Men and Wives (22 page)

“Sir Godfrey, am I to be the one burdened with that message?” said Dominic.

“Oh, come in to tea, Spong, come in to tea,” said Godfrey, leaning back.

“Jermyn,” said Dominic, turning smoothly from Godfrey, as if his words of himself had been by the way, “I have been gratified to hear that our long interest in you is to be crowned with result, that in other words you are about to have a bound volume of poems to your name. It must be a great pleasure, Jermyn, to repay your father in this way for the patience and faith with which he has awaited this fulfilment. May I offer you my sincere congratulations and my hopes that this book may shortly be followed by many others?”

“Thank you very much. The congratulations are perhaps premature, as you have not read the book.”

“Many others! Shortly followed!” said Gregory.

“No, Jermyn,” said Dominic, shaking his head, “I do not profess to be a judge of the poetic output. I am prepared to accept the verdict of the public, or at any rate of the critics of your work, which I make no doubt will be in your favour. I have a great belief in the uses of poetry
in the amelioration of life; and whatever some may think of it as an aim for manhood, it is my own conviction that the ministers to our leisure are as deserving of gratitude as those who strive for us in sterner vein. I shall be happy to receive a copy, if you can conveniently spare one, and happier still if you will write me a friendly inscription on the fly-leaf.”

“Thank you very much. But it won't be out for a couple of months,” said Jermyn.

“Not for a couple of months? Is there some delay?”

“No. It will come out in about the usual time.”

“It strikes me, Sir Godfrey, that the accusation of dilatoriness, usually brought against us lawyers, might with advantage, or at any rate with justice, be transferred to publishers. Jermyn will be well on the way with his second book before the world has a chance to acclaim his first.”

“Oh, there is a lot behind it, Spong,” said Godfrey.

“Will you make a good profit out of the book, Jermyn?” Camilla asked in innocence.

“No, none at all. Father is bringing it out for me this time. It is often done with the first book.”

“Jermyn, is that so?” said Dominic.

“I believe so, especially in the case of poetry,” said Jermyn.

“Then expense is to be involved, in addition to the time sacrificed?” said Dominic.

“Oh, no, Spong, you are not on it. I was not myself,” said Godfrey, laughing.

Dominic rose and took his leave, an extra heaviness in his breathing betraying his present unavoidable attitude to the house.

“Oh, Spong is an old skinflint,” said Godfrey rather uneasily. “I don't know if he thinks he is the head of this family, that he is in my place towards you all. Your mother left me in charge of everything, didn't she, not Spong? I don't know what we are coming to, if lawyers
are to be father and mother and legal adviser all in one. Why, you look quite depressed, my poor boys, and I am not surprised. It is damping for you to have wet blankets thrown in your face.”

“A nice, consistent metaphor!” said Gregory.

“Oh, well, is it? It was what I meant anyhow; it expressed my thought. Well, I am glad we are having friends this afternoon; it will help us to get the taste of Spong out of our mouths. He won't count for much among the rest, though he is dead sure to turn up. Not that I would choose to speak in that way of an old friend. I have an excuse. Poor old Spong! I believe we make a good deal of difference to him, and I am glad we do. Our friends have been very kind in flocking about us since we were left to ourselves. We hardly have a day alone.”

The afternoon was to illustrate Godfrey's words.

“I think we are really here too often,” said Agatha. “We might not have a home of our own.”

“Oh, well, Mrs. Calkin, I know how you appreciate young life about you. With all this youth and promise in my house, I feel I cannot do otherwise than share it. You will find Gregory waiting for you over there, ready to give some time to you.”

There was a change in Godfrey's touch as a host since Harriet had left him.

“It really seems unnecessary to shake hands,” said Geraldine. “We shall quite forget that we are guests.”

“Oh, well, Miss Dabis, as long as it makes a change for you.”

Agatha moved on with a modified expression, passed by Gregory with a kindly, easy smile, and went up to Dominic.

“We have met here several times lately, have we not, Mr. Spong?”

“Yes, we have,” said Dominic with grave appreciation.

“It seems an irony of fate that Lady Haslam should not be here to witness her children's developing lives, when she herself has laid the foundations of them.”

“Mrs. Calkin, it is a circumstance that makes us simply stand still and say, ‘God's ways are not as our ways.'”

“It has been such a relief to me that Sir Godfrey has been able to recover his spirits. I hardly dared to hope it would not be beyond him.”

“It is a thing we must regard with the greatest thankfulness,” said Dominic, just glancing at Godfrey and withdrawing his eyes. “And, Mrs. Calkin, there is one thing we have to remember. ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness.'”

“Indeed, we do have to remember it. There is no need to remind me of that,” said Agatha in a changed, controlled tone. “I carry that with me, the essential knowledge of it. After what I have been through, that goes without saying.”

There was a pause.

“Mrs. Calkin, you must allow me to thank you for your service to the youngest boy. As the lawyer, and I may say as the friend of the family, I feel personally grateful.”

“I have tried to do what was in my power. It seemed the least I could attempt.”

“It must be a wonderful thing,” continued Dominic, “to take the mother's place to a youth on the verge of manhood.”

“Yes, well, do you know,” said Agatha, recovering on this sufficient ground, and seeming in honesty to make a reluctant admission, “I believe that is what I have done. He comes to me with his troubles and perplexities, as if he had never known any other guide. It is a great thing, as you say—I think one does the work better for realising it—to guide the footsteps of a young man at the dangerous place, and to feel that one is requiting in that way his generous trust. I say to myself when I see him coming in, so affectionate and full of appeal, ‘Am I doing all that is in me to repay this young creature for what is so spontaneously given?'”

Dominic met this degree of evidence with a slow shake of his head.

“He is such a friendly boy, so disappointed if one of us is out,” said Geraldine.

Dominic swayed from one sister to the other.

“A mother's experience must come through,” said Agatha, “just because it must.”

“These soothing illusions!” said Geraldine.

“Miss Dabis,” said Dominic, in a manner concerned and taken aback, “no one has ever thrown doubt upon the truth that single women have opportunities as valuable and satisfying as those of their married sisters. I thought that was a certainty by this time established.”

“Why, did anyone question it?” said Geraldine.

“They did when I was single,” said Rachel, “before the certainty was established, you know.”

“Lady Hardisty, I think you are in popular parlance pulling our leg,” said Dominic. “And personally I cannot retaliate, as I could not be accused of either figuratively or literally performing that office for a lady.”

“Griselda, pour out the tea,” said Rachel, “and give Mr. Spong something to hand before he reyeals his true nature. It is extraordinary how everyone has a true nature, even when you would not think it possible. I believe natures are truer in those cases.”

“Ah, my little hostess, so you are looking after us all, are you?” said Godfrey, throwing one leg over the other.

“It is so painful to me to see this house without its mistress,” said Agatha, taking her stand by Rachel and stirring her cup. “She is in my mind every moment I am here. That things have to go on, and do go on, is of course a ground for thankfulness, but their very going on causes something very near to a heartache.”

“Very near,” said Rachel. “That is an excellent way of putting it. We are reminded that things will go on after we are dead, that people will be happy, actually be that, when we are not anything. And yet it would not do to have quite a heartache.”

“I suppose we ought not to feel it. We can do nothing
while we are here for those who have passed before.”

“You were thinking what we could do for them before they passed, if we could prove we should never be happy afterwards?”

“They would not feel that, though we cannot suppress a tendency to feel it for them,” said Agatha, and added half to herself:

“‘Better by far you should forget and smile,
Than that you should remember and be sad.'

I am convinced that that would be—that that is my dear husband's feeling towards my life.”

“People improve so tremendously when they are dead,” said Rachel. “We see they do when we compare our own feelings. Of course poets ought not to found their poems on their baser side. And they don't, do they?”

“It is Christina Rossetti, the great woman poet,” said Agatha, looking in front of her.

“Well, poets generally write as if they were dead. You see she feels exactly like your husband. It is we normal people who have nearly a heartache because people do not remember and are not sad.”

“It does almost amount to not remembering,” said Agatha, her words seeming to break forth. “In this case the absent one may return, and see for herself how things have gone without her hand on the helm. It is a heart-piercing thought.”

“You do make it seem that it all ought to be stopped. You couldn't prevent Gregory from attending the working party, could you? I have less influence over him.”

“No. No. That is a thing I could not do. I am almost sure I could not. He comes entirely for his own satisfaction.”

“Satisfaction! It has a dreadful sound. I do agree with you. But if nothing can be done!”

“It was actually in her own home that I meant. Somehow I cannot throw it off, that her being away should
make so little difference. I could almost feel a little disappointed.”

“Of course it is awful to see human happiness,” said Rachel.

“I think you know that was not my meaning.”

“That is what I always mean.”

“It is not always safe to judge other people by ourselves.”

“I have always found it absolutely reliable.”

“I think you are in jest,” said Agatha with a forbearing smile, “or at any rate between jest and earnest. Your sense of humour is too exuberant.”

“Is it? I had hoped it was subtle.”

“Well, at any rate it runs away with you.”

“Runs away!” said Rachel. “It must be exuberant.”

“Are you two quarrelling?” said Geraldine.

“No, it takes two to make a quarrel,” said Rachel.

“Well, what are you so deep in discussing?”

“My sense of humour. Your sister is describing it.”

“Oh, sense of humour! I agree it does not make one popular,” said Geraldine.

“A sense of humour need not be unkind,” said Agatha.

“Doesn't it have to be just a little?” said Rachel.

“One may point one's shafts without realising it,” said Geraldine. “When one has a selection of them, it is difficult to remember which are the sharpened ones.”

“All the great instances of humour are mingled with tenderness and tolerance,” said Agatha.

“Yes, that is what I meant. Only mingled with them. Just a little unkind,” said Rachel.

“Could there be anything worse than tolerance?” said Mrs. Christy, moving her hand. “Actual opposition is a thing I have nothing against. I feel it is worthy of my retaliation, that it may even sharpen the retributory powers that must take their place among our gifts. But tolerance implies no worthiness on our own part, no capacity for engaging personally in the fray.”

“I would certainly rather face an active enemy,” said Kate.

“How can you know without experience?” said Rachel. “None of us has ever faced an active enemy.”

“Oh, I have,” said Agatha, looking out of the window.

“You don't mean me, do you?” said Rachel.

“No, but that shows you have been naughty,” said Agatha, shaking her finger.

“I should sum it up, that I like to advance true friends, and beat down baffling foes!” said Geraldine, dropping her hand and her voice with a glance at Mrs. Christy. “I have no use for what is in between.”

“There again, how can you tell without having tried?” said Rachel. “No one ever does advance a friend.”

“Oh, surely,” said Agatha. “I have seen many instances of it.”

“I have never seen one,” said Rachel. “No one has ever advanced anyone I have known.”

“We must not take things too personally,” said Agatha with smiling repetition.

“No, but personally enough,” said Rachel. “We ought to have our share of the advancing.”

“We may not all be easy to advance,” said Jermyn. “We must make allowances.”

“It is hard to make them for anything so bad as not advancing us,” said Griselda.

“Well, can't you ladies spare a word for any of us?” said Godfrey. “If that is not a pretty speech, I don't know what you would have.”

“Perhaps not an interruption to their very animated conversation, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic.

“We are discussing the advancement of friends,” said Geraldine, turning immediately to them. “Lady Hardisty says no one ever does it. We will put it to the profounder masculine judgment.”

“Well, well, people must see to their own advancement,” said Sir Percy.

“Just as I said,” said Rachel.