A Heritage and its History (4 page)

“It may be just a little good, just a little.”

“Well, we are laggards,” said Sir Edwin, entering in front of his brother. “I fear that never might have been better than as late as this. We did not judge our time.”

“We judged it,” said Hamish, “but I did not make the pace. The never is far enough on the way for the lateness to be forgiven.”

“Now you will tell us just how you are,” said Rhoda.

“As I have done so, I will not again. Ill fortune does not add to us. And to be at one's end is nothing better. We can only be lessened by it.”

“By being on the edge of the solution?” said Rhoda, looking down and just uttering the words, with a glance
at Sir Edwin. “About to know the unknowable? No, no.

“I do not look to that. The dead past buries its dead. That is how it is about to serve me.”

“The past and the future are alive. We add to them day by day. The present owes homage to them. And we in the present give it.”

“Does your sister give her homage to anything?” said Hamish, smiling.

“Not to people's past,” said Fanny. “There does not seem enough reason. They are too little pleased with it themselves. And not much to my own so far.”

“We will pay homage to Fanny's youth,” said Rhoda. “She is twelve years younger than I am. I remember the day when she was born.”

“I am not sure that that is homage,” said Hamish. “Do you pay it to anything, Edwin?”

“Sometimes to what is done or thought. Seldom to what comes of it.”

“Ah, the lesson of our experience!” said Rhoda, turning towards him. “How I give it my homage! And some of what lies ahead! How we should bow before those who face it! There is the need for courage.”

“It is good of you to see my place. And to see my brother's. I do not know which is the harder.”

“I know. The one that demands the most. And you know, though you must not say it. When a thing is too much to face, we must accept it and be silent.”

“Yes, it is too much for me. That is self-pity, and
must be condemned. And I am uncertain how to feel to my brother. Pity of any kind has a poor name. And some of us would do ill without it.”

“I feel no pity. What I feel is something else, something not even akin. I feel what I have said. As you confront things full and unafraid, you will remember that I feel it?”

“I am afraid. It is dark before me. I trust my own time will not be long. That is the zenith of my hope. My brother and I have been too much to each other. We have given too little to our friends. I wonder we have them; we have but few. Life must be give and take.”

“But it should be good to give. If we must take as well, it is a poor giving. We must render freely to make a gift. I hope I may give what I have? It is what I ask.”

“So I shall have a friend. I shall need one and show my need. What I have will be less than nothing; you must indeed be willing to give. While I am waiting, I will remember. It will be a light in the coming blank. A faint one; I will say the truth; but it will be a light.”

“I am grateful,” said Rhoda, in a low tone. “And the fainter the light, the more grateful. To be allowed to do our little, when we cannot do much! It is indeed a cause for it.”

“I can say no more. My brother is looking at us. I am his while he needs me. In a sense I am always his.”

“We are talking of the future,” said Hamish. “I find
I like to think of it. When one will not share it, there is a lightness in its interest. I see it as a picture or a play.”

“I see it as a threat,” said Fanny. “There is more chance of ill than of good.”

“Let us add your marriage to it. It is proper that a play should have one.”

“Then I should have the loss,” said Rhoda. “Not that that is a thing to count.”

“Why is it not?” said Sir Edwin.

“You may marry yourself,” said Hamish.

“Then the loss would be mine,” said Fanny. “And I should count it, and expect other people to. I could not have anything I suffered, passed over.”

“You would not mind pity?” said Sir Edwin.

“I should mind the case for it. I think people usually mind that the most.”

“You are right not to be troubled by it. It can be of use.”

“Why does marriage make loss?” said Rhoda. “It ought to widen a relationship, not weaken it.”

“Widening things attenuates them,” said Sir Edwin. “I think it has to be.”

“It sounds as if people should not marry,” said Hamish. “But permission is not sought. I have sons, and shall find it so. Or I should, if I were to see the time. It has yet to come.”

“How are the sons doing?” said Rhoda.

“Thank you, not well. Simon is restless and dissatisfied, and Walter has left Oxford without a degree. I do not know how to help them in my days. And when
I am elsewhere, it may only be permitted to help those who help themselves.”

There was some mirth, and Rhoda spoke to Sir Edwin under its cover.

“We admire jesting about such things. We know it is brave and selfless; we should admire it. And yet we feel there is an emptiness beneath.”

“My brother and I have no beliefs. No religious issue is involved. Death is to us the natural change and end.”

“You have to be brave to face it, honest to feel it. Perhaps I could be neither. But I must stand by my own truth.”

“It is not a question of courage, simply of what our reason accepts or denies.”

“People talk as if we could select our beliefs,” said Fanny. “They seem to think they are a matter of personal taste. And it is true there have been fashions in them, and that being out of fashion has been visited.”

“Any honest belief is helpless,” said Hamish.

“Oh, there is so much more in it than that,” said Rhoda.

“I thought it put the matter in a word,” said Sir Edwin.

“Yes, that is what it did. But is a word the right vehicle for anything with such a range, nothing less than the whole of human destiny?”

“Words are all we have. It is no good to find fault with them.”

“And yet I do so. They are used as if they had some power. And how little they have!”

“I would not quite say that of yours,” said Sir Edwin, smiling.

“Here are two people who will have opinions on the matter, indeed on all matters,” said Hamish, as his sons were heard. “And they will not grudge them to us.”

“We are not guilty of intrusion,” said Simon, “or of any hope that we might be welcome. My mother has sent us to enquire for my father and to help him home. She was afraid he would find the second walk too much.”

“Are you prepared to bear me in your arms?” said Hamish.

“Certainly, if there is need.”

“I shall be glad of your support. I have come here for the last time, unaided. That is, for the last time. You must let me make the most of it.”

“We will do the same,” said Walter. “It is good to come out to tea without being asked.”

“You may not have done that,” said his father.

“But you perceive we have. Miss Graham is pouring it out. I am no longer affecting not to see.”

“Is your mother troubled about me?”

“Not now you are in our charge.”

“It is good to be a strong, young man,” said Rhoda. “One of the best things.”

“Not as good as that,” said Walter. “We always have too little to our credit. A woman is not expected to have so much. It is enough that she exists.”

“Oh, a good deal more is required of her than that. You would not like to be one?”

“Yes, I think I should. I should feel less guilt. And
people say I should make a good-looking woman. Simon would make such an awkward one.”

“My wife would have liked Walter to be a girl,” said Hamish. “And I should have welcomed a daughter.”

“No wonder I am guilty. That throws its own light.”

“I should have liked a sister as well as a brother,” said Simon.

“Simon, I hoped I was enough for you. The light grows fierce.”

“I think you would make a good man, Rhoda,” said Simon.

“I often have to be one. And I seem to manage fairly well.”

“Simon, have you any reason to use Miss Graham's Christian name?” said Hamish.

“I have assumed I have tacit permission.”

“Most things should be tacit,” said Walter. “I often wish everything was.”

“Ah, Walter's Oxford history makes a sad tale,” said Hamish.

“Father, pray let it be tacit.”

“You may depend too much upon that refuge.”

“But let me do so enough.”

“Come, I have said nothing yet.”

“You said it in a word,” said Simon.

“Well, if I went further, I might say too much.”

“I don't think the term, tacit, seems much good,” said Walter.

“You always seem so happy about things,” said Fanny to Simon.

“It is useless to be crushed by them. It can do nothing. There is so much in front of us; my father's death, my mother's widowhood, my uncle's bereavement, my own dull and subservient life. There is no point in dwelling on it all, as if it were not enough.”

“Your father is being brave. I daresay you wish he would be less so.”

“I suppose he is; yes, of course he is. But I think cowardice is best,” said Simon, laughing. “When my time comes, I shall be a coward. It will be better for me and everyone.”

“I should be a coward anyhow. So much of one, that I doubt the usefulness.”

“My father does what he owes to himself. I believe a lot of virtue comes from that. His conception of himself is too high.”

“Living up to it must be a strain. I should not think it is good for him.”

“I am sure it is not. It is helping to shorten his life,” said Simon, with his open acceptance of truth. “He should spare himself.”

“My sister's conception of herself is also high. All her conceptions are. She would never see that cowardice was best.”

“Perhaps our conception of ourselves is not as low as it might be,” said Simon, laughing.

“What is not so?” said Hamish.

“Some people's conception of themselves, Father.”

“I wonder how many of us would really say what that was,” said Sir Edwin.

“I do not wonder,” said Simon. “None of us.”

“Oh, that is surely too sweeping,” said Rhoda. “It might not be such an alarming thing.”

“It would be,” said Fanny. “We mean an honest conception, not a constructed one.”

“Do we?” said Walter. “I was just constructing mine.”

“I was checking my instinct to do so,” said Hamish.

“His must be settled,” said Simon to Fanny. “He has no time to modify it. And he would think it beneath him.”

“And it is different for people without beliefs. We do not have to be fit to die.”

“He has to be fit to be lamented and remembered. I sound callous, but that would be his thought. But his conception of himself is as honest as it can be. We can none of us look into the depths.”

“Or what would be the good of having always kept our eyes from them?”

“It might be a wholesome experience,” said Rhoda.

“Wholesome! What a strange word!” said her sister.

“You are giving a wrong impression of yourself. Or I trust you are.”

“Well, I hope I seem to be.”

“Do you believe in immortality, Rhoda?” said Simon.

“I can answer that in one word. Yes.”

“I can do the same,” said Fanny. “No.”

“It should not be in us to feel we are born to die,” said Rhoda. “We should be above such a feeling. Ah, it would be a poor conception, a poor thing.”

“I agree that it is poor,” said Simon.

“Should we like to live for ever?” said Hamish.

“Yes, if we did so,” said his brother. “Our being would be adapted to it.”

“It does seem that it might be done,” said Walter.

“I seem to be obstinate,” said Rhoda, “and that is said to be weakness. But I am not so sure.”

“Neither am I,” said Sir Edwin, smiling. “We may say it is weakness, when we find it too strong for us. Conviction is a powerful thing.”

“We shall be thought argumentative sisters. That is, if people think of us.”

“Oh, I hope they do that,” said Fanny. “Why should we be ignored?”

Simon turned to her again.

“Do you like your life here with your sister?”

“Well, it is the life I lead. And I suppose we all like living.”

“It does not afford you much scope.”

“It affords me none. But what should I do, if I had it? The lack may be a protection.”

“We cannot know what you could do, if you had the chance.”

“Well, suppose we did know! It may be better not to find out.”

“I should like to know it both about you and myself.”

“Know what?” said Hamish.

“What we have in us, Father.”

“Surely that emerges day by day.”

“If it has a chance to do so.”

“Oh, you do not wear fetters, my boy.”

“I was wondering if both Fanny and I wore them in a way.”

“We have no wings,” said Hamish. “It is no good to feel we should spread them so far, if we had.”

“I think it does us a little good,” said Simon, laughing.

“We see where you get your poetic gift, Walter,” said Rhoda.

“I hope he will make more use of it than I have,” said Hamish.

“Father, surely your life has been a poem,” said his son.

“I think we must be going. Your mother will be wondering about me.”

“She said she would leave you in our hands,” said Simon.

“I shall be in them in another sense, if we wait longer. And we have had what should be enough.”

“As we have,” said Rhoda. “We should ask no more. Indeed we do not ask it. We hope to come ourselves to you, when we may.”