“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.”
To these and other injunctions, though not laid upon themselves, the family gave an ear, Harriet with simple acceptance of the sphere which showed her husband strong and wise. Harriet and Godfrey had questioned their religion as little as the accepted shape of the earth they trod.
The service concluded with the Lord’s Prayer, in which the household spoke for themselves, Godfrey’s tones being apparently designed to suppress the sudden arbitrariness. Buttermere’s voice on the words, “as we forgive those who trespass against us,” suggested the suppliant’s general frame of mind.
“Well, now, breakfast!” said Godfrey, receiving his world on secular terms. “Now a good breakfast to make up for the bad night, Harriet. Don’t stand about loafing, you two boys. Good-morning, all of you. How is Father’s girl to-day?”
“Quite well,” said Griselda, giving him a startled smile, and leaning towards her mother.
“Mother, how did you sleep?”
“Not at all, my sweet one. Never mind, as long as you slept well.”
Griselda held her eyes down, and Jermyn strolled to the table.
“Well, bad news of the night?” he said with a deliberate ease.
“There is no news, dear, but not in the sense that no news is good news. It must certainly be no news to you by now, and you speak as if you were reconciled to it.”
“Oh, now, Harriet, now you are making a mistake,” said her husband in a manner of making a last effort before yielding to fate. “We keep all our sympathy for you, but, as you say, it is not news to us now. Nor is it to you, my poor girl. Gregory, don’t stand there, kicking your feet like a child.”
Gregory took his place by his mother, and looked into her face with simple affection.
“Well, how did you employ the night watches, since you had them at your disposal ?”
“In pacing up and down the corridors, my son,” said his mother in a soothed and gentle tone, and with almost a light of humour in her eye over words ominous to any other ear. “I knew I shouldn’t wake any of you. You all sleep so soundly.” Even this was not a reproach to Gregory. “I don’t feel so wrought up as I generally do after a night without sleep.”
“Oh, come, come, that is a good word, Harriet. Come, that is a brave speech,” cried Godfrey. “Now we shall have a better day. You will have a better day. You will be able to amuse yourself a little.”
“Amuse myself? Shall I, Godfrey? It has taken all my effort for years to get through the day, and to face the night, the night!” Harriet dropped her voice and bent her head as much in suffering as in the acting of exasperation, and Jermyn rose to the demand.
“What an offensive thing to say, Father! What worse insult than to be accused of amusing oneself? Amusing oneself, when life is but toil and duty!”
“I wish it were that for you, my son,” said Harriet. “And for me, how I wish it were just that, just toil and duty!”
“That sounds to your credit. We are proud of you,” said Griselda.
“Proud of her? Yes, we are,” said Godfrey loudly. “We are proud of her for the high mettle that keeps her up and doing as if she had the toughness the rest of us have. Ah, we have cause for pride.”
Harriet raised her eyes to her husband’s in mingled affection and despair.
“Who is proud of whom?” said the eldest son of the house, a gaunt young man of twenty-eight, as much like his mother as was allowed by age and sex and human difference. “Good-morning to you all.”
“Ah, good-morning, my dear boy,” said Godfrey, leaning back with eyes full of affection, as his son disregarded the summons of Harriet’s glance and went straight to his seat. “We wish you a good-morning indeed.”
“Matthew,” said his mother, “I don’t know if it is anything to you that you add to my burden; that you leave me morning by morning to feel you have had no part in our common preparation for our day?”
“Oh, prayers!” said Matthew. “They hardly seem to serve their purpose. I am not struck by the signs of preparation.”
“No, that is how it must seem,” said Harriet, turning her head. “I am a torment to you all, and a burden on your hours that you never escape ! But I am as much of a burden on my own, ten thousand times more of a burden. Griselda, my darling, don’t look distressed; don’t waste a thought on your harrowing old mother. Don’t think of me. Be happy.”
Griselda gave a response with her lips that did not develop into sound, and Matthew looked at her in gloomy compassion.
“How can her life be her own, when she is told that it is ? The two things are not compatible. None of our lives are our own.”
“Some of them are more your own than I can feel they should be,” said his mother in a different tone.
“You are speaking against me, and not to my face, Mother,” said Jermyn. “That is a mean and unmannerly thing to do.”
“I will say it to your face, my son. It is a sorrow to me that you and Matthew deal with your talents as if they were given you for your own use. I fear that may be your way of hiding them in the earth.”
Harriet’s ambition for Jermyn was a fellowship at Cambridge, his own that he should write original verse. Her desire for Matthew was a London practice in medicine, in which he was qualified, his aim for himself scientific research. Harriet’s ambitions for her children were so confused with her religious zeal, that her natural sense of values hardly emerged. She was a slave to her feeling that ultimate good depended on effort for others and sacrifice of self. Moreover she alone in the house knew the common fate of such hopes of youth.
“We have a lot of beautiful things in the family,” said Gregory in his dulcet tones. “Poetry and science and Griselda’s looks and Father’s seat on a horse. I hope I shall be generously proud. It is all wonderful.”
“My darlings, it is,” said Harriet in a deep, vibrant voice. “I should be a happy and grateful mother, and I am. How I should try to remember what I have! How I will try, if my weakness does not overtake me! I wonder if any of you can see me through it.”
Buttermere opened the door and cut through his master’s prompt and arduous words.
“Dr. Dufferin, Mr. Matthew!”
“Well, Doctor, how are you?” said Godfrey, who addressed and alluded to his friends according to their callings. “It is good of you to take us on your early ride. You will have some coffee with us before you drag this boy to his work. The young rascal is only just down.”
“I have finished, thank you, Father,” said Matthew, rising to accompany his friend.
“Now, now, don’t mouth at me and argue,” said Godfrey, in an easier tone than was warranted by his words. “Your mother wants a talk with the doctor, and if she wants it, she shall have it. The house is not yours. And if the talk is to be about you, be thankful that anyone wants to talk about you, that there are people who take an interest in you. Because you don’t take much interest in anyone else.”
Godfrey raised his voice to penetrate the door, and relapsed into mirth at the perception that half his speech was lost.
“Well, now, Doctor, here is my poor wife clucking on the bank, with her ducklings gone to water! Matthew is not starting on his profession, and Jermyn is not writing his what-do-you-call-it for his fellowship. They are deep in science and poetry and I don’t know what. How should I know? I never did any of these things. It is not because of me that they do them.”
“No, that is a just claim,” said the guest. “Harriet must know that she is at the bottom of it. That makes her feel the responsibility.”
Antony Dufferin was a dark, vigorous man of thirty-eight, with a broad, humorous nose, a covert quickness of eye, and to those who saw, a strong undercurrent of nervous and productive power. His career as a London physician had been broken by a marriage ending in scandal and divorce. He had not troubled to expose the truth, had given up his work with an easy heart, and settled in his native county near to the Haslams’ place, to give his life to a corner of medical research. Matthew had chosen to work under him, rather than accept from his parents a London practice as a gift.
“Now, Doctor, I beseech you to bring home to my wife that she is building troubles out of air. She will give an ear to you, when she won’t flicker an eyelid in my direction. I shouldn’t think there are more prosperous people in the world than we are; I don’t mean in any crude sense; I mean more fortunate in human affection, in family good fellowship, in the things that make life worth living. I should feel more fortunate still if my sons were laying the foundations for future usefulness.”
“Research doesn’t often promise usefulness,” said Dufferin, “though you put it with a simplicity. But why shouldn’t Matthew have an innocent occupation that he fancies himself? Other people don’t give so much sign of thinking of him. His attitude is more benevolent than theirs.”
“Yes, now, you are right, Doctor,” said Godfrey. “Harriet, you see the force of his words. That is the thought that has been in my own mind, though I couldn’t have put it better. I mean, we did well in asking him to sum things up for us.”
“Matthew is serving himself first,” said Harriet.
“Well, that is a true word of all of us,” said Dufferin.
“Ah, so it is,” said Godfrey with a chuckle. “I admit that I think of myself before anyone else comes into my head. I mean with a few exceptions, with the one exception of course; I am a married man.” He looked towards the window, but Harriet did not glance at him.
“A doctor’s life has great opportunities,” she said. “We are serious people, Antony, and should take great pride in the serious success of our son.”
“Plenty of preaching to be given in any life. People don’t often want it, and they never take it. They don’t even need it. If it was any good to them, they would be the first to give it to themselves. Matthew can use his own opportunities. He won’t want a profession when he comes after his father here, and what he has chosen will take him to his end. Come and see me out, Haslam.”
Godfrey followed his friend into the hall, and stood as if in doubt.
“What of my poor girl in there?” he said.
“I must be careful of my eyes. You see more with yours than you used. I see you have had to. I think it will be well enough, if she does not come under a real strain. I wouldn’t answer for things then: this fighting with everything is strain enough. But I don’t see how she can do that, with you all on the watch for her.”
“No, no. We will all watch for her indeed,” said Godfrey in a rather empty voice. “Matthew, here is the doctor waiting for you. Have you said good-bye to your mother, my boy?”
“No, there is no occasion, Father. I shall see her later in the day.”
“But go in and say good-bye to her, my son,” said Godfrey in a coaxing, deprecating tone. “Give her a word to take with her through the day. A word from you is a great stand-by for her. You know that.”
“I haven’t observed it,” said Matthew, going down the steps. “Good-bye, Father.”
“Good-bye, my boy, good-bye,” said Godfrey, with cordial appreciation of this farewell. “My blessing goes with you.”
Having uttered these last words in a tone too low to be heard, Godfrey retraced his steps to the dining-room, giving them especial force in case they should falter. Harriet was walking on the gravel outside the house, with Gregory holding her arm and stooping over her, and her face was happy and almost young.
Her husband threw back his shoulders and laid hold of the lapels of his coat, and walked about, swishing his feet on the carpet and breaking into snatches of talk and song. Buttermere entered and conveyed in silence his view of anyone engaged, or perhaps surprised in audible soliloquy.
“Well, Buttermere, so you have caught me in the act. You never talk to yourself, do you? You would be ashamed?”
Buttermere looked as if he could not but allow this to pass.
“You never do things you are ashamed of, do you, Buttermere?” said Godfrey, suggesting the truth, for Buttermere never talked to himself, did a woman’s work as distinct from his own kindred duties, addressed his subordinates except with peremptory direction, or committed tangible dishonesty. Of taking pleasure in any human discomfiture, especially in that of the family he served, he was not ashamed, reserving this feeling for such things as threatened his manhood.
Gregory was pacing with his mother on the path.
“I am asking you a question I have never asked before. What do you think about when you are treading the passages at night? Tell me at once and truly. Do you get into a habit of going over the same things ?”
“My darling, what do I think about? I ought not to tell you. I feel sometimes as if the curse were hanging over you, as if only your father were free of it. Yes, I go over the same things. That seems to be my weakness, almost my disease; I believe it is nearly that. I feel I must get something just as it was, and I don’t quite reach it, and begin again; and each time something is missed, and never the same thing. And it goes on through the night; and I feel it hanging over me in the day; and the future stretches before me with all the nights. And when I differ from Matthew and Jermyn—and it is not what I want for them, Gregory, what they are doing—and when your father and I are not of one mind, I go over what they have suffered, and what remains in their thoughts. And I feel that if I could once come up with the thoughts, I should not mind what they were; that I could face them, if they were not hanging over me with threat; and they can never be overtaken. And I ought not to tell all this to you, who may be going to suffer it yourself. I never ought to have married, Gregory. But I am easier now you know it, and I am not living alone. It does not seem it ought to be what it is, and yet it is always the same. You could never understand, and yet there is nothing you cannot understand, my dear, dear boy.”
“How clever of you it was to marry Father, when you were both of you as you were!”
“Well, my child, perhaps it was clever. Perhaps he was the right man for me, your dear, good father, my generous, forbearing husband. I may not be the right woman for anyone. But he is stronger than I am, just as he is weaker. I don’t think it has hurt him, unless it is that I will not think so. I trust he is happy. How I pray that he is! For I cannot help myself, Gregory.”
“Oh, yes, he is happy, doing such lovely things, shooting and riding and reading prayers,” said Gregory.
“Gregory, you know what our family service represents to your father and me, that it is the visible sign of the deepest things within us?”
“Yes. You are so fortunate to have them represented. Most of us don’t get them attended to at all.”
The mother was silent, a complex expression on her face.
“There are Jermyn and Griselda setting off for the moors,” said Gregory.
“Come, come, my darlings,” said Harriet in a passionate, crooning voice, beckoning with a large, maternal gesture. “Come and say good-bye to your mother. Go out into the sun and beauty, and leave uneasiness behind. It is I who have caused it. Leave me and be at peace.”
The intenseness of Harriet’s tone brought a change to her children’s faces, and Gregory took his arm from hers and sauntered by her side with the eagerness fading from his eyes.
Godfrey, who tended to pair with Matthew, as Jermyn did with Griselda, and Harriet with Gregory, stepped out alone on to the gravel, shading his face.
“Well, my Harriet. Well, my dear, I heard you talking in a way that reminded me of our youth. I said to myself, ‘Why, there is my Harriet chattering like a girl!’ This is a brave morning for you.”
“Godfrey,” said Harriet, shrinking back in a manner that made her husband do the same, “I wish you would not comment upon any action of mine that happens to be natural. What would you do, if you could not be yourself for a moment without creating a storm of comment? How can I avoid being unlike other people, if I am to produce stupefaction when I am as they are?”
“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.