“I could not conform, Mater. I am not on the usual line. You would not wish to have an average son.”
“Tell us about it fully,” said Hamish.
“Father, do not speak to me in short, terse tones. Remember that I owe you my being. And all is told.”
“Why did your tutor not write to us?” said Sir Edwin.
“Because I begged him not to. I mean I forbade him to. And the course was nearly at an end.”
“Surely you could have finished it, and taken your degree,” said Julia. “What was the object of your being there?”
“I have never known, Mater. But I could not be examined. The very word seemed to degrade.”
“Examiners are not inquisitors,” said Sir Edwin.
“What makes you say that, Uncle?”
“I hardly see a reason,” said Hamish, smiling.
“I hope you are really ashamed of yourself,” said Julia.
“I am ashamed of my position, Mater. It is most embarrassing. If my shame communicates itself to you, we will suffer it together. What does Deakin feel about it?”
“We have to render what is required of us, sir,” said the latter, continuing his duties.
“How did you spend your time at Oxford?” said Hamish, in simple question.
“I wrote poems, Father.”
“Amongst other things?”
“No, I just wrote poems. What do you imply? Of course I am not a wild young man.”
“Were the poems good ones?”
“Yes, but not so good, when I went back to them. And I had the courage to recognise it.”
“And so you destroyed them?”
“Father, they are easy words. Few people have the strength to reject their early efforts.”
“There must be many instances of it,” said Julia. “There can be no record.”
“It probably means you are a critic and not a poet,” said Sir Edwin.
“Does it, Uncle? It is a terrible meaning. But I am pleased that you can talk to me in respectful terms.”
“We are not proud of you, Walter,” said Julia.
“I thought mothers were proud of their sons in spite of everything.”
“Poetry will not take you far in life. Anyhow it will not support you.”
“What I shall have, will be enough for me. I ask but little.”
“What will happen, if you marry?”
“Disaster. But I shall not do so.”
“You cannot know at your age.”
“He does know,” said Hamish. “It is like the poems. He may find later that it is different. But I am not sure.”
“Did you ever write poems yourself, Father?” said Walter, looking at him.
“Yes, good ones, as you have, and then showed the same courage. It must run in the family. As your mother says, it may be in many.”
“And you see yourself as a critic and not a poet,” said Sir Edwin.
“What you said to me,” said Walter. “I do like it to be the same.”
“Well, we are most of us critics of many things,” said Hamish, putting the matter more generally.
Deakin raised his shoulders with a faint smile, as though feeling this unavoidable.
“I am a critic of Walter’s poems,” said Simon, lightly.
“And you feel it exalts you,” said his brother. “But if that is what you want, you should be the first to recognise them.”
“That position is occupied,” said Simon, with a laugh.
“It is better to be generous than to be gifted,” said Julia.
“But it is not so congenial,” said Hamish. “The generous person has to give more admiration than he feels. And he has such a different sort himself.”
“A terrible sort,” said Walter.
“Well, I shall not have any,” said Simon.
“You will have another kind,” said Walter. “You will be esteemed for your place.”
“It seems to be honest esteem,” said Hamish. “Well, I suppose we are to humour you, Walter.”
“Well, I should like it, Father.”
“There is something I should not disguise from you,” said Sir Edwin. “Your father’s health makes him reluctant to fail you at this time.”
“It somehow seems better to disguise it,” said Hamish.
“I shall be happy to have both my sons at home,” said Julia. “But I am not sure how to take the good fortune.”
“You and I will share it, Mater,” said Walter. “And we will not forget that Simon is one of us.”
“I am not afraid of your feeling for each other.”
“Simon, do you feel you deserve this?”
“Do you expect to earn anything by your poems?” said Sir Edwin.
“Well, Uncle, I do imagine it.”
“Poets may live in the world of imagination,” said Hamish.
“Destroying the poems is not the way to earn by them,” said Julia.
“Isn’t it, Mater? It is supposed to be in the end.”
“I hope you have no bills from Oxford?” said Sir Edwin.
“No, none, Uncle. I destroyed them with the poems.”
“All that pile that I saw?” said Simon.
“The bills,” said Walter. “The poems were not a pile. Or not those I destroyed.”
“Did you destroy the bills without paying them?” said Julia.
“If I had paid them, they would not be bills, Mater. They would be receipts. And I put those in a drawer.”
“You are very boyish, Walter.”
“Mater, if you meant to wound me, you have done so. But it is a sad kind of success.”
“They will come in again,” said Julia.
“So they will. So my destroying them does not matter.”
“You will not ask your mother to pay them,” said Sir Edwin.
“Indeed no, Uncle. Of course we do not ask.”
“The tradesmen have to live,” said Julia. “Did you think of that?”
“No, but I found they did. They told me about it. And if they die, the bills come in. They live on in them.”
“They are trifling bills,” said Simon. “Mine were much larger. Uncle Edwin paid them.”
“Your position is different,” said his mother.
“So it is,” said Walter. “And I have never had a grudging thought.”
“Perhaps it is fair that you should live in your own way. It is a freedom Simon will not have. It may be worth while to make sacrifices for it.”
“It is a good thing Mater feels that, as she is to make them,” said Simon.
“Mater, how deeply you speak!” said Walter.
“Well, I am not a stupid woman. It may be from me that you inherit your gifts. Talented men often have remarkable mothers.”
“So we know where to place you both,” said Sir Edwin.
“Uncle, those words were better not said. You should not speak with an ironic note.”
“Is there any way in which we may speak?”
“Very few ways. Most of them shock me so much.”
“Are we to remain at the breakfast table until luncheon is put upon it?”
“It would save our coming back for it,” said Simon.
“I should require time for the adjustment, sir,” said Deakin, without raising his eyes.
“Ought you not to be finding something to do?” said Julia, to her sons.
“Simon will not find that hard,” said Hamish. “I am no longer equal to much. And Edwin wants him to get an insight into things. The future must be remembered.”
“And we have seen that he does not forget it,” said Sir Edwin.
“How do you feel this morning, Father?” said Simon, in a tone of concern.
“I feel no difference day by day. It is every month or so that I know a change. When a heart begins to go downhill, it knows no turning.”
“I shall talk like that one day,” said Walter. “I like to imagine it. It puts people in a very becoming light.”
“In what way?” said his father.
“It shows them as dignified and courageous and not over-regardful of self. And what could be better?”