The Present and the Past

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘To be without heart and hope is reason enough.’

  ‘Not for many of us, and not for you. I am not a stranger to you.’

  ‘My poor wife, that is just what you are. It is what you have always been. How clearly I see it! It did not make me less alone.’

  ‘What was in your mind? Or what was on it? I ask you to tell me the truth.’

  ‘I am not the hero of a detective story, Flavia.’

  ‘You need not be so longer than you like,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘You cannot face the truth,’ said Cassius, looking at his wife. ‘You know it and will not accept it. There is no more to be said.’

  ‘More will be said and more will be thought. You are right that I do not accept your account as the true one.’

  ‘Do you accept it, Father? Do you take my word?’

  ‘I do not expect you to tell us what you are keeping to yourself, my boy. What is the truth about one thing? Are you glad you failed to do your work?’

  ‘I may get to be glad,’ said Cassius, wearily. ‘This is not the way to make me so. I did not expect these dealings. I was not prepared for an attack. I see it is easier to face death than to face life.’

  ‘Well, life presents many problems, and death none. But it has not been your way to be overset by them.’

  ‘You do not know how I have met them.’

  ‘I know as much about you as you do yourself, my boy.’

  ‘It is as true of you as it can be of anyone. But we go by ourselves through life. If anyone has saved me from it, it is you.’

  ‘There will be other people in the next world, if your theories are true,’ said Flavia.

  ‘They will have cast off their mortal guise, and with them their mortal qualities.’

  ‘I should not relinquish my resolve to pursue the truth about this.’

  ‘I suppose you cannot imagine hopelessness?’

  ‘I think I can, though I have not experienced it. But have you done either, Cassius?’

  ‘So you know me no better than that, after nine years?’

  ‘After that time I know you as well as that.’

  ‘After fifty-two years I do the same,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘We are unfamiliar with this new guise,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Perhaps the other was a guise,’ said Cassius. ‘Perhaps you are seeing my real self for the first time.’

  ‘No, no,’ said his father, ‘the other would have become real by now. And what reason had you to hide yourself? You saw none.’

  ‘Well, this is leading us nowhere.’

  ‘That is the fault we find with it,’ said Flavia. ‘But it will lead us somewhere in the end.’

  ‘I cannot help you any more.’

  ‘It may be true, my boy,’ said Mr Clare. ‘You are not able to bring yourself to it. And you would have a right to keep your own counsel, if your actions affected no one else.’

  ‘There is no mystery,’ said Cassius.

  ‘That is the word,’ said his father.

  ‘Well, have it as you will. There is some dark secret.’

  ‘Those words will do as well.’

  ‘The secret may not be so dark,’ said Flavia. ‘Things become so when kept in darkness.’

  Cassius compared his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece and glanced at the door. Sounds were heard outside.

  ‘Did you arrange for the children to come?’ said his wife.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cassius, looking again at the watch, as if to check their exactitude.

  ‘So that your interview with us should not be too long?’

  ‘I knew how much I could stand,’ said Cassius, simply. ‘Well, so you have all come to see your father. You know he has been ill?’

  ‘No, Toby has,’ said the latter.

  ‘He was upset this morning,’ said Megan.

  ‘Poor little boy!’ said Toby, looking at his father.

  ‘Yes, poor little Toby! But Father has been worse than that.’

  ‘No, Father better now.’

  ‘Toby can run about,’ said Cassius, ‘and Father has to lie on the sofa.’

  Toby laid his head down on this support, and watched his father out of the corner of his eye for a model of invalid deportment.

  ‘Quite well now,’ he said, looking up. ‘Father and Toby.’

  ‘No, Father will not be well yet.’

  Toby resignedly replaced his head.

  ‘What is the name of your illness?’ said Henry to Cassius.

  ‘It is something you would not understand.’

  ‘But it must have a name. The doctor must have called it something.’

  ‘I think it would now be called general weakness and depression.’

  ‘But what was it at first?’

  ‘Why do you want to know? The name does not make much difference.’

  ‘I want to tell people about it, when they say it was not an illness.’

  ‘What do they say it was?’

  ‘That does not matter, if I can tell them the name. The weakness was just the ending of it.’

  ‘The after effects,’ said Megan.

  ‘Poor Father very sad,’ said Toby, without raising his head. ‘Very sad and want to die. But wake up again.’

  ‘Do people say that?’ said Cassius.

  ‘We heard them saying things,’ said Megan. ‘They didn’t mean us to hear. And we didn’t know they would say them.’

  ‘But you knew no better than to listen?’

  ‘We were not listening,’ said Henry. ‘Megan told you that we heard. But I daresay we might have listened. There isn’t anyone who wouldn’t have, when it was a thing like that.’

  ‘Why were you as sad as that?’ said Megan.

  ‘I can hardly tell you the reasons. I hope you will never be so sad.’

  ‘Everyone is sad sometimes,’ said Henry. ‘But they don’t do what you did. Will you be put in prison?’

  ‘No, of course I shall not.’

  ‘I thought that to kill yourself was against the law.’

  ‘There is no need to use such words. This was not much more than a mistake.’

  ‘Do you mean you did it by accident?’

  ‘Well, I hardly knew what I was doing.’

  ‘Then perhaps it would not count. Perhaps you were delirious. People didn’t know it was like that. They thought you meant to doit.’

  ‘If I had done a good action, no one would have heard of it,’ said Cassius, looking round.

  ‘They would certainly have had less opportunity,’ said Mr Clare. ‘It would have made less talk.’

  ‘Have you ever done one?’ said Henry. ‘You know I don’t mean you haven’t. I just wanted to know.’

  ‘I suppose so from time to time. Have you?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think so. I can’t think of one.’

  ‘Well, I declare, neither can I,’ said Cassius, half-laughing. ‘I declare that I can’t. But I suppose I can hardly have gone through life without doing something for somebody.’

  ‘People generally count supporting their children,’ said Megan.

  ‘Well, I do not. That does not put me apart from other men.’

  ‘And your good action must do that?’ said Mr Clare. ‘You would kill two birds with one stone.’

  The elder boys had entered the room, and Fabian came up to his father.

  ‘We have been fortunate, Father,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I am so thankful, and so is everyone. We could not have spared you.’

  Cassius took the hand and sent his eyes over his son’s face. Guy came and stood by his brother.

  ‘You said you had never done a good action,’ he said, in a hurried, even tone. ‘But you let Mother come and see us, and changed things for us all. And you let her go on coming. It does put you apart from other men.’

  ‘Did your mother tell you to say these things?’

  ‘She did not tell us what to say,’ said Fabian.

  ‘Then I congratulate you in my turn. You have done well.
You may tell your mother that from me.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘You did not tell your son to make a speech?’ said Cassius to Flavia.

  ‘No, I leave him to depend on himself.’

  ‘What he said was certainly different.’

  ‘Which kind of approach do you prefer?’

  ‘You made a beautiful speech, my boy,’ said Cassius, suddenly to Guy. ‘You brought comfort to your father when he needed it. You have made him proud of you, and so has your brother. I am a happier man, and I had need of happiness.’

  Toby ran up and stood ready to share in the compliments.

  ‘And Toby is a comfort to Father by being himself.’

  ‘And Henry and Megan,’ said Toby, with an embracing gesture. ‘And Bennet and Eliza and Mother.’

  ‘What would have happened to us, if you had died?’ said Henry. ‘This house would have belonged to Fabian; so we should still have had a home. But would other things have been different?’

  ‘And Ainger and William,’ added Toby.

  ‘Would you not have found that losing me made a difference?’ said Cassius, looking at his son. ‘Yes, but I knew about that.’

  ‘So that is how you talked, when you thought I might be going to die.’

  ‘Well, we couldn’t have helped it, if you had,’ said Megan. ‘We shouldn’t have had to feel ashamed about it. That is unfair when people haven’t done anything. And when a thing is done on purpose, it isn’t even sad.’

  ‘It is sad that anyone should want to do such a thing.’

  ‘Not if he wanted to when he had an ordinary life. If he had had pain or sorrow, it would be different.’

  ‘Life itself can be a sorrow, my child.’

  ‘Only because of what is in it. We are supposed to like life itself. Will you be happier now you have done this? Your life won’t be any different.’

  ‘I shall be more resigned. And I hope my life will be a little different. I hope something will come out of it, that will make it so. And I must remember what you say, and try to like life itself.’

  ‘Toby said it,’ said Toby, coming up with something in his hands.

  ‘What have you there?’ said Cassius.

  Toby displayed a box containing various objects.

  ‘Where did you get that box?’

  ‘Open drawer,’ said his son.

  ‘Go and put it back again and shut the drawer.’

  ‘No,’ said Toby.

  ‘Do as Father tells you at once.’

  ‘Bottle,’ said Toby, making a selection from the box.

  ‘He will break it,’ said Megan.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Toby, his voice quavering into mirth. ‘Only hold it. When it break, can’t help it, poor little boy.’

  Cassius reached towards the bottle, but desisted and drummed his fingers on the couch.

  ‘Give the bottle to me,’ said Mr Clare. ‘It is mine, and I have my use for it.’

  ‘Rattle it,’ said his grandson.

  ‘No, it is almost empty. It will not make any noise.’

  Toby showed that this was not the case, and his grandfather stood with his eyes on it. A change seemed to come into the room. It seemed that time was standing still. Mr Clare and Flavia met each other’s eyes, and the former took the bottle and emptied it pn his hand.

  ‘Seven tablets! And there were eleven there. So you took four, my son.’

  His unusual ending gave weight to his words.

  ‘Yes, I took four,’ said Cassius, going into deliberate mirth. ‘Enough to make me unconscious and to do no more. But it did a good deal more. It has done its work. And I should not like to face it again, I can tell you. I began to think I should breathe my last. I almost had the experience I was supposed to have had. I thought my last hour had come. But I played a proper trick on all of you. The weak point was that I played it on myself as well. You need not think I did not suffer for what I did, if that is any comfort to you. If four tablets did that, ten would indeed have done the whole.’

  ‘Well, we knew that,’ said his father.

  ‘And if you all say it served me right, I say the same to you,’ said Cassius, his tones swelling. ‘You deserved to think you had driven me to my death, when you had done all you could to empty my life. It was the right and fair return; it was poetic justice. So I don’t want any solemn faces or speaking silences or exchange of glances. Things are fair and square between us, and there is an end of it.’

  ‘There is also a beginning,’ said Flavia. ‘Another conception of you, a mistrust of what you say and do, a question of your presentation of yourself. A difference that will go through our lives and die with us.’

  ‘And have you had so much trust in me? There has been little sign of it. We cannot lose what we have never had. I have not to face much there.’

  ‘Did Father pretend he had taken more pills than he had?’ said Megan.

  ‘He did, my child. That is what he pretended,’ said Cassius, going into further mirth. ‘And he does not regret it. And he hopes you will never be driven to a like course, and that if you are, you will achieve more by it.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you did it, or what you wanted to achieve.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Henry.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Flavia.

  ‘No,’ said Cassius, looking at them. ‘You would not understand. The heart can only know itself.’

  ‘You let me know some of it, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘I did, my dear old father. And what I should have done without your listening ear I do not know.’

  ‘You could hardly have done more than you have.’

  ‘I could have done the whole thing.’

  ‘No, you could not, being as you are. We can only act according to ourselves.’

  ‘I really thought of it.’

  ‘We are not talking of thoughts. They cover a wide ground.’

  ‘You are a strange man, Cassius,’ said Flavia. ‘I see I have not known you.’

  ‘And you are a strange woman. And I have always known you. And now I know you better.’

  ‘You have put yourself in a class apart.’

  ‘No, I have not. I have put myself in the class of weak, erring mortals to which we all belong, to which you belong yourself. I am not removed from you by a single act. What about you, who drove me to it? What should be said of that? No, you are not to go, children. I refuse to be left alone with this woman. Father does not want to be left alone with Mater.’ Cassius changed his tone and put his hand on Toby’s head. ‘She is vexed with him and makes him afraid of her. Toby must stay and take care of him.’

  Toby placed himself in front of his father and looked round in challenge, and Flavia glanced at him and looked away.

  ‘I think Mother is in the hall,’ said Fabian. ‘She was coming to see us today. May we go out to her, Father?’

  ‘You must ask Mater that,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Mater always lets us see her.’

  ‘Ask her in; ask her in,’ said Cassius. ‘We have nothing to hide. She may as well hear what she must hear in the end, and hear the truth instead of some distortion of it. Let her swell the chorus of my judges. Come in, Catherine, and join them in their verdict on me. I know you and Flavia have but one thought between you.’

  ‘They do not need more than one for this matter,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Well, Catherine, what have you heard of me? You need not be afraid to say. ‘I am not used to being spared.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I heard that you found things too much. I heard that you tried to end them.’

  ‘Well, well, it was not quite that,’ said Cassius, with another sound of mirth and his eyes turned aside. ‘I hardly know how to tell you. I have put myself in an awkward place. You may think in almost a ridiculous one; I can understand that view. Or rather it is chance that has done it; I thought things out myself. Ask Flavia to tell you. You would rather hear it from her. And she can put things i
n a word better than I can.’

  ‘No, it is your own history, my boy,’ said Mr Clare. ‘No one else can tell it from the first.’

  ‘Well, then, I did not take the full dose,’ said Cassius, looking in front of him and speaking easily. ‘Only enough to make me unconscious and do no more. I thought of taking it, and then the will to live, or the impulse of life, or whatever it was, checked me and led me to a compromise. Compromise; yes, that is the word. And I carried it through. I did not fail in my purpose. I hoodwinked my father and my wife. And they are not easy people to deceive;you must have found that. I mean you would understand it. They accepted the whole thing. And upon my word I was near to accepting it myself. It was a dire experience, recovering from that trance. I find myself feeling I have had a narrow escape. I find myself in a mood of thankfulness. It shows how near I was to the actual thing.’

  ‘It surely shows your distance from it,’ said Flavia.

  ‘Well, you ought to be glad of that. It ought to be a relief to you. You don’t seem to have taken any lesson from what I have done.’

  ‘But you seem to have taken one yourself,’ said Mr Clare. ‘And it is you who needed it.’

  ‘And you have not done it, Cassius,’ said Flavia. ‘We cannot go so far from the facts.’

  ‘Did you confess the truth?’ said Catherine to Cassius, in a tone that seemed to come from their life together.

  ‘Go on with your tale, my boy,’ said Mr Clare. ‘It is no one else’s.’

  ‘Well, no, I did not,’ said Cassius, with a little laugh. ‘I meant to carry the matter through and let the deception do its work. And I hope in a measure it has done it. But Toby found the bottle with the tablets that were left, and the number told their tale and exposed his father.’

  ‘You put it well, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.

  ‘Yes, well, I can put things into words when I like,’ said his son, in a modest tone. ‘I can express myself when there is need. I seem to be able to. I don’t know if it is true of everyone.’

  ‘No one must talk of this outside the house,’ said Flavia.

  ‘No, it would swell to all kinds of proportions,’ said Cassius, as if not averse to the idea. ‘I should be said to have put an end to myself ten times over.’

  ‘You would be said to have tried to do so once,’ said Mr Clare. ‘No doubt you will be. And it is at once better and worse than the truth.’