Men and Wives Read online

  Godfrey followed his friend into the hall, and stood as if in doubt.

  “What of my poor girl in there?” he said.

  “I must be careful of my eyes. You see more with yours than you used. I see you have had to. I think it will be well enough, if she does not come under a real strain. I wouldn’t answer for things then: this fighting with everything is strain enough. But I don’t see how she can do that, with you all on the watch for her.”

  “No, no. We will all watch for her indeed,” said Godfrey in a rather empty voice. “Matthew, here is the doctor waiting for you. Have you said good-bye to your mother, my boy?”

  “No, there is no occasion, Father. I shall see her later in the day.”

  “But go in and say good-bye to her, my son,” said Godfrey in a coaxing, deprecating tone. “Give her a word to take with her through the day. A word from you is a great stand-by for her. You know that.”

  “I haven’t observed it,” said Matthew, going down the steps. “Good-bye, Father.”

  “Good-bye, my boy, good-bye,” said Godfrey, with cordial appreciation of this farewell. “My blessing goes with you.”

  Having uttered these last words in a tone too low to be heard, Godfrey retraced his steps to the dining-room, giving them especial force in case they should falter. Harriet was walking on the gravel outside the house, with Gregory holding her arm and stooping over her, and her face was happy and almost young.

  Her husband threw back his shoulders and laid hold of the lapels of his coat, and walked about, swishing his feet on the carpet and breaking into snatches of talk and song. Buttermere entered and conveyed in silence his view of anyone engaged, or perhaps surprised in audible soliloquy.

  “Well, Buttermere, so you have caught me in the act. You never talk to yourself, do you? You would be ashamed?”

  Buttermere looked as if he could not but allow this to pass.

  “You never do things you are ashamed of, do you, Buttermere?” said Godfrey, suggesting the truth, for Buttermere never talked to himself, did a woman’s work as distinct from his own kindred duties, addressed his subordinates except with peremptory direction, or committed tangible dishonesty. Of taking pleasure in any human discomfiture, especially in that of the family he served, he was not ashamed, reserving this feeling for such things as threatened his manhood.

  Gregory was pacing with his mother on the path.

  “I am asking you a question I have never asked before. What do you think about when you are treading the passages at night? Tell me at once and truly. Do you get into a habit of going over the same things ?”

  “My darling, what do I think about? I ought not to tell you. I feel sometimes as if the curse were hanging over you, as if only your father were free of it. Yes, I go over the same things. That seems to be my weakness, almost my disease; I believe it is nearly that. I feel I must get something just as it was, and I don’t quite reach it, and begin again; and each time something is missed, and never the same thing. And it goes on through the night; and I feel it hanging over me in the day; and the future stretches before me with all the nights. And when I differ from Matthew and Jermyn—and it is not what I want for them, Gregory, what they are doing—and when your father and I are not of one mind, I go over what they have suffered, and what remains in their thoughts. And I feel that if I could once come up with the thoughts, I should not mind what they were; that I could face them, if they were not hanging over me with threat; and they can never be overtaken. And I ought not to tell all this to you, who may be going to suffer it yourself. I never ought to have married, Gregory. But I am easier now you know it, and I am not living alone. It does not seem it ought to be what it is, and yet it is always the same. You could never understand, and yet there is nothing you cannot understand, my dear, dear boy.”

  “How clever of you it was to marry Father, when you were both of you as you were!”

  “Well, my child, perhaps it was clever. Perhaps he was the right man for me, your dear, good father, my generous, forbearing husband. I may not be the right woman for anyone. But he is stronger than I am, just as he is weaker. I don’t think it has hurt him, unless it is that I will not think so. I trust he is happy. How I pray that he is! For I cannot help myself, Gregory.”

  “Oh, yes, he is happy, doing such lovely things, shooting and riding and reading prayers,” said Gregory.

  “Gregory, you know what our family service represents to your father and me, that it is the visible sign of the deepest things within us?”

  “Yes. You are so fortunate to have them represented. Most of us don’t get them attended to at all.”

  The mother was silent, a complex expression on her face.

  “There are Jermyn and Griselda setting off for the moors,” said Gregory.

  “Come, come, my darlings,” said Harriet in a passionate, crooning voice, beckoning with a large, maternal gesture. “Come and say good-bye to your mother. Go out into the sun and beauty, and leave uneasiness behind. It is I who have caused it. Leave me and be at peace.”

  The intenseness of Harriet’s tone brought a change to her children’s faces, and Gregory took his arm from hers and sauntered by her side with the eagerness fading from his eyes.

  Godfrey, who tended to pair with Matthew, as Jermyn did with Griselda, and Harriet with Gregory, stepped out alone on to the gravel, shading his face.

  “Well, my Harriet. Well, my dear, I heard you talking in a way that reminded me of our youth. I said to myself, ‘Why, there is my Harriet chattering like a girl!’ This is a brave morning for you.”

  “Godfrey,” said Harriet, shrinking back in a manner that made her husband do the same, “I wish you would not comment upon any action of mine that happens to be natural. What would you do, if you could not be yourself for a moment without creating a storm of comment? How can I avoid being unlike other people, if I am to produce stupefaction when I am as they are?”

  “Oh, come, Harriet! Storm of comment! Why, what did I say but that you were talking like a girl? You would not expect me to be up in arms, if you said I was talking like a boy. You are not likely to say it to me. That would produce stupefaction, I can tell you.”

  “Godfrey,” said Harriet, laying her hand on his arm, “I am not often myself in these days. Will you bear with me for the sake of those behind while we have a word about the future of our sons?”

  “Bear with you? Bear with a word on the future of our sons?” said Godfrey, drawing her arm within his in well-thought-of emulation of Gregory. “I should like it above all things. A talk with you about our dear boys, who hold us together and prevent us from drifting apart; who make it worth while for us to hold together; who make our keeping together for our own sakes a good thing in itself! It is what I have been wanting without knowing what I wanted.”

  Godfrey, setting off at his wife’s side, observed the sudden pallor of her face, and while keeping on the prudent side of comment upon it, was far from assigning himself as its cause.

  Chapter II

  “Words Cannot Do justice to my opinion of Gregory,” said Jermyn, as he walked with his sister on the moors. “He seems to ask nothing but to curl up sleekly in other people’s minds. I can almost hear him purring in Mother’s. Beside him I am a monster of gross egoism.”

  “I hope I am too,” said Griselda. “I think that is nicer for us.”

  “Matthew and I won’t be useless to other people in the end. Far from it, if we are allowed the chance of being what we are. If we are driven to throw our powers into hackwork just when the early forces are in play, the spring might go for ever; it might simply break. You can’t get too much into one youth.”

  “I shan’t try to get anything into mine,” said Griselda, with the humorous freedom she showed with her brothers. “I think my spring is too tender to be used at all. I daresay Gregory’s is too.”

  “I was speaking in a serious spirit. We must do that for a second or two sometimes.”

  “Well, if we must,” said Griselda
. “Then you are in no danger from Father, and probably in none from Mother, though we tremble before signs that she is tempted to use her power. People can’t have so much without its occurring to them to use it.”

  “I am protected by her weakness for seeing Father master in his own house.”

  “I had a feeling that you were safe. And you will be safer when you reach a more definite stage. Mother is simpler than she seems.”

  “You can’t be as definite with poetry as if you were working with material things. It is simple indeed not to see that. The spirit comes and goes, as live things must. It is independent and ebbs and flows. At the moment it is on the ebb.” Griselda nervously conquered a smile, and her brother continued with coldness. “You can’t foretell your moods. All rare things are elusive. It is a condition of their being rare.”

  “Well, of course, those are not the words for Mother. She can observe that things are elusive without suspecting that they are rare, except in the sense that they are not to be depended on.”

  “You can’t offer up poetry to order. You may laugh, but you can’t gather up and put into form in a moment what has been stirring in your mind for years, what may have its roots right back in the deeps of childhood. Strange, strange, that human beings with centuries of thought behind them should think it were possible!”

  “That is a hopeful view of Father’s antecedents. The centuries behind him hold a good deal besides thought. We must take it into account.”

  “Of course it is my business to give him proof, and I am not far off it now. Things are rising and working and taking shape. A very few more months!”

  “That is good hearing,” said his sister. “A little family uplift would not come amiss. I don’t see what we shall come to, if we don’t have some soon. Matthew may not be able to wrest a secret from the universe. We must rely on the one of you who can depend on himself.”

  “Each time I see the Hardistys’ place,” said Jermyn, as they came upon an eighteenth-century house, “I regret that we do not belong to what Buttermere properly calls the real gentry.”

  “We can’t blame Buttermere for being ashamed of us,” said Griselda. “We are at that particularly shameful stage when we understand it. Here is Sir Percy coming to meet us. He always does that when we arrive without being asked.”

  Sir Percy Hardisty, whom Buttermere described as a gentleman of the old order, had a shapeless, stooping figure, little, opaque green eyes, a boneless, spreading nose, an uncertain gait, and clothes of that peculiar shabbiness which rouses speculation upon the wearer’s attitude to them. Sir Percy had no attitude to things of this kind, and Buttermere had summed up his own in the statement that his master, Sir Godfrey, owed more to himself; and there was truth as well as triumph in his perception that Sir Percy’s corresponding debt was small.

  “Well, well, this is a kindness to an old man,” said Sir Percy, who was sixty-two and had for some years imposed this view of his age. “You have come to see me as well as the rest of us. It is a great favour to us all. Now tell me how your mother is this morning.”

  Sir Percy had a great affection and respect for Harriet. The feeling was shared by his wife, who was coming to join them, a sturdy old woman ten years older than her husband, with bright, steady eyes, a well-shaped head and a carefully innocent expression.

  “It is an interesting time of the year, the time when our oldest shoes get really spoilt enough to be discarded. That is of no advantage to Percy. We say he is one of those people who can wear anything. I think he must be the only one who really wears it. I hope he hasn’t been too certain of himself, and assumed you would stay to luncheon without being pressed.”

  “Why, they will have luncheon with us, Rachel. Luncheon must be on the table,” said Sir Percy, looking perplexed.

  “They are young and generous,” said Lady Hardisty. “Come in, my dears, and begin at once having luncheon. It is worse to talk to hosts when you are not having it. You know I sit at the side of the table, so that people can see I do not shrink from sitting under my predecessor.” Sir Percy fleetingly raised his eyes to the portrait of his first wife. “Everything has to be done to throw up the character of a woman in my position. You know I taught Milly and Polly to call me Mater, to show their real feeling of that kind was given to another long ago. I trained them myself in that for the sake of their loyalty. As Polly only knew her mother for an hour, her loyalty is a tribute to the dear child’s constant nature, that it pays to foster.”

  Sir Percy paused in his carving, his knife and fork aloft and wide, and leant towards Jermyn.

  “And how did you say your mother was?”

  “Not up to a great deal,” said Jermyn. “She does not sleep, and that makes the day rather much for her.”

  “Yes, yes. And your father?” said Sir Percy, laying down his tools. “He is perhaps not too much put about by it?”

  “He is anxious about her in his own way. He tries not to let it get the better of him, for all our sakes.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Not get the better of him,” said Sir Percy, rising to yield his place to his wife, and stooping over Jermyn’s chair with his hands upon it. “Then you can cheer me on the whole about everything?”

  “Percy, you can’t expect Jermyn to be a second mother to you as I have been,” said Rachel. “Poor little Grisel is looking at you as if she really were your mother. It is too much for them.”

  “And Matthew?” said Sir Percy, passing along the table with a hobbling step. “Matthew is still at his work, is he? He doesn’t often come to see us all. And you, Jermyn, are still at poetry? Well, that leaves you more at ease; that is one thing about it; that is a great thing for your friends.”

  “Percy, of course Jermyn is not at ease. Do say less dreadful things,” said Rachel.

  “He is coming out as a full-fledged poet almost at once,” said Griselda.

  “A little later than that,” said Jermyn.

  “Ah, now, now,” said Sir Percy, leaning back in his wife’s chair, “that will be something for your mother. Because she must want a little cheering sometimes, with all of it, with your work and Matthew’s. Of course I know it has to be done, that it is a great thing that you can do it. Both of you, too; it is a great thing; but still your mother, you know. Now, Rachel, I must insist upon relieving you.”

  “No, my dear. You must learn to think of others.”

  “Well, now, poetry, Jermyn,” resumed Sir Percy. “Do people ever make anything out of it, as far as you know?”

  “Well, I hope I shall make a few hundreds a year in the end. People don’t often take it up as a life work. I shall have to be content with a very little for a long time, and to be a poor man at last.”

  “Well, now, and does that content you?” said Sir Percy. “That is what you want, is it? Well, of course, ‘poets are not people we can understand. They would not be what they are if we could.”

  “No, they might as well be something else,” said Rachel. “I wish I had ever been misunderstood. People so often give us our due, and that is bound to remind us of it.”

  “Of course my life work must involve many kinds of sacrifice, perhaps nearly all kinds,” said Jermyn. “I am more than content.”

  “Oh, many kinds of sacrifice, nearly all kinds?” said Sir Percy, lifting his head. “Nearly all kinds? And you are content? More than content? And your poor mother does not like it? No, I am sure she would not.”

  “I think she will be reconciled to it, when she realises that any powers I have tend that way,” said Jermyn. “She can hardly forbid my making sacrifices for my own sake. It is for nobody else’s.”

  “Oh, for nobody else’s?” said Sir Percy. “But what good is it then? I mean sacrifice not for someone else? I thought sacrifice—I mean sacrifice for your own sake, isn’t that a little fanatical, Jermyn? I don’t think that is what your mother means, when she is herself just a thought serious-minded, you know.”

  “No, no. She does not mean that. She thinks I am a pompous, slug
gish young jackanapes,” said Jermyn.

  “Yes, but, now, what about what your mother thinks?” said Sir Percy coaxingly. “I don’t mean what we know hasn’t entered her mind. But isn’t there something in it? Because all this sacrifice for nobody! Well, you know. Now why not think of your mother and father, instead of sacrifice for people outside, for nobody at all?”

  “Griselda, it is too considerate to make us think it is a laughing matter,” said Rachel. “I do appreciate it, and Percy would if he could.”

  “I shall have to sacrifice my mother’s satisfaction with the other things,” said Jermyn. “It is the sacrifice I shall like least to make.”

  “Oh, well, sacrifice,” said Sir Percy, accepting persistence in this line. “Well, so you must have it, Jermyn. Well, well, there seem to me to be better things. And your mother’s satisfaction. Well, sacrifice has to be sacrifice; I see that it does. But you must have your way, and join the martyrs, the poets, take what seems to you the right course. Why, there are the girls, Rachel. There are Mellicent and Polly, back from their picnic in time to get something besides their sandwiches. Sandwiches are not very much.”

  “They are nothing. Nobody can eat them,” said Rachel. “Well, my dears. Give your sandwiches to Merton for the fowls.”

  “We have finished them, Mater,” said the younger girl.

  “I thought that was why places were so untidy after picnics, that people took sandwiches and could not eat them. I don’t understand why so much is left, if they can be used. Mellicent, you must make up to Jermyn for being told that poetry is not worth a sacrifice, that his mother ought not to be sacrificed to it, when of course she ought. It is trying in such subtle ways to be told that you must not sacrifice your mother.”