A God and His Gifts (6 page)

“Do you want to join in the game?” said Sir Michael, as if recognising evidence to the contrary.

“I would rather read. The game isn't a real one. It is only meant to hide something.”

“Oh, we are all younger than he is,” said Hereward. “Come, my three generations. We will leave our elder to himself.”

“I want to hold Salomon's hand,” said Reuben.

Salomon put down his book and went to his side.

“‘Here we come gathering nuts in May, nuts
in May, nuts in May.

Here we come gathering nuts in May, on a
cold and frosty morning'.”

Sir Michael rendered the words with abandon, and paused for Alfred to take him up on the other side.

“Whom will you have for your nuts in May?”

“We will have Ada for nuts in May—”

“Whom will you send to fetch her away—?”

“We will send Hereward to fetch her away,
on a cold and frosty morning.”

Hereward and Ada came into the centre to engage in the contest. Hereward was the victor and drew his wife to his own side. She fell against him and broke into tears, and her second son observed them and was disposed to add his own.

Her eldest gave them a glance.

“I knew it was not a game. It was the opposite of one.”

“Well was it a success?” said Alfred. “I am not a judge.”

“It was a success, Father,” said Ada. “It has done its work. It has shown us things as they have to be, as we must see they are. We will leave it there.”

“We will,” said a quiet voice, as Penelope moved forward. “I think this scene is at an end. To continue it would avail us nothing. Emmeline will go home with her father, and will not come again. If the sisters say goodbye here and now, it will be said.”

Emmeline suffered Ada's long embrace and Hereward's openly affectionate one, made little response to either, and followed her aunt.

“Play game,” said Reuben, in a tone without much hope.

“No, a tale,” said Merton. “Father always knows a new one.”

“Not a new one,” said Reuben, with a wail.

“I can tell you an old one,” said Salomon. “Father can tell us one out of his head.”

Hereward gathered his sons about him, taking Reuben on his knee, and threw himself into a narration that held them still and silent, and moved them to many human emotions, indeed to most of them.

“Again,” said Merton, when it ended, keeping his eyes on his father's face.

“No, that should be enough, sir,” said a voice from the door, where the nurse had stood with a dubious expression. “They will take some time to forget it.”

“Is it only worthy of oblivion?”

“Well, that is really the best thing, sir,” said Nurse in a candid tone. “It might prey on their minds.”

“Again,” said Merton, moving his feet rapidly.

“No, come and tell it to me,” said Nurse. “I have only heard part of it.”

“Yes,” said Merton after a pause, a smile creeping over his face. “I will tell you it all.”

Reuben waited on his father's knee until Nurse lifted him from it, indeed waited for her to do so. Merton followed them upstairs of his own will. It was where his treasure was, and where his heart was also. He was Nurse's favourite of the three brothers, and she was his favourite of all human beings.

Salomon sat down and opened his book, as a member of the remaining company.

“What a difficult book!” said his father. “Do you understand it?”

“I know it is an allegory. But I think of the people as real ones.”

“Do you get any lessons from it? It is supposed to afford a good many.”

“I am not old enough for them,” said Salomon, meeting his father's eyes, as if this might not be true of everyone.

Hereward smiled to himself and went to the door.

“Well, it was a strange scene,” said Sir Michael to his wife, waiting for it to close. “To take place before us all, as it did. I could scarcely believe my ears. I had a sense of eavesdropping somehow.”

“I had not. Being obliged to hear something is so different from being tempted to hear it. It does not remind me of it.”

“No, it has no zest about it. I don't mean the other would have any zest, of course. If we yielded to it, which we should not, of course. Well, it was an unusual scene.”

“Oh, I daresay I have cut a sorry figure,” said Ada, with another sigh. “But I felt the time had come, and that it was then or never. In marrying an ordinary woman Hereward has involved himself with an ordinary woman's feelings. But I have talked enough about my ordinariness. You are well aware of it. You know Hereward has not married a martyr. And you see that I have not either.”

“You have not married an ordinary man,” said Zillah. “You must meet much that is not ordinary. He can only be a rule to himself.”

“But only in his own sense. A gifted person owes as much to other people as an average one. Surely not any less.”

“You can hardly feel that Hereward has not fulfilled his human debt.”

“His debt to his wife is part of it. He has a duty to her as well as to the public. Or I am one of the public, if you like.”

“No, do not be one,” said Joanna. “I am sure I am not, though I don't dare to give the reasons.”

“Well, I dare for you, Mamma,” said Ada. “I dare to give many. And one of them is the way you have behaved to-day. Taking no sides, understanding everyone, condemning no one. Just there to help by being the whole of yourself. What better reason is there?”

Before an answer was necessary, Hereward returned to the room. He wore an absent air and was humming to himself.

“Still at the book?” he said to his son. “Don't you get rather tired of it?”

“I don't read it all the time. I don't like the second part.”

“You have not been listening to grown-up talk?” said Ada, with a note of reproof.

“It was the only kind there was. Of course I have heard it.”

“Are you any the wiser?” said Hereward.

“Yes, I think I am a little.”

“Tell us what you have learned from it.”

“It would be no good to tell you. You must know it yourself.”

“Why, this is a son after your heart, Hereward,” said Sir Michael. “Do you begin to see yourself in him?”

“He likes Reuben best,” said Salomon.

“That is a different kind of feeling,” said his father.

“I think there is only one kind.”

“I am a lover of very young children. You would hardly understand.”

“I think I am too,” said Salomon, smiling at his own words. “I like Reuben myself.”

“My feeling for all of you grows with every day.”

“I thought it had got less for me.”

“That is because you don't understand it.”

“It might be because I do. And I think it is. There isn't much in a feeling to understand. It is just something that is there.”

“You must not argue with Father,” said Ada. “He must be wiser than you are.”

“I can't help not thinking what he does. It is a thing no one can help. It is only he and Aunt Zillah who always think the same.”

“Ah, that is what they do,” said Sir Michael. “And
a great thing for both of them it is. Neither will ever stand alone. They can always be left to each other. Indeed they might be now. They deserve an hour to themselves. We all acknowledge their right to it.”

“Come then, my little son,” said Ada. “We will go upstairs and give our minds to the young children. Father is leaving them to us.”

“And trusting them to their mother with an easy heart,” said Sir Michael, in a full tone, as he left the room. “He is making no mistake there.”

“Well, it was a thunderbolt, Zillah,” said Hereward. “I was taken by surprise. It all seemed to fall from nowhere.”

“I have wondered if it would come. And it has come and gone, and will not come again. But what will it mean? What will you do without Emmeline?”

“Think of her, and write to her, and know why I have no answer. They can't take everything from me. And they can't take you. They do not dare to think of it. Ada would not wish to have me without my sister.”

“Nor you to have her without hers. And that has to end. But she can be accepted in herself. She does not give us nothing.”

“To me it is more than that. I have a value for all that she gives. I have not lost my feeling for her. I will not lose it. I guard it more closely than my feeling for you. It is not so safe. And much depends on it.”

“I will help you to keep it. You need not fear. In a sense it is at the root of our life. It is the basis of the future and the safeguard of it.”

“Zillah, we are brother and sister. If we were not, what could we be?”

“Nothing that was nearer. It stands first among the relations. There is nothing before it, nothing to follow it. It reaches from the beginning to the end.”

“Well, I may or may not be welcome,” said Ada's voice. “But I must assert myself once more. There are
things I can and do accept. But banishment from my husband in my own home is not one of them.”

“My father's words mean nothing,” said Hereward. “We have ceased to listen to them, almost to hear them. You must learn to do the same.”

“I know they meant nothing to him. Why, he and I are fast friends. His presence is often a help to me. Today it enabled me to break my silence. To do what was beyond myself. And it was time it was broken. There had ceased to be a case for it.”

“Whether or no that is true,” said Zillah, “I think there is a case for it now.”

“Oh, well, I am willing. I don't want to press things home. There is too much of the fairness of the ordinary person in me for that. Something had to be ended, and it is at an end. I shall not return to it. But I don't feel with you about your father. I like to hear his voice, sounding cheerfully about, expressing goodwill to everyone. I hear it now; and if it cannot be music in my ears, it is something that is no less welcome.”

The voice was coming across the hall, gaining volume as it drew near.

“‘Here we come gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May. Here we come gathering nuts in May on a cold and frosty morning.

“‘A touch of frost in the nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May. A touch of frost in the nuts in May, on a cold and frosty morning.

“‘Ah, we managed to smooth it away, smooth it away, smooth it away. Ah, we managed to smooth it away, on a cold and frosty morning'.

“Oh, there you all are! How that jingle sounds in one's head! The tune that is, of course. The words have no meaning.”

“Can that ever be said of words?” said Zillah to her brother.

“Well, the book is ended,” said Hereward. “What there can be in a word! I am in a strange solitude. I seem to move in a void. I am without any foothold, any stake in life. I have suffered it before, and it is never different. I have had and done what I wanted. But I pay the price.”

“Come, what of your home and your family?” said Sir Michael. “What is this talk of a void? You have the stake in life of other men.”

“I have lost my own. The people have left me, who have lived with me and made my world. More deeply than mere flesh and blood.”

“You mean you have finished with them? And mere flesh and blood! What are you or any of us? What of your mother and me? What of your characters themselves? They are supposed to be like real people. I thought that was the point of them. It is what is often said. Indeed I have thought—” Sir Michael broke off and glanced about him, a smile trembling on his lips.

“I don't use my family as characters, if that is what you mean. They would serve no purpose for me.”

“Well, not as characters, not in your sense I daresay. But things here and there—little touches—I have thought—” Sir Michael leaned back and smiled again to himself.

“
Mere
flesh and blood!” said Salomon to his father. “And Grandpa before your eyes!”

“Well, I am the man I am,” said Sir Michael, modestly. “I have my thoughts and perceptions like anyone else. Or like myself I suppose. It may come from being flesh and blood. That is, of one's own kind.”

“I daresay a good deal comes from that,” said Merton.

“Well, I return to your world,” said Hereward. “I have lost my own. I am happy in having had it. But I would not urge another man to follow in my steps. I do not wish it for my sons. It is a hard path to tread.”

“It seems that it has its allure,” said Salomon. “I don't feel it myself. Or perhaps feel that of any other.”

“Well, you are in a place apart. You will not have to earn your bread. Your brothers must think of the future. I shall not live and write for ever.”

“To think that I must tread a path!” said Reuben.

“And earn bread,” said Merton. “What a hard and frugal course! It is a malicious phrase.”

“Have you thought of a way of gaining it?” said Hereward. “What of your work in the years ahead?”

“Well, I know the main line, Father. I can put it in a few words. I want to be a writer. But not of your range and kind. I should not appeal to the many, and shall be content to write for the few. But by them, in this country and beyond it, I hope to be known in the end. And not only known; read.”

There was a silence.

“It ought hardly to have been in a few words,” said Salomon.

“But it is in those that good writers suggest so much,” said Joanna.

Hereward was silent, and his father gave him a glance.

“Why should I not speak the truth?” said Merton, looking at them. “It was a simple thing that I said.”

“Simple in a sense you did not mean,” said Hereward, in an even tone.

“You have had a writer's life yourself. You should not feel it a strange one for your son.”

“You spoke of a different one from mine.”