Men and Wives (32 page)

Dufferin locked the door and went downstairs, humming a snatch of song. He entered the dining-room and left the door ajar.

“Ah, the poor boy! We have got it over. He will never have the fancy again. It was as real to him as if it had been the truth. He faced it as truly as if he had it in his memory. And he behaved well.” Dufferin, in his effort to encounter Godfrey's eyes, found himself echoing his speech.

“He did, Doctor,” said Godfrey, coming forward with extended hand. “I thank you for the words. He is a hero. I thank you for establishing it. We all thank you for lifting this great weight off our minds. For we didn't know what to think. I confess I didn't. He might have done it in illness,
just as he fancied he had done it in illness, the poor, overstrung lad! He is like his mother. If any one of her children is like her, it is he. And seeming to feel the least all the time! Ah, still waters run deep. Well, Rachel stood by us, and did not let her belief falter. She held up her heart and she held up ours. She knew the truth. She sensed it. Her woman's instinct led her right. Ah, that is the kind of thing to trust.”

“Then Mother did want to die?” said Griselda.

“Yes, she did want to,” said Dufferin. “We have to look at that. But it was only a moment, and not the moment we imagine. She would have had a sort of exaltation.”

“My poor, heroic, erring wife!” said Godfrey.

“Godfrey, you know you are sure that Harriet hears everything,” said Rachel.

“Is Matthew clear now that he was under a delusion?” said Jermyn.

“Yes, it is all over,” said Dufferin. “I don't think it can come on him again, but I am going to keep a watch on him to-day. I will take in his meals myself, and have him under my eye. Buttermere is not the person to be about him, or about anyone in a nervous state. Don't interfere with me. I know what I am doing.”

“We are too grateful, Doctor,” said Godfrey. “But one of us will go upstairs with the meals.”

“No. I said I knew what I was doing. He would rather have me. He will be himself to-morrow, if he gets some sleep.”

“Dear, dear, this sleeplessness! It is a ghastly thing to have in a family. The poor boy gets it from his mother,” said Godfrey. “Now one thing I know, it doesn't come from me. I have never been sleepless in my life; and since everything has been to pieces about us, I have been a dead man from midnight to morning. Well, Buttermere, we have good news about Mr. Matthew. We can call on you to congratulate us. He has thrown off the sad delusion that was troubling him. It is off his mind, and the world is clear
before him. You know his engagement is broken off?”

Buttermere barely inclined his head.

“It was that that was too much, and nearly wrecked his reason. Ah, it nearly threw him on our hands a helpless—threw him helpless on our hands. We are at ease about him now.”

“Yes, Sir Godfrey,” said Buttermere.

“You don't think it has got about, do you? See that the report doesn't spread. It would not be fair on Mr. Matthew. We know how easily words set into a form.”

“Not a syllable will pass my lips, Sir Godfrey.”

“Oh well, it is hardly as bad as that. But we don't want it chattered about all over the place. You see the distinction?”

“I agree there is apt not to be any, Sir Godfrey.”

“Well, keep your mouth tight shut then.”

“That is what my words amounted to, Sir Godfrey.”

“Well, suit your actions to your words.”

“I have expressed the intention of taking the wiser course, Sir Godfrey.”

“What do you mean?” almost shouted Godfrey. “Are you insinuating that there is anything against my son?”

“Insinuation is not in my line or my place, Sir Godfrey.”

“You are right about the last,” said Dufferin. “But talk in any way you like, or in the only way you can, only where we can hear you don't talk at all. And bring something on a tray for Mr. Matthew. He had no breakfast. Bring it now, and I will take it up myself.”

“I am to be depended upon, sir.”

“Do as you are told,” said Dufferin.

“If you think it wiser, sir,” said Buttermere, hastening his step a little as he left the room.

“Can we go on having him about?” said Griselda.

“Taking him seriously would be giving a wrong impression,” said Jermyn.

“We can hardly expect him not to show his disappointment,” said Rachel. “Think of being baulked of what you
would like best in the world, when in sight of it!”

“We shall be ill if we discuss him, and we already have illness in the house,” said Griselda.

Godfrey walked from the room as if he could not bear again to be unduly stirred.

Gregory sauntered up to Griselda with a kind expression.

“It is all over now,” he said.

“Well, what does it matter what happened, when the choice is what it is?” said Jermyn. “It makes little difference which tragedy we have in the family.”

“It makes all the difference,” said Dufferin. “And you know which you have. I have told you. People too simple to set aside the sick words of a sick man must be taught.”

“I saw it for myself. I have proved I am not simple,” said Rachel. “Even Matthew did not imagine he was that, at the worst moment of his delusion. He saw himself behaving in quite a complicated way. He kept his self-respect through everything.”

“We have simply to be ashamed that we have less deep feeling than he has,” said Gregory. “It is too heartless of us not to think we did it.”

“I see how his mind may have begun to work,” said Jermyn.

“No, that is not fair, Jermyn,” said Rachel. “You know quite well that he put the whole thing into your head. Be generous like your father. He makes no claim at all, though no one appreciates it as he does. You have brought the tray, Buttermere. What is your feeling about having put the tablet with the harmless ones? You must not bring forward a definite claim; the family must come first.”

Buttermere looked over the tray in silence.

“Take this key, and carry up the tray, and put it down by Mr. Matthew, and come away as silent as you are now,” said Dufferin.

“Yes, sir,” said Buttermere, leaving the. room with an even tread and the tray motionless.

“You can deal with anybody, Rachel. You have passed
the final test. Now all of you go to your several occupations. You must some of you have something you sometimes do. And Griselda would be the better for an hour by herself.”

Griselda turned to Dufferin the moment they were alone.

“It all gets more and more, Antony. It is more than it ought to be, for Mother to have wanted to die, not to have wanted her life any more than that; and for Matthew to think he did it, to have that to suffer as well as his own disappointment. It was always dreadful to see him disappointed. And I can't bear not knowing if he did it. We shall never know. You know we shall never know. And it is worst of all, yes it is, for Father not to feel things more. That was all she had in her life, poor Mother, all she had, when she was a woman who needed so much! And Ernest will feel he is taking too much on himself in marrying me. He wants a wife who will give him support, not someone crushed and disgraced by a family like mine. And I will not marry a man who does not let me have my brothers. I would have even Matthew, even if he had done it. I have never cared for him as much as the others, but I am his sister now. And Ernest will despise him for having delusions. He thinks he is the only person in the world who must be weak. I can't be strong enough for him.”

“Be yourself with him, and let him see that he has more than enough. If he doesn't want you as you are, strong or weak, with or without his kind of strength and weakness, tell him you feel the same to him. More than one of you may be undertaking too much.”

“I know I must seem to have strange feelings about him.”

“He could speak the simple truth about you. You see that he does speak what seems to him to be the truth. I think he does that about more things than most of us. I think he is an honest man, Griselda.”

When Bellamy came in later, he wore a look of simple exaltation. He shook hands with the men, and putting his arm round Griselda, faced them with kindling eyes.

“Haslam, I have come not in a spirit of bitterness or judgment. I have come to identify myself with Griselda's family, to be Matthew's brother and your son. I have come to help you to be simply courageous and straightforward in tragic circumstances. For who are we who should judge? Who am I? He is a man and my brother, my brother in more than one sense. Something was too strong. And how know we on what day or in what hour our own temptation may come, and find us not on the watch but sleeping?”

Griselda stood with her head bent, looking up at Bellamy from under her brows.

“Ernest, my boy,” said Godfrey, standing with his hand held out, but not advancing, “we thank you for your generous attitude. We thank you as much as if we needed it. But happily we have not come to that; mercifully you do not find us in that pass. It emerges that Matthew's love and grief for his mother transcended what others felt, and left him shattered. So that this sad delusion took hold of him and laid him low. But his will has risen victorious and truth has triumphed. With our friend the doctor's help, he is established as sinning not at all, but greatly suffering.”

“Is that proved?” said Bellamy, speaking before he thought.

“Yes, it is certain,” said Dufferin. “A case of transferring something that has made a deep impression, to himself, as people unjustly accused of a crime have been known to fancy themselves the authors of it.”

“Poor boy, poor boy!” said Bellamy.

“Yes, yes, you say the words,” said Godfrey.

“I feel I stand reproved,” said Bellamy. “I feel I should have known Griselda's brother. But the tidings came to me as established by his own confession.”

“Tidings! Established!” said Godfrey. “His own confession! The poor child only spoke of it this morning. I hope the true report will get about as fast. We will ask you to do your best in that matter for us, Ernest. And of
course you couldn't know what to make of it all. We were baffled ourselves. The confession came, as you say, from his own lips. He thought it was a confession, poor, suffering boy! He is terribly like his mother, terribly for him, appealingly for us. My wife leaves one child who is her equal in feeling.”

“The rest of us will soon have borne enough,” said Jermyn.

“Ah, Haslam, it is a complex heritage for us. We shall need our qualities to bear our pride, and live under the sword of Damocles. You need have no fear for me. I shall not flinch. It is Griselda, wild and sorrowing and burdened, whom I love, as I shall never love another woman.”

“If you think of me in that way, you do already love another woman. That is not the woman I am. It is too much for you, the prospect of our marriage. I wondered if it would be. I knew you well enough to wonder. And it is too much for me. I could not support you under the strain of my family life. We should both of us have more than we could bear.”

“Griselda, I have already almost had that,” said Bellamy, holding out his hands. “You see me as I am, an overwrought and tired man. I need the strength that you can give.”

“I am never one for thinking a woman ought to give more than a man,” said Griselda in a breathless tone. “I don't see that difference between women and men. I don't want to see it between my husband and myself. I don't feel I am such a strong woman. My mother knew I was not. I don't want to give out so much; I should get weary with so much giving. I don't care for the men who are weaker than women, and I am no good to the kind that are. I think you are right in your judgment of yourself. There had better be an end of everything between us. Mother was right. There is an end.”

Griselda broke down, and Jermyn and Dufferin followed her from the room. Bellamy made a despairing gesture and looked at Godfrey.

“Well, I can't help it, my boy,” said Godfrey.

“Well, can I?” said Bellamy. “Can I help it, Lady Hardisty?”

“Well, Griselda implied that you couldn't,” said Rachel. “And she seemed to have thought about you. But I should say there couldn't be a better person than you to marry. I have often thought about you two, and always said that.”

“Well, I will go home,” said Bellamy, as if he expected to be gainsaid. “I will return to my lonely fireside. No, I will give up talking like Spong. I will become a man who need not have his fireside lonely. I will learn Griselda's lesson; I find no lesson beneath me; and I am not slow to learn. I will depend on you all to remain my friends.”

“Well, the reformation came too late,” said Rachel. “Only a moment, but I think Antony has taken advantage of it. I can go home to my lonely fireside too, and settle down with Percy and his memories. I have some memories of my own now. Well, Harriet always wanted Griselda to marry Antony.”

“Well, I declare, I believe she did,” said Godfrey. “She never said so, and I never thought of it. But I believe she did.”

“Why, of course she did!” said Gregory.

“Must you be going, Rachel?” said Godfrey. “I hardly have the energy left to thank you. I have come to the end of my tether.”

“That is wonderful of you,” said Rachel. “Harriet's husband and eldest son do her the greatest credit. Jermyn shall see me into the hall; it is unassuming of him not to mind being able to. I can't say enough for Harriet's family in their different ways.”

“I wanted to have a word with you,” said Jermyn, “and not about anything you expect. Not about Griselda's fluctuations, or even about Matthew's rise in general esteem. About something that will explain my mistimed consciousness of self. Here is my book of poems that has
just come out. I wish my mother had seen it. I did not dare to let Mellicent read them before they were published, but the majesty of print has begotten confidence. I want you to ask her to be ready to tell me her impression. I know I sound egotistic, but life has to go on.”