Men and Wives (12 page)

“Mr. Spong!” said Buttermere.

“It is almost your turn to be ashamed, Father,” said Mellicent. “We are all human beings together, but we are not all men together like you and Mr. Spong.”

“Yes, yes, men together, fellow-guests,” said Sir Percy, just rubbing his hands.

“Lady Haslam,” Dominic said, “I am sensible of your peculiar kindness in bidding me to complete your party to-night. I am neither the man nor in the mood to enhance the spirits of the occasion, and friendship confers the most when it demands the least.”

“Spong, will you take Mrs. Calkin in to dinner?” said Godfrey.

Dominic caused a smile of conscious privilege to alter his face.

“Mellicent, you will let Jermyn take Griselda as well as you?” said Harriet. “We are a man too few.”

“You are double privileged, Jermyn,” said Dominic. “We shall all be finding it in our hearts to envy you.”

“That is not at all a pretty speech to make before your
partner!” cried Geraldine, leaning to catch Dominic's eye, as she accepted Matthew's arm.

“I am confident,” said Dominic, “that Mrs. Calkin understood me to refer to quantity rather than quality of companionship.”

“Now, Rachel, you and I will lead the way,” said Godfrey. “I said to Harriet that I would have you for a partner, whether you fell to my share or not. I don't care a jot about the etiquette of the thing.”

“Do you mean that I am not the chief woman guest?” said Rachel. “I thought that was why I generally went in with you.”

“Sir Godfrey and Lady Hardisty are such very old friends,” said Agatha, proceeding with Dominic.

“Yes,” said Dominic, looking down on her with protection. “There is something very beautiful in the spectacle of a tried intimacy. I think our good friends, the Haslams and the Hardistys, show us as striking an example as we could see.”

“I have found them all such congenial intimates myself,” said Agatha. “I have always in my mind the kindness of the whole group at the time when life was emptied for me. It is at those times that we find out the true value of friends.”

“Mrs. Calkin, it is,” said Dominic, with an impulse to pause which he checked for the sake of the procession. “I should not have thought two months ago, when the greatest of all losses fell also upon me, that I should ever again call myself a fortunate man. But in the proven worth of my fellows, I must thus describe myself.”

“Well, now, let us take our seats,” said Godfrey, walking round the table. “Let us sit where our names are. Myself at the top, Harriet at the bottom, and all of you in between. Now are we all settled?”

He paused and bent his head, unmindful of Bellamy's office, and caused Dominic to cast an arrested look at him and stand with his eyes held down well into the hum of talk.

“And now what kind of wine are we all to drink?” he said in a voice that seemed to counteract the foregoing solemnity. “Mrs. Calkin, we must persuade you to change your custom to-night.”

“No, I won't have anything to drink, thank you.”

“Mrs. Calkin, we are not, I hope, to take that statement literally,” said Dominic, supplying her with water.

“Lemonade, madam?” said Buttermere at Agatha's elbow.

“Thank you,” said Agatha with dubious eyes on her glass.

“I am afraid I have been rather precipitate,” said Dominic, glancing over his shoulder with spreading colour.

“Lemonade, sir?” said Buttermere, indicating Agatha's glass to his subordinate, and seeming to suggest that he was probably right in his gauging of Dominic's habit.

“Thank you,” said Dominic in a casual manner, turning at once to his neighbour.

“Come, Mrs. Christy, change your mind,” said her host.

“No, indeed, I must stand up for my principles.”

“Mrs. Christy, that is often a very hard thing to do,” said Dominic.

“I hope not at this table; I trust not indeed,” said Godfrey. “Our friends' principles are always respected here.”

“Yes, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic with gratitude.

“I do not refuse wine on principle,” said Agatha in a distinct voice. “I have no conscientious scruples against it. Often I enjoy a glass of wine. In fact I was brought up to take a little. But I find it works better in different ways not to be dependent on it.”

“I am dependent on it, and cannot have it,” said Geraldine, looking at the colour in her glass. “That is the sad effect on me of the same bringing up.”

“Well, get as far as you can to-night, Miss Dabis,” said Godfrey.

“Food and drink are the things worth living for,” said Gregory.

“Lady Haslam,” said Dominic, leaning towards Harriet, “I assume we are not to take this young gentleman's statement seriously.”

“I don't know, the little good-for-nothing!” said Godfrey. “What he has to eat and drink and wear! That is what seems to matter to him.”

“It is the whole of civilisation,” said Gregory.

“Oh . . . oh!” said Dominic, laughing with his eyes still on his hostess.

“I think my boy considers anything before those things,” said Agatha.

“Yes, Mrs. Calkin,” said Dominic in a serious tone that seemed to offer compensation for his withdrawn attention, “I can believe those things are a matter of indifference to him.”

“I would not say that,” said Agatha, causing her partner's eyebrows slightly to rise. “He likes good things to eat and drink as well as anyone; he makes that clear when he comes home. Wine isn't a luxury with us then I can tell you. But they are not the first things in life to him. No.”

“They must be in his heart,” said Gregory.

“Oh, Lady Haslam!” said Dominic, with further merriment.

“Gregory, this foolish joke has gone on long enough,” said his father, presumably not noticing its effect on his guest.

“Gregory has made a joke,” said Matthew. “He is doing his best to make the party go.”

“Now that is a thing I cannot do,” said Godfrey. “If anyone asked me to make a joke now on the spur of the moment, I could not do it for my life.”

“Well, we will ask you,” said Geraldine.

“You have made your answer betimes, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic with a touch of apprehension, “and one which
I make no doubt will have to do for many of us here.”

“I always think there is so much involved in humour,” said Mrs. Christy. “So many things flood the memory at the mere conception of it. I am such a votary of the comic muse. ‘No,' I have said, when people have challenged me, ‘I will not have comedy pushed into a back place.' I think tragedy and comedy are a greater, wider thing than tragedy by itself. And comedy is so often seen to have tragedy behind it.”

“That is true. I think all my jesting about Percy's first marriage is seen in that way,” said Rachel.

“I am not speaking of the oft-instanced order of so-called humour,” continued Mrs. Christy. “I hold no brief for Jane Austen and her kind. Woman though I am, I want something more involved with the deeper truths and wider issues of life.”

“Well, I don't set myself up to be a critic,” said Godfrey in an aloof and contented tone.

“You don't need to set yourself up in any way,” said Gregory. “You are too high.”

“High enough to be one of Jane Austen's fathers,” said Jermyn.

“Oh, am I? Well, what do you mean by that?” said Godfrey, in a suspicious but still incurious spirit.

“What do you think of Miss Jane Austen's books, Jermyn?” said Dominic—“if I may approach so great a man upon a comparatively flimsy subject.”

“Our row of green books with the pattern on the backs, Rachel?” said Sir Percy with a sense of adequacy in conversation. “Very old-fashioned, aren't they?”

“What do the ladies think of the author, the authoress, for she is of their own sex?” said Dominic.

“I have a higher standard for greatness,” said Agatha, “but I don't deny she has great qualities. I give her the word great in that sense.”

“You put that very well, Mrs. Calkin,” said Dominic. “I feel I must become acquainted with the fair writer.”

“That is a great honour for her!” said Geraldine.

“Miss Dabis, I assure you I do not feel it so.”

“What do you think, Mr. Bellamy?” said Harriet.

“I did think something at the time when I used to think. She has some inner light. To copy her is hopeless. I am on my knees.”

“Mr. Bellamy hid himself somewhat under his cover of silence,” said Dominic.

“I did not know you wrote yourself, Mr. Bellamy?” said Harriet.

“I write and I paint and I play and I act, and I don't do anything well enough to be worth while, and everything rather too well to give it up. I am a rolling stone, a proof that a little learning is a dangerous thing, that he does much who does a little well. I am an illustration of every warning proverb under the sun.”

“It may be something to be that, Mr. Bellamy,” said Dominic in a complimentary but indefinite spirit.

“But I do not like to live simply as a warning to others. I often wonder why I continue to live at all. I honour those people we never meet, who take the matter into their own hands. Of course we cannot come across them after they have taken that step.”

Dominic's gaze swelled.

“Mr. Bellamy,” he said, with a forced smile, “that is hardly a speech we expect from a clergyman.”

“Any kind of speech does for a clergyman. He can't be turned out for his discourse, in the pulpit or elsewhere. In his case actions really speak louder than words. ‘Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever.'”

“I never see why we should not end our own lives if we wish to,” said Jermyn.

“Perhaps people would not suffer as much or as long as we think,” said Harriet, as if to herself.

“Harriet, my dear!” said Godfrey, while Dominic turned his eyes on his hostess in involuntary consternation.

“It shows a want of courage to end one's own life. I
think that must be said,” said Agatha with gentle tolerance towards any human proceeding.

“I think it needs too much courage. I should be too cowering a soul to attempt it,” said Geraldine.

“We have not decided what courage is,” said Kate.

“Now I don't understand this line of talk,” said Godfrey. “Here we are, happy, prosperous people, with all the good things that life can give us! And we sit posing and pretending we want to die, when what we want is to go on living, and getting the best out of everything as we always have. It is no good to disguise it.”

“But it is natural to want to disguise that, Godfrey,” said Rachel.

“I meant, I am content to wait for my appointed time,” said Godfrey.

“Well, now we know what you meant,” said Rachel.

“I always think that discussion whether it is better to be alive or dead is so irrelevant,” said Mrs. Christy, whose eyes had been darting from face to face. “Not only because we shall not be dead, but more truly living, so that the problem is non-existent; but because we shall go on developing our natures, and gaining more experience of the wonder of the universe, so that we shall not be dead, but more truly living.” Her gesture assigned her repetition to word rather than thought.

“I knew it was better to be dead,” said Bellamy.

“My dear husband is with me even more than he was in his lifetime,” said Agatha. “I don't know if anything can be deduced from a truth under that head. For it is a truth.”

“Mrs. Calkin, our time will come one day,” said Dominc. “It makes it easier to look forward to that it has come for some of us.”

“It adds to the inevitability of it,” said Mellicent.

“And that hardly wants adding to, does it?” said Rachel. “It seems to be established.”

“Lady Hardisty, we know not on what day nor at what
hour,” said Dominic, turning her words to true application.

“No, that is it. You really don't, when you are over seventy,” said Rachel.

Dominic laughed before he knew it.

“Comedy has tragedy behind it,” said Rachel.

“Why, Harriet, you are deserting us, are you?” said Godfrey in a loud, light tone that had an announcing quality.

“Now I am going to give my best to my own sex,” said Rachel. “That is thought to be such a rare thing, and it is so much the easier. It is no wonder that women are jealous of other women, when they so often see them at their highest; and men have so much excuse for despising women.”

“Can't I come with you?” said Gregory. “I am so young. I go with the women and children.”

“No, sit down, little jackanapes,” said Godfrey. “They don't want you. Why should they?”

“No, but I want them,” said Gregory, holding on to the door. “I am such a boy.”

“No, no, apron-strings,” said his father.

“Gregory,” said Dominic, coming forward judicially, “I make no doubt that we should many of us give the palm to the gentler company, but we must follow the dictates of convention.”

“Mr. Spong is a very cultured man,” said Rachel when they reached the drawing-room. “The contrast of Percy makes me notice it. Comparisons are only odious for one side.”

“Yes, indeed they are,” said Geraldine, laughing with full comprehension.

“I feel so sorry for poor Mr. Spong, now that he has lost his life-companion,” said Agatha. “I think he must have such a lonely home to go back to.”

“Especially with his predilection for fair society,” said Geraldine.

“I understand so well the void there is in his life,” concluded Agatha.

“Spinsters are not supposed to have any understanding of a void!” said Geraldine.

“My dear, it is much worse,” said Rachel. “I am a spinster in essence myself, as I did not marry until I was over fifty. A spinster is supposed not only to have understanding of a void, but to have nothing but a void to understand. It is bravest to look at it straight.”