Ivy Compton-Burnett - Men and Wives

“I knew it was better to be dead,” said Bellamy.

“My dear husband is with me even more than he was in his lifetime,” said Agatha. “I don’t know if anything can be deduced from a truth under that head. For it is a truth.”

“Mrs. Calkin, our time will come one day,” said Dominc. “It makes it easier to look forward to that it has come for some of us.”

“It adds to the inevitability of it,” said Mellicent.

“And that hardly wants adding to, does it?” said Rachel. “It seems to be established.”

“Lady Hardisty, we know not on what day nor at what hour,” said Dominic, turning her words to true application.

“No, that is it. You really don’t, when you are over seventy,” said Rachel.

Dominic laughed before he knew it.

“Comedy has tragedy behind it,” said Rachel.

“Why, Harriet, you are deserting us, are you?” said Godfrey in a loud, light tone that had an announcing quality.

“Now I am going to give my best to my own sex,” said Rachel. “That is thought to be such a rare thing, and it is so much the easier. It is no wonder that women are jealous of other women, when they so often see them at their highest; and men have so much excuse for despising women.”

“Can’t I come with you?” said Gregory. “I am so young. I go with the women and children.”

“No, sit down, little jackanapes,” said Godfrey. “They don’t want you. Why should they?”

“No, but I want them,” said Gregory, holding on to the door. “I am such a boy.”

“No, no, apron-strings,” said his father.

“Gregory,” said Dominic, coming forward judicially, “I make no doubt that we should many of us give the palm to the gentler company, but we must follow the dictates of convention.”

“Mr. Spong is a very cultured man,” said Rachel when they reached the drawing-room. “The contrast of Percy makes me notice it. Comparisons are only odious for one side.”

“Yes, indeed they are,” said Geraldine, laughing with full comprehension.

“I feel so sorry for poor Mr. Spong, now that he has lost his life-companion,” said Agatha. “I think he must have such a lonely home to go back to.”

“Especially with his predilection for fair society,” said Geraldine.

“I understand so well the void there is in his life,” concluded Agatha.

“Spinsters are not supposed to have any understanding of a void!” said Geraldine.

“My dear, it is much worse,” said Rachel. “I am a spinster in essence myself, as I did not marry until I was over fifty. A spinster is supposed not only to have understanding of a void, but to have nothing but a void to understand. It is bravest to look at it straight.”

“I don’t find it much of an effort to show that courage,” said Geraldine.

“Of course I see how civilised it is to be a spinster,” said Rachel. “I shouldn’t think savage countries have spinsters. I never know why marriage goes on in civilised countries, goes on openly. Think what would happen if it were really looked at, or regarded as impossible to look at. In the marriage service, where both are done, it does happen.”

“It depends on one’s attitude to responsibilities,” said Agatha in a low, almost crooning voice. “Do we want fuller responsibilities, deeper happiness, heavier burdens? That is what it comes to.”

“Of course we do,” said Kate. “That is everything. And you are recognised as having it, which is better.”

“Do you want to marry?” said Geraldine in an astonished tone.

“I think perhaps I ought to want it. I may be one of those people who ask too little for themselves. I am told that I lose myself in books, and losing oneself surely shows too little sense of importance.”

“Oh, I admit I show that sort of self-effacement,” said Geraldine.

“I make that admission, too, Miss Dabis,” said Mrs. Christy, glancing at Harriet. “It is such an instinct with me as to be almost a necessity, to lose myself in the masters of bygone days, especially in those in affinity with myself. I think we owe such a debt to the minds that illumine the past.”

“An hour with a book,” murmured Gregory.

“Gregory, I did not know you were here,” said Harriet.

“I told you I was going to be, Mother.”

“Yes, he was quite open about it, Harriet,” said Rachel. “I wish I had realised it. He couldn’t do more than tell us. He did hear mention of the marriage service, but we could so easily have gone farther and quoted from it. Everyone knows the parts that would have served. He was so full of faith in us, and it is a pity to shake young confidence. But I think I did go farther than anyone else.”

“Yes, you did,” said Gregory, in a grateful tone.

’Now our opportunity has gone,” said Rachel. “I hear the voices of the men. I shall have Gregory to tea, and Percy shall not be with me, only the girls.”

“Well, here we are!” said Godfrey. “Gregory, you young scaramouch, we missed you almost at once, but we thought they would send you out if they did not want you. So you have been listening to the ladies’ chit-chat, have you?”

“That is what it was,” said Rachel, “and I am afraid he did listen.”

“Only such a little while,” said Gregory. “They have joined us so soon.”

“Well, Gregory, we cannot allow you a monopoly of the fair companionship,” said Dominic. “We elders must assert ourselves.”

“I did not assert myself,” said Gregory.

“No, he did not!” said Geraldine, looking round and laughing.

Dominic walked consciously across the floor. “Jermyn, I trust I shall not be thought guilty of monotony in my enquiries, but I find it in me to ask again after the progress of your flights of fancy. I trust my interest will be my excuse for my frequency in overstepping the boundary between your world and mine.”

“Thanks very much. I have been going slowly of late. I hope my verse will see the light of day before long, and it is halting work getting anything into its final shape. One will have burnt one’s boats after that.”

“Well, Jermyn, I hope you will have burnt nothing more serious than a little midnight oil. But when you have finished your book — it is the same book, by the way, that you were engaged upon when last I conversed with you?”

“The very same, and not a book yet at all.”

“When you have reached its conclusion, is it your plan to turn to the ambition which is perhaps your mother’s as much as your own, and revert to the more exacting field of genuine scholarship?”

“My plan is what it has always been.”

“Yes, but, Jermyn, have you considered that the giving of yourself at this period of your life is a serious proposition? That you will never again have the boundless energy, the power to recoup after strenuous effort, that will be yours for the next few years? Or, if I may adopt a somewhat personal note, the opportunity to fulfil at trifling cost to yourself the dearest wishes of her whom it must mean more than anything to you to gratify? It is only in youth that such opportunities come.”

“I have considered it finally long ago. I hope my mother will find some satisfaction in any success that may be mine.”

Dominic stood and drew a deep breath in rising above his feelings.

“Harriet, it is Matthew I want to have a word with this evening,” said Sir Percy. “I haven’t had a talk with him ever since I can remember. I don’t like your boy, Matthew, to be such a stranger to me.”

“He is more of a stranger to me,” said Harriet, who was crossing the room and did not pause to reply.

Sir Percy became as one who had not spoken, and Harriet continued her way to her youngest son, who was sitting on the floor, leaning his head against Agatha.