Men and Wives (21 page)

“You are in too responsible a position,” said Agatha.

“I wish that were true,” said Bellamy, taking his cup, and a moment after giving a bright smile to the donor. “I would not mind not being a boy, if I could have a
man's compensations. But a parson goes to a wedding and marries somebody else! He won't even be able to bury himself, though burying is his profession. He goes to a working party and does not do any work! He drinks the tea that somebody else has made.” He held out his cup with another smile to a hand prepared to replenish it. “Well, I know what I shall do. I shall learn to sew.”

“To cut out?” cried Geraldine.

“To cut out and to buttonhole and to featherstitch. That will be real work, and help to qualify me as a human being.”

He turned from the hilarity that the idea of his sharing these human occupations produced in those engaged in them, and began to talk to Kate, whom he was inclined to make a friend.

“A clergyman is a clown, Miss Kate, and a deal less respectable a clown than one on the stage. That clown amuses people as a life work, and what more useful work could there be? A parson amuses people because he is a man among women. A man among men and a woman among women are natural. No one who thinks that women do not like being with women has any knowledge of life; and no one does think that a man does not like being with men. And a woman among men has pathos and human interest. But a man among women is simply—oh yes, I know I am this—the thread that goes through their lives. I would much rather be an ordinary man than a thread. A thread is such a good word for me.”

“Especially as you are going to involve yourself in sewing!” cried Geraldine from a distance.

“I wish some woman would find a proper use for me as a thread. I might be used to sew up a gap in things for her. Do you think Griselda would ever use me, Miss Kate? Lady Haslam wanted a stronger thread for her, and one that had not been used before.”

“It has to be a strong thread to be used twice,” said Kate in a hearty tone.

Geraldine, who had been looking at Bellamy and her sister in surprise and almost consternation at their intimate colloquy, rose to her feet and broke the meeting.

Rachel met Godfrey in the hall.

“Well, did you make a success of the working party?”

“No,” said Rachel.

“What went wrong?” said Godfrey.

“My personality,” said Rachel. “It went to pieces. Agatha is next to Harriet after all. It is worse than that. She is instead of Harriet.”

“Well, My Dear boy, welcome, welcome,” said Godfrey, entering his dining-room six months after his wife had left him. “The oftener we see you the more welcome you are.”

“Then I must be very welcome by now,” said Bellamy. “But not to Buttermere. He looked at me with a stony eye because he had to lay another place.”

“Your place was laid as usual, sir,” said Buttermere.

“Buttermere, you will soon be sorry for ungenerous words. When I have carried my princess to the parsonage, and we are happy and hospitable at our own board, you will find yourself sentimental that our places know us no more. Make the most of a Chapter that will soon be closed.”

“It is needless to go further when everything has simply to be done, sir.”

“We will, indeed, Ernest,” said Godfrey, putting himself into a gap he was prepared to fill. “It has been one of the happiest Chapters in our lives. I would not ask for a happier, if I could be offered it. Of course there is always the one thing wanting. But we won't keep on dwelling on it. There seems to be something grasping, almost a thought ungenerous in harping on our right to have things all our own way. We will leave that alone for a little while. But it has interrupted my welcome of you, and I wouldn't have had it fail for the world. I am as pleased to see you as any of my other children.”

“Whose presence has been staled by custom,” said Griselda.

“Ah, now, Grisel! What will you do with this girl, Ernest?” said Godfrey.

“Nothing. She will do everything with me.”

“Ah, I'll be bound she will. They do everything with us at first. And afterwards of course, even more until the end.”

“Well, it is the beginning we have before us as yet,” said Bellamy.

“Yes, yes, we all get the beginning,” said Godfrey. “Nothing that comes later can cheat us out of that.”

“Is it permitted to ask how Griselda's mother is?” said Bellamy.

“My dear boy, I am grateful to answer that question, when it is asked in that spirit, and not as if I were somehow to blame for her being ill. I should be the last person, shouldn't I, to wish it? Some people give me an actual sense of discomfort for going on my way doing my best, instead of sitting about in sackcloth, in other words for following my wife's teaching instead of disregarding it. I am not saying which is the better course. I won't throw up the one I am taking. It is second best, I suppose they think.”

“Well, Ernest is not among them. You may answer him,” said Griselda.

“Yes, well, it is all as it must be, Ernest. I am not allowed to see my wife at the moment. Dufferin has forbidden it, and I am to take that as meaning she is better. That may be the meaning; other things would encourage me more. But I have put my best foot foremost, and looked people in the face, and please God I will continue as I have begun.”

“I trust not alone for very much longer.”

“I trust not, Ernest; but I don't see my way very clear before me. I have no great conviction to help me forward. Sometimes it is borne in upon me that it is just the beginning. Well, one thing is, that the certainty will creep on us unawares, and we shall be broken to the burden. But these are depressing words. We will give you no more of them. We will pass to brighter things. I find I can support
this entertainment in aid of your church, settle the financial side of it, I mean.”

“What a lovely meaning!” said Bellamy. “It is so uplifting not to be told that charity begins at home, as if that were a reason for its not continuing as far as the local church!”

“Yes, I find myself in a position to do so. I have seen Spong, and he makes it clear that that is the case. I should say, he lets it out because he can't help it, because I can see it for myself. I am getting an eye for business matters. However, we won't speak about Spong; he will be here for luncheon in a moment. He rather looked at me, old Spong, when I said I was to finance a play in support of a church. It seemed to him a contradiction in terms. The church part he swallowed pretty well; it was the play that stuck in his gullet. ‘Ah, well, Spong,' I said, ‘anything done for a good purpose is done for that end.' I quoted a bit out of your theories to him. And he said not another word. I think he saw my mind was made up. So things are shaping as you fancied them, Ernest?”

“All my life is perfect,” said Bellamy. “Perhaps it is partly because I have a patron. I believe that parsons have always needed patrons.”

“Oh well, my boy, patron! I don't know anything about that. You are to be my son, you know.”

“Indeed I do know. All my life has been leading up to it. It is just the right finish to Griselda that she has parents worthy of her.”

“Yes, yes, my boy, you think of both her parents, don't you?”

“It seems that there is to be a reversal of the old order of things, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, coming smiling to the table, “and that it is no longer to be a question of children being worthy of their parents, but of parents adopting that relation to their children.”

“Oh well, Spong, the old order passeth,” said Godfrey, condoning general change.

“Ah, I am of those, Sir Godfrey, who view with a sentimental regret the passing of things established.”

“Camilla, my dear!” said Godfrey. “We had given you up. How are you?”

“A thought shaken for the moment. Having brought a message from my lately intended husband to my now intended husband, I find myself confronted by my former husband as a fellow guest! And by our common legal adviser, who knows what would be called the unsavoury details of the case. I am sure I may depend upon Mr. Spong, and that the court is closed. Matthew, Antony is summoned to a patient and will not be working at his house to-day. He sent the message to Mother's door, as he knew I was coming here. He puts me to any use he can, now I am not to serve my former purpose. Ernest, it is utterly congenial to me to meet you as a brother. We exercise quite a choice of ways of becoming one flesh. Matthew, when you glower at me like that, I cease to be your future wife. I am your slave, I am a bondswoman, a squaw.”

“I hope, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, “that that is your eldest son's ideal in his life-companion.”

“Well, haven't you come at all to see me, Camilla?” said Godfrey, his eyes undetained by Dominic. “Haven't you a word for your future father-in-law? Don't you think I am any man at all beside Matthew?”

“Dear Sir Godfrey, I have come with the express purpose of feasting my eyes on you. I had to pass from alliance to alliance until I came to the one that provided me with you.”

“Father, let Camilla begin her luncheon. She is behind already,” said Matthew.

“Mother was convinced that being so late would destroy my character for ever. Being divorced was nothing to it. The second is less inconvenient for other people. It provides them with an excitement instead of a trial.”

“We must call that a cynical speech,” said Dominic,
in a tone that seemed expressionless through doubt how to meet the speaker.

“I am known to be a cynic,” said Camilla.

“Quite wrongly then,” said Gregory.

“But it is wonderful to have brought that off,” said Jermyn.

“Jermyn, am I to understand,” said Dominic, “that it is your aim and object to be regarded as a cynic?”

“I am a very ordinary young man,” said Jermyn.

“Jermyn, you cannot expect us to subscribe to that.”

“No. Of course I should be aghast if you did.”

“Sir Godfrey, frankness is not a quality in which the modern generation is lacking.”

“I believe it is not. I am thankful to say I have found it is not,” said Godfrey. “My children keep nothing from their father.”

“You could not have a greater compliment,” said Dominic.

“I could not. I value my sons' and daughter's confidence above everything. If there is any little thing I can do for them, I count myself already repaid.”

“Matthew, have you yet discovered a house in which to embark upon your married life?” said Dominic, as if Godfrey's words set up this train of thought. “I apprehend that the scientific success which has in a measure attended your pursuit of it, disposes of the question of your extending your sphere. I do not use the qualifying words in any carping spirit. I know how seldom a quarry is sighted in your chosen field.”

“We have been looking at some houses in the town,” said Matthew. “My father is going to take one for me near my work.”

“It strikes me, Matthew, as no doubt it strikes you, that you have a very generous parent.”

“Now, now, I won't have a word of it, Spong!” said Godfrey, holding up his hand. “I declare, when I gradually realise how much there is in this literary and scientific
work, I find myself standing hat in hand before my sons.”

“That is not an attitude, Sir Godfrey, that was readily adopted by our own parents. Matthew”—Dominic seemed gravely to recollect himself—“I have not adequately expressed to you my congratulations upon this imminent change in your life. Married happiness is the highest that man is supposed to have.”

“He is not supposed to have the other kind, is he?” said Camilla.

Dominic cast a fleeting glance at Camilla, and continued in the same tone. “I have myself been very happy. I can do no more than hope that your future holds for you what my past holds for me.” Another glance at Camilla showed him struck by the unlikelihood.

“Thanks very much,” said Matthew.

“I gather, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, subsiding into amusement, “that the youth of the day has a tendency to be what we may call laconic.”

“Mr. Spong grudges me a roof over my head,” said Camilla. “He thinks I should be what I am, a woman of the streets. He should have more sympathy with his fallen sisters. I try to look on him as a man and a brother, and I have seen the reverse of a brotherly light in his eye. I believe I have seen it in more senses than one.”

Dominic turned to Bellamy as if he had not heard these words, but with a faint air of sympathy arising from them.

“I understand, Mr. Bellamy, that you are inaugurating some dramatic proceedings on behalf of the restoration of your church. Ecclesiastical architecture is a subject which I have much at heart. May I congratulate you on the expectation of a sum adequate to your projects?”

“Yes, I think you may. My future father-in-law is adopting another satisfying relationship, and becoming fairy godmother. He is financing the affair, so that all the takings will be profit. And we are putting the sewing ladies on garments for the play instead of for the poor. So all things and people work together for good.”

“It is for the same purpose indirectly,” said Dominic in a rather wavering tone.

“Very indirectly,” said Camilla. “The poor can't be clothed in ecclesiastical architecture.”

“Mrs. Bellamy, it makes a patch of beauty in their lives.”

“But not a patch of any kind on their garments.”

Dominic fell into open mirth, and exchanged a glance with Godfrey, or rather conferred a glance upon him.

“I will be going, Haslam,” said Bellamy. “And I won't come back to tea. I know you are expecting friends. If my fair parishioners find me a too familiar presence, my semblance of usefulness will be gone. Tell them from me that stitching has never to be done so thoroughly for fancy dress, so that they should be making speed.”