“There, My Dear one, there, my own, you are just going from one haven to another,” said Godfrey, as he followed the chair that bore his wife, conscious but recognising no one, from his house. “We will soon have you home now, for it will be home where your husband sees you every day. No, it isn’t good-bye. I shall be over to see you in the morning.”
Godfrey bent over Harriet’s hand, while her eyes rested vacantly on him, and turned at once to the house, openly giving no meaning to the empty parting; and the carriage containing Harriet, Gregory and a nurse, moved down the drive. The father went swiftly to the library and almost burst open the door.
“My poor child, my poor boys, I fear you are upset. You should not have been allowed to witness what you have. It is a ghastly thing for you to see your mother taken from her home in her helplessness. It may well make an impression that will go with you to your graves. I ought to have shut you up and taken it all on myself. And I put myself under it as far as I was able. I saw you safe in here, and gathered the whole thing on to my own shoulders. But we wish we had done more, the more we have done. I declare I could find it in me to blame myself.”
“Would you see anyone, Sir Godfrey?” said Buttermere in a hushed tone, putting his head round the door instead of throwing it wide in his usual way. “Mr. Bellamy is coming up the drive.”
“Yes, yes. Show him in. We have no secrets,” said the master in a voice correspondingly clear. “We are quite prepared to see our friends. Griselda, it is only the rector. What are you running away for?”
“Mother seemed not to like me to see too much of him,” said Griselda, pulling her hand from her father’s and escaping from the room.
“Ah, her father has sympathy with her,” said Godfrey, sighing. “That is to be the lie of things now, I see, this following her wishes. Well, I shall make it my life to do the same, until she comes back to us. And then we shall all do it doubly of course. Well, so here is the rector coming to see us! I suppose it is because of all this happening. How it has got about so soon puts me at a loss. Well, we have done nothing to be ashamed of. Few men have thought less of themselves than I have the last week. Well, Rector, you find us a broken family to-day. My wife has to spend a little while away from us. No doubt you have heard. The time may not be long, but we are finding it hard to begin it.”
“Haslam, all theories of pastoral duty go to the winds, but my wish to see you as a friend has forced me to indulge myself. You know how I have looked up to your wife, how I have felt myself the weaker, smaller creature. You can’t feel it more wrong than I do that I should be strong and useless while she is laid aside.”
“My dear boy, we appreciate what you say. At this moment such words are as oil poured into our wounds. We do not hail you as useless while you can say them.”
“It has come very heavy on all of them,” said Bellamy, looking round. “Is Griselda more upset than she has to be?”
“Ah, knocked utterly on the ground,” said Godfrey in a deep tone. “Laid out so completely that she has to go to her room. We none of us feel a jot or a tittle compared with her. Well, in a sense a mother gives everything to her only girl.”
“I will come to hear how she is to-morrow. And to-day I will thank you for letting me say my word, and cease to be. Matthew, you are the person I envy at the moment. You can do something. I wish I had a man’s work in life.”
“Ah, if anyone has that, it is that boy, Rector,” said Godfrey with half-guilty confidence. “If I could tell you what he is setting before himself, your tears would mingle with mine.”
“Then don’t do it, for Bellamy’s sake,” muttered Matthew.
“Yes, and for your own sake, my boy,” said Godfrey with tender extenuation. “You need not be uneasy. Your father will not betray you. You don’t want an audience about just this, and just now. It is no wonder and an honour to you. I won’t give your little secret away. It is too big to my mind for that. I will only say that I envy you. I wish there was some sacrifice I could make for your mother, that I could give up my aims and my hopes for her sake.”
“Sir Percy and Lady Hardisty!” said Buttermere, in happy ignorance of the service he rendered, flinging open the door as though, if things were to be in this way, so they should be.
“Percy and Rachel? Must you be going, Rector? Now how has it got about to Percy and Rachel? It seems a thing has only to happen, to be at the four corners of the world. Good news does not fly so fast. If that has never been said, it ought to have been. It ought to be a saying. If I have made a saying, I have made one.” Godfrey put his hand on Bellamy’s arm in amends for his complication of thought at parting. “Here are Percy and Rachel falling on us out of space! And call her Lady Hardisty, Gregory, if you please, and if you don’t please, because I won’t have anything else. I have been through too much to be put about by trifles. How are you, Rachel? How are you, Hardisty? This is good and kind.”
“Haslam, my dear old friend!” said Sir Percy. “I had to see for myself how all of you were. You will understand me?”
“He really had to, Godfrey,” said Rachel, “and you are not even trying to understand.”
“Well, you can see for yourself, Hardisty. We are together, trying to support each other. It is no more than that.”
“Of course not. That is doing justice to Harriet,” said Rachel.
“My little Griselda?” said Sir Percy.
“I can hear her coming downstairs,” said Rachel. “We are the only intruders she can face. Did the rest of you bear with Mr. Bellamy? She is the only one who has given us a true welcome. I will repay her by keeping the house for a few days. You can’t learn to be father and mother in a moment, Godfrey. I must take Harriet’s place.”
“Rachel, that is a heartening word. That gives me courage. I was at my wits’ end what to do for my poor children.”
“I hoped you would make too much of it. People are known to exaggerate kindness in trouble, just when it seems they would think it only natural. It makes kindness such true economy that we have to take advantage of our friends’ misfortunes. I have heard that at other times it is taken as a matter of course, but I hardly believe that can really happen. Percy, it is not you who is to take Harriet’s place, and there must be someone to go on bringing up Polly. Mellicent has not recovered from being brought up herself. Just tell them how you respect them for having a real experience, and say good-bye.”
“Ah, yes, a real experience; I cannot judge what it must be,” said Sir Percy, withdrawing without imposing the effort of farewells.
“Be just to your early life, my dear,” said his wife. “And this is a chance for you to go home and live in it again. You cannot call for me until after the working party.”
“What working party?” said Godfrey.
“The working party that Harriet and Gregory give, to make brightness for Geraldine Dabis and to clothe the poor. Gregory calls people by their Christian names, and Harriet cuts out. I don’t wonder it is Harriet who has had the breakdown. I cannot cut out. I don’t mean I consider personal risks with Harriet ill, but I am very little fitted for real life. Geraldine would be so jealous if she knew. In other things I will take Harriet’s place; there is nothing else real. Percy, if you go this moment, you won’t coincide with Dominic Spong. I discern him with the long sight of old age. It is a great disadvantage to be old. How officious of him to come to condole! Doing a thing gives you so much understanding of it. We won’t say good-bye, my dear; it would look like thinking of ourselves.”
“Say, rather, au revoir Lady Hardisty,” said Dominic, appearing in Sir Percy’s stead, and pausing by Rachel, with his eyes averted in delicacy from the family. “Meeting you here lifts a great load off my mind. Sir Godfrey, at the risk of appearing obtrusive, I am inflicting my presence, feeling that if in anyone’s heart a corresponding chord is touched, it is in mine.”
“You are good, Spong, you are good. We should be badly off if it were not for the thought of our friends.”
“Without being presumptuous enough to take my stand in that capacity by the side of Lady Hardisty, I yet feel that a sympathetic word is due from one man to another at such a time. I do not forget, Sir Godfrey, your kindness to me, and not only yours, when my own hour came.”
“Yes, yes, Spong, thank you, thank you. And I will depend on you to serve us further and share our family dinner to-night. You will not deny us, as Hardisty has done. Perhaps we could expect no more of him, after what he has left with us.” Dominic turned a smile of full corroboration to Rachel. “But we will trust you to do better by us in yourself.”
“Sir Godfrey, it is true that I can do nothing in these days except through that often unsatisfactory medium. But I fear I should be but a poor substitute for Sir Percy Hardisty.”
“We are not talking about substitutes. We are asking, for yourself,” said Godfrey.
“No, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, shaking his head, as if he had shown too little reluctance for the hospitality. “I could not dream of intruding upon you on a night when you all must feel that only one presence could complete your family circle. I should be the last to consider myself the one equal to filling that place.”
“That place is filled. I am here instead of Lady Haslam,” said Rachel. “But won’t you stay as a friend? I ask you as her deputy.”
“Since you put it in that way, Lady Hardisty, I cannot do otherwise than acquiesce.”
“Capital,” said Godfrey.
“A great kindness on your part, and a privilege on mine, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, substituting his own choice of fitting words.
“Well, we must get ready for dinner,” said Rachel.
Dominic stepped towards her.
“Lady Hardisty, I have not the means of ‘getting ready’, as I came unexpectant of, and accordingly unprepared for the invitation; but if I may have the opportunity of what is termed a wash and brush-up, I shall feel myself less unfitted for your presence.”
“Matthew will take care of you. I am doing what his mother would wish, and not allowing his father to be used as a host to-night.”
“I am more than reconciled to being handed over to the kindly offices of Matthew, our future host in this house, or I should rather say our present deputy host; for although I am a family lawyer, and as such concerned with future generations, I am not one to anticipate the cry: ‘The King is dead. Long live the King.’”
“Why did you have Spong to dinner, and not Sir Percy?” Jermyn asked Rachel on the stairs.
“Because Mr. Spong came to dinner and Percy did not,” said Rachel. “Gregory, call to Buttermere that we don’t want anything extra to eat. I am sure Mr. Spong will not eat before Griselda and me, such a physical thing to do. I don’t think I will take your mother’s place as far as having the room opening out of your father’s, Griselda. It isn’t that I wouldn’t do everything for him, but I have had so much of things consecrated to early romance.”
“Well, we are not to be alone on this first night of our new life,” said Godfrey, as they gathered in the drawing-room. “We are to have some compensation.”
“I am sure, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, “that neither Lady Hardisty nor I would see ourselves in that light.”
“I have come on purpose to be seen in it,” said Rachel. “You are fortunate to be a chance guest, Mr. Spong. It does seem more sensitive.”
“Lady Hardisty, I was far from making that comparison. Now if Miss Griselda can bring herself to tolerate an escort so many years her senior, I shall be happy to do my best to bridge the gulf between us.”
In the dining-room there occurred some hesitation over Harriet’s seat, which Buttermere, in the failure of definite directions, had deliberately placed.
“Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, standing to elucidate the position, “I think we are all agreed that that is a place we should prefer to see unoccupied.”
“It is my duty to prevent that,” said Rachel, taking the seat, and putting her fan on the table.
“Lady Hardisty, I appreciate your attitude. You are doing more,” said Dominic, turning on her a gaze that seemed to swell for different reasons.
“I am doing nothing, but it is better for them all not to see the place empty.”
“Lady Hardisty, mine was the simpler masculine view. I bow to a woman’s deeper insight in these matters.”
“Ah, you set us an example, Spong,” said Godfrey, as his guest gave a sudden rapid murmur, checked his haste and openly rounded his utterance, and looked towards the window.
“That was far from my thoughts, Sir Godfrey.”
“True. It was not the view he thought we should take of it,” said Matthew.
“He showed true courage,” said Jermyn.
“But he showed it so plainly,” said Griselda. “That is hard on others.”
“It had always been the custom of my wife and myself,” Dominic was saying, “to begin and end a meal with blessing and thanksgiving. I admit it would materially lessen my enjoyment of a repast to feel that either was omitted.”
“’Materially’ is an excellent word,” said Gregory. “Of course it is wise not to omit them.”
“I confess,” said Dominic with a touch of asperity and suspicion, “that I never do omit them, whatever difficulties may be placed in my way.”
“No difficulties are in your way here, Spong,” said Godfrey. “And I think it is a very good plan to express our gratitude for what is given us, as though we were not ashamed of it. We have grace on formal occasions; I don’t know why we gave it up amongst ourselves.”
“Not because you were ashamed, if you have it before guests,” said Rachel; “though they say that showing in true colours is especially hard in family life.”
“It was nothing more than the change of fashion, I think,” said Godfrey.
“It is hardly the sphere, Sir Godfrey, in which the dictates of Dame Fashion need be meticulously adhered to,” said Dominic, as if his host’s position were sufficiently established to allow of entertaining lightness.
“I don’t see any sense in fashion if it is not adhered to,” said Griselda.
“No, Miss Griselda, that is the view you would very naturally take.”
“I wish I could use a word like ‘meticulously’ as a matter of course,” said Gregory.
“Gregory,” said Dominic, “may I ask why?”
“Because of the effect of modern reading,” said Gregory.
“I felt that for a moment,” said Rachel. “But that effect would not fit the atmosphere I try to create.”
“I entirely concur, Lady Hardisty,” said Dominic, “that that is not a department in which you need take any steps to emulate me.”
Gregory and Griselda laughed.
“It appears, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic with a good-natured chuckle, “that these young people are engaged in holding up to ridicule such old fogeys as you and me. We must not include Lady Hardisty in that category.”
“The young monkeys! I daresay they are,” said Godfrey.
“We do not grudge them, Sir Godfrey, the relaxation proper to their years, even though it be at our expense. We know they do not forget the occasion which has given rise to the presence of Lady Hardisty and myself.”
“I had hoped they had forgotten it for the moment,” said Rachel. “They did their best to avoid it, poor children.”
“I doubt if they would thank you for that appellation,” said Dominic with a rather difficult smile. “We may be safe in gathering from experience of young people that it would not appeal to them.”
“Don’t take any notice of me,” said Rachel. “I can’t forget the occasion, and remembering occasions does not improve anyone. It is so considerate of people to forget them, and give up their credit for depth of nature for the sake of others.”
“Whatever you do, Rachel, we are thankful to have you here to-night,” said Godfrey. “We are so grateful for your presence that everything else is swallowed up in our gratitude.”
Dominic looked as if he somehow suffered in comparison with Rachel, and was at a loss to explain it.
“Don’t let my taking the working party be swallowed up,” said Rachel. “It is really important to deprive the workers of the pleasure of Gregory’s taking it alone. Why should they have pleasure when Harriet can’t? They might even forget the occasion. Mr. Spong has put that into my head, and I could not bear it.”
“I shouldn’t be there, anyhow,” said Gregory, in a quiet, open manner. “I shan’t be seeing so much of Mrs. Calkin and her sisters now that Mother is ill. She was anxious for me to make friends of my own age, and I hope to get on to the lines she wanted, before she comes back.”
“Yes, that is the lie of the land, Rachel!” said Godfrey, after a prolonged look, with eyebrows raised, at his youngest son. “Harriet’s children can think of nothing but how they can serve her, and meet her when she returns, with their whole lives adapted to her desires. That is their aim and object. Here is Griselda scuttling away from the rector, scurrying like a hare at the word of approach, because he wasn’t her mother’s fancy for her! And Matthew is giving up his research, simply and finally giving it up without a look behind, because she believed that humdrum work, useful work in the world should be put before personal ambitions. His personal ambitions, poor, dear lad! And now here is Gregory, the last and the least, I mean our dear youngest boy, snapping his thumb at his old ladies, resolving to see no more of them, because it was a whim of his mother’s, his mother knew in her wisdom that his contemporaries were better for him! If these are not children to be proud of, I don’t know whose are. Would you not be proud of children of that stamp, Rachel?”
“Children of that stamp couldn’t be mine, Godfrey. There is nothing of anything you mention in me to be inherited. For example I couldn’t make friends of my contemporaries. They are failing too rapidly. I hate people whose golden bowls are broken.”
“I think we need hardly suggest, Lady Hardisty, that Lady Haslam’s case is of that nature,” said Dominic looking bewildered.
“Well, Spong, and what do you think of these children of mine, now that I have told you what I have of them?”
“Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, “I honour them. I honour the young men for the sacrifice that seems to me a tribute to their essential manliness, though many people might take the opposite view; and I am sure Miss Griselda is not behind them in the feminine sphere, which involves no less than their more conspicuous masculine one. Sir Godfrey, I honour your sons and your daughter.”
“Well, what do you say to that, Rachel?” said Godfrey, with his lips unsteady.
“I say everything,” said Rachel. “And I will take them all into the drawing-room with me. They can have nothing against the feminine sphere after what Mr. Spong has said about it.”
“One moment, Sir Godfrey!” said Dominic, raising his hand, in appeal to his host rather than to the woman guest. “Is Jermyn to be exempt from the privilege of concession to his mother’s wishes? I should esteem it as great a one to him as to his brothers.”
“Oh, I daresay Jermyn will be following on; I can almost get it from the look in his eye,” said the father, not at a loss. “I can vouch for it that Jermyn will not be far behind.”
“I will not refuse the credit,” said Jermyn. “I may do more spadework and less of my own vanities.”
“And I will not refuse my whole-hearted approbation, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, “and congratulation. Congratulation is the meed that I offer.”
“Don’t stand waiting for more flattery,” said Rachel. “Come into the other room and shut both doors. Your father may not pull himself up in a moment. You have been through a great deal to-day, my dears. Things have been going from bad to worse. I have not taken a mother’s place, and thrown myself between you and evil.”
“Mr. Spong won’t stay the night, will he?” said Griselda.
“No, my child. I am the housekeeper, and I cannot manage it.”
“It is a mercy you are with us,” said Gregory.
“It is indeed. But ought you to express appreciation of old ladies, Gregory?”
“It is incredibly catholic of Father not to mind him,” said Matthew.
“Well, he does praise all of you as much as he is told,” said Rachel. “I was much less of a success at that. It is grudging and wasteful not to be able to praise people to their faces. Praising them behind their backs is pointless, keeping it all from them. I wish I were more like Mr. Spong.”
“May I be permitted, Lady Hardisty, to turn the tables, and express myself desirous of bearing a greater resemblance to you?” said Dominic, coming in unexpectedly with Godfrey.
“That goes without saying for all of us,” said Godfrey.
“Sir Godfrey, compliments do not come my way so often, that I can afford to ignore one that is forthcoming. And those we do not in theory have the advantage of, are the sweeter.”
“Why have you come in at once like this?” said Matthew to his father.
“Oh, well, I found it too much, sitting in there with all there is weighing on me. You didn’t any of you stay in there, did you? I couldn’t stand it for a second, and there is the truth.”
“Sir Godfrey, I think the moment has come for me to withdraw from your hospitality,” said Dominic, as though suddenly finding he had failed in some function he had believed fulfilled. “It remains for me to thank you for your welcome, and betake myself to my own lonely fireside, there in your manner to brood on what I have lost. My comfort must be that for you the loss is transient.”
“Oh, thank you very much, Spong. And all my sympathy goes with you,” said Godfrey, extending a hand, and dragging himself up after it a moment later. “Matthew will see you out. Matthew, you would like to see Mr. Spong to the carriage. We will have the carriage out for him. I declare I am at the end of my tether, and not a fit companion for a living soul.”
“You really are not, Godfrey,” said Rachel. “You are behaving more unworthily of Harriet than any of us.”
“Oh, well, so I am. So I may be. My mind is too full of her for me to behave worthily of her. People can just reconcile themselves to it.”
“Yes, so they can,” said Rachel. “They soon break the habit of speaking of a friend as an excellent host.”
“Why, has anyone ever said that of me?” said Godfrey, sitting up but relapsing. “Well, I am sure I don’t care whether they have or not.”
“Your mind is not quite full of Mother,” said Gregory. “Self has crept in.”
“Oh, well, has it?” said Godfrey. “Well, I should be a peculiar person if I hadn’t some thought of myself in these days. Well, we will have poor old Spong to dinner again some time, and I will try to be more myself with him.”
“’Poor old Spong’?” said Jermyn. “He is younger than you are, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know, I am sure,” said his father. “I don’t know anything about him.”
“He looks it,” said Rachel.
“Does he!” said Godfrey, sitting up again, and this time retaining his position. “Does Spong look younger than I do? Do I look older than Spong? Well, you know, I shouldn’t have thought so. Well, I can’t expect this state of things not to have its effect on me. I am not superhuman, if I have looked young for my age. You will soon have a pitiful old man for a father. You seem to think you have already. Well, I will go and get a night’s rest, or I shall be a wreck by the morning. If I am, you won’t hesitate to tell me. Ah, you will all be ready to pop it out. Rachel, I apologise for stiflying yawns in your face.”
“That is an optimistic view of what you are doing,” said Griselda.
“My dear little girl, you are brighter!” said Godfrey on his way to the door. “Having Rachel is doing you a world of good.”
“I wonder why Father and Mother married,” said Gregory.
“We can’t explain these things,” said Rachel. “I say that to myself when I look at my predecessor’s portrait. Well, I do not; I see the whole explanation there. When are you going to take the photograph of your mother into the town to be enlarged?”
“I had thought of to-morrow,” said Gregory. “Of taking it myself and giving it afterwards to Father. A surprise.”
“It is a good idea to give it to Father. It will be a surprise,” said Matthew. “We had better follow his example and go to rest. The day will start with the little service, and the strain falls least heavily on him.”
Godfrey was the first to be in his place for this ceremony, and sat with his Bible open before him, parting his lips once or twice while the seats were taken. This was the only indication he gave of unusual force of conception, and he came to the table in a cold and absent manner.
“It was a subtle recognition of my filling Harriet’s place to make no mention of me,” said Rachel. “But was it wise not to ask for any guidance for the household? Won’t they need it especially, with Harriet away?”
“I spoke simply the words that came from my heart.”
“And no words for the household came into them?” said Rachel.
“Buttermere is listening,” said Jermyn, as the door gently closed.
“Godfrey, you mustn’t be so happy-go-lucky. You must think of Buttermere. And I have done the unmentionable thing. Well, one point about that is, that no one can speak about it.”
“Oh, a little accident, Rachel. Buttermere will understand it.”
“Buttermere is impossible. Looking and listening, of course, but understanding! And he will know now that we don’t have anyone waiting in the room at home. He will guess that we are poor. And I have tried to cultivate that kind of shabbiness that may go with anything. It is only Percy to whom it comes naturally. And now Buttermere knows what it goes with.”
“Ah, Rachel, I don’t know how we should be feeling this morning by ourselves. We quail before the moment of your leaving us. Quail before it. That is the word, ‘quail’.”
“It is an excellent word,” said Gregory.
“Well, it is the one that gives my meaning. Quail before it, blench, flinch. Blanch, cower, wince. Shrink! I tell you what I do quail before, Rachel, and that is the course my children are taking. I look forward to the day when I can take their mother by the hand, and point out the extent of her children’s sacrifice. That day is as a beacon before me. I should like to hear you say a word about the matter, Rachel.”
“I remember I failed you yesterday,” said Rachel. “But I have not changed in the night.”
“Ah, yes, that is how one feels. We must not speak about it. Tears would start to our eyes.”
“And yet you wanted me to. And Buttermere would be looking. Parents will sacrifice anyone to their children.”
“Oh, well, Rachel,” said Godfrey. “Well, tell us how long Percy will spare you to us.”
“Until after the working party. I have to explain that it won’t be held again. I must be revenged on the women who work for Harriet’s illness. All of them well and strong, and Harriet ill!”
“Well, they can’t help it,” said Godfrey.
“They can,” said Rachel. “I am sure they take great care of themselves.”
“Who will be coming to the working party?” said Jermyn.
“Gregory’s three, to see Gregory; and my two girls because I bring them; and Mrs. Christy to work; and Camilla because it is a kind of outing, and because it gives an effect of boldness to go where she meets Mr. Bellamy, which after all is better than the usual effect of wistfulness. And some more who have only names.”
“And who seem not to have even those,” said Jermyn. “’From him who hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath.’”
“Yes, so it shall,” said Rachel. “I think the working party is all that Geraldine has. You will not come, Griselda, of course?”
“Ah, Rachel, no one but a woman can be a mother,” said Godfrey.
“True,” murmured Gregory.
“Isn’t the working party necessary?” said Jermyn.
“Well, it is to clothe the poor,” said Rachel. “Your mother had it, and we are giving it up. Things depend on the point of view. Remind me to be early, Godfrey, for fear Agatha gets into Harriet’s place. I am afraid she thinks it is she and not I, who is next to Harriet.”