Ivy Compton-Burnett - Men and Wives

“Oh, come, Harriet! Storm of comment! Why, what did I say but that you were talking like a girl? You would not expect me to be up in arms, if you said I was talking like a boy. You are not likely to say it to me. That would produce stupefaction, I can tell you.”

“Godfrey,” said Harriet, laying her hand on his arm, “I am not often myself in these days. Will you bear with me for the sake of those behind while we have a word about the future of our sons?”

“Bear with you? Bear with a word on the future of our sons?” said Godfrey, drawing her arm within his in well-thought-of emulation of Gregory. “I should like it above all things. A talk with you about our dear boys, who hold us together and prevent us from drifting apart; who make it worth while for us to hold together; who make our keeping together for our own sakes a good thing in itself! It is what I have been wanting without knowing what I wanted.”

Godfrey, setting off at his wife’s side, observed the sudden pallor of her face, and while keeping on the prudent side of comment upon it, was far from assigning himself as its cause.

“Words Cannot Do justice to my opinion of Gregory,” said Jermyn, as he walked with his sister on the moors. “He seems to ask nothing but to curl up sleekly in other people’s minds. I can almost hear him purring in Mother’s. Beside him I am a monster of gross egoism.”

“I hope I am too,” said Griselda. “I think that is nicer for us.”

“Matthew and I won’t be useless to other people in the end. Far from it, if we are allowed the chance of being what we are. If we are driven to throw our powers into hackwork just when the early forces are in play, the spring might go for ever; it might simply break. You can’t get too much into one youth.”

“I shan’t try to get anything into mine,” said Griselda, with the humorous freedom she showed with her brothers. “I think my spring is too tender to be used at all. I daresay Gregory’s is too.”

“I was speaking in a serious spirit. We must do that for a second or two sometimes.”

“Well, if we must,” said Griselda. “Then you are in no danger from Father, and probably in none from Mother, though we tremble before signs that she is tempted to use her power. People can’t have so much without its occurring to them to use it.”

“I am protected by her weakness for seeing Father master in his own house.”

“I had a feeling that you were safe. And you will be safer when you reach a more definite stage. Mother is simpler than she seems.”

“You can’t be as definite with poetry as if you were working with material things. It is simple indeed not to see that. The spirit comes and goes, as live things must. It is independent and ebbs and flows. At the moment it is on the ebb.” Griselda nervously conquered a smile, and her brother continued with coldness. “You can’t foretell your moods. All rare things are elusive. It is a condition of their being rare.”

“Well, of course, those are not the words for Mother. She can observe that things are elusive without suspecting that they are rare, except in the sense that they are not to be depended on.”

“You can’t offer up poetry to order. You may laugh, but you can’t gather up and put into form in a moment what has been stirring in your mind for years, what may have its roots right back in the deeps of childhood. Strange, strange, that human beings with centuries of thought behind them should think it were possible!”

“That is a hopeful view of Father’s antecedents. The centuries behind him hold a good deal besides thought. We must take it into account.”

“Of course it is my business to give him proof, and I am not far off it now. Things are rising and working and taking shape. A very few more months!”

“That is good hearing,” said his sister. “A little family uplift would not come amiss. I don’t see what we shall come to, if we don’t have some soon. Matthew may not be able to wrest a secret from the universe. We must rely on the one of you who can depend on himself.”

“Each time I see the Hardistys’ place,” said Jermyn, as they came upon an eighteenth-century house, “I regret that we do not belong to what Buttermere properly calls the real gentry.”

“We can’t blame Buttermere for being ashamed of us,” said Griselda. “We are at that particularly shameful stage when we understand it. Here is Sir Percy coming to meet us. He always does that when we arrive without being asked.”

Sir Percy Hardisty, whom Buttermere described as a gentleman of the old order, had a shapeless, stooping figure, little, opaque green eyes, a boneless, spreading nose, an uncertain gait, and clothes of that peculiar shabbiness which rouses speculation upon the wearer’s attitude to them. Sir Percy had no attitude to things of this kind, and Buttermere had summed up his own in the statement that his master, Sir Godfrey, owed more to himself; and there was truth as well as triumph in his perception that Sir Percy’s corresponding debt was small.

“Well, well, this is a kindness to an old man,” said Sir Percy, who was sixty-two and had for some years imposed this view of his age. “You have come to see me as well as the rest of us. It is a great favour to us all. Now tell me how your mother is this morning.”

Sir Percy had a great affection and respect for Harriet. The feeling was shared by his wife, who was coming to join them, a sturdy old woman ten years older than her husband, with bright, steady eyes, a well-shaped head and a carefully innocent expression.

“It is an interesting time of the year, the time when our oldest shoes get really spoilt enough to be discarded. That is of no advantage to Percy. We say he is one of those people who can wear anything. I think he must be the only one who really wears it. I hope he hasn’t been too certain of himself, and assumed you would stay to luncheon without being pressed.”

“Why, they will have luncheon with us, Rachel. Luncheon must be on the table,” said Sir Percy, looking perplexed.

“They are young and generous,” said Lady Hardisty. “Come in, my dears, and begin at once having luncheon. It is worse to talk to hosts when you are not having it. You know I sit at the side of the table, so that people can see I do not shrink from sitting under my predecessor.” Sir Percy fleetingly raised his eyes to the portrait of his first wife. “Everything has to be done to throw up the character of a woman in my position. You know I taught Milly and Polly to call me Mater, to show their real feeling of that kind was given to another long ago. I trained them myself in that for the sake of their loyalty. As Polly only knew her mother for an hour, her loyalty is a tribute to the dear child’s constant nature, that it pays to foster.”

Sir Percy paused in his carving, his knife and fork aloft and wide, and leant towards Jermyn.

“And how did you say your mother was?”

“Not up to a great deal,” said Jermyn. “She does not sleep, and that makes the day rather much for her.”

“Yes, yes. And your father?” said Sir Percy, laying down his tools. “He is perhaps not too much put about by it?”

“He is anxious about her in his own way. He tries not to let it get the better of him, for all our sakes.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Not get the better of him,” said Sir Percy, rising to yield his place to his wife, and stooping over Jermyn’s chair with his hands upon it. “Then you can cheer me on the whole about everything?”

“Percy, you can’t expect Jermyn to be a second mother to you as I have been,” said Rachel. “Poor little Grisel is looking at you as if she really were your mother. It is too much for them.”