Ivy Compton-Burnett: Two Worlds and Their Ways

“My Dear, Good wife!” said Sir Roderick Shelley.

The former replied without raising her head.

“The money subscribed divided by the number of subscribers gives you the average subscription. Twenty-four pounds, ten shillings and sixpence, divided by thirty-five. Would you do a sum like that in your head, Roderick? Or could you not do it at all?”

The latter expressed no opinion, indeed had none.

“Come, my pretty,” he said.

“Fourteen shillings,” said Maria Shelley, looking at him over her pencil. “Of course I am neglecting the pence.”

Her husband repeated his words, neglecting the pounds and shillings also.

Maria gave him a smile and extended a hand in his direction, or gave the smile to herself and put a hand into space. He tapped a spoon on a saucer with more acquiescence than impatience, and rested his eyes on the scene beyond the window. His most satisfying vision was the flat, green land about his fading walls, and his only music the wind in his native trees sighing over the ground where he would lie. To be without it would be to be without a grave.

“Meals are such a waste of time,” said his wife.

“Any congenial way of spending it tends to be called that.”

“I wish we could do without them, or without so many.”

“The wish is often fulfilled in your case.”

“I only eat to keep up my energy.”

“You attain your object. I am a person of a wider range.”

“You are always boasting, Roderick.”

“That may be as true of yourself.”

“People who do not know us, might think we were disagreeing.”

“So they might,” said Sir Roderick, smiling. “And what kind of person would it take to know we were not?”

Maria’s hand encountered the coffee-pot and closed on it. Her husband pushed a cup beneath it and pursued the uncertain stream, and as he withdrew it, tilted the spout to a safe angle. She gave him a glance at the suggested waste of energy, and filled her own cup before she put the pot down.

“Thank you, my pretty,” he said, and stirred his cup.

Maria opened a letter and ignored her own. With her broad, massive frame, her crumpled, weatherbeaten face, her prominent, greenish eyes and the signs of fifty-three years, she was no one’s pretty but Sir Roderick’s; while the latter, with his unshapely figure, his slits of blue eyes, his fleshy features and a chin and neck more undefined than is usual at sixty-eight, was no one’s pretty at all. He saw his wife as she was when he married her, sixteen years before, or at about that time had ceased to see her. She saw him as he was, and saw an engaging quality in him, that she believed was apparent to no one but herself, though it was the first thing that strangers noticed. He was aware of it himself, as he saw its effects, but was protected by his natural ease.

“Are you having no breakfast this morning, Maria?” he said, holding a spoon above a dish.

“I wonder why we still call them your sisters-in-law. Though I don’t know what word we are to use. And we give enough advice to ourselves, or at any rate, I do.”

“And have some over for other people. There does seem to be a fair supply.”

“The most trying part of being a second wife is the existence of the first wife’s family. I did not ask for their opinions, or if I did—”

“You did not mean you wanted them. Advice suggests that we ought to change, and why should we tolerate that?”

“I do not think I have ever followed their advice.”

“It was necessary to increase the dose. And in its present strength it seems to be having some effect.”

“You think you put things neatly, don’t you, Roderick?”

“Yes,” said the latter, with a smile.

“One would not think you would be able to express them at all.”

“No,” said Sir Roderick, as if seeing the truth of this.

“How did you come to have one sister-in-law who keeps a school, and another married to a man who keeps another? It does not seem to fit with you.”

“I married into a different stock. I am a clod, a squire, a turnip, anything you please. Or nothing you please, I daresay.”

“You are a very self-satisfied person.”

“I have no great wish to improve. Perhaps that is what it means. But I have not much opinion of myself.”

“I wonder if I have,” said Maria, with an air of turning her eyes on herself, but actually turning them on her husband. “I wonder why two women wanted to marry you, Roderick.”

“You must answer for one,” said the latter, who knew the number was larger than this, and found it caused him no wonderment.

“She was much better-looking than I have ever been,” said Maria, glancing at a protrait. “Would you call me plain?”

Sir Roderick looked at the face before him, and realised it was years since he had called it anything.

“You are yourself, my pretty. To me your face is your own.”

“I wonder if a second wife often wishes she had known the first. I feel I should like to have a talk with her. But I am rather unlike other people.”

“You are yourself,” repeated her husband, not disputing this.

“I am glad my boy is a younger son. I want him to have a life of personal effort. It is what I should choose for him.”

“I hope he will like it as well as you do, as he will not have any choice.”

“I never grudge Oliver’s mother the place she left her son. I believe Sefton will go further.”

“He probably will, and fare worse. If I had ten sons, I should like them to be elder sons. I have liked being one myself.”

“Mary!” said Maria, in a meditative manner. “Mary Shelley. How familiar the name must have been to you! It is strange that she and I should have different forms of the same name, when we were to be different forms of the same thing; your wife, Roderick.”

“It is a common name,” said the latter, and said no more.

Maria gave him a look in which sympathy predominated.

“I can never bear to think of those years between your marriages. I cannot imagine what you did.”

“My dear, good wife!” said Sir Roderick, not referring to his earlier marriage and only romance.

“You do not often look at her portrait. I suppose you can look at the one in your mind.”

Sir Roderick was silent, finding he had looked at neither so often of late. He had ceased to speak of his first wife, not because her death had broken his heart, though it once had done so, but because the heart had mended.

“My dear, the past has its own life and its own death.”

“It is said that it never does. But I suppose it gets old like everything else. Miss Petticott will miss the children, if we take this advice and send them to school.”

“We can easily make up to her.”

“We can impose demands on her time and patience. That is what they do. It will be harder to make up to ourselves. I wonder if they all know they are to have breakfast down here today.”

“Has anyone told them?”

“They must know that workmen are repairing the wall of the schoolroom. The damp was coming through. Do not be slow, my dear. Did Mary treat Oliver as I treat my children?”

“No. It was different.”

“Was she fonder of him?”

“It was not quite that. She did not want to improve him.”

“Perhaps there was less room for improvement when he was a child. How I talk like the ordinary stepmother! But it has been good of me to have her father in my house for all these years. Of course these letters are really addressed to you.”

“Why ‘of course’, when you have read them?”

“The advice is meant for us both. I wish I could regard myself as exempt from it. I always read the letters and give you the gist of them. You will not read the writing.”