Ivy Compton-Burnett - Men and Wives

There was silence.

“Have you anything more to say, Matthew? Because do not let me force you to stop.”

“No, I have said what I meant, Mother. I stopped of my own accord.”

“Ah, you cannot even grant me that, Matthew?” said Harriet with deliberate sadness. “You must stop of your own accord. Well, have it your own way then. Allow me nothing. You stopped of your own accord. You had done what you set out to do; you had given me the wound that you thought would cow me into submission, through my terror lest the knife be turned in it again. You hoped to add that terror to my burdens. When you had done it, you stopped of your own accord.”

“No, no, Harriet, I can’t have it left like that,” said Godfrey in a despairing tone. “I can’t have it quite in that way. Because it was not just that, my dear. Your sense of fairness tells you so. Matthew may be young and hotheaded, and I am not defending his words. But he was generous in the main; he was honest in his heart. He was making an effort for others besides himself. He had to call up his courage to do it. He felt like a man, and tried to behave as he felt. He knew it was time you should be protected from yourself. He saw that you must not smash up our affection and our family life, for imagined reasons that do harm to yourself. No, no, Harriet.” Godfrey put a summons into his voice, as his wife rose and left the table. “There is still a word to be said, still a word. Still a word, Harriet! You must allow me one moment; I don’t deny you. I spend my life responding to your demands. You are fair, my dear. I ask you for a moment in return. I don’t mean that I don’t identify myself with you. You and I are one in every detail of our lives. Matthew was addressing his words to both, and I was taking them to myself.”

Godfrey broke off at the sharp closing of his wife’s door, and sat back with an expression strange to his face.

“The End of Breakfast!” said Jermyn.

“And the beginning of what else?” said Matthew.

“It isn’t possible that all our lives should take shape from one person’s pattern,” said Griselda with tears in her voice.

“Possible. I hope not often actual,” said Jermyn. “The struggle to avoid it shows that it might happen.”

“No, no, it shan’t be possible, my Grisel,” said Godfrey. “You shall have your life according to your own pattern. Your life is your own, my sweet. And as for my poor boys, sitting there not knowing what to say or think, I can assure them that things will be as if this had never happened. I can set their hearts at rest. You did well to rise up and endeavour to get things on to a better footing, Matthew. You meant well and did well. You bore yourself like a man. Your speech was masterly! And if it was a little young and emphatic, we can’t expect old heads on young shoulders. Mother will realise it when she thinks it over. It comes to me that she will. If she gives her impartial thought to it, she might. Gregory, you might do what you can some time. You could try to find some moment. You know we have sometimes to rely on you.”

“And this is the reassurance you promised us,” said Gregory.

“Oh, well, yes, I did promise you,” said his father. “Well, but I begin to feel a doubtfulness creeping over me. I begin to feel in a proper fright, and I don’t disguise it,”

“It was better when you did disguise it,” said Griselda.

“You gave up so soon,” said Gregory.

“You have done well only to begin to feel it this minute,” said Jermyn.

“Will all our life consist of it?” said Griselda.

“It cannot consist of it more than it has for some time,” said Matthew.

“There is Mother coming downstairs!” said Gregory.

Harriet’s footfall passed through the hall and out of the house.

“Can she be going to church alone?” said Griselda.

“It is not time,” said Matthew.

“Oh, yes, of course it is Sunday,” said Godfrey.

Buttermere approached to clear the table, seeing the continued presence of the family no challenge to his routine.

“Her ladyship has gone out, has she, Buttermere?”

“Yes, Sir Godfrey.”

“Has she gone out long?”

“As you heard her this minute, Sir Godfrey.”

“Did she say how long she would be away, or leave any message about our waiting for her?”

“I am not aware that she has exchanged words with anyone, since she suddenly left the table, Sir Godfrey.”

The carriage came from the stables and went towards the gate.

“Oh, well, she has deserted us,” said Jermyn.

“On Sunday, too,” said Gregory.

Griselda laughed, and Buttermere’s face fell at this proof that the trouble bore easy treatment.

Harriet Drove To the town, and directed the coachman to stop at Dufferin’s house. Dufferin heard her voice from an upper floor, and came from his working room to meet her. She looked up at his face, caught sight of another face behind it, and stood with a drooping head and deepened breath, as if taking on her shoulders a further burden.

“I am hardened to being eyed askance because I visit my future husband,” exclaimed Camilla. “But the attitude is to be extended to chance encounters with somebody else’s son. A leopard’s spots cannot be changed, and in Lady Haslam’s eyes they are contagious, and shameless exposure of them increases the danger.”

“Well, as you tell me what I have come for, I will go on from your words,” said Harriet. “You know that Matthew has lived in a world very different from yours, a world narrow and careful in your eyes, perhaps narrow and careful in itself. You understand what I am asking you?”

“To recognise that the narrow sphere has unfitted him for the wider one! His handicap is to command my protective tenderness, tenderness being the last feeling you would wish me to harbour towards him!”

“Yes, in one sense as you put it, my dear,” said Harriet, with the maternal touch she had with young women. “I only mean that you are older than Matthew—”

“Oh, am I? Grey-haired and in the sere and yellow leaf! Well, it can’t do Matthew any harm to be exposed to my experience. It is Gregory who has a fancy for the aged of my sex. Tell him there is a winning old lady with a welcome for him, if he should care to enrich his collection. Matthew will vouch for my being an interesting specimen.”

“You are right that I am in your hands,” said Harriet, accepting this word of her son. “As that is so, I must leave myself in them. Antony, since I have come on purpose, and not knowing she was here, Camilla will allow me to have a word with you alone.”

Dufferin led her upstairs to his working room, his face grave.

Harriet turned to him with as complete a change of bearing as if she were unaware of what had passed, Dufferin looking as if he were prepared.

“Antony, this is my life, what people call by that name. The time when they rest from their life is the culminating part of mine. I live while they sleep, and I sleep for an hour when they are waking, and I hear them wake through my hour. I creep from my room, feeling that a sudden touch or sound would drive me mad, already mad with the terror of what may come. And it always comes. Godfrey or the children say some word, and I am beyond help. Poor Godfrey is the goad. I steel myself to meet him, but it is always the same. And I see my children’s faces, and am urged by the hurt of them to go further, and driven on to the worst. I retrace my way in my mind, trying to grasp at what they remember; I almost overtake it and it goes; and each time I reach it less and less, until I hope to get only to a certain point and then less far; and my brain is numb.”

Harriet’s sureness through her groping thought gave a strong impression of her dark and definite experience. She took a breath, and went on in lucid words.