“Well, I must go home,” said Fanny. “To the house that will soon be that to me again.”
“I will come with you,” said Julia, “and talk of what has to be done. It is to be home to me as well.”
There was a minute of silence when the three men were alone.
“It was like a Greek tragedy,” said Walter. “With people saying things with a meaning they did not know, or with more meaning than they knew. It is not the first today. Will it always be like this?”
“It must not be,” said his uncle. “We are to forget the truth. It must not lie below the surface, ready to escape. It is strange enough, Simon, that you are the person whom we doubt.”
“You can hardly do so, Uncle. You know what I have at stake. What would be the cost to me, if the truth were known? In itself it has cost me enough.”
Sir Edwin left the room, and Walter turned to his brother.
“What kind of a man is our uncle?”
“He is no better than you or I. It is best for himself that the truth should be hidden. If it emerged, his dignity would suffer, a thing he has never faced. And he could hardly wish me to lose any more. I have lost enough. And I have done him no deliberate harm.”
“You must have made love to his wife.”
“If there are to be no more words, let there be none.”
“Tell me once what you feel about everything, Simon. Somehow it is hard to know.”
“I can put it in a word. The place is the thing I love. Above any man or woman, above you yourself, above all else. And I am cast from it, and shall see it pass further away. My feelings are dulled. You ask me what they are. To myself I seem to have none.”
Chapter 7
“Did you not see your mother come into the room?” said Simon.
His son rose to his feet, glancing with a half-smile at his sister.
“And do not exchange glances with Naomi. You are too old to be so mannerless.”
“Eighteen years is hardly past youth,” said his daughter.
“I shall be going in and out,” said Fanny. “I have some things to arrange.”
“Then I must behave like a Jack-in-the-box,” said her son.
“The deportment required of you,” said his brother.
“And of you,” said Simon. “You may take what I said, to yourself.”
“Simon, is there any need to be so sour and sharp?” said Julia, in a tone that seemed to illustrate her words.
“I will not see my sons become boors. We can afford them no training and must act as mentors ourselves. It is not a choice I would have made. I am not cut out for the character. But certain things are forced upon me.”
“Do you think you and Walter were better at their age?”
“We had another background. They are more dependent on their parents. It is no kindness to fail them.”
“It is not always clear where kindness lies.”
“I suppose it is real kindness,” said Ralph. “That does lie in unexpected ways.”
“Do not copy your uncle,” said Simon. “Whatever you can or cannot be, you can be yourself.”
“But that is the trouble, Father,” said Naomi. “They have to be someone else.”
“I like to be copied,” said Walter. “It is a proof of what I have been. I hope people will not forget who was the original.”
“Must you stand about in that conscious way?” said Simon, to his sons. “There are surely chairs in the room.”
“Mother is coming in and out, sir,” said Graham. “It is the line of least resistance.”
“What is that to do with it? Are you at a stage when energy fails?”
“I am sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Challoner,” said a lady at the door, looking from Fanny to Julia, as if hardly distinguishing between the owners of the name. “But now that Naomi is seventeen, should she go with her brothers to their tutor? It hardly seems a proper thing.”
“But he teaches subjects you do not, Miss Dolton,” said Simon, mildly. “And it is better that she should learn them.”
“I have never felt the want of them, Mr. Challoner.” Simon was at a loss, and Naomi checked a laugh without full success.
“Things are different since your day — our day, Miss Dolton,” said Julia.
“I know I am not entirely up to date, Mrs. Challoner.”
“That is not what I said. I meant to support my son.”
“Then what did she say?” murmured Naomi.
Miss Dolton was a hurried-looking woman, who had come to the house as nursery governess, and remained to organise an upstairs life for pupils grown beyond her. Simon did not countenance his children’s presence at his board.
“You can take proper care of your sister,” he said. “I hope I need not say it. And when you get to your books, forget yourselves and attend to them. The one thing between you and the workhouse is your education, such as it is. I imagine you do not want to end in it.”
“I think we must do so, sir,” said Graham. “We could hardly provide for our old age. The question is how much of our life we can spend out of it.”
“Well, it rests with you. Your chances are up to the average. And most people avoid it.”
“Did you have a good breakfast?” said Fanny to her children. “It is a chilly day.”
“We had what was provided,” said Ralph. “I should perhaps hardly use your word.”
“Surely it was enough?”
“It is not quantity that fails. It may not be the right preparation for the workhouse, that we do not have to ask for more.”
“Do not be so childish,” said Simon. “What talk for a boy of fifteen! In another class you might be earning your bread.”
“I wonder how long we shall have it provided,” said Graham, when they had saluted their parents and withdrawn.
“As long as we have it with Miss Dolton,” said Naomi. “We could not afford the arrangement ourselves. It is an expense to Father to keep us below him.”
The brothers and sister left the house, Graham and Naomi resembling Simon, but slighter in form and feature; and Ralph as much like his mother as a boy could be to a woman. They accepted their life as the one they lived, and the one they shared, with a humour that modified its harm.
“Simon, things are too much for you,” said Julia. “You are so seldom your real self. We are in danger of forgetting what it was.”
“Things fall heavy on me, Mater, and must do so. My work for my uncle, the poor return, the headship of my family, the knowledge that I take your income, burden my wife, and am a cross-grained, middle-aged man before my time! I was not brought up to this way of life. My early years did not fit me for it. My sons are happier in looking to a future that will be theirs.”
“I almost wish you could forget those years. So far from being a happy memory, they feed your disappointment. It was a great and sudden one, but it is in the past. It seems it might be buried with it.”
“It goes through the present and the future. It will be with me in old age, when memories are clear. I do not want to complain, but I am pursued by it. And other people suffer with me.”
“Why do what you do not want to?” said Fanny. “We are none of us the better for it.”
“I think I am,” said Walter. “I am fascinated by people’s troubles, when they are not sickness or death. I never tire of them, even in my own family, though I would rather they were somewhere else.”
“Sickness of heart and the death of hope,” said Simon, with a grim smile. “Do they serve your purpose?”
“It is making too much of it,” said Julia. “You have a great deal in your life. I cannot understand your not seeing it.”
“Mrs. Challoner,” said Miss Dolton, at the door, “Nurse has come to me in some trouble. Claud has not eaten his breakfast, and has ended by throwing it on the carpet.”