Ivy Compton-Burnett: Men and Wives

“Well, Buttermere, This is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?” Sir Godfrey Haslam stepped, though hardly in this manner, through the window of his dining-room, and stood to face or to pass his butler’s scrutiny. “I’ll wager not fifty-six. But that is what I am. Six-and-fifty the month before last. Well, what would you say, Buttermere?”

“Good-morning, Sir Godfrey,” Buttermere said.

“Three years and ten months under sixty! What some people would call an elderly man. Well, in later middle life would be the general verdict. But I don’t feel anywhere near so far run down my course. I hope every man of that age feels as I do. I hope you do, Buttermere?”

“My circumstances have been at variance, Sir Godfrey,” said Buttermere, continuing the duties that had brought him to what he was.

“Shine or shade seems to tip the scales one way or the other,” said Sir Godfrey, frowning at the delicate balance of his life. “Well, I daresay it is the same with most of us. Up and down.”

Buttermere stood with his back to the light, in illustration of his own experience.

Sir Godfrey Haslam, a fair, solid man, with kind, shallow eyes, indefinite Saxon features, and a genial and casual bearing, turned to the window and surveyed the English meadow and moorland that he had chosen, since he had had to choose, for the setting of his days. His butler, a man of the same build and age, with a large, hairless face and head, and a small group of features roughly arranged towards the centre of the former, could only give a glance in the same direction, and put more energy into his present employment of drawing breath. Both men looked as if they had led an easy life, the master, as was natural, as if he had led the easier.

“I feel a different man when the sun is at work. I feel proud of my home, of my wife, of my sons and my daughter, my menservants and my maidservants, and the stranger that is within my gate. I take a satisfaction in my possessions.” The speaker’s glance at his portraits confirmed his contented spirit, as his father, when causing them to be made, had relied upon his own experience that early struggling leads to ultimate success. “And in my dear old parents who look down on me from their frames, as if they were glad to see me set up in a different way from themselves. Ah, I remember their gladness. Nothing to be ashamed of in my heritage, Buttermere, in a useful little fortune and title earned by providing people with things they need, by putting at their hand what sufficed unto them. I should blush for myself if I blushed for it.”

“Yes, Sir Godfrey,” said Buttermere in a voice of rejoinder.

“You see I talk to you as a friend, Buttermere,” said Sir Godfrey, sensing that this tone was called for. “Twenty-five years you have been about us, and that gives a man a right to be treated as a friend, doesn’t it?”

“Thank you, Sir Godfrey,” Buttermere said, in a manner that did not testify to these dealings.

“I believe you would prefer a stand-offish aristocrat for a master,” said Sir Godfrey, taking no credit for the soundness of his belief.

“I am satisfied, thank you, Sir Godfrey.”

“Anyone down yet?” said the master, with an expression of pricked-up ears.

“Her ladyship is on the way, Sir Godfrey.”

“Oh, her ladyship is first this morning,” said Sir Godfrey going to the door with a firm tread and a suggestion of outstretched arms. “Well, my Harriet, well, my dear! And how did you sleep?”

“You know I do not sleep in these days, Godfrey. It is monotonous for you always to ask the question, and for me always to answer it.”

Lady Haslam came into the room with a dragging step, a short, dark woman, with worn, firm features, a heavy jaw and unhappy brown eyes, looking much older than her husband, although of his age.

“Oh, but I meant, how much sleep did you get? I meant, did you have any sort of night at all? You know what was in my mind, as well as I know myself.”

“Yes, I know, my dear.”

“Oh, come, come, my dear girl. You must have some kind of rest, or you couldn’t be all day about with us all. You are never withdrawn for a moment. I mean, we never have to do without you. Don’t make a point of misunderstanding me. Don’t come downstairs with that express intention.”

Harriet was of better family than Godfrey, and had brought a darker heritage in her older blood. She had worn early in nerves and brain, with others of an inbred race, and an intense religious and family life bore heavily on her feebleness.

When her children entered, she searched their faces with hungry eyes, and returned their greeting with a passionate embrace.

Her second son, Jermyn, was a serious young man of twenty-four, who combined in his looks the best points of both his parents, and whose Christian name had been given him because it was his mother’s surname, a reason seemingly valid only for a younger son, since it had not been applied to his elder brother. Her daughter, Griselda, was a handsome, unstable-looking girl a year or two younger, whose wide grey eyes continually sought her mother’s, and never seemed at rest. The youngest son, Gregory, was an overgrown, featureless youth of twenty, with prominent, colourless eyes and at first sight no expression. The eldest son observed a custom of being late.

“Well, we are all here,” said Godfrey, with a note of anticipation. “You are all with us, Buttermere?”

“All but Cook, Sir Godfrey,” said Buttermere, choosing to disclose that duty detained one member of the household, in spite of, or rather because of its being a daily circumstance.

“Oh, well, we are all here,” said Godfrey, causing Griselda to smile at Jermyn. “The eleventh Chapter of Corinthians, the fourteenth verse!”

Godfrey came of dissenting stock, and was used to religious officiation on the part of the head of the house. He had taken his father’s mantle on his own shoulders with a willingness that had grown to zeal. Harriet was religious enough to care only for the fundamentals of her faith. She accepted and respected him in this character, setting it above his other side, in which preference she was joined by himself. He read in an emphatic, satisfied voice, which he raised and dropped without regard to the words, and then laid the book aside and fell on his knees, when his example was followed by his household.

“O Lord,” he exclaimed, in tones of respect and admonition, that somehow indicated the words with capitals, “Thou seest us gathered before Thee at Thy altar, at the beginning of our day, a simple family seeking Thy grace to bring us through it, sinful indeed in word and thought, yet without sin in Thy sight. For faith can remove mountains, and that faith is ours. Keep our three sons, the young men going forth, rejoicing in their youth, to the daily temptations that are its joy and snare. Keep our daughter, the solace of our age, the companion of her father’s prime; hold her in Thy keeping. Keep our servants, those who are with us to do Thy work of ministering. And those who need especial strength, to carry them over the ground trodden so often that it has become hard, who find a strain in the trivial round, the common task, give to these Thy protection for their frail and gallant spirit. Bless my wife and all of us, and bind us all together with the great, unbreakable bond of family love and fellowship.”