The Present and the Past by Ivy Compton-Burnett Page A

Catherine.
    â€˜Yes, they must know. Our servants talk to theirs. I listen to servants’ gossip. It is one of my weaknesses and my pleasures.’
    â€˜They are often the same,’ said Ursula. ‘Perhaps they always are.’
    â€˜No wonder we do not conquer our failings,’ said Catherine.
    â€˜Do you wish you had stayed with your husband?’ said her brother.
    â€˜I found I could not stay. I took the way that offered, I accepted the gain and loss. Or I thought I did. But I find I cannot do so. I am breaking my word. I have lost so much, that I have lost myself.’
    â€˜How do you feel about the boys living with their father?’ said Ursula.
    â€˜I would take nothing from them. I have learned to measure loss. And in a way it means nothing. He is a dead figure in my heart. I could meet him and say my word. I could see him go, the same dead thing. But to his children he is alive.’
    â€˜I wonder what he means to them.’
    â€˜I have wondered it night and day.’
    â€˜I do enjoy this personal talk.’ said Elton. ‘I know I ought to be ashamed, but creditable pleasure is so hard.’
    â€˜Like rejoicing in others’ joy,’ said Ursula. ‘Though that is an extreme case.’
    â€˜They do say we should eschew the personal and pursue wider things,’ said Catherine.
    â€˜It would serve them right to have to do it,’ said her sister. ‘If they had to fulfil their boasts, what a lesson it would be! They ought to be made to talk about national affairs:’
    â€˜Well, people do talk about such things.’
    â€˜So I have heard,’ said Elton, ‘but I do not want any proof.’
    â€˜If you listen to servants, you must find the men sometimes talk to them,’ said Catherine.
    â€˜I listen to the women. It is some instinct of self-protection. And it is their standard I admire, their integrity of interest and purity of aim. What a good thing there are so many more of them than men!’
    â€˜The men tend to be more reliable witnesses.’
    â€˜Yes, and they are not ashamed of it. Not ashamed of being without creative power. No woman would be so shameless. She would have no friends. No other woman would tolerate it.’
    â€˜She might have men friends.’
    â€˜Well, that would be her punishment.’
    â€˜I suppose some men talk of personal things.’
    â€˜There are some happy marriages,’ said Ursula. ‘So they must.’
    â€˜A man is supposed to eat his breakfast with the paper propped up before him,’ said Catherine.
    â€˜Well, he has to quote from it and pretend he thought it allhimself,’ said Elton. ‘But I don’t suppose Cassius did that.’
    â€˜No, he tended to the personal. But the personal note must be the real one. It ends the interest of things, if they are not rooted in the truth.’
    â€˜Sometimes it adds to it,’ said Ursula. ‘That seems to be its purpose. How it does add to it! It even does for the whole.’
    â€˜Distortion seems always to tend to people’s disadvantage.’
    â€˜Well, it may as well kill two birds with one stone.’
    â€˜What good does it do us to disparage people?’
    â€˜I am not sure, but it seems to be great good. Perhaps it makes us better by comparison.’
    â€˜Do we do everything for our own advantage?’
    â€˜Yes, I think we do. No one else does anything for it. So it takes all our time to get enough done.’
    â€˜I have a dislike of the simple sin of saying behind people’s backs what we do not say to their faces,’ said Catherine, with a little laugh.
    â€˜It does seem strange of you to have anything to do with what is simple.’
    â€˜It would be a more complex sin to do both,’ said Elton.
    â€˜It would be better than only doing the first,’ said Catherine.
    â€˜I thought the first was always done,’ said her sister.
    â€˜I suppose criticism