Men and Wives (6 page)

“Oh, my boy, my dear boy!” expostulated Godfrey, leaning to touch his son's shoulder, while Harriet sat with her head bent, seeming to wrestle with her thoughts. “We are not trying to exasperate you. We would not do it for the world. We would rather be exasperated ourselves. We have the greatest respect for all letters and science, and all the things that you and Matthew do. We know they are the greatest and the most to be respected things in the world. You have often told us so. And we know that that is the opinion of all thinking people. If you ever do anything with your poetry, there will be two proud people in the world, and those will be your mother and me. And if you do not, we shall be proud of you for having tried, prouder of you than if you had succeeded, knowing that there is more faith in honest doubt, more success in true failure, than in half the achievements we hear about. That is how we feel about it.”

“You can't say it is not enough, Jermyn,” said Griselda.

“Well, perhaps I am at the height of my honour now. They say these experiences fall short,” said Jermyn.

“My dear, good, gifted boy!” said Harriet.

The Rector Of the Haslams' village, the Reverend Ernest Bellamy, seemed what he was, a man who had chosen the church because of its affinity to the stage in affording scope for dramatic gifts. He was a tall, dark, handsome man, with a suggestion of nervous energy and nervous weakness, who showed at forty how he had looked in his youth. As he stood at the house of his wife's mother, a modest dwelling in the neighbouring town, his movements betrayed that he was rallying his powers with a view to a scene to be enacted within. His mother-in-law came to the door herself, a small, energetic woman of sixty, with grey hair, high-boned features, and the kind of spareness and pallor that goes with strength.

“Well, Ernest, you are a living proof that absence makes the heart grow fond. I have never looked forward more to one of our stimulating wars with words. I always think that every mind, at whatever point it is situated in the mental scale, is the better for being laid on the whetstone and sharpened to its full keenness.”

“I thank you for your welcome. I may not be undeserving of it, but it is nevertheless kind and just to give it,” said Bellamy in a sonorous voice, as he followed her. “For you have not been blind to the truth.”

“I hope truth is always apparent to me. It makes such a good vantage ground for surveying everything from the right angle,” said Mrs. Christy, who suspected she had a remarkable brain, and found that her spontaneous conversation proved it beyond her hopes. “You and Camilla find my parlour constricted, but ‘stone walls do not a prison make' to minds whose innocence takes them for an hermitage. I had almost taken refuge in some oft-quoted lines.”

“It was as well you were prevented,” said her daughter, looking up from her seat by the fire, a tall, fair woman of thirty, with the family resemblance to her mother, that may lie on the surface or very deep. “Those lines don't happen to serve as a refuge at the moment.”

“Well, Camilla,” said Bellamy, his eyes steady on his wife's face.

“I fear that lines rise to my mind at every juncture,” said Mrs. Christy, moving her hand. “I must plead guilty to an ingrained habit.”

“A harsh but just description,” said Camilla.

“Well, quotation, description, analysis, anything is grist to my mill,” said her mother, “provided it can take on literary clothing. That is my only stipulation.”

“She is qualified to listen to you, then, Ernest,” said Camilla, glancing at her husband's posture as at a time-worn torment. “You need someone with a catholic spirit. Tell her you are going to put it all on to me, if you are not ashamed of it in plain English. That is good enough literary clothing, and she can understand it, though she cannot speak it.”

“Indeed it is good enough literary clothing!” said Mrs. Christy. “My English is of the plainest. A few good words, a few expressions sanctified by long usage, welded easily into a cultivated whole!” She bethought herself to make a disclaiming gesture. “That should be the common standard in speech.”

“Mrs. Christy, let us look at things,” said Bellamy. “We have turned our eyes from them long enough, too long.”

“Yes, well, people always find me such a help in setting matters on to their right basis. I put myself entirely into the place of the individual, and yet shed the light of my own view-point on the assembled facts, which is such an illuminating thing to do.”

“Mother, do keep your hands still. You remind me of Miss Dabis. Ernest feels he has enough light in himself. It is his profession to let it shine before men.”

“Camilla understands me. I am going to act according to that light. I am not a man to judge sternly a fellow-creature fallen by weakness, to learn no compassion from my own lack of strength. But on that very ground, neither am I a man who does not need support. God knows how I have craved for sympathy and been denied, how slow I have been in giving up faith and hope.”

“Ernest, no one is asking you to hope for my sympathy,” said Camilla, as though her impatience just allowed her to speak. “You know quite well that I am not able to give sympathy to you, that you don't command my sympathy. I am not imploring you to settle down with me again. The thought of it would be the end of us both. It is for that very reason that there is only one part for a man to play.”

“You are asking me to give up my future and my hopes, when you have given me nothing. I am to consider you because you are a woman, to this extent. My feeling for women forbids me to sully the name I have a right to offer to another woman, unsullied.”

“He is as polygamous as I am, Mother, except that ‘to the pure all things are pure'. Well, Antony finds it all the same, and we can't expect a man to have a case trumped up against himself, who has spent his life preaching at other people. Poor Ernest!” Camilla threw herself against her husband. “I ought to have taught you that preaching is a game that two can play at. It is my fault that I have to be divorced and disgraced, and bring my mother's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”

Bellamy stood aloof and silent, proof against the challenge he had taken so many times.

“Well, Mother, shall we break up the meeting? That must be Antony ringing the bell, another son coming to pay his respects to you! You will soon have quite a sizeable family if this goes on. You had better stay,. Ernest, and clasp the hand of your successor. It might be soothing to exchange a word of sympathy.”

“Why, what is the matter with you both?” said Dufferin, addressing the women and not perceiving Bellamy.

“Mother is weeping about my being divorced. I am the one who ought to weep, but I am showing a criminal's courage.”

“Why, what is there to weep about? It is my responsibility.”

“You know it is not. You know you have done it all for Camilla's sake,” said Mrs. Christy, weeping. “To think that this public dishonour is the end of my only child!”

“The public part won't take long,” said Camilla. “The case against me will be too plain for that. And it is not the end, my poor mother; you let your hopes run wild.”

“I don't dare to think what your father would have said.”

“I don't know why, as he can't say it.”

“Being actually divorced yourself!” said Mrs. Christy, brought to the final word.

“Well, she need never be that again,” said Dufferin. “I have learnt the art, and if there is any more need of it, I will fall back on my acquirement.”

“I don't know what people will say about her, or about you, or about any of it.”

“I do. But it won't hurt any of us.”

“You are not right. It will hurt you,” said Mrs. Christy. “It is not true at all that that sort of thing does no harm to people.”

“No. I have found that it does harm,” said Dufferin. “Even Bellamy won't escape. It takes two to make a quarrel, when of course it does not. And a man should take everything upon himself, when there isn't anything for Bellamy to take.”

“There is always enough for a man to take,” said Camilla. “You know you have already taken it once. I shall soon be living with a man. I am all the woman that is necessary.”

“A good definition,” said Dufferin. “But doing a thing may make a man see the point of view of another who won't do it. Why shouldn't this one appear simply as he is? That is all he asks to do.”

Bellamy stepped impressively into sight.

“Well, pretty good for a listener,” said Camilla.

“I repudiate that word,” said Bellamy.

“Yes, yes, you have every right to,” said Dufferin. “She only meant that you overheard, and you don't deny you did that. Why that face of tragedy? We are doing all you want for you.”

“I cannot forget my eleven years of spoiled life.”

“Well, try to forget them, and don't spoil another minute. And I have nothing to do with ten and a half of those years. I have only known Camilla for seven months. I have done no harm to you.”

“You could not know that,” said Bellamy.

“Of course I knew it. Camilla was as clear about things as you were. It wasn't a case of the one in heaven and the other somewhere else. It can't be very often.”

“Well, this isn't leading us anywhere,” said Camilla. “Mother, I had better get home before my partners for life have quarrelled about me too bitterly to bear me company for an hour. There are still some things to arrange in my present consort's house. And if I walk in the dusk alone, there may be further trouble; and the impression seems to be that I am giving enough. Which of your sons-in-law will you spare me as a protector? I leave the choice to you, as you seem to have an equal regard for them. I may be prejudiced in my judgment.”

“I have to go home,” said Bellamy. “We need not set the scandal on foot before the moment comes for it.”

“We will defer people's satisfaction as long as we can,” said Camilla. “I don't want to add to the pleasures of your flock. I have given them too much flannel and soup for them to deserve any more at my hands. Oh, yes, you paid for it, but I shall be paying for this. So honours are
easy. I think I get the more expensive share. So I am to walk for the last time with you as your life-companion. Do you remember the first time? I have entirely forgotten it. Ernest, don't scowl at me like that; don't dare to. I have told you my nerves won't stand it. If we are to keep the peace until the truth is known, you must make my side of it possible. I can't be confronted with self-pity and self-righteousness and self-everything else.”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Christy,” said Bellamy, as though saying a significant word.

“Oh, my dear boy! How things have turned out! What am I saying? What am I to say?”

“Poor Mother, she goes to my heart,” said Camilla. “A divorced daughter and a parlour full of sons-in-law! Poor Ernest, you go to my heart too.”

“I am at last thinking in that way of myself.”

“I am the last to dispute it,” said Camilla, edging herself away with her elbow. “You have a natural gift for it. It is time you recognised where your talents lie, as they are rather specialised. But I shall have you on my mind, moping in that dank rectory alone. I could welcome my successor with open arms. I could throw myself on her neck and give her wifely directions about your health.”

“You need not have me on your mind, Camilla. I can face having nothing. I am used to less.”

“I don't know. There are not many things worse than nothing.”

“Yes, many worse,” said Bellamy.

“Oh, well, well, have it as you will. Many worse, then, many worse. We have had some desperate times together; we have had some shattering years. They have been the same to me as to you, though it has not struck you. How we have hated each other at times!”

“I think I have given you no reason to hate me, Camilla.”

“You think that, do you? Well, that is reason enough. Oh, but you can't help it, my poor Ernest, mine no
longer. Let us go our ways apart. We shall have to sort our worldly goods, and separate my own from those with which you me endowed, and endow me with no longer. ‘Give a thing and take a thing is a wicked man's plaything.' What are you doing to-morrow?”

“I have Mrs. Spong's funeral in the early afternoon. Otherwise I am free.”

“Oh yes. Funeral, funeral! Well, we have come to the funeral of our hopes of each other. I am not coming to Mrs. Spong's funeral; our own is enough. I have had my fill of funerals, and mothers' meetings and parishioners' teas. The funerals are the best; they do get rid of somebody. We emerge from them with one parishioner less. They are better than the weddings, which promise us a further supply. Funerals have never failed us. Your flock behave at last with a decent self-effacement. The drawback is that they give you the opportunity of doing the opposite. I couldn't cloud my last days as your wife with the spectacle of you doing yourself justice at a funeral. It would destroy the sentimental attitude I am cultivating towards you. The funerals all stand out in my memory. They are like a string of pearls to me. I couldn't add another to them, with Mr. Spong as chief mourner. It would be a large, dark pearl in the front of the only string of pearls you ever gave me, and the little more would be too much.”

In Most Eyes Bellamy was justified in using his position at burials to do well by others and himself, and the combination was satisfying to Dominic Spong, as he stood, conspicuous and seemingly sunk in himself, at his wife's grave. He was a ponderous man about forty-five, with a massive body and face and head, a steady, prominent gaze and a somehow reproachful expression. His aspect to-day was of emotion unashamed. When Bellamy concluded with a depth of feeling and command of it, he stood for a moment as if unable to tear himself from the spot, and left it with a bearing unaffected by human presence.