Men and Wives (8 page)

“Can we tolerate it?” said Kate. “By himself he will not allow gossip; and how can we cope with circumstances we have never met? Most people insist on it.”

“You will soon come up to Lady Hardisty, if you go on persevering in her line!” said Geraldine, with her eyebrows raised.

Kate looked kindly and uncomprehending, not ready to be drawn upon her emulation of Rachel, which had struck her as in its nature imperceptible.

“Poor man, he feels it very deeply,” said Agatha, coming back into the room.

“He thought I did not feel it enough,” said Kate.

“Well, anyhow he said so!” said Geraldine.

“We must not expect everyone to enter into everything,” said Agatha. “That would not be possible. If Mr. Spong expects it, he is wrong. We must get to know that, those of us whose lives hold the Chapter not common to all. It is the price we pay for fuller experience. We must be content to pay it.”

“We can be more content not to pay it,” said Geraldine.

“I shall never get over being thought to behave with a want of taste and feeling,” said Kate. “I shall harbour towards Mr. Spong the peculiar aversion we have towards those we have wronged.” She glanced at her sister as she ended.

“Well, we can talk about the Bellamys now,” said Geraldine, with a faint air of hardly finding her sister's propensity worth considering. “I daresay Mr. Spong would have joined us, if we had persevered.”

“No!” said Agatha. “No! There are some things that some of us can only bear a certain touch upon.”

“I wonder how soon Mr. Spong will be looking about him for another partner,” said Geraldine, reaching for a book. “I thought he already tended to a wandering eye.”

“No. Not in this case. No!” said Agatha. “This is a case where devotion has gathered, risen to its height, and will hold to the end. He will go on his way alone. There are some of us for whom that path is laid out. Poor man! My thoughts will be with him to-night in his lonely home. They are with him now, as he goes his way towards it.”

Dominic was going his way in the Haslams' carriage to the house of Sir Percy Hardisty.

“Ah, now, Spong, I take it as a kindness that you will try to feel at home with us to-night.”

“Sir Percy, I can only thank you.”

“You are saving us from feeling that our touch cannot be borne in trouble,” said Rachel. “That would strike at the very foundations of our union. Will you not have something to drink, Mr. Spong? It is half an hour before dinner.”

“It would strike, Lady Hardisty, at the foundation of our faith in many things,” said Dominic, stretching backwards to a table in compliance with the degree of his interest. “The touch of certain people is the only thing that can be borne.”

“Ah, now, forget it for the moment, Spong,” said Sir Percy. “Don't be dwelling on it, my boy, to-night. I mean, dwell only on the bright side of it, on all of it; but don't be feeling alone among old friends.”

“You may listen to Percy. He knows what can be done from experience,” said Rachel.

“Sir Percy, I cannot feel alone amid so much kindness. I will simply feel that she who has left me is with me in spirit.”

“Then you both will feel alike,” said Rachel.

“You will not misunderstand me, Lady Hardisty,” said
Dominic, with a look of perplexity and a resonant utterance of the name, as if granting her full right to bear it, “when I say that to me any thought of a successor to my wife is sacrilege.”

“Well, now, Spong,” said Sir Percy, as if any subject were to bel preferred to the one that obtained, “how about this about the young Bellamys and Dufferin? Because we won't try you now by going on to ground that is your own. But that is one sort of business.”

“Sir Percy, as family lawyer to all of them, I have been brought much into contact with the affair,” said Dominic with an air of grave distaste. “I have done my best to advise each party for his or her individual good, but the upshot is, they are to all intents and purposes of one mind.” He sank into dubious amusement.

“It is nice of them to agree under such a test,” said Rachel. “We should never know people in ordinary life. Of course the whole of my life is a test. It is quite the best moment in Mr. Spong's life for us to have him with us, Percy.”

“I am sorry for that poor woman, Mrs. Christy,” said Dominic, with the dilation of his eyes that mention of a woman produced. “It is hard for her to have this trouble with her daughter. I have done all I can to show my sympathy towards her.”

“Percy, we must see about showing sympathy,” said Rachel, “if Mr. Spong doesn't mind our copying him.”

“Lady Hardisty, indeed no,” said Dominic.

“But the girl will divorce Bellamy, of course,” said Sir Percy.

“No,” said Dominic in a judicial tone, “apparently not. The fault is entirely on her side, and Bellamy appears to be anxious to keep any slur off himself. It would go hard with him in his profession to take any other course. And another point seems to be that he may marry again. And no breath of scandal has ever touched him, Sir Percy.”

“I appreciate his taking thought for the successor,” said Rachel.

“But would a woman like that sort of thing to be done about another woman?” said Sir Percy.

“Sir Percy, I am afraid you have very little idea of the attitude of the ladies to one another,” said Dominic, with heaving shoulders.

“He only knows that of one lady to another,” said Rachel, “and it has misled him.”

“Well, but now, about Dufferin?” resumed Sir Percy. “A nice fellow, an able fellow, a man of family. What is he about, getting into muddles fitter for other people than for him? What does he get from making parsons afraid of slurs and all of it?”

“We are not able to limit our dealing to a world constituted just as we should like it, Sir Percy. We lawyers have to find that out.”

“Well, well, but Bellamy's wife?” said Sir Percy. “Why shouldn't some other woman do for him?”

“Well, perhaps he thinks himself the judge of that,” said Dominic, again with doubtful laughter. “Or, conceivably the lady constituted herself the judge. I shall be seeing Dufferin to-night, but possibly I could hardly venture to put that question to him!”

“To-night? Oh, to-night? You are to be with him to-night, Spong, about some of it? Well, now, wouldn't any other night have done for him?”

“Sir Percy,” said Dominic, a flush creeping over his face, “the truth is, I could not bear the prospect of my own empty fireside. His being my neighbour in the town enables me to direct my steps homewards, without immediately taking the plunge that looms ahead of me.” He ended with a considerate smile.

“Nor the prospect of our fireside either,” said Rachel. “Of course the horror of the thought leaks out, Percy and me sitting opposite each other, with the shadows gathering and no memories in common, since old people live in their youth.”

“You would be justified on your side, Lady Hardisty, in
allowing a horror to leak out of any more of my company. I am conscious of showing the effort with which I respond to the kindness I would not be without. And such inconsistency demands banishment.”

He rose smiling, and held out his hand, seeming to summon self-control to achieve a conventional bearing.

“Here is Polly, come in time to say good-bye,” said Rachel. “Polly, you did not know that Dominic was here, did you?”

“I think, Lady Hardisty,” said Dominic with a conscious smile, “that Miss Polly would be taken aback by the idea of such an elderly person as I must appear to her, being possessed of a Christian name, much more being called by it.”

“Polly does not expect older people not to have names, or not to be called by them,” said Rachel. “She knows they do not give up everything. And I thought you and Polly were the same age. That is the stage I have got to.”

Dominic took his leave of Polly with a smile that did not comment on this, in deference to her point of view.

Sir Percy returned from attending him to the door.

“Well, now the poor fellow, Rachel! Does he have to be chasing about after everybody to-day?”

“I suppose he does; the urge of our natures is strong.”

“Because I should have thought any kind of fireside was better than none.”

“All kinds may be better still,” said his wife.

Dominic was approaching the fourth fireside afforded him since his wife's burial.

“Well, Dufferin,” he said, sinking down into a chair, “I have found my old friends very warm-hearted to a man in his first desolation. I have been deeply touched. I have had it brought home to me what kind hearts there are in the world.”

“That is sometimes brought home. What would have been brought home to me, if I had been your shadow? They must have talked about something even to you.”

“They spoke of you, Dufferin, with great respect and affection, and with deep concern for the position in which you find yourself. That is all I can say.”

“You might have had better entertainment. You may have it soon. Camilla will be here in a moment, and you can see the play at first hand.”

Dominic made a movement back into his chair, and his cigar wavered in his grasp.

“She won't hurt you,” said Dufferin, giving him a glance. “You came, knowing that her mother's house was a hundred yards away. You may have come because you knew it. You wouldn't have been the first. And it is as good a reason as my being your wife's third cousin. There is her voice on the stairs.”

Dominic flushed and laid his cigar aside.

“Antony, Mother thought it undignified of me to come. She can't understand that if we had relied upon her supervision, we could not have arrived where we are. If she had known Mr. Spong was to be our chaperon, she would have sped me with a light heart.”

Dominic had drawn himself to his feet, offering this homage to womanhood in any condition.

“I believe Mr. Spong would insult me if I were a man.”

“Mrs. Bellamy, you are not a man.”

“The exactitude of the lawyer! No, keep your easy chair, Mr. Spong; you must be tired to death to-day. I will take my seat on Antony's knee.”

Dominic glanced at Dufferin's position of hand and limb, just allowing himself to follow his experience.

“I don't believe Mr. Spong hates me after all,” said Camilla, regarding him. “He can hate the sin but love the sinner.”

“I hope, Mrs. Bellamy, that that is a true word spoken in jest.”

Camilla leaned back and laughed.

“I think, Dufferin,” said Dominic, gathering himself together as if he bethought himself, “that my presence
here can be dispensed with during Mrs. Bellamy's visit.”

“Oh, you think?” said Camilla. “Well, I should not act until you are sure. A lawyer knows it does not do to go on guess-work.”

“What am I to understand from that?” said Dominic, smiling at Dufferin.

“That you are indispensable,” said Camilla.

“Dufferin, am I to yield to pressure?” said Dominic.

“Oh, sit down, Spong,” said Dufferin.

Dominic sat down.

“Well, My Dear Matthew, so you have given your support to our little service this morning. It isn't often that you hear your father doing what is in him to start the day for you all. I might be a cipher in the house in the morning for all you know of me. I was glad indeed to see you there. It gave me heart for what I was doing. I felt I did it better. Well, did you think anything of my way of getting along?”

“I can hardly give an opinion, Father. I am not present often enough to have a standard.”

“Well, I hope you will be in the future. I trust it is the beginning of an era for your mother and me, when we see all our sons before us at the altar we raise in our house. For it is a right and seemly thing——”

“Godfrey, one moment while I ask you whether you will have tea or coffee,” said his wife.

“——a right and seemly thing for young men and maidens, for old men, for men and children——”

“Godfrey, a word about which you will have!”

“Oh, well, tea or coffee then. Coffee, coffee!—a right and seemly thing for us all, lovely, of good repute——”

“Buttermere, take the dishes from Sir Godfrey and give them to Mr. Matthew.”

“——lovely and pleasant in the sight of all who see it——” Godfrey raised his arms to facilitate the proceeding, lost the thread of his thought, glanced across at the dishes as they were discovered, and set to his conclusion as if his stages were complete. “For where two or three are gathered together——”

“My dear, there is a moment for everything. Just now we are having breakfast.”

“Oh, my dear, what? Am I annoying you already? Well, I will stop talking and let us all sit in silence. I will not burden you with what is in my mind.”

“You really were a long while saying it,” said Harriet.

“Oh, a long while, was I? I suppose I may be permitted——Well, I grant you I wasn't too quick about it, but I should have been quicker if I had been allowed my own pace. I hope you are not in for a bad day, Harriet.”

“That is not a suitable thing to say to anyone who is not the victim of a recurring malady,” said his wife in an acutely suffering tone. “Why should I be subject to insinuations that I am situated in some peculiar way? I hope you are not any of you in for a bad day.”

“I fear we are, all of us,” said Matthew.

“Oh well, you know, Harriet, you are prone to find things trying at times, more trying than most of us. Come, don't make a quarrel with me over that. You are not always at the top of your form, not always inclined to look at the bright side of everything. We don't any of us take it amiss. There now, I have told you we don't.”

“You may spare yourself, Godfrey, I am clear that you find yourselves magnanimous and forbearing, and me a burden.”