I have is yours. But Ransom has never been dead to me. His life has gone on with mine. I don’t look for the young man who left me. I look for a man in middle age, as he looks for an old woman. But I can’t have him die before me. When I die, I must leave him to his life. He will get strength from his mother. I can’t have him back to lose him. Do you think he means what he says?”

  “He would hardly say it otherwise. It would be too heartless a thing. But we will hope he is mistaken. We must wait to judge. Waiting is what he has arranged for us.”

  “Ah, you have never cared for him. You have never seen him as a brother. But to me you are both my sons.�
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  “He has been the first to you. And he will be so again, when he is with you. He will be a change for you. You are not wearied of him and his ways. But what if it was so with all of us? What if we had all left you?”

  “What reason is there to imagine it? Your lives and needs were different. You have been held by your inheritance. Hugo has been glad of a home. He has not earned as Ransom has. I wonder how Ransom has done it. Well, we are soon to know.”

  “I doubt it. I noticed it was not revealed. I daresay it will never be.”

  “Well, earning is always fair. We pay for what we need. The difference is simply that people need different things. If anyone has not earned, it is because he has given nothing. You yourself look after the land and earn in your own way.”

  “We should not always fancy a reference to ourselves,” said Hugo. “But suppose there is one?”

  “What of the two elder children?” said Selina, as the voices of these were heard. “What have you given and earned there?—Come in, both of you. There is a great word to be said. Your Uncle Ransom has returned. He may be here at any time. Come in, Teresa, and wait for him with us. This is a moment for us all. My Ransom, my especial son, the one who has my name! We will welcome him together. It is not a thing for me alone. I shall know him when I see him. We shall know each other. He will not be different to me. I shall not to him.”

  Selina’s voice broke and she groped for her handkerchief, unable to put her hand on it. Lavinia took one from the pocket of her coat, bringing something with it, that fell to the ground. She moved quickly to retrieve it, but her father forestalled her, and was handing it to her when it caught his glance. He stood with his eyes on it, looked at his daughter and back at it, and at length spoke.

  “What is this, Lavinia?”

  “That? Oh, I don’t know. What is it?”

  “It is an envelope addressed to me by Teresa. The postmark has the date of the letter that was found in your grandmother’s desk. How do you explain it?”

  “Has it? What of it? I must have picked it up in her room. It was accounted for, wasn’t it?”

  Ninian drew from the envelope a small paper-knife belonging to Lavinia, and looked her in the eyes.

  “Tell me about it, my daughter.”

  “What is there to tell? I must have seen the envelope, and put it in my pocket without thinking. And I suppose the knife was there. I often carry it about with me. Why should I have thought of it? If there was anything wrong about it, I should have destroyed the envelope. It means nothing.”

  “It means what it does. I wish you had destroyed it. Or perhaps I should not wish it. It is right that the truth should emerge. Tell me the whole.”

  “You tell it to me. You know more of it than I do. The matter means nothing to me. It is to you; it seems to mean something. Do you know about it?”

  “Lavinia, this is no good. The truth is thrust on us. We are helpless before it. Tell it to us yourself.”

  “You have told it, my son,” said Selina. “We do not need it again.”

  “He is implying something,” said Lavinia, turning between them as if bewildered. “I can only guess what it is. The letter was in your desk, Grandma. And the envelope must have fallen on the floor. And I suppose I picked it up. It is what anyone would do. Such things do not leave a memory.”

  “Why did you put the letter in the desk, my child? I have never quite understood. Why did you not destroy it?”

  “Do we destroy other people’s letters? I thought they were sacrosanct. If I came on this one, and put it in the desk for you to read, it was a natural thing to do. And an easy thing to forget. I should not have known what was in it. We do not read people’s letters either.”

  “The paper-knife tells its tale,” said Ninian. “There is no need to make another.”

  “You thought I was going to die?” said Selina, her eyes still on her grand-daughter.

  “We were all afraid of it, Grandma. But that does not bear on the matter.”

  “Then the letter would have been found after my death, and the guilt assigned to me? And to my conscious self that time.”

  “I don’t know anything about the letter. Except that Father read it to us.”

  “A service you did not need,” said Ninian. “Have you known all the time, Mother?”

  “I could not know. I have thought it. I knew it was not any self of mine. And who could it have been? Who had an end to serve? Who—it is best to say it at once—sorted the letters when they came? Who was distraught and not in command of herself?”

  “Then you were shielding Lavinia?”

  “Well, I had no proof. And an unconscious self is a useful shield. There is no question of blame.”

  “What have you to say, my daughter?”

  “Nothing,” said Lavinia, in a sudden, hard tone, as if casting off a guise. “I thought it a service to you to hide the letter, a service to us all. Yes, and the greatest to myself. It would have saved us from wrong and wretchedness, as I saw the matter then.”

  “Why did you not destroy it, as your grandmother said?”

  “It might have transpired that Teresa had sent it,” said Lavinia, in an almost exasperated tone, as if this should be clear.

  “But should we have suspected you? You of all people? You know we should not.”

  “There would have been discussion and question. And the letters went through my hands, as Grandma has also said.”

  “You thought we should find the letter in the end?”

  “You would have gone through Grandma’s papers,” said Lavinia, with an open sigh.

  “That is most of it,” said Selina. “And the rest I know. It was too much to destroy the letter. The wrong of it would have been too great. Poor child!”

  “We must try to see her in that way,” said Ninian. “It is not as she has seen herself.”

  “And not as you have seen her,” said Teresa. “That must be said. It may be at the root of everything.”

  “The guilt is not mine. I had my own right to happiness. If I was making too large a part of hers, it was time I ceased. It was time indeed. Perhaps it was too late. Perhaps I am partly to blame. It would help me to feel I was.”

  “So I have been the cause of it all.”

  “Not you yourself,” said Lavinia. “Anyone in your place.”

  “You took a great risk. Few of us would have dared to take it. So much depends on our courage.”

  “I am grieved to the heart,” said Ninian.

  A low voice came from the door, where Miss Starkie stood with the children.

  “Would you like to come upstairs, Lavinia?”

  “No, thank you. Nothing would be gained.”

  “You share my grief, Miss Starkie,” said Ninian. “It is especially yours and mine.”

  “I can hardly believe it, Mr. Middleton. I feel it cannot be true.”

  “We all felt in that way. It was forced upon us. Lavinia herself has said it now.”

  “I don’t understand about it,” said Leah, in an undertone.

  “I do,” said Hengist, half-smiling. “I will tell you upstairs.”

  “You will not,” said Miss Starkie, in an unfamiliar tone. “You will neither of you utter a word of it, now or ever. It is a thing you will not dare to do.”

  “I haven’t said a word,” said Agnes. “I knew it was that kind of thing.”

  “We are not always with her,” said Hengist, glancing at Miss Starkie.

  “I trust you,” said the latter, looking at him. “You must be worthy of trust.”

  “Are you worthy?” said Leah in a whisper.

  “No. And it is no good to try to be, when you are not.”

  “Not even Lavinia seems to be,” said Leah, her tone awed.

  “I must speak at last,” said Hugo to Egbert. “Have we to believe it?”

  “Yes. The idea had occurred to me. But I thought it could not be.”

  “It can’t. Not as it seems. It was fate, her father, anything. She is
a pawn in the game.”

  “Lavinia could not be a pawn. She laid her plan. She was serving the common cause.”

  “Her own first of all. That was rare and resolute in her. It is so unusual to serve ourselves. All the talk is of serving others. It draws me closer to her. Teresa saw something of the truth. Would you have dared to do it?”

  “No, or perhaps I might have. As I say, the thought had struck me. So I must have felt it possible. Is it a protection to have no courage?”

  “Should you not say a word to the person who showed it?”

  “Yes, I have planned the word. It is what I have been doing. I hope it will not fail.”

  Egbert moved to his sister.

  “Lavinia, I have seen you as the heroine of a drama. And you have emerged as the opposite. But it is the latter who carries our sympathy. Think of the examples in books, the very best ones.”

  “Well, is this a case in life?” said Lavinia, holding her eyes from him, and unconscious of her clenched hands. “I hardly think it will be. But it is a clever word.”

  “It is an honest one. It comes from my heart. And I could not have faced the danger. I should simply have been afraid. What a waste it has been!”

  “I forgot that one thing we are known to forget. Or are found to have forgotten, when it has betrayed us. In my case the envelope with the paper-knife. Perhaps it shows I am not hardened.”

  “You have needed to be. Dire things have come upon you.”

  “I have simply not realised them. I don’t realise what is on me now. You are remembering things I said. I can see they are coming back to you. I shall never be trusted again. I shall live under a cloud. But perhaps no one is trusted much. Or I can try to think so.”

  “Grandma emerges as a great figure. I feel I have not known her.”

  “And have not known me. I suppose she has known us all. I half-fancied she suspected. Or I think now that I did. But I somehow felt I was safe with her. I almost felt I had her sympathy. Unless I imagine that too.”

  “I like the wisdom after the event,” said Hugo. “It tends to be real wisdom. The other has so often to be disowned.”