Ivy Compton-Burnett - Men and Wives

“Mother is not the foremost among my proud, but other people make up for her, notably my husbands. My former husband was quite proud, and my future husband is prouder. Proud, prouder, proudest! There will have to be a third. We heard that you were clothed and in your right mind, Lady Haslam, but nothing would do for Mother but that I should come to inquire. So here I am, inquiring. Sir Percy gave me a lift, and I began to teach him the art of pride. I promised to sit by him on the way back. You won’t mind, Lady Hardisty? It is his fault, not mine. People always ask me to sit by them again.”

“Then I am glad Percy did,” said Rachel. “It is so unfair to say that he is not like other people. Harriet, I try to forgive you for not treating me as a friend. I won’t bring Percy in to be a witness of it; and making inquiries of you is simply a mockery. Come along, Camilla, and sit by Percy. Percy, Camilla is going to keep her promise.”

“Oh, what?” said Sir Percy, getting to his feet in the carriage. “I did not see you in time to get out, my dear. Harriet is still all right? Ah, that is good to hear. No, I won’t go in. She saw enough of me last night, and we must wait to see enough of her. Yes, I told Mrs. Bellamy we would take her home. We shall have the pleasure of Camilla’s company on our way back, Rachel.”

“There now, he has given me right away!” said Camilla. “I couldn’t bring myself to warn him. The sight of his face would have been too much. But I expect you guessed I was romancing.”

“No, my dear, it sounded to me so likely; but I am sorry you did not warn Percy; you will have to sit behind with me. Percy must not suspect; he would be too upset about failing a woman. I don’t mean that he has failed in his heart; it was only because he was disturbed about Harriet. He will not another time. Gregory, go indoors and sit with your mother. She must not bear the miss of me by herself.”

“I adore Lady Haslam,” said Camilla, “though she by no means pays me back in kind. I surprise myself in returning good for evil.”

“We all adore her in proportion to the good in us,” said Rachel. “I saw there was much good in you, my dear; and I saw Percy seeing it in the carriage. She is most of all to me.”

Gregory had gone to his mother and settled himself at her feet.

“Now tell me all about it,” he said.

“About what, my son?”

“About all the things that made you do it. Tell me in plain, simple language so that I understand.”

“If the feeling should come again,” said his mother in a low, musing tone, “it would seem a hard thing to have failed to do it, when I had made up my mind. There was the making up my mind. But I have not felt since that I very much want to do it.” She raised her eyes as if seeking explanation of her feelings.

“Will you promise to tell me, if you want to again?”

“I don’t know if I ought. You are so young, my poor boy. I have already brought too much on you.”

“Will you promise?” said Gregory.

“Yes, dear,” said Harriet, in a voice that held no meaning.

“You don’t break your promises, do you?” said Gregory, looking at her doubtfully.

“No, we don’t break promises,” said Harriet. “Here is your father.”

“Well now, Harriet, here you are, sitting with your son!” said Godfrey, as though he spoke glad words. “Well, you are a heroine. I knew that the first time I saw you; I sensed the stuff you were made of. Well, Gregory, and how do you find your mother this morning?”

“Not very good at telling the truth about the darkness into which she descended.”

“Ah, now, Gregory, we won’t go into that,” said his father with a movement of shuddering. “We will leave it to fade away. It is as if it had not happened. That is what it is to me, what it will be for all of us, for your mother first of all. She is right not to tell you; she makes the wise decision; we can trust her to make it. Now what you have to do is to help her to forget it, to sweep it right out of her mind, and the way to do that is to forget it yourself. Forget it, Gregory. Serve your mother by controlling yourself in that matter.”

Harriet raised her eyes and rested them on her husband and son, as if weighing the difference between them.

“Forget it, Gregory, forget it,” repeated Godfrey, turning himself on his heels with his hands in his pockets, and seeming to feel released from something normally involved in his wife’s presence. “Forgetting it is the thing we have to remember.”

Harriet gave a low laugh.

“Oh, that is what you are doing, Harriet!” said Godfrey, pausing on his heels, and bending from his waist towards his wife. “Laughing at your poor old husband, because he is advising what is best for you! And this boy aiding and abetting you! Well, what a wife and son to have! Wife and son to have — wife and son!” The speaker revolved in time to his refrain.

Harriet and Gregory laughed together, and Harriet continued her laughter as if she could not control it.

“Well, you are cheerful enough without me at the moment. I needn’t stay to be made a stock of. Not but what I am glad to be anything for you, my dear. If you need me, send to where I am, the stables or the garden or the library, and I am with you.”

“Places in the order of probability,” said Gregory.

His mother laughed again, and her laughter seemed to hold and shake her.

“You had better come upstairs and lie down,” said Gregory, holding out his hand. “It was very unwise to get up at all this morning. Some of us ought to have thought of it.”

Harriet looked at the hand as if uncertain of its purpose, deliberately placed hers in it, and rose. She stumbled as she went upstairs, and fell again into hysterical mirth. Gregory helped her on to her bed, and went to his father in the stables.

“I can’t make Mother out this morning. Of course there must be some reaction from the strain of yesterday, but I don’t understand her state. She is emotional in a way that is not like her, and seems to have no control of herself. I suppose it doesn’t mean anything?”

“What it means, Gregory, is this,” said his father, passing his hand down a horse. “It means that your mother is a wonderful woman, and has made up her mind to cease throwing a blight, to atone to us for what she has made us suffer. Ah, if there is anyone who appreciates your mother, it is I. If there is anyone whose bitterness is swallowed up in admiration, it is I, it is mine, it is I.”

“Yes, but have you noticed her this morning?”

“I have not, Gregory, I have not. I have refrained from gratifying my curiosity, satisfying any particular anxiety on purpose. It seems to me a piece of consideration that we owe her.”

“We owe her other things as well,” said Gregory.

“We do, Gregory, we do. And whatever we owe her shall be given her in measure full to overflowing. My beauty, my lovely girl”—Godfrey was now addressing his mare—“you don’t know what it is to be tossed and torn and have no peace, when you are doing your best for everyone, do you? No, and you shan’t know it. I would rather I and everybody belonging to me knew it, than you, my pretty, my sweet.”

“We don’t often get so completely what we would choose.”

“No, but she shall have it, she shall,” said Godfrey, assuming a concentration similar to his own. “Everything she shall have that her master can give her.”

“Your benevolence seems to be genuine, but not of wide application.”

“Well, I have always been a soft-hearted fellow, Gregory,” said Godfrey in a tone of disarming admission. “Any creature alive, man, woman, child, or beast, is certain of a response from me.”

“I am sure of it,” said Gregory.