Men and Wives (34 page)

“Jermyn, take her away before she leaves me anything more to alter,” said Rachel. “Really this is not fit for the poor. I don't see how any unfortunate person could wear it, not anyone already unfortunate.”

“It is plain and strong,” said Mellicent.

“I hardly liked to put it into words, but it is, isn't it? We must not call the poor thriftless, and then treat them as if they were not. What is the good of knowing about them?”

“What do you think, Mellicent?” said Jermyn, accompanying her along the road.

“I thought the verses very interesting, some of them, especially those with the definite signs of early youth. Something seems to go in the later ones.”

“Well, perhaps those are more in my real manner. What do you think of their quality?”

“I think they are by no means without a worth of their own.”

“You think me a fool to have published?”

“No, I think you are fortunate. My father is poorer than yours. That is the difference between us there.”

“Mellicent, I hope that some day I shall have the right to publish your work. I am helpless until my own can struggle into the light of itself.”

“And shall I not also be at that stage by then?”

“You did not misunderstand me.”

“No, you made yourself clear. Would you like it except in the way you have planned?”

“You can't think I should not be overjoyed if you were to get rapid success. We can never tell what work will come most promptly into its first, facile credit.”

“You hold to your plan,” said Mellicent. “Would you
like a wife who was better than yourself on your own line?”

“Yes, if she really were better. But married people can't continue on the same line. To a man and a woman there must in the end be a man and a woman's life.”

“Now I have not refused you,” said Mellicent. “You have refused me.”

“You have not written much lately, have you?” said Jermyn after a silence. “I should like to see the poems I have not seen.”

“You have not seen most of them. I can send them if you like.”

“I should like it indeed. But I must make it clear, that as you don't want men and women distinctions in these things, I must not see it a case for chivalry. If you don't want my opinion, don't ask for it.”

“I have not asked for it,” said Mellicent, laughing. “It is you who ask to form it. Of course it is not a case for chivalry. I shouldn't expect it from a man who had refused me.”

“Well, you will send the poems to-night,” said Jermyn, waving a farewell.

“What will you do, my dear?” said Rachel, coming out of Agatha's gate, where the two had parted.

“Send my poems to Jermyn.”

“Has it been as bad as that? Must you really? Being cruel to be kind is such dreadful cruelty. Being cruel to be cruel is better.”

“I think Jermyn takes it for that.”

“Well, it might have been worse. You are still friends, then?”

“Yes,” said Mellicent, smiling to herself.

“You refused his offer?” said her stepmother.

“No, he withdrew it.”

“Oh yes, the poems,” said Rachel. “Must you really be a spinster, even though people will never understand it?”

“People like you will understand it.”

“But do you realise how uncommon I am? There are no people like me.”

“I think I am like you in one small way. Your happiest years were your single ones.”

“Well, a selfish life is lovely, darling,” said Rachel. “It is awful to be of use.”

“My Dear Boy, my heart aches at seeing you set off. I don't know when I have had a moment that gave me a lump in my throat like this. I could set the waterworks on like a woman, if I let go of myself. I don't make any bones about it.”

“You don't, Father,” said Matthew.

“You take your father's blessing with you,” Godfrey continued, bringing his hand down on his son's shoulder, and appearing to be deterred by convention from embracing him. “And I don't need to say that your mother's goes with it. I am as convinced of that as that I am standing here. I can say no more.”

“Matthew knows that if there was anything more, you would say it,” said Griselda.

“You have gone the full length, Father,” said Matthew.

“You will have to go over it all again when I set off to Cambridge,” said Jermyn. “I can't be put off with a lesser portion.”

“Oh, my dear boy, that is not quite the same,” said Godfrey, with a lighter hand for his second son. “Matthew and I have been through so much together that it has made a bond between us. There is that between Matthew and his father. And Matthew was the first born to me and his mother.”

“We are not disputing it, Father,” said Matthew, going a step further.

“Ah, Matthew, the future before you; an old man myself,” said Sir Percy. “I don't want you to think of an old man. I shall be thinking of you; you need not give a thought to it.”

“Ah, thank you, my dear old friend,” said Godfrey, just
avoiding monotony in gesture. “Matthew's heart is too full for words this morning.”

“Matthew comes in for more and more credit, and deserves it,” said Jermyn.

“The rest of us might make a suitable response,” said Gregory.

“If you think, he has always been the silent one,” said Griselda.

“Good-bye, Grisel; good-bye, Father; good-bye, all. Thanks very much,” said Matthew, passing to the carriage.

“Ah, good-bye, my dear boy!” said Godfrey, standing with his hand over his eyes. “Yes, there he goes, our eldest son. His mother's eyes are on him and all of us at the moment of our parting.”

“I don't believe Harriet gives her attention to everyone but me like that,” said Rachel.

“I am sure she does not, Rachel. Her eyes are on you as you take her place to her children,” Godfrey assured her, walking with his back towards her into the house.

“Not as I go back to my own concerns?” said Rachel.

“Yes, yes, Rachel, we will go home,” said her husband.

“I must learn not always to be here. Habits get so set in old age. Harriet must sometimes look down and see her place vacant for herself. I was quite superfluous this morning, with her doing everything. She must have been pleased with Matthew's departure. He hardly said a word, and his father did all he could to show him up.”

“Ah, you miss Harriet, Rachel,” said Sir Percy, for the first time since Harriet's death.

“Yes. I am almost falling into Godfrey's method of keeping her.”

Godfrey went into the library and threw himself into a chair, to find his common solace in his own companionship.

“Well, well, a turning point, a parting of the ways. My wife gone, my boy Matthew gone, the other children off on their own lives. The last to come, the first to marry.
Nothing but an old grandfather before long. I must depend on myself. That time comes to most of us sooner or later. I shan't find it as easy as I once should have. I had those months with the young ones alone; a good time, good children, good to their father. It isn't as if I were starting again, with the relief of taking the days for myself in peace. Yes, well, there are other things, but there is relief. I won't shirk looking at myself. If Harriet knows my heart, she knows that. There are not worse things in it than in other men's. Better, I shouldn't be surprised; I am an easy sort of fellow. Harriet didn't have trouble with me. She might have had, ageing so early, my poor girl. I should have been ashamed to let her have it.” He sat up and his voice gained force. “I can say that for myself. If that is Buttermere sneaking into the room, he leaves the house this minute!”

Godfrey sprang to his feet and strode to the door, to receive Camilla into his arms.

“Dear Sir Godfrey, Matthew has left you? I had to come and say a word. I waited until he was gone, because I would not hurt him by seeing him. I wish I had done him less harm. If you ever speak to him of me, say that I wish I had done him only good. He will understand. But I could not help it. I can't help these things I do to men. Say that you understand me.”

“My dear Camilla, my dear girl, I do indeed say it. You know I wished to have you for my daughter. And my wife would have come to wish it too. My heart rises up and tells me so. And I thank you for what you say about her. Your words are as balm to my soul. They cheer me as I set off on my lonely path, hardly seeing what is in front of me. I do not set myself up to be of account. I am content to live with little.”

“You make me feel I have done more harm than I thought. I shall have no peace. I cannot bear you to waste the prime of your life. I always loved you better than Matthew.”

“Did you, Camilla? Did you, my dear?” said Godfrey in a far-away tone.

“I did, I did. I can't go on with my life until you are going on with yours.”

“Cannot you, Camilla?” said Godfrey, as if the appeal of this just came home.

“Say you will never be different.”

“Well, well, I will say I will never be different to you, Camilla. It is something to you to know that, is it, my dear?”

“You take advantage of my betraying myself in a moment of emotion!” said Camilla, moving away and throwing on him a different eye.

“Well, your feeling in that way is something to me. It will be a spar for me to hold on to, as I flounder through my life, trying to do my best, trying to look forward, with little enough to give me courage. People do not see me as you do, Camilla. They leave me to go my own way, as they go theirs. They cast not a look to the right or the left.”

“We all have our special ones,” said Camilla, with her head down.

“And I am your special one, Camilla? I have always felt my heart go out to my son's future wife. You have been dear as a daughter to me. I shall look always to see you, and have the support of your words. You are the only one who sees me as I am, as I see myself, and not as a husk left over, with the kernel gone. For my dear and loyal wife, Camilla, that gifted and devoted woman, is seen to have left me somehow emptied, bereft of something, drained by what I have had to give, and have given so willingly.”

“I know you would give a great deal,” murmured Camilla. “I can feel you would.”

“Camilla, there is no limit to what I would pour out on a woman who granted me a little in return, who would spare a thought to the manner of man who walked through life at her side. I am not an old man, as the world reckons
years; I am a man in my vigorous days, as is accounted the life of men. I am younger than I have been allowed to be in the past. I could give much.”

“You are not the only one of us who could do that.”

“I make no claim to be. I should not ask nothing, Camilla.”

“I should be the last woman to want a man who did.”

“I believe you would, Camilla. I believe I am a man who knows what is welcome to a woman, what is acceptable in her sight. I have had little chance to show the man I could be.”

“Better late than never! Never too late to mend! Never too old to learn!” chanted Camilla, pirouetting across the room. “Don't escort me to the door. I will creep out with bowed head as I came.”

Godfrey walked up and down the floor, and finding the space restricted, continued his steps into the hall, which Gregory and Polly were crossing on their way to the garden.

“Well, my Gregory and Polly! Well, my pretty pair! I can tell you I envy you, or I should in some people's place. I know what you are feeling. It only comes once, at whatever time of life it comes, what is carrying you on its force. Some people would say you were too young, as they would say I was too old. They are as wrong in one case as in the other. For we know not on what day nor in what hour it cometh, whether in the spring or the autumn, the later summer of life.”

Dominic Entered The Haslams' house with somehow stealthy steps, as if he would be glad to leave it with the ensuing interview past.

Godfrey came to greet him with an easiness rather than ease of manner, that recalled the days of Harriet's illness.

“Well, Spong, I think you find me in better heart. I feel more prepared to pick myself up and get on my way, than when you saw me last. It was a rough tumble. But we must not stay at a standstill because we have had a set-back. Life is not long enough for that.”

“No, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, allowing his eyes to waver from Godfrey's face, and not expressing satisfaction in his account. “I have taken the liberty of calling on you, in the hope that you may be disposed to give me some of your attention. I have sympathised with your disinclination to concentrate upon material matters, but I shall be from home for a few weeks in the immediate future, and should be concerned if you desired assistance when I was constrained to deny it. I shall not need to impose exacting demands at a time when your mind is distracted by other claims.”

“Yes, yes, let us get to it, Spong,” said Godfrey, pulling up a chair for himself, and seeming to summon another by a glance, which Dominic supplemented. “Let us get it over. We have to set our minds in order, so that we can turn them to the next Chapter. For we shall have to act our part in it. We must not stay with our feet rooted in the past.”

“No, well, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, laying out some papers one by one, with his eyes upon them, “what I have to say concerns amongst others one point which, with your
permission, we will turn to first, a slight one as regards comprehension and probably discussion. I have to state what it is likely you already know, what I make no doubt you already know, and disclose as a matter of formality.” Dominic seemed to find each syllable useful in postponing the nominal utterance. “You are doubtless aware that your wife left you in control of the larger part of the income deriving from her estate, on the condition that, and for as long as, you remain her widower. Failing this, the money reverts, in proportions which she has laid down, to her children.” Dominic, having accomplished the form, remained with his eyes on the table.