Men and Wives Read online

  “I suffered the last time I was here,” Agatha continued to Harriet, “in seeing the superficial sameness and knowing the essential difference. There must be much that you have to put right, now you are in the general’s place again. You have all my sympathy with the demands of your position.”

  “They have not begun to trouble me yet,” said Harriet. “I have to resolve never to let them again. I am simply in great happiness in being in my home with my husband and children.”

  “Will you have the working party at your house again now?” said Geraldine. “It has been most exciting lately with the garments for the play. We have had all kinds of odd, agitating things to accomplish. I always seem to get masculine habiliments for my portion! I don’t know why they should be assigned especially to me.”

  “It seems to be going too well where it is, for us to think of change,” said Harriet. “I hope your sister can continue to hold it.”

  “Whatever is thought best by everyone, is what I should like,” said Agatha.

  “Then keep it, Mrs. Calkin, keep it,” said Godfrey. “My wife must not do as much as she used. She will come in and join you sometimes.”

  “We have done what we could to fill your place to Gregory,” said Agatha, turning to Harriet, as if modestly to change the subject. “He has been in, I think, whenever he has known I should be by myself. I hope you find he has not suffered as much as you feared?”

  “I have not found yet how much any of them has suffered,” said Harriet, sending her eyes round her children’s faces, and keeping them on Gregory’s. “I trust none of them too much; I think not. I know what kindness you have shown us.”

  “I hope you will let Gregory keep up his intercourse with us? I should be sad, really genuinely sad”—Agatha paused for impartial apportionment of feeling—“to see it broken. I feel there is something I can give him, that I think he will tell you I have given.”

  “He probably will not, as you have given it,” said Harriet smiling. “And Gregory does what he chooses in his friendships. You have found that he does.”

  “No. No. I daresay he will not speak of it. I think you are subtler than I am there. I think he will not.”

  “Sir Percy and Lady Hardisty!” said Buttermere.

  “Harriet, we have come without being asked, because you have not asked us. We should not do such a thing without a reason. We supposed our welcome went without saying, as that was the way it went. Yours goes so much without, that I should be nervous lest Percy should speak, if that was his tendency.”

  Rachel’s voice grew hurried and helpless, and she withdrew her eyes from Harriet’s face.

  “Rachel!” said Godfrey. “After all you have done for us in Harriet’s absence, it cannot be said in mere words that you should have been here to enhance her homecoming. But our thoughts have been so engrossed with her, that they have hardly got outside our four walls. Our other friends would not be with us to-day, if they had not thought of it themselves, if they had not shown us the same kindness that you are showing.”

  Dominic looked down at his bread and fingered it, and Agatha raised a face that cordially confirmed this account of her position.

  “Percy has come to drive me over. He did not think he was wanted. Johnson is ill, and Percy will have sympathy with people he employs, though it spoils the old-world atmosphere that is the point of him. I have come to have coffee with you in your own room, Harriet. I have had my luncheon, so you cannot have the rest of yours. Percy had better have it; he wants it, as I hurried him over his.”

  “No, no, don’t get up, my dear,” said Sir Percy, as Griselda would have relieved him of the duties of her mother’s place. “An old man can make himself useful. Mrs. Calkin, you will allow me? Mrs. Calkin, Buttermere.”

  “Well, come upstairs with me, Harriet. Percy will look after them all,” said Rachel, moving and talking quickly to cover the meeting. “I shall be glad of some of your coffee. Our coffee is poison; cheap things are; I can’t help the vulgarity of truth. I might have brought some of it for your guests. I can’t conceive why you didn’t think of it, instead of giving all your attention to yourself. Why, Harriet, my little one, what is it?”

  Harriet had flung herself into Rachel’s arms and broken into weeping.

  “Haven’t you really had the fit of crying that goes with coming home? I thought people just crossed the threshold and burst into tears. Of course I understand; it was Buttermere. Your emotions have had no outlet.”

  “Rachel, my husband and children! They can do without me. That is why I have not sent for you; I have not had the heart. I have come home to find they can live with me away.”

  “Of course they can. What else were they to do? You must not force people to do things, and then complain of their doing them.”

  “I should not mind it. They had to get used to my being away. They could not help it, though they did it easily. I should not even mind their going against what I wished for them, though it was almost from the moment I left them. Their lives are their own.”

  “It was not from that moment. You did not see that one,” said Rachel. “And what is it you do mind?”

  “I know the moment would have been one by itself,” went on Harriet, raising her face and smiling sadly. “But it was followed by few others of its kind. It is not that I would think of it; it would only be thinking of myself. But I see them with new eyes, Rachel, my husband and children, whom I feel I have not dealt fairly by. I understand it was because of me, because I tried them beyond their strength, that they broke away when I was gone.”

  “Well, if they had a reason, and one you can understand! And it sounds a dreadful thing for you to do, dear.”

  “Godfrey is led like a child,” said Godfrey’s wife. “I feel now that I always knew it. I would not mind his spending too much; he never had a business brain; and I can put things straight. But he gives up the whole trend of his life at the touch of a hand. I would not speak of his supporting what we have set ourselves against; things are not wrong because we are against them; we will say they are not wrong. But his whole attitude to serious things is blurred and easy. He has been made what he is, first by his parents, then by his wife, and now by his friends and his children.”

  “Poor Godfrey! You do all take advantage of him. We seem to be the only people who do not. I claim that he shows no trace of my influence or Percy’s. But that is not what you mean.”

  “He shows very little of mine at the moment,” continued Harriet with the same smile. “Of course he will come back to it, is coming back. But that is all the same thing. I hardly know what man he is in himself.”

  “I know exactly from hearing you describe him,” said Rachel.

  “I know now from hearing myself. And I should not complain; he has had to get to know me, my poor Godfrey. And so have my children, enough to feel they must make the most of being without me. They all made the most of it, all of them, Rachel! There is Gregory, my Gregory, my dearest thing on earth, who binds me to life—-—”

  “No, that is an exaggeration, Harriet. You know he did not bind you to it, that nothing did.”

  “He is in the grip of that worn-out woman,” said Harriet, with what for her was startling bitterness. “It is the wrong thing for him, and it may end anywhere.”

  “You know it may not. It can end nowhere. It can only end. It shows how little worn out you are, that you have not had to face that.”

  “Rachel, if I thought it was simple jealousy, I would put it from me. If I find it is that, I will put it from me. But it is not only that. I admit that I think the feeling Gregory has for middle-aged women, should be mine; that it should be both earned and given, but I ask nothing that is not mine. If he were to fall in love with Percy’s Polly, I would simply rejoice.”

  “Well, he shall fall in love with her then,” said Rachel. “So there is an end of Gregory, simple rejoicing. And there is an end of Griselda too, because of course she has to marry Ernest Bellamy; everyone would have to. I shoul
d have to myself, if I agreed with you that feelings between the young and old could lead anywhere. So we can go on to Matthew and Jermyn. They have not taken advantage of your being away; they used to try to research and write poetry under your eyes; and now they seem to have done it. You have come back to find them more than the same sons to you.”

  “They are the same in that they still put ambition for themselves before a more generous service. I will see it as a ground for pride. I will conquer my own disappointment, though I dread theirs. But I am troubled by their persuading their father to pour out the family money on them, money not meant for their own purposes. They are not the same sons there.”

  “People have to persuade people to pour out money on them. It is never meant for their own purposes, and persuasion is the only thing. Now is this the truth coming?”

  “It is Matthew and Camilla!” broke out Harriet. “It is Camilla as a wife for Matthew! I cannot bear it, Rachel. I cannot suffer it to be. She will take him into the wide and easy way that ends in darkness. She is taking him now. My son, my son!”

  “Matthew is as easily led as Godfrey, is he? You have got them into the way of being led. You did that, and then you left them.”

  “It was not by my own will that I left them,” said Harriet. “And as to that, Rachel, I hope I can say, ‘God’s will be done’.”

  “It sounds unnatural from you; and your exceptions are so arbitrary.”

  “I will gather myself together,” said Harriet. “I will gird on my armour; I will stand up to the fray. I will fight my husband and children, my best beloved. That is what I have before me.”

  “Is it worth it, apart from the sound of it? Of course it is for that.”

  “I know you are trying to save me. But I do not shrink from the sacrifice.”

  “Then it is not a sacrifice for you. It is unnatural not to shrink from sacrifice for other people, but things must not be shirked because they go against the grain.”

  “You are only trying to save me.”

  “Why ‘only’? Why should I not put you first? You are first to me, and you are evidently first to yourself.”

  “No, I am not,” said Harriet.

  “Well, God’s will be done, or rather your will be done, Harriet. You seemed to think the first should hardly happen so often.”

  Chapter XX

  “Well! so you are here, harriet,” said Dufferin.

  “Why are you running away from home by yourself so soon? I could have come to you.”

  “I can say what I have to better when I am here.”

  “I know you stick at nothing then. What do you want this time?”

  “Nothing for myself,” said Harriet.

  “I am glad of that. You would hardly ask for what you did before, for anyone else.”

  “Antony, why did you let Camilla and Matthew come together?”

  “Because Camilla liked Matthew better than me. There was nothing I was out for for myself in that.”

  “Why were you drawn to her yourself?” said Harriet, seeking light on Camilla’s character.

  “Well, well, things were in a tangle for her, and I might as well have had her as any other. I get rather lonely by myself at times.”

  “Did you feel her giving you up for Matthew?”

  “No, she knew that didn’t matter to me. Matthew is giving her the whole of himself, a thing I could never do. She is right to take him. I owe her no grudge there.”

  “She has not a good character,” said Harriet.

  “No?” said Dufferin, consideringly. “No, perhaps she has not. She can’t ever get what she wants, and that hasn’t been any help to her.”

  “What does she want?” said Harriet.

  “A lot of men and a lot of money and a lot of everything that can be touched and used. It is a disadvantage to want so much.”

  “Ernest Bellamy cannot give Griselda any more than he gave her.”

  “No; but I suppose you don’t think of Griselda as you do of her.”

  “Would Camilla be content if she had what she wanted?”

  “Yes, I think so, but she can’t have it, that I can see.”

  “I feel she is not a good woman,” repeated Harriet.

  “Yes, so you have said. And perhaps she is not; it is true that she is not. But I like her better than a lot of the good ones, and so do you.”

  “Why did you not keep to her?” said Harriet.

  “To save Matthew?” said Dufferin, smiling. “Why should I keep to her, if she was no use? Because she would not keep to me, I tell you. She wanted Matthew, and Matthew wanted her a great deal more. And remember this about Matthew, Harriet. He is his mother’s son. To be thwarted in his real desires won’t do for him, any more than it did for you.”

  “Does he see her when he comes here to work?”

  “Of course he does. What do you suppose he comes for? What you have come for, to get what he wants, because Camilla is round the corner. You would not ask that if you did not know.”

  “Antony, you take these things so lightly. In so many things you are careless, as I can judge. And yet in spite of it all I respect and trust you. I feel as if they are in your hands, to be saved from each other, Camilla and my son, whom I have wept and prayed over, whom I have brought up in the straight and narrow way.”

  “Yes, you have done that. Straight enough; and narrow enough too. I believe Camilla is taken with the straight-ness; she hasn’t quite so little in common with you. But they are neither of them in my hands. Camilla is in her own hands, and Matthew is in Camilla’s. There is danger that he may lose her if he does not marry her soon. I use the word ‘danger’, Harriet; it is the word I mean. And now I have a word to say to you. By weeping and praying over Matthew you are rushing to your own doom. Stop weeping and praying. Your prayers are not answered, are they? And people don’t shed tears for you.”

  “No, they do not,” said Harriet, standing with her eyes down.

  “And better for them that they shouldn’t. That is why they don’t. Go back to them, and learn what is good for yourself, as they have learnt it.”

  “Antony,” said Harriet, “does it strike you that my husband and children have less feeling for me than is given to most wives and mothers?”

  “No, I should think more feeling; and you know I tell you the truth. But people don’t feel as much as you want them to. Even you yourself—and you are a woman of very deep feeling, Harriet—want to have things your own way. Look back at this talk, and see that is what you have wanted. Go home and understand that other people want it too. Matthew is your son in many things. When you feel you don’t understand him, examine into your own heart, and you will find the explanation there.”

  Harriet overtook Gregory, walking up the drive towards the house, and getting out of the carriage at the door, waited for him to join her.

  “Where have you been, my son?” she asked, in her old manner.

  “To see my old ladies,” said Gregory, smiling at his mother.

  “Gregory, my dear,” said Harriet, “will you do something for me?”

  Godfrey, who was coming out into the porch, stopped short, and he and his son stood with their eyes on Harriet’s face.

  “Gregory,” said Harriet, “I can only just say it,” and indeed she used a faltering tone. “I meant to come home and find you all without a fault, and I do find you so in yourselves, my dear. But I have to say this for your own sake, just this word. It would be wiser not to spend so much time with a woman so much older than yourself. A gulf of forty years cannot be bridged. I know how good to you Mrs. Calkin has been during my illness, and your mother is the first of those who are grateful to her. We will ask her here; you know we all respect and like her; and so you will often be with her. But give up this going to see her by yourself.”

  “I couldn’t do such a startling and selfish thing. It is I who have to be grateful to her, not anyone else. It is evidently only I who am grateful, and that is natural. And you do not respect and like her,
Mother. She gets nothing out of coming here. Of course I cannot stop going to visit her all at once.”

  “Then do it gradually, darling. You are right that that would be better.”

  “Yes, I think your mother is wise there, Gregory,” said Godfrey, speaking as if this one minor point in the family situation might be criticised. “I think perhaps that little matter could be adjusted. And in that case you will adjust it. We will leave it to your own good sense and judgment, my dear boy.”

  Harriet went silently into the house, and Matthew, who had been strolling on the gravel in apparent calm, came up to his father.

  “Well, so it has begun. I saw it beginning.”

  “Matthew, I am at a loss to understand you,” said Godfrey, his voice seeming to be adapted for his wife’s hearing, though she was out of earshot. “If you mean that your mother is going to allow herself to fall back into the ways that were the result of nervous illness, I consider it pessimistic and unworthy. The little point about Gregory is one by itself, as you and he very well know.”

  “You are not much at a loss,” said Matthew. “And you don’t know as much as I do about Mother to-day.”

  “Matthew, we will not continue this conversation.”

  “Mrs. Christy is coming to dinner,” said Matthew. “Camilla told her to come on after the working party. It is time she and Mother met on their new footing. You might break it to Mother, as you are so confident of her compliant spirit.”

  “Indeed I will break it to her, tell her of it, if you wish. And indeed I am confident of her compliant spirit. That is the word that fits the case. She will be delighted, as you know, to dispense her hospitality to a friend. There is something in your attitude that perplexes me, Matthew.”

  “You are fortunate,” said Matthew.

  Harriet came into the drawing-room, kind and cheerful, noticed Griselda’s face, and at once came up to her.

  “Why, be happy, my darling. You are not afraid of your mother, are you? If you only knew, there is no one you need be less afraid of. It is not there that your danger lies, my sweet.”