The Present and the Past

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘Will you have any of this?’ he said to his wife.

  ‘I will have what I usually do.’

  ‘A good deal, isn’t it?’ said Cassius, seeming to operate with some effort.

  ‘I should think an average amount.’

  ‘This is not a meal we were to dispense with,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘I think most women eat less,’ said Cassius, looking at the plate as it left him.

  ‘Well, this is what I will eat,’ said his wife.

  ‘I wonder what we are quarrelling about.’

  ‘You can hardly do that, my boy, as you have arranged it,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Do you think that bookcase would look better further to the left?’ said Cassius, with his head to one side.

  ‘Not to me, when I have seen it where it is for so long. It would look in the wrong place. And I should think it would to you, as you have seen it there for even longer.’

  Cassius regarded it in independent consideration.

  ‘Did you say you had seen the children this morning?’ he said to his wife, as though realizing no more than this about her utterance.

  ‘I did not say so, as you know. But I have seen them or seen four of them,’ said Flavia, her voice changing as she spoke. ‘And a picture they made, alike and different, and individual and the same. Toby was still asleep.’

  ‘Did Miss Ridley add to the picture?’

  ‘She looked herself, as she does. Yes, she added something of her own. I hope the post is what she needs.’

  ‘I hope she is the person to fill it. That should be our concern.’

  ‘It was naturally our chief one. It should not exclude the other. I am afraid it tends to do so.’

  ‘I am sure of it,’ said Mr Clare. ‘I would not say I was afraid.’

  Cassius looked at his companions’ plates, and took a shred of meat himself, as if to fill the time. In a moment he gave a sigh and fully supplied his plate, as though conformity were unavoidable. As he did so, he happened to meet his wife’s eyes.

  ‘Having my luncheon after all!’ he said, as if quoting her thought.

  ‘A good many people are doing that.’

  ‘But they did not say they would not have any,’ said Cassius, still in the quoting tone.

  ‘I daresay they did. It is a thing people do.’

  ‘So I am just like anyone else?’

  ‘No, you need not be afraid of it, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Like a good many people in that,’ said Flavia.

  ‘And you are different?’ said Cassius.

  ‘I may be in the minority. The matter is a small one.’

  ‘How many of us think that about ourselves?’

  ‘All of us,’ said his father. ‘And not only on that ground.’

  ‘On more important ones?’

  ‘Yes, yes, on those, my boy.’

  ‘I hardly think we are all so much alike,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Cassius. ‘I often wonder if I belong to the same species as other people.’

  ‘And what conclusion do you come to?’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘To my own conclusion. I daresay you often wonder it about yourself.’

  ‘No, I know I belong to the same. I have had long enough to learn it.’

  ‘Do we mean the same thing, or not?’

  ‘The same,’ said Flavia, smiling. ‘Everyone always means it.’

  ‘Now there is something I have been- wanting to say,’ said Cassius, replenishing his plate, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘Fabian is getting too old to be with women and children.’

  ‘He will go to a public school in a year. A home life is best for boys in childhood. It is what I shall do for Henry, and so what I do for his brothers.’

  ‘I suppose Guy is your favourite of your stepchildren?’

  ‘I have no stepchildren. I have four sons and a daughter. I can see it in no other way.’

  ‘I wonder if they can,’ said Cassius.

  ‘If so, the blame is mine.’

  ‘Their opinion of you would hardly be the same as your opinion of yourself.’

  ‘Then perhaps the blame is theirs,’ said Mr Clare. ‘Children are not always blameless.’

  ‘I wonder if they ought to see their own mother,’ said Cassius, keeping his tone even. ‘Yοu know she has returned to the place?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said his wife.

  ‘I am not a man who cannot change his mind.’

  ‘It seems that you are not.’

  ‘The best way to deal with a mistake is to rectify it.’

  ‘If a mistake has been made.’

  ‘It is never too late to mend.’

  ‘A poor saying,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Not to mend ourselves,’ said Flavia. ‘To mend what we have done, it is often too late. I think it generally is.’

  ‘Do you feel with me that we took a wrong course?’ said Cassius.

  ‘No, I think we did the best thing. I do not say there was any good thing.’

  ‘No mistake was made at the time,’ said Mr Clare. ‘None could have been made.’

  ‘A man’s feelings may change,’ said his son, not looking at anyone.

  ‘You need not tell us, my boy. You give us the proof.’

  ‘They have a way of returning,’ said Flavia, ‘with the return of the things that caused them. Just as they pass with their passing.’

  ‘You think you are very wise and deep,’ said her husband.

  ‘Well, it sounded as if she was,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘And the words suggested it to Cassius,’ said Flavia, ‘and he is not prone to such opinion.’

  ‘One woman and two men!’ said Cassius, as if to himself. ‘I suppose this is what it must be.’

  ‘And would a second woman mend matters?’ said his wife. ‘Well, perhaps she might. She might be the right person in the right place, doing the thing she could do.’

  ‘My dear, good wife!’ said Cassius, in another and louder tone. ‘My helpmeet in the troubles of life! How I depend on you in my mind, if I have my own ways of showing it! I know you understand me.’

  ‘Well, that is fortunate,’ said his father. ‘It might not be so.’

  ‘I want your advice, Flavia. I ask for it, my dear. Would you advise me to approach my first wife? Your opinion will be mine.’

  ‘I hardly know what my opinion is. I have not thought. I should not think. It has not bearing on the matter.’

  ‘Ah, I have never met a little woman with such an opinion of herself. Or one with a better right to it. But why not help a simple man in his own way? Unless you are afraid of what is in your mind. I daresay we all are really.’

  ‘Oh, well, afraid of that. But we should not betray it. We always take great care.’

  ‘To involve other people and protect ourselves?’

  ‘Well, think what care that would need.’

  ‘The thing to do is to keep it in our minds and to continue to be afraid of it,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Well, what else could we do?’ said his daughter-in-law. ‘There is no danger that we shall accustom ourselves to it. It is not true that we get used to anything.’

  ‘You both talk as if you had dark thoughts on a heroic scale,’ said Cassius, as if this were a too ambitious claim.

  ‘Just on the ordinary scale,’ said his wife.

  ‘Now here is a letter come by hand,’ said Cassius. ‘And I declare the one I dreaded! I might have known it. I expect I did know in my mind, and that is what put me into such a state. Well, what a thing to confront a man in the first half of the day, and cast a cloud over the rest of it!’

  ‘Letters usually come at breakfast,’ said his father. ‘And then the effect might be on the whole day.’

  ‘And that is helpful, is it? And common is the commonplace, and empty chaff well meant for grain. That things are common would not make my own less bitter. Never morning wore to evening but something of the kind took place.’

  ‘It does soun
d rather like the whole day,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Yes, you can be clever about it. How does that affect the position?’

  ‘I think it improves it a little. What does the letter say?’

  ‘Read it to us, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Oh, yes, and have you and Flavia throwing your wit over it, and treating me as if I were a culprit, instead of a man expected to be married to two wives at once, and to offer up one of them to the mockery of the other. What a demand to be made on a man! I could not have believed it.’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ said his wife.

  ‘Come, you can be explicit, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘I am putting it as plainly as I can. Surely two wives is explicit enough for anyone. Or would you want it to be ten? Would that be more explicit?’

  ‘No, it would be less,’ said Flavia. ‘It would need a good deal more explanation.’

  ‘Well, have the truth,’ said her husband. ‘Have it and make what you can of it. Here am I told by my first wife that she is coming to encounter my second, and to break up our family life, and take our children away from us, and be a heroine and a martyr through it all! Though she does not want to see me. Oh, no, there is no mention of that. Though what harm it would do her I am at a loss to say. She did it day and night for five years.’

  ‘And felt she could do it no longer,’ said Flavia, in an expressionless tone.

  ‘And I felt the same, I can tell you, and felt it no less. To have those eyes boring straight into mine, as if they would read my very soul, and probably find I hadn’t one into the bargain! It was as much as flesh and blood could stand. I had come to an end as much as she had.’

  ‘Is she returning to the place for good?’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Coming back to her home, as she puts it,’ said Cassius, referring to the letter. ‘As if this house had not been her home for years! There is no need to be invidious, is there? Coming back to that brother and sister, and to that house with books all over it, and little else that I could ever see. Well, if she prefers it to this, I wish her joy of it.’

  ‘She hardly has the choice of the two,’ said his father. ‘And she has come with a purpose and told you of it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she wants something for herself. There is no need to say that.’

  ‘I should not have thought it need be said of her, from what I have heard,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Yes, be magnanimous about her. We know your view of yourself.’

  ‘It is the way to make it everyone’s view of her,’ said Mr Clare. ‘And there is no harm in her taking it.’

  ‘Yes, I am the one who is criticized and condemned, and seen as a common creature blundering between two highminded women, and inflicting myself on both. That is my position. I must put up with it.’

  ‘What is it that your first wife wants for herself?’ said Flavia.

  ‘Oh, I thought you said she would not want anything.’

  ‘But you did not take that view.’

  ‘And I do not take it,’ said Cassius. ‘She seems to me to want all she can get, as in her way she always did. She and I parted by mutual consent, but no one was to know that but ourselves. Oh, no, she was the martyr and I the culprit, and the world had to see it like that. And now she thinks she can call the tune, as if it were the truth. It is a thing that makes my blood boil.’

  Cassius was a broad, solid man about fifty, with a broad, fair face, small, light eyes, thick, uncertain hands, and flat, not uncomely features, that responded to his emotions. His father, who was like him, had a stronger growth of bone, that raised and strengthened his features to the point of handsomeness. Flavia looked a creature of another blood between them. She seemed to watch her husband, while her father-in-law simply accepted him. Mr Clare saw his son as he was, and kept his feeling for him, and Flavia seemed to fear to do the one, in case she should cease to do the other.

  Cassius was the master of the place, which he had inherited from a godfather, and Mr Clare on the death of his wife had joined his fortunes with his son’s.

  ‘Read the letter to us, my boy. Then we shall know our ground.’

  ‘“Dear Cassius,”’ read his son, in a voice that challenged them to form their own opinion, ‘“I am breaking my word. I have not strength to keep it. I cannot be parted longer from my sons. It is not in me to suffer it. I am coming back to my home. I must be within daily distance of them. Indeed I have come back. I ask you to allow me access to them. If you will not, I shall still seek it. I do not ask for forgiveness. I see there can and could be none. I do not ask for what is beyond people’s power. I am the last person who should do that. Catherine Clare.”

  ‘There is a letter for you. What do you think of that as a threat to our lives? Catherine sneaking in and out of our home, and none of us knowing whether to accept her or not! And an atmosphere of discomfort and uncertainty over everything.’

  ‘She would hardly do that,’ said Flavia. ‘I know her only by hearsay, but enough to know that.’

  ‘Yes, stand up for her. Put yourself in her place. I might have foreseen this. Two women against one man, when two men against one woman would be the better match! And two mothers for those boys! What a state of things!’

  ‘I hope both mothers will be real ones. And I see no reason why they should not.’

  ‘Well, I do. From what I know of you both I see no hope of it. Oh, I am not a stranger to either of you. And I don’t see you working together, and there is the truth.’

  ‘There should not be any problem, if there is goodwill on both sides. And there is no reason against it.’

  ‘No reason? Well, you are a simpler woman than I thought you. So you can honestly say that. Well, I believe you are simpler. I believe you put a veneer on yourself and deceive us all. I believe people often do that.’

  ‘It is an example that might be followed,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Your willingness to let her see the boys puts the matter on its foundation,’ said Flavia.

  ‘My willingness? Who said I was willing? I tell you I am not. I don’t want to have her in my home, looking as if she would penetrate into the heart of things, and as if she were too sensitive to look at them when she had done so. Oh, she has her own view of herself. Just as you have, for the matter of that. Women think much more of themselves than men.’

  ‘Well, that does no harm,’ said Mr Clare, ‘if it leads them to live up to it.’

  ‘Well, it casts an atmosphere of falseness and consciousness over everything,’ said Cassius, in an easier tone. ‘And now I suppose I am to answer this letter. And say — well, say what I can. Just to accept what she says would make me cut a poor figure. Or is that what I am to do? Can’t either of you utter a word, or have a thought, or give me any kind of help? What is the good of feminine insight and the experience of seventy years, if they can’t be turned to account?’

  ‘You have only to write what is in your mind,’ said his wife.

  ‘I have told you what that is. So I am to write that, am I? Well, I will do so and let you see the result,’ said Cassius, rising with an air of reckless purpose.

  ‘Why be in such a hurry, my boy?’ said his father. ‘It is not a case for eagerness.’

  ‘Eagerness? No, it is not. So I will do nothing and see what comes of that. Though I have not much hope that the matter will rest there. I know the woman I am dealing with.’

  Cassius took a deep breath as his wife and his father left him, and then squared his shoulders and addressed the butler, who had been waiting on them, or ostensibly doing so.

  ‘Well, Ainger, have you gained an idea of my position?’

  ‘I have caught a word here and there, sir,’ said Ainger, looking up in an incidental manner.

  ‘You remember your former mistress?’

  ‘Five years of my life were spent under her sway, sir. It can hardly have escaped me.’

  ‘She is returning to my life after nine years, or that is the suggestion.’

  ‘I did not gathe
r your decision, sir,’ said Ainger, contracting his brows as in an effort of recollection.

  ‘I have no choice in the matter. It is out of my control.’

  ‘It seems that a mother’s feelings command respect, sir.’

  ‘So you heard the whole thing. I thought you did.’

  ‘It recurs to me, sir, as an undercurrent to my work, as I cast my mind over it.’

  Alfred Ainger was a tall, active man of forty, with a round, yellow head, a full, high-coloured face, very blue, bunched-up eyes, an unshapely nose and a red-lipped, elaborate mouth that opened and shut with a vigorous movement. His bearing carried an equal respect for his master and confidence in himself.

  ‘Well, you may soon be opening the door to your former mistress.’

  ‘I shall know what is required of me, sir.’

  ‘I hope I may say the same, Ainger. I hope I shall be able to support one wife and receive the other, and do a man’s part by both.’

  ‘The young gentlemen should be a help to you, sir.’

  ‘Yes, it is they whom she is coming to see. I do not flatter myself it is anyone else. I do not wish to do so. But I shall have to meet the several claims and forget my own. I hope I shall be equal to it.’

  Chapter 3

  Bennet set Toby down at the dining-room door and constrained her charges to enter. They advanced and stood about the table, as seats for them were not supplied. Toby went on to the window-seat, disposed some playthings upon it and entered into communication with them.

  ‘Is my baby coming to his mother?’ said Flavia. ‘I have not seen him today.’

  Toby said nothing except to his possessions.

  ‘Come and have a word with your grandfather,’ said Mr Clare.

  Toby paused for a moment and then ran towards him and displayed his knees.

  ‘You have grazed the pair of them. So you had a fall.’

  ‘Henry push him,’ said Toby, in a tone of suggestion.

  ‘No, he did not,’ said Megan. ‘Toby fell when Eliza ran after him to take him to bed.’

  ‘Run fast,’ said her brother. ‘Toby too.’

  ‘We should say what is true,’ said Flavia, stroking his head.

  ‘A plate,’ said Toby, with a giggle, looking round the table.

  ‘A plate was broken and made him laugh,’ said Henry. ‘He can still be happy easily.’