Men and Wives (3 page)

“I shan't try to get anything into mine,” said Griselda, with the humorous freedom she showed with her brothers. “I think my spring is too tender to be used at all. I daresay Gregory's is too.”

“I was speaking in a serious spirit. We must do that for a second or two sometimes.”

“Well, if we must,” said Griselda. “Then you are in no danger from Father, and probably in none from Mother, though we tremble before signs that she is tempted to use her power. People can't have so much without its occurring to them to use it.”

“I am protected by her weakness for seeing Father master in his own house.”

“I had a feeling that you were safe. And you will be safer when you reach a more definite stage. Mother is simpler than she seems.”

“You can't be as definite with poetry as if you were working with material things. It is simple indeed not to
see that. The spirit comes and goes, as live things must. It is independent and ebbs and flows. At the moment it is on the ebb.” Griselda nervously conquered a smile, and her brother continued with coldness. “You can't foretell your moods. All rare things are elusive. It is a condition of their being rare.”

“Well, of course, those are not the words for Mother. She can observe that things are elusive without suspecting that they are rare, except in the sense that they are not to be depended on.”

“You can't offer up poetry to order. You may laugh, but you can't gather up and put into form in a moment what has been stirring in your mind for years, what may have its roots right back in the deeps of childhood. Strange, strange, that human beings with centuries of thought behind them should think it were possible!”

“That is a hopeful view of Father's antecedents. The centuries behind him hold a good deal besides thought. We must take it into account.”

“Of course it is my business to give him proof, and I am not far off it now. Things are rising and working and taking shape. A very few more months!”

“That is good hearing,” said his sister. “A little family uplift would not come amiss. I don't see what we shall come to, if we don't have some soon. Matthew may not be able to wrest a secret from the universe. We must rely on the one of you who can depend on himself.”

“Each time I see the Hardistys' place,” said Jermyn, as they came upon an eighteenth-century house, “I regret that we do not belong to what Buttermere properly calls the real gentry.”

“We can't blame Buttermere for being ashamed of us,” said Griselda. “We are at that particularly shameful stage when we understand it. Here is Sir Percy coming to meet us. He always does that when we arrive without being asked.”

Sir Percy Hardisty, whom Buttermere described as a
gentleman of the old order, had a shapeless, stooping figure, little, opaque green eyes, a boneless, spreading nose, an uncertain gait, and clothes of that peculiar shabbiness which rouses speculation upon the wearer's attitude to them. Sir Percy had no attitude to things of this kind, and Buttermere had summed up his own in the statement that his master, Sir Godfrey, owed more to himself; and there was truth as well as triumph in his perception that Sir Percy's corresponding debt was small.

“Well, well, this is a kindness to an old man,” said Sir Percy, who was sixty-two and had for some years imposed this view of his age. “You have come to see me as well as the rest of us. It is a great favour to us all. Now tell me how your mother is this morning.”

Sir Percy had a great affection and respect for Harriet. The feeling was shared by his wife, who was coming to join them, a sturdy old woman ten years older than her husband, with bright, steady eyes, a well-shaped head and a carefully innocent expression.

“It is an interesting time of the year, the time when our oldest shoes get really spoilt enough to be discarded. That is of no advantage to Percy. We say he is one of those people who can wear anything. I think he must be the only one who really wears it. I hope he hasn't been too certain of himself, and assumed you would stay to luncheon without being pressed.”

“Why, they will have luncheon with us, Rachel. Luncheon must be on the table,” said Sir Percy, looking perplexed.

“They are young and generous,” said Lady Hardisty. “Come in, my dears, and begin at once having luncheon. It is worse to talk to hosts when you are not having it. You know I sit at the side of the table, so that people can see I do not shrink from sitting under my predecessor.” Sir Percy fleetingly raised his eyes to the portrait of his first wife. “Everything has to be done to throw up the character of a woman in my position. You know I taught
Milly and Polly to call me Mater, to show their real feeling of that kind was given to another long ago. I trained them myself in that for the sake of their loyalty. As Polly only knew her mother for an hour, her loyalty is a tribute to the dear child's constant nature, that it pays to foster.”

Sir Percy paused in his carving, his knife and fork aloft and wide, and leant towards Jermyn.

“And how did you say your mother was?”

“Not up to a great deal,” said Jermyn. “She does not sleep, and that makes the day rather much for her.”

“Yes, yes. And your father?” said Sir Percy, laying down his tools. “He is perhaps not too much put about by it?”

“He is anxious about her in his own way. He tries not to let it get the better of him, for all our sakes.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Not get the better of him,” said Sir Percy, rising to yield his place to his wife, and stooping over Jermyn's chair with his hands upon it. “Then you can cheer me on the whole about everything?”

“Percy, you can't expect Jermyn to be a second mother to you as I have been,” said Rachel. “Poor little Grisel is looking at you as if she really were your mother. It is too much for them.”

“And Matthew?” said Sir Percy, passing along the table with a hobbling step. “Matthew is still at his work, is he? He doesn't often come to see us all. And you, Jermyn, are still at poetry? Well, that leaves you more at ease; that is one thing about it; that is a great thing for your friends.”

“Percy, of course Jermyn is not at ease. Do say less dreadful things,” said Rachel.

“He is coming out as a full-fledged poet almost at once,” said Griselda.

“A little later than that,” said Jermyn.

“Ah, now, now,” said Sir Percy, leaning back in his wife's chair, “that will be something for your mother. Because she must want a little cheering sometimes, with
all of it, with your work and Matthew's. Of course I know it has to be done, that it is a great thing that you can do it. Both of you, too; it is a great thing; but still your mother, you know. Now, Rachel, I must insist upon relieving you.”

“No, my dear. You must learn to think of others.”

“Well, now, poetry, Jermyn,” resumed Sir Percy. “Do people ever make anything out of it, as far as you know?”

“Well, I hope I shall make a few hundreds a year in the end. People don't often take it up as a life work. I shall have to be content with a very little for a long time, and to be a poor man at last.”

“Well, now, and does that content you?” said Sir Percy. “That is what you want, is it? Well, of course, ‘poets are not people we can understand. They would not be what they are if we could.”

“No, they might as well be something else,” said Rachel. “I wish I had ever been misunderstood. People so often give us our due, and that is bound to remind us of it.”

“Of course my life work must involve many kinds of sacrifice, perhaps nearly all kinds,” said Jermyn. “I am more than content.”

“Oh, many kinds of sacrifice, nearly all kinds?” said Sir Percy, lifting his head. “Nearly all kinds? And you are content? More than content? And your poor mother does not like it? No, I am sure she would not.”

“I think she will be reconciled to it, when she realises that any powers I have tend that way,” said Jermyn. “She can hardly forbid my making sacrifices for my own sake. It is for nobody else's.”

“Oh, for nobody else's?” said Sir Percy. “But what good is it then? I mean sacrifice not for someone else? I thought sacrifice—I mean sacrifice for your own sake, isn't that a little fanatical, Jermyn? I don't think that is what your mother means, when she is herself just a thought serious-minded, you know.”

“No, no. She does not mean that. She thinks I am a pompous, sluggish young jackanapes,” said Jermyn.

“Yes, but, now, what about what your mother thinks?” said Sir Percy coaxingly. “I don't mean what we know hasn't entered her mind. But isn't there something in it? Because all this sacrifice for nobody! Well, you know. Now why not think of your mother and father, instead of sacrifice for people outside, for nobody at all?”

“Griselda, it is too considerate to make us think it is a laughing matter,” said Rachel. “I do appreciate it, and Percy would if he could.”

“I shall have to sacrifice my mother's satisfaction with the other things,” said Jermyn. “It is the sacrifice I shall like least to make.”

“Oh, well, sacrifice,” said Sir Percy, accepting persistence in this line. “Well, so you must have it, Jermyn. Well, well, there seem to me to be better things. And your mother's satisfaction. Well, sacrifice has to be sacrifice; I see that it does. But you must have your way, and join the martyrs, the poets, take what seems to you the right course. Why, there are the girls, Rachel. There are Mellicent and Polly, back from their picnic in time to get something besides their sandwiches. Sandwiches are not very much.”

“They are nothing. Nobody can eat them,” said Rachel. “Well, my dears. Give your sandwiches to Merton for the fowls.”

“We have finished them, Mater,” said the younger girl.

“I thought that was why places were so untidy after picnics, that people took sandwiches and could not eat them. I don't understand why so much is left, if they can be used. Mellicent, you must make up to Jermyn for being told that poetry is not worth a sacrifice, that his mother ought not to be sacrificed to it, when of course she ought. It is trying in such subtle ways to be told that you must not sacrifice your mother.”

Mellicent Hardisty was a contented young woman of
twenty-six, very like and nearly as plain as her father, except that her eyes, as small and pale as his, were alive and clear. Jermyn's face lit up at her coming with welcome for a congenial presence. Polly at nineteen was a simpler version of the portrait that hung before her father's eyes. Her changing, unfinished face seemed to say that it would be equal to her mother's, if as much were done for it. Sir Percy's portraits were not on a level with Sir Godfrey's, and much had been done.

“Well, now, I am going to get up and go,” said Sir Percy, carefully adapting his actions to his words. “And you know an old friend meant nothing, Jermyn, about things beyond his scope. It is for you and Mellicent to teach me; it is for me to learn. Now Griselda and Polly will chatter in the garden, and their voices will come in to Rachel and me, and be all the poetry we shall want. And you and Milly will settle it all, because these things involve too much.” Sir Percy's voice died away on a murmur as he disappeared. “Yes, they involve a great deal in many ways.”

“Mellicent, what heavy work is made for a poor young man who wants to justify his own sorry little tastes!”

“That doesn't sound as if it mattered much.”

“Well, his own deep, serious tastes, then. And why shouldn't I mean that after all?”

“No reason at all. It is all or nothing with people with these things. But for most people it is nothing. We have to remember that.”

“It is not the moment for remembering it, when you feel yourself on the verge of accomplishment.”

“That is great news,” said Mellicent. “We can't help getting a tendency to wait and see.”

“I should say not,” said Jermyn. “To think of the stuff that comes out!”

“People talk as if that showed the thing was easy. Really it shows it is too hard for most of us. It is not to be wondered at that gifts are rare.”

“No, no, it is not,” said Jermyn, his voice rising. “It is a great piece of fortune to be above most men, for those that are.”

“It is a good thing to feel you are that. I don't think a strong conviction is ever based on nothing.”

“Well, yours will be the first opinion I shall want, when the verses are ready for the human eye.”

“We only really want one opinion.”

“I know you have written yourself, Mellicent. And your writing has my gravest respect; and I am not given to easy praise of the artist.”

“The other kind of praise is the thing,” said Mellicent. “Here is Griselda, threatening to take you home.”

“Jermyn, we shall soon have had a day of happiness. Lady Hardisty is sending us back in the carriage in the hope of saving us. And it is our duty to relieve Gregory.”

“Does Gregory want to be relieved?” asked Polly.

“Yes. He is on duty with Mother,” said Griselda.

“On duty?” said Polly with her eyes wide.

“We haven't your easy life, Polly,” said Jermyn.

Polly wore a look of living sympathy as her friends drove away.

“Don't Jermyn and Griselda and Gregory much like being at home?”

“Their mother's nerves must be a cloud over everything,” said Mellicent. “They were in real alarm at the thought of not being back in time.”

“But they will be in time, now they have the carriage,” said Polly, springing to take her father's arm.

Sir Percy looked down on his younger child with an emotion that forced its way to his eyes. He believed that his joy in life had ended with the death of her mother nineteen years before, and the conviction was the chief ground of his self-esteem, a feeling that had never had a strong foundation. If he had realised that a little later his contentment had begun, it would have failed to survive;
and his second wife, knowing its right to its life, left the truth in silence.