The Mighty and Their Fall

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  “Do you not congratulate me, Miss Starkie?” said Hugo.

  “I have long done so in your character of uncle. This new one is too much for me. I cannot deny it. The disparity in age speaks for itself.”

  “It could have saved itself the trouble,” said Lavinia.

  “And if it is not an intrusive question, what of the material problems? You have always lived in your brother’s house.”

  “In this house. Ninian is not my brother. And not at his expense. I am not quite without means. And Lavinia will have what her uncle leaves.”

  “But that surely passes to her father. Whether or no there is a will. Forgive me, if I am wrong.”

  “It would be harder to forgive you, if you were right,” said Ninian. “No, the money is not to be mine. My brother left it to Lavinia. We will not talk about whose it will be.”

  “It can be put in a word, Father. It will belong to Hugo and me.”

  “But you will not act in haste,” said Miss Starkie. “Remember the life behind you. You have always felt more for your father.”

  “Not always. Not for some time. As you imply, it is in the past.”

  “We are thrust aside, Miss Starkie. We are in a similar place. We must be content to have served our purpose.”

  “I should be indeed. But I feel I can hardly have served it. I did not look for this. It is no good to deny it.”

  “It does seem too late,” said Hugo.

  “I am hardly myself, Mr. Hugo. I hope you don’t misunderstand me.”

  “No, you have taken no risk of it.”

  “You feel with me, Teresa?” said Ninian.

  “For my own sake rather than theirs. This may settle two lives that needed it. But it is hard to be sure.”

  “Well, we wish them well. There is no need to say it. We must put aside our own feelings. They are after all a part of ourselves. We will go forward with them, hoping for them everything, grudging them nothing. I say the last for myself. Lavinia will believe me and see me as her father.”

  “Yes, I will, Father,” said Lavinia, moving to his arms, as he held them out to her.

  “Father can’t marry Lavinia,” said Leah, standing with her eyes on them.

  “Of course he cannot,” said Miss Starkie. “What a foolish speech!”

  “I said that he couldn’t, not that he could. And I never know why they can’t.”

  “They would, if the law allowed it,” said Hengist. “Or why does there have to be a law?”

  “And he is married to her,” said Leah.

  “I am not going to say anything,” said Miss Starkie. “You need not expect it.”

  “She doesn’t want us to say Mamma. She thinks we don’t feel in that way to her. And she doesn’t mind.”

  “I am frustrating your efforts, Miss Starkie,” said Teresa.

  “We saw the need for them then. I think it cannot be denied.”

  “I fear you have striven unsupported.”

  “Do they call you anything, Mrs. Middleton?” said Miss Starkie, suggesting the result of this.

  “Well, we rejected everything and were left with nothing.”

  “Well, if that is a satisfactory conclusion!” said Miss Starkie, forcing a brisk tone.

  Selina entered the room, and at once looked from face to face.

  “We have news for you, Mother,” said Ninian. “I believe you feel we have. It is at once near to you and far from your thoughts. You may have some inkling of it. You are a hard person to surprise.”

  “Do not lead up to it, my son. Let me have it in a word. You must know it.”

  “This uncle and niece are no longer to be what they are. What they are to be I hesitate to say. It may be a shock to you”

  “If they want to be married, they can’t be,” said Selina, in a shriller tone. “I have seen it coming and thought my eyes deceived me. I have heard and disbelieved my ears. It cannot be. It is a wrong, unnatural thing.”

  “It is natural, Grandma,” said Egbert, “for a man and a woman in the same home to be attracted to each other.”

  “No, that happens when they are in different homes. The attraction of closeness is the result of it. It dies in the open. When they were in it, they would find it dead.”

  “It will live and grow in me,” said Hugo.

  “You should not have let it arise. You knew all there was against it. Look at it as others will. Marrying a virtual niece, when she inherits a fortune? It will tell one tale.”

  “To us it tells another. We are only concerned with our own.”

  “You are holding your eyes from the future. You would live in the atmosphere, breathe the air, hear the voices you always had. And would feel you always would. All your life as well as hers. All her young life as well as yours. Ninian, can you not prevent it? You are her father.”

  “I could only use words, as you have. And you see the use of those. Miss Starkie did the same, with the same result, that is with none.”

  “And she represents the many. They will all say the one thing. We shall always hear it.”

  “Try not to be troubled, Mother. They are hardly doing wrong. They are unwise and are likely to rue it. And we can hardly see Hugo as we did. But we must accept what we cannot alter. And do all in our power to help them.”

  “Help them? To the harm of each other’s lives? To the undoing of your daughter’s. And what help is in your power? You are a shadow on the scene. You appear to choose the part. We must suppose it is yours.”

  “It is mine. I am nothing. I can do and say no more.”

  “Well, I can,” said Selina. “I can both do and say it. I can betray my husband and reveal the truth. I will tell you a thing you were never to know, that no one has ever known. Hugo is your father’s son. That is why he was adopted. That is why he has something of his own. That is how he came to be one of us.”

  There was a pause.

  “Tell us the whole,” said Ninian.

  “It happened before you remember. When Hugo was in his infancy. Your father determined to adopt him, and would not be denied. He said he was the orphan son of a friend, and would say no more. I did not question him; I had no need; I accepted what could not be helped. I had no doubt that the boy was his. I have none now. His feeling for him proved it, both then and as time went by. We ostensibly took him as a companion for Ninian, when we thought we might not have another child. It was a natural thing to do, and aroused no question.”

  “Hugo is Lavinia’s uncle?” said Ninian.

  “Her uncle by half-blood. Your half-brother. Your father’s son.”

  “They say that truth is best,” said Egbert. “I wonder what anything else would be.”

  “Truth is needed here,” said Ninian. “We are forced to welcome it. But it was wise to keep the secret. We must all keep it now.”

  “It has been kept through your lives. It was kept even from me. It was neither right nor wrong, but it was best.”

  “It is the truth, Grandma?” said Lavinia. “You feel it is?”

  “As far as I can tell it, my child. I wish at this moment that it was not.”

  “Mother,” said Hugo, “you have done well by me.”

  “I feared to do ill. I would not fail my husband or your helplessness. In doing what we must, we come to do more. I came to care for you. And I have had return.”

  “It is strange news,” said Ninian. “It ends the threat that was on us. It must do other things. We shall get used to the knowledge.”

  “I shall not,” said Hugo. “To me there is no change. And to Lavinia there will be none.”

  “That is not a thing to say,” said Ninian.

  “It is what we both of us feel.”

  “In a way we are closer,” said Lavinia.

  “You are,” said her father, gravely. “The natural tie is strong. Your feeling for your uncle had a truer basis than you knew. You can recognise it between yourselves.”

  “We can marry and live as brother and sister,” said Hugo. “As our real
relation is not known.”

  “What next?” said Ninian sharply. “First an uncle, then a suitor, now a brother! What will your next thought be?”

  “I will tell you. We can live as what we have been, as adopted uncle and niece. The difference in years, that looms so large, can help us there.”

  “But why make the change, as you have not made it before? Oh, of course, there is the money.”

  “Yes, of course. No one can live on nothing. Ransom knew it, when he set Lavinia free.”

  There was a pause before Ninian spoke again.

  “She may use her freedom. The choice is hers. What do you say, my daughter?”

  “We might do it, Father. We could for a time. But it might not be for always. It would not be the same for Hugo. There might be a different end.”

  “Say Uncle Hugo, as you always have, like the brave girl you are,” said Ninian.

  “Well, Uncle Hugo. What difference does it make? If we lived as uncle and niece, I should have to say it.”

  There was a silence.

  “So it has made the difference,” said Hugo.

  “And it makes another,” said Ninian, bending towards his daughter. “It restores our partnership, our power to help the future. It gives back much.”

  “And from you it takes nothing,” said Teresa.

  There was again a silence.

  “Hugo, I may welcome you as a brother?” said Ninian, holding out his hand. “You will let me be glad of it in itself. I almost wish Ransom had known.”

  “He knew,” said Selina. “I had to share the knowledge. I could not carry it alone. After your father died, he knew. Until then I felt I did share it.”

  “He kept the secret,” said Ninian. “It was a thing he could do. So it was the deserter who had your confidence.”

  “Not because he deserted. I could have loved him better, and told him more.”

  “I do not grudge him his place. I hope I grudge nothing to anyone. I am sometimes misjudged.”

  “So are many of us. So was he.”

  “Are we sure of the truth?” said Lavinia. “Sure beyond doubt? Is there any real proof?”

  “Your grandfather’s words. That the boy had a claim he could neither forget nor reveal. It meant what it did.”

  “Have you my birth certificate?” said Hugo.

  “I had nothing to do with your birth. Your mother died at the time. I have never pursued the events. It would have ended in nothing. Or rather in the one thing.”

  “I will take every step to find out the truth. To prove or disprove your theory. There may be some hope.”

  “There is none. The truth is what it must be. It can be nothing else.”

  “So Uncle Hugo is really our uncle,” said Egbert. “It seems to make a difference, to be a strange, deep thing.”

  “We are not to know it,” said Selina.

  “Or speak of it again,” said Ninian. “So already that has to be said. There are ears everywhere.”

  There were some outside the door.

  “It is a thunderbolt, Cook,” said Ainger. “The old master! Who would have thought it?”

  “Not you or I, unless we forgot ourselves.”

  “So I am better in a way than he was.”

  “There are other points of difference that we might be alive to.”

  “Well, it seems the first can be last, and the last first.”

  “Ainger, you should curb your tongue. It carries you onward.”

  “It is not so much of a failing.”

  “You are confident of yourself. No sin is venial.”

  “You never lose your hope of me, do you?”

  “Well, if I am struck by glimpses, it is not for you to express it.”

  “What is it all about?” said another voice.

  “You need not put questions, James. You go beyond yourself.”

  “You can keep to your place,” said Ainger. “You are beginning to grace it.”

  “Am I better than I was?” said James, with his face in a sudden glow.

  “You are on the upward grade, James,” said Cook, in a severe tone. “But do not overestimate it and fall backwards. That is a snare.”

  “And go and do something useful,” said Ainger, yawning.

  “Yes, sir,” said James, his step, as he sprang away, causing Cook to start and glance aside.

  “So you were ashamed of what you were doing,” said Ainger with a grin.

  “Well, gossip is no ground for pride. Though we all stoop at times.”

  “We don’t have to stoop so much, when we are already low.”

  “I do not apply the term to myself. Nor is it used by others.”

  “A thing I should not choose to be, is a governess.”

  “Well, the choice might not fall on you, Ainger. You might be seen as lacking on some points.”

  “I hope we shall listen to some further revelations.”

  “There is no need for downrightness. Overhearing is a word.”

  “It is hardly the right one.”

  “Well, we can strain at a gnat.”

  “I should call it swallowing a camel.”

  “You need not cap me, Ainger. My words may stand. And we have talked enough. There are signs.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to be on the other side of the door?”

  “If I cannot deny it, it is where I should not be,” said Cook, as she walked away.

  CHAPTER XI

  “Has the breakfast hour been changed?” said Ninian.

  “You know it has not,” said Teresa. “We are observing the usual one. The others are late this morning.”

  “Not late in coming down. I have ended that. They are loitering outside the house, expecting us to wait for them.”

  “Well, they will be disappointed, and will not expect it again.”

  “I am a solitary creature,” said Ninian, trying to smile. “Steering my course alone! Well, I should be used to it.”

  “They will soon be coming in.”

  Ninian raised his shoulders and dropped them in easy despair.

  “Oh, I believe Hugo has returned! They have gone out to welcome him and hear his news.”

  “Then they may as well stay out,” said Ninian, with a faint, frowning movement of his eyes towards Ainger. “Breakfast will be over before they come in.”

  “Yours will be, if it proceeds at that rate.”

  Ninian put aside his plate and turned to the next with an air of quiet attention.

  “Shall I bring something hot, ma’am?” said Ainger, as he removed the plate.

  “No, there is no need,” said Ninian, without looking up.

  “Ainger was speaking to me,” said his wife.

  “Well, I have answered for us both. You need not trouble.”

  “Mr. Hugo has travelled at night, sir. He will want something.”

  “There does not seem any sign of it. Perhaps he has had breakfast.”

  “No, sir. The train has not long been in. He must be tired and hungry.”

  “He can hardly be the last,” said Ninian, half-laughing. “Or he would be more anxious to remedy the matter.”

  “He seems to have something to tell, that is detaining them, sir.”

  “It does appear to have that result.”

  “The mistress is with them, sir,” said Ainger, as if this was significant.

  “Oh, I am glad she is equal to it. We need not keep you any longer.”

  “No, sir,” said Ainger, with a readiness that disposed of any desire to remain.

  As footsteps were heard, Ninian rose from the table, brushed his napkin across his lips and went to the door. Encountering the group, he waited for them to pass, and pursued his way.

  “Stay, Father,” said Egbert. “Uncle Hugo has his news to tell.”

  “Nothing urgent, I gather. There was no hurry to impart it.”

  “We were spellbound by it. It may have far results. You must wait and hear it.”

  “I have waited,” said his father.
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  “Tell him, Hugo,” said Selina, sinking into a chair and ignoring her son’s mood. “A few words will be enough.”

  “You will hear it, Ninian?” said Hugo.

  “Yes, if it concerns me. It seemed that it did not.”

  “You will feel it does. It is what I had a hope it might be. A hope I hardly dared to frame. I have found out the truth about myself. And I am not your father’s son. I have traced the events to my birth, pursued the evidence, followed every track, and reached a certain result. My father was a widowed friend of your father’s, whose death your father caused in a moment of youthful violence. He suffered a lifetime’s remorse, never uttered a word of the truth, preferred any account of his adoption of me to the true one. That is the whole story. You see its meaning for me. I am not related to Lavinia. Our future is free and clear. You will rejoice with us, if you are a natural father.”

  There was a pause.

  “The certainty is absolute?” said Ninian. “As a natural father I must ask that.”

  “It may be, my son,” said Selina. “The account agrees with what I know. There may be no room for doubt. There must be proof, if you want it and will follow it. But Hugo is prepared.”

  “As a natural father I am disturbed,” said Ninian, in a lighter tone. “There is the risk that the threat of this marriage may return. But I hope it is only a natural father’s uneasiness.”

  “A threat? It is a certainty,” said Hugo. “Of course it will return. That was the object of my effort, and is its reward. I thought you understood.”

  “I feared it,” said Ninian, as if to himself. “It flashed into my mind as I heard. We must hope the danger will pass.”

  “What have you against the marriage?”

  Ninian gave a sigh, as if at a threadbare question.

  “I will say one thing once. Your holding Lavinia to a life that denies her youth. That is, the sacrifice of it. Surely it is enough.”

  “She will make the life for us both. I am willing to share what is hers. I am free from the pride that would satisfy itself at her expense.”

  “Well, would not everything be at her expense?” said Ninian, with a little laugh. “It is true that you are without pride. But the words are empty ones. It is too late for the change’”

  “It is the time for it, as you know. And I shall not touch what is not mine. Lavinia will deal with it.”