Read A Heritage and its History Online
Authors: Ivy Compton-Burnett
A Heritage and its History
AND ITS HISTORY
by
Ivy COMPTON-BURNETT
Chapter 1
“It is a pity you have not my charm, Simon,” said Walter Challoner.
“Well, we hardly want a double share in a family.”
“I am glad you are all without it. It is untrue that we cannot have too much of a good thing. I could not bear to be one amongst many. It would not suit the something there is about me.”
“I don't see anything to mind in it.”
“But is there anything about you, Simon?”
“It would not help me, if there was. One amongst many is what I am. The number of us is my trouble. My uncle has his dealings with my father, and my father passes them on to me. I have no personal scope. My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me. I see it shortening before my eyes. And Uncle must leave everything to Father, before I even become the heir. It throws my life into an indefinite future. I never put it into words, but I carry a burden about with me.”
“It is praiseworthy not to put it into words. I wonder how it would be, if you did.”
“Words do not hasten things,” said Simon.
“No, or yours would have done so. Can it be that you have death in your heart? What a different thing
from charm! To think of the gulf between us! I wonder if there is any outward sign of it.”
The brothers did present a difference, as they stood in the family dining-room. Walter was short and pale and spare, with long, narrow features and alert, light eyes, and sudden, uneven movements that seemed to be a part of him. Simon, three years older, and now a man of twenty-five, was tall and large and heavily made, with a florid, regular face, lively, brown eyes, and the precise and easy movements that tend to go with weight. Something in the firm profile and supple hands of both suggested the tie of blood.
“Well, charm should be on the surface,” said Simon. “It has no hidden use.”
“It does what it can, one poor little portion amongst all that is without it. Strive on, Walter Challoner, and the charm you see in secret, you can reward openly.”
“There is none in being blasphemous,” said Simon, looking at the breakfast table.
“Simon, surely you are a modern man.”
“And none in ignoring conventions. And real charm should be unconscious.”
“No good quality is that. Good qualities involve effort. Without it they would not exist. Think of charity and tolerance. Even with it they exist uncertainly. But charm is perhaps more of the nature of a gift. It makes me humble as well as proud.”
“I can only be the first. I have no chance of being what I might. I serve the place through other men, and feel my own powers wasted.”
“It is pleasant to be conscious of powers. I admit I find it so. And they ought to have their outlet. But your heart is unduly set on the place. It seems to be the meaning of your life.”
“I do not deny it or wish to. I love it as I could never love anything else. Even you are second to it. Wife and child could never be more to me. I shall need them, in order to hand it on to my descendants. That will be their first meaning. And my hands are tied. I can order and alter nothing. You are in a better position, pretending to be a poet.”
“Simon, pray do not talk to me like a member of my family. And just as you were being so different! I seldom speak of my ambitions or their fate. There is a good deal of quiet courage in my life. Turn your eyes on it, and let it lead you onward.”
“That is the last thing I can hope for. I am held back in everything. Look at this room and its dinginess! It gets darker with every day. It is that creeper smothering the house. And I can do nothing. When the place is mine, I shall have it cut away.”
“I did not mean you to be led as far onward as that. Uncle Edwin and Father would both have to die.”
“Well, people must die in the end.”
“Of course they must not. People are immortal. You must have noticed it. Indeed you betray that you have.”
“I wish I could think I was. My time will be too short to serve any purpose. And there are things I want to do so much.”
“Your voice broke with pardonable emotion. I had not met that before. So it is true that books are based on life. But you plan to do things when two people are dead. That proves you are immortal. It is they who are not.”
“It is what they seem to be. And older people would naturally die first.”
“Well, Nature is cruel. We are told about it. They ought to have the first claims. They are led to expect them.”
“Who is cruel?” said another voice, as an elderly man entered the room. “Good-morning to you both.”
“Good-morning, Uncle,” said the two young men together.
“Nature is cruel,” said Walter. “She lets older people die before young, when they have a better right to live, as they have that to everything.”
“And have formed the habit of living,” said Simon, easily.
“Yes,” said Sir Edwin, glancing at him. “But people may not die in order of age.”
“What did I tell you?” murmured Walter. “You see he is immortal. Or anyhow he sees it.”
“What made you think about death? It is a thought for my age rather than yours.”
“The creeper on the house,” said Simon. “It has had its time.”
“So have many of us. But I hope it is not dying? I planted it myself fifty years ago. And I feel that gives it a claim on life. I cannot give a reason.”
“I cannot either,” said Simon, laughing.
“I can,” murmured Walter. “It helps him to feel there is no such thing as death. If it dies, he will see there is.âNo, it is not dying, Uncle. But Simon wishes it was. He says it darkens the house.”
“It may do so. I daresay I do the same. It is a thing that comes with age. But it will be left as it is, as I shall be. We will be allowed to grow old together.”
“What do you mean, Uncle? You know you are our sunshine.”
Sir Edwin laughed, but looked at his elder nephew.
“He was saying he would have it cut down, when the place was his? No, I was not listening at the door. He need not admit it.”
“Uncle, are you trying to introduce an element of discomfort?”
“That tends to come, when death is mentioned, and someone over sixty is in the room.”
“Sixty!” murmured Walter. “When he is sixty-nine! He does mean to be immortal.”
“Good-morning to you all,” said another voice. “Here is someone else over sixty. It is a common thing. What is the talk about it?”
“Not as common as being in the twenties,” said Sir Edwin, “nor held to be.”
“But quite ordinary,” said Walter. “That is what I really think. It is the secret of my appeal.”
“If it is a secret, why not keep it?” said Simon.
“It seems to need explanation. Charm is so elusive.”
“Well, we have had our help,” said his uncle.
The elder pair of brothers made as great a contrast
as the younger, and seemed to combine their attributes with their own. Sir Edwin had Simon's height and Walter's spareness and pallor, a fuller brow than either, and deep, grey eyes, with a piercing quality they seemed to try to veil. His brother was as short as his second son, and as dark as the first, with firm, sunken features and sunken, sombre eyes, and a suggestion about him of a failing hold on life. All four had the straightness of bone and suppleness of hand that went to the family type.
“Your young men talk of demolishing the creeper on the house, Hamish,” said Sir Edwin. “It is encroaching, as old things do. They must accept our sympathy with it.”
“I remember your planting it. We have gone through the years together. And changed with them, as we must. And it has no designs on our lives.”
“I am not so sure,” said Simon, laughing. “It takes your light for itself.”
“And stands in yours in a way,” said Sir Edwin. “Or is involved with those who do.”
“I meant just what I said, Uncle. It is not good to live in shade. You would be better with it gone.”
“We are clinging to life. I think you would not deny it.”
“It is the fault of the old, that they do that,” said Hamish.
“You both seem to think you are a hundred,” said Walter.
“No, I hardly like to think I am sixty-nine, as you have observed,” said Sir Edwin.
“You ought to be just a little deaf, Uncle.”
“We are not always treated as what we ought to be. I think we seldom are. Perhaps I am fortunate.”
“Uncle, pray do not speak to me in a dry manner.”
“We don't know how long the creeper lives,” said Simon.
“Something else we have in common with it,” said his father.
“It used to be forbidden to talk about age,” said Sir Edwin. “When a custom is broken, we see what lies at the back of it. There is reason behind all convention.”
“I think we may talk about the age of a plant,” said Simon.
“This plant is nothing to do with you or me,” said Hamish, gently. “The house and what is in or on it are your uncle's.”
“They are for the time. But they are to do with all of us. Each of us in turn holds them in trust.”
“But not out of his turn,” said Sir Edwin. “We live in the present, not in the ultimate future. We need not voice our thoughts about it.”
“Ultimate future!” murmured Walter. “Indeed they are immortal.”
“We are, or ought to be, as far as your brother is concerned. Looking past other people's lives is a poor habit.”
“What habit is that?” said another voice, as a grey-haired woman entered the room. “Simon, you are not beginning the day by arguing with your uncle?”
“I am glad to hear it,” said her son. “I was afraid I was.”
“I quarrel with anyone who peoples his world simply with himself,” said Sir Edwin.
“Some people must see themselves in their place,” said Hamish. “Simon's is not his fault. He cannot help knowing it.”
“He talks as if he had no other interest.”
“Well, what other has he, Edwin?” said Mrs. Challoner. “We have not so much in our life.”
“People should wait for changes to come. And they may safely do so.”
“Who brought up the subject? It is not a good one for the morning.”
“The creeper on the house, Mater,” said Simon. “I said it should be cut down.”
“And implied that it would be,” said Hamish. “And we throw no doubt on it. But everything has its time.”
“We know not on what day nor at what hourââ” said his wife. “But what is wrong with the creeper? It adds so much to the house.”
“Too much,” said Simon. “It throws its shadow all over it. This room is like a dungeon. I should be thankful to see it gone.”
“I should be most distressed. It is a part of my home to me, of the background of my married life. It will not go with my consent.”
“Then it will not go,” said her son.
“Has the creeper a name?” said Walter.
“No one knows it,” said Simon. “And no one has
taken the trouble to find out. And the name we give it suits it, the thing that creeps.”
Julia Challoner was a long-limbed, upright woman of fifty-eight, with clear, hazel eyes, waving, grey hair, hands that might have met a demand, if one had been made, and a face that was at once roughly-hewn and handsome, pleasant and prone to cloud. She and her husband had lost their early feeling, but retained dependence and trust; and of late her affection for him had been charged with her fears for his health. She was both critical and fond as a mother, and would have found more fault than she did, had not a natural, nervous discontent been held in check by her religion.