Men and Wives (14 page)

“Well, you will know that another time,” said Dufferin. “I knew it about you this time. We all understand it easily. It is more or less what we all want.”

“And so are we all thankful, Doctor!” said Godfrey, speaking as if the breath in his voice were weak. “We are thankful to you from the bottom of our hearts for averting from us the great calamity that was threatening us.”

“Nothing was threatening you. I have averted nothing. Harriet simply had an idea, that met the fate of many ideas and turned out to be of no good.”

“Well, we are grateful for your wisdom in at once humouring my poor wife and saving her from herself. And she will thank you herself when she is up to it, and promise you that never again will she seek from you or anyone else what she sought from you the other day. For if you had yielded, and granted her the means of bringing on us all——Ah, we shudder at the thought.”

“I have given you all a memory you should never have had,” said Harriet in a faint voice.

“You would have given us a reality, as far as your thoughts of us went,” said Jermyn.

“I fear my thoughts of anyone but myself went only a little way.”

“Not a distance to be considered,” said Matthew.

“Well, now, that was a moment to live through,” said Godfrey, recovering his normal manner. “To think you had lost your wife, and because she didn't find life with you worth living! That is a thing most men live more years than I have without having to face. Well, we are over it now. Harriet won't forget again what she is to all of us. Because you forgot that, Harriet; you did, my dear.”

“Yes, I did, Godfrey. I forgot it. I thought only of myself.”

“That is not over-stating it,” said Matthew.

“No, my dear,” said his mother.

“I hope you are prepared to spare a thought in future for all of us to share between us?” said Jermyn.

“Yes, I am, my son.”

“You see, Harriet, they are all determined you shan't do a thing like that again!” said her husband with a note of triumph.

“Do you feel quite well now?” said Griselda, pressing up to her mother.

“Yes, quite, my darling.”

“She is tired out,” said Gregory, “and no wonder.”

“She has done a very tiring thing,” said Griselda, forcing a natural laugh.

“You see, Mother, this kind of thing would soon do for you what you find you do not want,” said Matthew.

“Oh, now, leave that, Matthew,” said Godfrey. “Yes, my Harriet, you must settle down to rest.”

“It must be a strain, committing suicide,” said Rachel, who had been silently watching the scene. “If people survived it more often, there would be more witnesses of how trying it is. We must take the ordinary line of reproach; nothing else would be flattering; and you do deserve flattery, Harriet, having faced death, and found it so uncongenial to face it, which makes it more heroic. You must give me a lesson in facing it, as for me it is getting imperative. I believe I shall die without facing it,
and I would much rather face it without dying, as you have. I am letting my tongue run away with me, and it is not a suitable occasion, that of a friend's attempted suicide, but I am exhilarated at being your only guest to be in the heart of it all. You were still involved when Antony and I came in. It was noticeable.”

“Yes, oh yes, I daresay it was,” said Godfrey, giving a little laugh.

“Is Sir Percy in the house? Does he know it is all well?” said Gregory.

“Antony called to him over the stairs. He is waiting below with Mellicent,” said Rachel. “I hate to think of their not knowing the best part; it seems selfish to keep it from them; but denying ourselves the relation of it will be atonement. Harriet took something by mistake and got a fright! And really she did so much more. She makes the greatest sacrifice of all. But people will not realise that the pleasure in being well-informed should be intellectual; they make it social. You can all go downstairs and say to Percy that I am staying here for the night, because I cannot be spared. Don't stand there, looking as if Harriet needed any of you, when she has me.”

“Yes, she is right. We can all go,” said Dufferin. “Matthew can bring me news of his mother in the morning.”

“Harriet and I will have a talk before I see her into bed,” said Rachel. “Our friendship is strengthened by our mutual interest in facing death. We will have a comfortable little chat about it. People will say it is braver to face life, so self-righteous and superficial. As if so many of them would be brave, nearly all of them! They talk as if nobody had ever known them. Harriet is quite an exception. Do go away, all of you. We don't want an audience for intimate feminine gossip.”

“Oh, now, now, don't talk too much about it. Put it out of your minds once and for all,” said Godfrey in an easy tone for an easy matter, going towards the door. “Help
her to do that, Rachel, and we shall all be grateful to you. Good-night, my Harriet.” He came back and embraced his wife. “Good-night in the ordinary, normal way. We are not going to make much of it. We know what is best for you better than that. Well, Doctor, if it were not for you, we should be a sorry family to-night.”

“It would hardly be a natural thing to give a woman poison,” said Matthew. “It would involve danger for the doctor as well as for the woman. I don't understand why Dufferin gave her anything at all.”

“Because her reason might have failed if she had been denied,” said Dufferin, in a low tone for Matthew's ear. “You know why now, and if you don't command yourself you will soon have something of the kind in your own experience. Camilla's belonging to me can't colour your outlook on every occasion.”

“What, Matthew, what?” said his father, rising mechanically on each stair. “What tone are you taking, my boy? You used to be all agog if anyone said a word against the doctor, forgot to praise him up to the skies. And now you take us up when we express our gratitude for a great service he has done us! Why, you are all in a whirl, and no wonder. Dufferin will understand it.”

“He is right. I needn't have given her anything, but I thought it best in a way,” said Dufferin. “Well, Hardisty, you had a minute of suspense.”

“We have been reminding ourselves that they also serve who only stand and wait,” said Mellicent, “and have been at a loss to understand why.”

“It was kind of you to call to us, Dufferin,” said Sir Percy. “We thank you for it. We were uneasy, Mellicent and I, and Rachel was not with us; she was upstairs with all of you. Yes, our poor Harriet and trouble! They must be kept farther apart. Taking something by mistake and getting a fright! Something that did not matter. But if it had mattered! Rachel must speak to her about it. Is Rachel ready to be taken home?”

“She is doing us the kindness of remaining with us tonight,” said Godfrey, “and we are accepting it gratefully, Hardisty. We are dependent upon it.”

“Oh yes, Rachel is not coming then? Well, I will fetch her in the morning. I shall be wanting to know how it all is. But I shall not come in, you know. I shall stay outside, and Rachel will come out to me. Can I take you, Dufferin?”

Godfrey walked straight into the library and flung himself back in a chair.

“Well, what an experience! What an evening for us all! We couldn't have lived through it if we had been prepared for it beforehand. I should have fought clean shy of it; I make no bones about that. Gregory, my poor child, the worst of it fell on you. You have all had a rough-and-tumble time in your youth. I ought to have been able to save you, but the power was not in me; things have been too much. Griselda, my pretty one, you look all wan and worn out. Come to your father.” Godfrey drew his daughter to his knee and played with her hand. “Well, that was a moment, when we realised the whole thing was moonshine! It was a reward for what we had been through, that relief! And your mother found it a relief too. Oh, yes, she did; there is no doubt about it. She didn't want to leave us all as much as she thought. She wasn't quite so near to the end of her tether.”

“She found it more of a relief than anyone,” said Jermyn.

“She didn't make any secret of it,” said Matthew.

“That showed great quality,” said Gregory.

“I declare for a second I thought it was all up,” said his father. “I faced it for a moment. For a breathing space I knew what it was to be a widower. Ah, your mother did not know what she was putting before my eyes.”

“She did. She gave all her attention to preparing our way,” said Gregory. “No remorse.”

“All the life she had left, to it!” said Grisėlda. “Fancy giving it to that! I always wondered if it were all true, the
French Revolution and all of it. Now I know it is.”

“People dying so mannerly!” said Gregory. “It is a great test.”

“Yes, yes, it is, Gregory,” said Godfrey. “Some people are equal to it. Your mother is one of them. She is a high-spirited, high-minded woman under the little foibles that make our life a burden, that cause us an anxiety that burdens our lives. You have hit the mark. But I think, for all that, her best moment was when Dufferin told her she had built the whole thing on air. I hold to that.”

“The other moments would have been less satisfactory,” said Griselda.

“My Grisel, you are feeling more cheerful!” said her father.

“I wish I were a girl, and could have a little attention,” said Jermyn. “I feel I need it.”

“Some comfort,” said Gregory.

“So you do, my poor boys. So you do, my darl—my dear sons,” said Godfrey. “I wish you were all of an age when I could pet and cosset you, and make up to you for what you have been through. But we shall pick ourselves up, and go forward as if it hadn't happened. It was only a mistake after all.”

“It was not that, Father,” said Matthew.

“Oh, well, well, it was regretted. And if that is not a mistake, what is?”

“The mistake was that the stuff was harmless,” said Matthew.

“Very well, it was harmless, wasn't it?” said his father. “Why this arguing on an occasion like this? It doesn't really seem suitable. And we are tired out enough already.”

“Well, I hardly am,” said Rachel, coming into the room. “I still feel rather stimulated. I hope Percy felt it, that I could not go home with him. I have come to join you in disloyalty to Harriet. She would hardly expect to escape it. I have just been disloyal to her to her face. ‘My dear,' I said, when she was afraid she would not sleep, ‘it
is not your fault that you are not in your last sleep. You do keep changing your mind. It is everything or nothing with you.' But I think she will sleep; she is very tired. It takes a great deal to exhaust her enough, doesn't it?”

“She won't change her mind again, will she?” said Griselda.

“No, no, my child. She could not be up to so much.”

“It cannot be called a heroic thing to do,” said Matthew.

“I suppose it cannot be called that,” said Rachel.

“No, no, don't you agree with him, Rachel. You stand up for my poor wife,” said Godfrey, leaning back and relinquishing his daughter without sign of consulting her.

“It wasn't anything worse than a hastiness of spirit,” said Jermyn.

“Yes, it was worse; it was deliberate,” said Matthew.

“I wish we knew how she felt before she did it, the steps in her mind that led up to it,” said Gregory.

“We mustn't want to go as far as she did,” said Jermyn.

“Well, I hope there are some things you will stop short of,” said Godfrey, opening his mouth in concession to the stage matters had reached.

“There are probably a good many,” said Rachel.

“Yes, yes, there are, Rachel,” said Godfrey, sitting forward. “You are right to make us see that Harriet was not to blame in what she did. She is a fine creature, making a fine effort against her weaknesses. Well, it is no good my sitting here, making an exhibition of myself. How you can all hold your heads up puzzles me. I will take myself off and leave you free of the sight of me. Harriet will sleep, Rachel, you say? Well, I shall sleep the better for knowing that. Oh, well, laugh then, all of you. Laugh. I am glad you have the heart for it; I have not. I am thankful you have something to laugh at, and glad if I have given it to you. Rachel, again I express to you my gratitude.”

“Why is it more natural to be disloyal to your mother
than your father?” said Rachel. “It ought to be the other way round.”

“He is more helpless,” said Jermyn, “but it would be natural to take advantage of that.”

“We can't explain chivalry,” said Griselda. “It is a feeling I have never understood.”

“Does it throw light on it that we could never show it to Mother?” said Gregory. “To think we shall have to meet her, when some of us must have been the cause!”

“Will she be able to meet us?” said Matthew.

“I suppose not, if she thinks of the past,” said Griselda.

“We are all quite blameless,” said Matthew.

“It is humbling to feel we are impossible without meaning to be,” said Rachel. “Godfrey, why are you coming back when you had left us to be disloyal to you?”

“Oh, that is what you are doing, is it?” said Godfrey, crossing the room with his eyes on the chimney-piece, and his hand holding his coat together to cover some initial disarray. “Yes, here are my studs behind the clock! I remembered I had put them there. I was asking before dinner if I had better wear them, and Griselda voted for the plain ones, those I actually wore. I don't know if you noticed them; I expect you did not; that is the point of them, that they do not strike the eye. I thought she was right; I agreed with her; I don't care to see a man bedizened. What do you think?” Godfrey held the studs before his shirt, waiving compunction in the matter of its expanse. “I don't think they would have done me any good, do you? I think the effect was better without them, just careless enough. I think I shall have them made into something for Harriet. Though I don't know that I shall. I might come across some links to match them some time. One never knows what will turn up. There can be no harm in being all of a piece. Well, good-night again.”