Ivy Compton-Burnett - Men and Wives

“Thank you,” said Agatha with dubious eyes on her glass.

“I am afraid I have been rather precipitate,” said Dominic, glancing over his shoulder with spreading colour.

“Lemonade, sir?” said Buttermere, indicating Agatha’s glass to his subordinate, and seeming to suggest that he was probably right in his gauging of Dominic’s habit.

“Thank you,” said Dominic in a casual manner, turning at once to his neighbour.

“Come, Mrs. Christy, change your mind,” said her host.

“No, indeed, I must stand up for my principles.”

“Mrs. Christy, that is often a very hard thing to do,” said Dominic.

“I hope not at this table; I trust not indeed,” said Godfrey. “Our friends’ principles are always respected here.”

“Yes, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic with gratitude.

“I do not refuse wine on principle,” said Agatha in a distinct voice. “I have no conscientious scruples against it. Often I enjoy a glass of wine. In fact I was brought up to take a little. But I find it works better in different ways not to be dependent on it.”

“I am dependent on it, and cannot have it,” said Geraldine, looking at the colour in her glass. “That is the sad effect on me of the same bringing up.”

“Well, get as far as you can to-night, Miss Dabis,” said Godfrey.

“Food and drink are the things worth living for,” said Gregory.

“Lady Haslam,” said Dominic, leaning towards Harriet, “I assume we are not to take this young gentleman’s statement seriously.”

“I don’t know, the little good-for-nothing!” said Godfrey. “What he has to eat and drink and wear! That is what seems to matter to him.”

“It is the whole of civilisation,” said Gregory.

“Oh. . oh!” said Dominic, laughing with his eyes still on his hostess.

“I think my boy considers anything before those things,” said Agatha.

“Yes, Mrs. Calkin,” said Dominic in a serious tone that seemed to offer compensation for his withdrawn attention, “I can believe those things are a matter of indifference to him.”

“I would not say that,” said Agatha, causing her partner’s eyebrows slightly to rise. “He likes good things to eat and drink as well as anyone; he makes that clear when he comes home. Wine isn’t a luxury with us then I can tell you. But they are not the first things in life to him. No.”

“They must be in his heart,” said Gregory.

“Oh, Lady Haslam!” said Dominic, with further merriment.

“Gregory, this foolish joke has gone on long enough,” said his father, presumably not noticing its effect on his guest.

“Gregory has made a joke,” said Matthew. “He is doing his best to make the party go.”

“Now that is a thing I cannot do,” said Godfrey. “If anyone asked me to make a joke now on the spur of the moment, I could not do it for my life.”

“Well, we will ask you,” said Geraldine.

“You have made your answer betimes, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic with a touch of apprehension, “and one which I make no doubt will have to do for many of us here.”

“I always think there is so much involved in humour,” said Mrs. Christy. “So many things flood the memory at the mere conception of it. I am such a votary of the comic muse. ‘No,’ I have said, when people have challenged me, ‘I will not have comedy pushed into a back place.’ I think tragedy and comedy are a greater, wider thing than tragedy by itself. And comedy is so often seen to have tragedy behind it.”

“That is true. I think all my jesting about Percy’s first marriage is seen in that way,” said Rachel.

“I am not speaking of the oft-instanced order of so-called humour,” continued Mrs. Christy. “I hold no brief for Jane Austen and her kind. Woman though I am, I want something more involved with the deeper truths and wider issues of life.”

“Well, I don’t set myself up to be a critic,” said Godfrey in an aloof and contented tone.

“You don’t need to set yourself up in any way,” said Gregory. “You are too high.”

“High enough to be one of Jane Austen’s fathers,” said Jermyn.

“Oh, am I? Well, what do you mean by that?” said Godfrey, in a suspicious but still incurious spirit.

“What do you think of Miss Jane Austen’s books, Jermyn?” said Dominic—“if I may approach so great a man upon a comparatively flimsy subject.”

“Our row of green books with the pattern on the backs, Rachel?” said Sir Percy with a sense of adequacy in conversation. “Very old-fashioned, aren’t they?”

“What do the ladies think of the author, the authoress, for she is of their own sex?” said Dominic.

“I have a higher standard for greatness,” said Agatha, “but I don’t deny she has great qualities. I give her the word great in that sense.”

“You put that very well, Mrs. Calkin,” said Dominic. “I feel I must become acquainted with the fair writer.”

“That is a great honour for her!” said Geraldine.

“Miss Dabis, I assure you I do not feel it so.”

“What do you think, Mr. Bellamy?” said Harriet.

“I did think something at the time when I used to think. She has some inner light. To copy her is hopeless. I am on my knees.”

“Mr. Bellamy hid himself somewhat under his cover of silence,” said Dominic.

“I did not know you wrote yourself, Mr. Bellamy?” said Harriet.

“I write and I paint and I play and I act, and I don’t do anything well enough to be worth while, and everything rather too well to give it up. I am a rolling stone, a proof that a little learning is a dangerous thing, that he does much who does a little well. I am an illustration of every warning proverb under the sun.”

“It may be something to be that, Mr. Bellamy,” said Dominic in a complimentary but indefinite spirit.

“But I do not like to live simply as a warning to others. I often wonder why I continue to live at all. I honour those people we never meet, who take the matter into their own hands. Of course we cannot come across them after they have taken that step.”

Dominic’s gaze swelled.

“Mr. Bellamy,” he said, with a forced smile, “that is hardly a speech we expect from a clergyman.”

“Any kind of speech does for a clergyman. He can’t be turned out for his discourse, in the pulpit or elsewhere. In his case actions really speak louder than words. ‘Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever.’”

“I never see why we should not end our own lives if we wish to,” said Jermyn.

“Perhaps people would not suffer as much or as long as we think,” said Harriet, as if to herself.

“Harriet, my dear!” said Godfrey, while Dominic turned his eyes on his hostess in involuntary consternation.

“It shows a want of courage to end one’s own life. I think that must be said,” said Agatha with gentle tolerance towards any human proceeding.

“I think it needs too much courage. I should be too cowering a soul to attempt it,” said Geraldine.

“We have not decided what courage is,” said Kate.

“Now I don’t understand this line of talk,” said Godfrey. “Here we are, happy, prosperous people, with all the good things that life can give us! And we sit posing and pretending we want to die, when what we want is to go on living, and getting the best out of everything as we always have. It is no good to disguise it.”

“But it is natural to want to disguise that, Godfrey,” said Rachel.

“I meant, I am content to wait for my appointed time,” said Godfrey.

“Well, now we know what you meant,” said Rachel.

“I always think that discussion whether it is better to be alive or dead is so irrelevant,” said Mrs. Christy, whose eyes had been darting from face to face. “Not only because we shall not be dead, but more truly living, so that the problem is non-existent; but because we shall go on developing our natures, and gaining more experience of the wonder of the universe, so that we shall not be dead, but more truly living.” Her gesture assigned her repetition to word rather than thought.