Parents and Children

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  She looked at Eleanor with a guarded, neutral expression. She could not see her with affection, as they were not bound by blood; and the motives of her son’s choice of her were as obscure to her as such motives to other mothers; but she respected her for her hold on him, and was grateful to her for her children. And she had a strong appreciation of her living beneath her roof. If Eleanor saw it as a hard choice, her husband’s mother saw it as an heroic one, and bowed to her as able for things above herself. The two women lived in a formal accord, which had never come to dependence; and while each saw the other as a fellow and an equal, neither would have grieved at the other’s death.

  Luce sat down on the floor and laid her head on her grandmother’s lap. Regan put a hand on her head. Eleanor took her usual seat and her skilled needlework. She was a woman who did not make or mend for her family. Her daughter broke the silence by throwing her arms across Regan’s knees and giving a sigh.

  ‘Grandma,’ she said, putting back her head to regard the latter’s knitting, ‘your needles flying in and out remind me of the things that work in and out of our lives. Each stitch a little happening, a little step forward or back. I daresay there are as many backward steps as forward. But that is not like your knitting, is it?’

  She continued to survey the needles with a steadiness that was natural, in view of what she derived from them; and Regan smiled and continued to knit, as if she did not take so much account of the employment.

  ‘We have not much chance of going back,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Not in your sense, Mother,’ said Luce, not moving her eyes. ‘But there is a certain progression in our lives, which we do not always maintain. It so often comes to a swinging to and fro.’

  ‘You mean in ourselves, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Mother, I do mean that,’ said Luce, looking at her mother as if struck by the acuteness of her thought.

  ‘My days for progress are past,’ said Regan.

  ‘I wonder why people say that in such a contented tone,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘They may as well put a good face on it.’

  ‘No, Grandma, I do not think it is that,’ said Luce, tilting back her head to look into Regan’s face. ‘I think it is just that many things still stretch in front of them, though some may be behind. I think we all go on advancing in ways of our own, until some sort of climax comes, that we all look towards as a goal.’ She said the last words lightly, as if not quite sure if she had made or avoided a reference to her grandmother’s death, and settled herself in a better position on the floor to indicate that her thoughts were on trivial, material things.

  Regan kept her eyes on her needles, which she seldom did if her thoughts were on them. She was thinking for a moment of her own end. It engaged her mind no oftener as it drew nearer, and it did this so lightly at the moment that it failed to keep its hold.

  ‘Where is Grandpa, dear?’ she said to Luce, in a tone that offered the tenderness due to a child, and the respect due to a woman.

  ‘I don’t know, Grandma; I hope he is not by himself.’

  ‘Your father is with him,’ said Eleanor. ‘You reminded him to go to him.’

  ‘So I did, Mother,’ said Luce, putting frank eyes on her mother’s face.

  ‘Fulbert will find it a change to have regular work, if it has to come,’ said Regan, with the thrust in her tone that seemed to be an outlet for emotion.

  ‘And it seems that it must,’ said Eleanor.

  Luce glanced from one face to another, as if she would not seek information where it was not given.

  ‘I think Father sometimes does more for Grandpa than appears at a glance, Mother. His desk is often littered with accounts.’

  Eleanor did not dispute this.

  ‘It all appears at a glance perhaps,’ said Regan, with a smile of pure indulgence.

  ‘Grandma, you are not at heart a critical parent. Your children must always have found you a refuge from the censorious world.’

  Regan’s face worked at mention of her children, two of whom were dead.

  ‘You would not say the same of your mother,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘No, Mother, no,’ said Luce in a deliberate tone, lifting her eyes in sincere thought. ‘But we can say other things.’

  A sound of singing came from the hall, and the performer entered and proceeded to the hearth, where he ended his song with his eyes on his hearers and an expression of absent goodwill. Regan looked at him with automatic fondness; Luce gave him a smile; and Eleanor did not move her eyes.

  ‘Grandpa,’ said Luce, moving hers so much that they almost rolled, ‘did you feel the impulse to come to us about three minutes ago?’

  ‘Just about, just about, my dear,’ said Sir Jesse, adapting his measure to the words.

  ‘Then it is a case of telepathy,’ said Luce, looking round. ‘I have noticed that Grandpa is sensitive in such ways. His response is almost consistent.’

  ‘Well, how are all of you?’ said Sir Jesse, surveying the women as if they belonged to a different sphere, as he felt they did.

  ‘We are well and happy, Grandpa,’ said Luce, in a personally satisfied tone.

  Regan’s face showed her support for this view, and Eleanor’s face told nothing.

  ‘How has this young woman been behaving?’ said Sir Jesse, displacing his wife’s cap and causing her to simulate a pleased amusement.

  ‘She has been behaving well, Grandpa,’ said Luce, turning up her eyes to Regan’s face.

  ‘And this younger woman?’ said Sir Jesse, indicating Eleanor, but disturbing nothing about her.

  ‘She has been behaving well too, Grandpa,’ said Luce, in a demure tone.

  ‘And this youngest woman of all?’

  ‘Well too, Grandpa,’ said Luce, hardly uttering the words.

  ‘Three good women,’ began Sir Jesse to the tune of a song, but broke off as his grandsons entered, and spoke with a change of tone. ‘Well, I suppose it is time to eat, as you appear amongst us. What meal do we expect?’

  ‘Luncheon, Grandpa,’ said Luce, in the same tone.

  ‘It is a pity we cannot break Graham of this way of eating,’ said Daniel. ‘It is such a primitive habit.’

  ‘Do not talk nonsense,’ said Eleanor, in a low tone.

  Sir Jesse Sullivan was a large, strong man of seventy-nine, whose movements were surprisingly supple for his build and age, perhaps the result of his frequent mild exercise, and perhaps the cause of it. His small, dark, deep-set eyes looked out under a jutting, almost jagged brow, and his blunt, bony features seemed to mould themselves to his mood in a manner inconsistent with themselves. This element of inconsistence seemed to go through him. His solid, old hands had a simple flexibility, and his hard, husky voice had vibrations that suggested another being. His eyes were familiar and fond on his wife, less familiar and faintly admiring on Eleanor, comradely and somehow unrelenting on his son, indulgent on Luce, and sharp and piercing on his grandsons, who as males dependent on their education, and dependent on him for its cost, struck him as suitably occupied only at their books. The expense of the training that produced schoolmasters and curates and such dependent men, was so startling to Sir Jesse, who had himself had little education and no thought that he required more, that he put it from his sight; and it seemed inconsiderate and almost insubordinate in his grandsons to act as a reminder.

  ‘Is Father ready for luncheon, Grandpa?’ said Luce.

  ‘He is, my dear,’ said Fulbert, running into the room, ‘and he hopes it bears the same relation to him.’

  ‘It will be ready at the right time, Father,’ said Luce, folding her arms round her knees in preparation for waiting.

  ‘I suppose Graham must come to meals,’ said Daniel. ‘There ought to be some other way of managing about him.’

  ‘We must eat to live,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘But is that necessary for Graham, Father?’

  Luce gave a quick look at her second brother.

  ‘The gong gets a little late
r every day,’ said Fulbert consulting his watch.

  ‘It is the someone behind the gong, Father,’ said Luce, and in a tone so light and even that it might have escaped notice. ‘And then the someone behind that.’

  ‘You would think it would help the household to have things on time.’

  ‘Such a household would be above help,’ said Daniel.

  ‘It is a tribute to Grandma’s management that you can talk like that, Father,’ said Luce.

  ‘Well, I may be allowed to pay her the compliment.’

  Regan looked touched beyond the demand of the occasion.

  ‘The gong must soon sound with so much behind it,’ said Graham, in his toneless voice.

  ‘It will sound when luncheon is ready,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘It will be our last luncheon without the babies at the end,’ said Luce. ‘Their holiday ends today. I cannot get used to being without them.’

  ‘Luce has not forgotten her brothers and sister in three weeks,’ said Daniel. ‘It must be the depth of her nature.’

  ‘You did not remember them enough to speak of them,’ said Sir Jesse.

  As the gong sounded through the house, Fulbert walked swiftly to the door and held it open for the women, sending his eyes to different objects in the room, as if he felt no inclination to hurry this part of the proceedings. He rather enjoyed any duty that had a touch of the formal or official. At the table he did the carving, a duty deputed by his father, and performed it with attention, swiftness and skill, supplying his own plate at the end with equal but not extra care. Daniel and Graham were talking under their breath, and their mother threw them a glance.

  ‘You need not concern yourself with them,’ said Sir Jesse. ‘They are about to address themselves to their business.’

  ‘Isn’t it a repellent trait in my brother?’ said Daniel.

  ‘So is Grandpa,’ murmured Graham. ‘He and I are of the same old stock.’

  ‘Any word you have to say of me, you can say to my face,’ said Sir Jesse.

  Graham was about to reply, but his mother’s eyes prevented him. He was dependent on Sir Jesse for most of what he had, and this was not a forfeiture it was wise to incur. Daniel took his grandfather in an easier spirit and reckoned with him in so far as he served his purposes. Sir Jesse thought him better behaved, a not uncommon result of this attitude of youth.

  ‘Well, my boy, we must break our news,’ said Sir Jesse to his son.

  ‘Of the prospect that takes me from the bosom of my family,’ said Fulbert, looking with mingled apprehension and resolution at the faces round him.

  ‘Mother, Grandpa,’ said Luce, turning steady eyes upon them, ‘we should be glad to have this thing cleared up, whatever it is. We have been living for days under the sword of Damocles, and it will be a relief to have it fall. What is this threat of losing Father for some reason unexplained? We should be grateful for the truth, and we feel we have a right to it.’

  ‘Your father has to go to South America to look into the estate,’ said Eleanor. ‘Your grandfather had the final letters today.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother. That is at once a shock and a satisfaction. We had no idea what the dark hints might portend, and imagination was outstripping the truth. Now we may hope that the exile will not be long.’

  ‘A matter of six months,’ said Fulbert, with courage and ease.

  ‘Thank you, Father. That would have been a blow not so many days ago. As it is, we chiefly experience relief.’

  ‘You could have asked before,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘No, Mother, we could not,’ said Luce, meeting her eyes. ‘There was that about you, that precluded approach of the subject.’

  ‘What led our elders to conceal the simple matter?’ said Daniel, in a low tone.

  ‘The instinct to keep all things from the young,’ said Graham. ‘Even a temporary concealment was better than nothing.’

  ‘Six months is a moderate sentence,’ said Daniel. ‘We can hardly expect Graham to show a new son to Father on his return.’

  Graham glanced at Regan in imagination of her feeling.

  ‘I shall not live six months many more times,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you will, Grandma,’ said Luce, in an even tone. ‘Probably a good many more.’

  ‘What about me in exile?’ said Fulbert.

  ‘Poor Father! You did not expect to have to ask that question.’

  ‘I would go myself if I were younger by a few years,’ said Sir Jesse, with an undernote of inflexibility that revealed his true relation with his son. ‘And it is not only for that reason that I wish I were.’

  ‘I cannot imagine you in a stage more becoming, Grandpa,’ said Luce.

  ‘I have liked others better, my dear,’ said Sir Jesse, smiling to himself as he recalled these.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to pay Grandpa an occasional compliment,’ murmured Graham.

  Regan made an emotional sound, and Luce came and stood behind her, stroking her shoulders as she continued to talk.

  ‘A great part of Father’s duty must devolve on Mother.’

  ‘And she will be equal to it,’ said Fulbert, in a tone of paying the fullest tribute.

  ‘She will have but little support in one of her sons,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I wish the time were behind us,’ said Eleanor. ‘And I may make other people wish it more.’

  ‘A mother’s life is not all sacrifice,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘It is not indeed,’ said Regan, in allusion to her own lot.

  Luce gave Regan’s shoulder a final caress, and left her as if her attendance had done its work, as it appeared it had.

  ‘Father, perhaps a word from you would touch Graham at this time,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Nothing is asked of either of you, but that you shall consider your future,’ said Sir Jesse.

  ‘Grandpa, that is rather hard,’ said Luce. ‘More than that must be expected of everyone. And long months spent over books may not strike young men in that light.’

  ‘Then they are not what you call them.’

  ‘Well, they scarcely are as yet,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Mother, that is even harder,’ said Luce, with a laugh.

  ‘The mot abandoned youth is a child to his mother,’ murmured Graham.

  ‘Mother, you are setting a gallant example,’ said Luce. ‘Father has not a wife who will make things harder for him.’

  ‘We are none of us taking the line of showing him how much we are affected.’

  ‘No, we are not engaging in that competition, Mother. But we might not follow the other course with so much success.’

  ‘Those who show the least, feel the most,’ stated Fulbert.

  ‘That is not the line to take with me,’ said Regan, with smiling reference to her swift emotions.

  ‘You are a self-satisfied old woman,’ said her son.

  ‘Grandma has no need to wear a disguise,’ said Luce.

  ‘And have the rest of us?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Well, Mother, many people do wear one. That is all I meant.’

  ‘“This above all, to thine own self be true;

  And it must follow, as the night the day,

  Thou canst not then be false to any man,”’

  quoted Fulbert, in conclusion of the matter.

  ‘Why is that so?’ said Graham. ‘It might be true to ourselves to do all manner of wrong to other people.’

  ‘The only thing is to conquer that self, Graham,’ said Daniel.

  ‘It depends on the sense of the word, true,’ said Eleanor. ‘It means it would be dealing falsely with our own natures to do what degrades them.’

  ‘I expect it does mean that, Mother,’ said Luce, in a tone of receiving light and giving her mother the credit. ‘No doubt it should be taken so.’

  Sir Jesse broke into a song of his youth, a habit he had when he was not attentive to the talk, and sang in muffled reminiscent tones, which seemed at once to croon with sentiment and throb with experience. He glanced at the
portraits of his dead son and daughter, as if his emotion prepared the way for recalling them; and sang on, as though the possession of life overcame all else.

  His wife followed his look and his thought, though her eyes were not on him. She would have given her life for her children’s, and knew he would have done this for nothing at all, and accepted and supported his feeling. The pair lived with their son and his family, feeling amongst and not apart from them. They saw themselves as so young for their age, that they shared the common future. They were neither of them quite ordinary people, but they were ordinary in this.

  ‘Well, don’t I deserve a word to myself on the eve of my banishment?’ said Fulbert.

  ‘You do, Father,’ said Luce, ‘and you would have had it, if you had not contrived to forfeit it. I cannot see how we are to live the next six months. We shall have to take each day as it comes.’

  ‘Why is that a help?’ said Graham. ‘It seems to spin things out. It would be better if we could compress the days.’

  ‘Graham, are you going to let these months be different?’ said Daniel.