A Few Days later Dominic entered the house with a hushed tread, holding his bag as a secular object brought on a sacred occasion. He remained leaning over Harriet’s hand in silence.
“Well, Spong, you see we are ourselves again,” said Godfrey. “Our tide has turned. I know you will rejoice with us.”
“Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic, not yet exposing Harriet to the reality of speech, “I could ask for nothing that would occasion me greater personal gratitude. That is my feeling upon your reunion.”
“Thank you, Spong. We were sure of your sympathy. And I wish your wife could be restored to you, as mine has been to me. It lessens my personal joy that you cannot have your share in it.”
“Sir Godfrey, it does not lessen mine.”
“Well, let us get our business behind. We shall be more ourselves when that is not hanging over us. We can’t come together without these things having to be adjusted, more’s the pity. You and I must take them off my wife in future, Spong. I grudge her attention to them. We have formed the habit of getting along together, and we must put what we have learnt into practice. We can’t allow her a ruling hand where it is too much for her. We must remember what has happened once, and be on our guard.”
“If I remember Lady Haslam aright,” said Dominic, unfastening the tape of his papers with a humorously rueful air, “I hardly think she will want much taken off her in the line of business decisions. To use what is at best a colloquial expression, I should put her, of the two of you, as ‘top dog’ in that department.”
“Well, well, but we must take care of her,” said Godfrey. “Now, Harriet, my dear, is there anything you would like dwelt upon in those papers you have before you?”
“No, they are quite clear. I went through them last night,” said Harriet. “They are in order and just as usual. The investments don’t need altering. Mr. Spong has been very wise in the one or two changes he has made. After all, my time away has been only a matter of months. But I don’t understand about our banking account; our joint account, Mr. Spong, that both my husband and I supply and draw upon. It is overdrawn to quite a large amount, a thing which has never happened. We have not the pass book here. There is just the record of the overdraft in your summing up. Is any of the income not paid in to the bank?”
“No,” said Dominic in a considering voice, “everything has been paid in as usual. And the statement is up to date, brought indeed to completion for this interview.”
“Then there must be some explanation. I shall no doubt see it presently.”
“There would have been in some ways an unusual drain upon the account,” said Dominic in tones withdrawn from comment. “There would be the advance to Messrs. Halibut and Froude for the publication of Jermyn’s poems; and the expense of hiring the theatre and providing properties for the dramatic entertainment organised by Mr. Bellamy; and the purchase money of the lease of Matthew’s house. Those items would appear on the debit side, and result probably in abnormal depletion.” He looked towards the window.
“Oh, yes, yes, Harriet,” said Godfrey. “Those are things I have done, certainly. I knew we should be of one mind about them. I was not able to consult you, so where I was convinced you would approve I followed my own line. It was imperative for Matthew to have a house near his work, and he couldn’t afford to take one for himself, the dear boy! There will be no rent now that we have bought the lease; that was taken into account; and I considered it was about the standard you would wish. And Bellamy’s play was, between ourselves, for Griselda’s sake. The poor children were deprived of you, Harriet. I did something to make up to them.”
“Oh, yes, yes, my dear. I have no doubt it was wise. I only wanted to understand. Mr. Spong is right that I have a business conscience.”
“Yes, but, Harriet, these are hardly matters for you to worry your head about in these days,” said her husband with resumed gravity. “You know we are to keep such decisions away from you. You are going to be wise. What you have to do is to let your heart thrill with pride over the achievements of your sons. Ah, when I took in what it all meant, my own heart thrilled with pride and humble thanksgiving. I felt that if I could only share it with you, my cup would be full. It is full now.”
Dominic looked torn between his human and professional feelings.
“Yes, so is mine,” said Harriet. “We should indeed be grateful for our sons and for ourselves. I suppose poor Jermyn could not get his poems accepted. Well, I know that means nothing. You were right to save him disappointment.”
“Harriet,” said Godfrey, “I could not have faced it for him! He might have faced it for himself, but I could not. There was an end of it.”
“Well, I hope it may not be the beginning, Sir Godfrey,” said Dominic. “Young gentlemen may be apt to take advantage of such a parental attitude. Now this other item, the expense for the play. Does Lady Haslam wish anything to be said about that?” He spoke with his head bent over a moving pencil, and a hovering smile.
“Well, my husband knows about it. He can tell me anything I need to be told,” said Harriet. “Thank you, Mr. Spong, I see the overdraft is accounted for.”
Dominic turned at once to succeeding matters, as if he had felt no intervening emotion, and the interview proceeded to its close.
“You will stay to luncheon, I hope, Mr. Spong?” said Harriet. “We are expecting Mrs. Calkin and Miss Dabis to join us. Our friends are very kind in hastening to welcome me home.”
“If I were to be the only guest, I should hesitate, nay I should refuse, Lady Haslam, to impose my presence on a family so lately restored to itself. But as that is not to be the case, I will take my place with a pleasure that will chiefly consist in seeing you again presiding at your own board. With due respect to my other friends and clients, the greater satisfaction will swamp the less.”
“Well, well, it is time to go in,” said Godfrey. “We can put away all this. You would like to get the dust off your hands, Spong. Buttermere, Mr. Spong would like some hot water in the room off the hall.”
Dominic followed the butler with an air of being both accustomed and entitled to such ministrations.
“The water is hot, sir,” said Buttermere, standing by the open door, and producing the impression that for many people he would have turned the tap.
“Oh yes, yes, thank you, I can manage very well,” said Dominic, hastening to forestall the services to which he was used.
“Luncheon will be served in a minute, sir,” said Buttermere, glancing at the guest as he left him.
“This is a very well appointed house,” said Dominic in an easy tone, as he came slowly to the table. “Mrs. Calkin, I have not had the privilege of meeting you since the occasion when we rejoiced that our hostess was to resume the place we associate with her hospitality. Miss Griselda, I may congratulate you on your transition to a less important seat. I claim to know you well enough to assume it is a matter for congratulation.”
“Even with your experience as a lawyer,” said Geraldine.
“Miss Dabis, I still have remaining to me some belief in the soundness of my fellow creatures.”
“I shall not try to say how thankful I am to see you in your place again,” said Agatha in a low tone to Harriet. “It is a thing that is simply better not attempted.”
“I agree, Mrs. Calkin, that it would be to court certain failure,” said Dominic, leaning forward earnestly.
“I suffered the last time I was here,” Agatha continued to Harriet, “in seeing the superficial sameness and knowing the essential difference. There must be much that you have to put right, now you are in the general’s place again. You have all my sympathy with the demands of your position.”
“They have not begun to trouble me yet,” said Harriet. “I have to resolve never to let them again. I am simply in great happiness in being in my home with my husband and children.”
“Will you have the working party at your house again now?” said Geraldine. “It has been most exciting lately with the garments for the play. We have had all kinds of odd, agitating things to accomplish. I always seem to get masculine habiliments for my portion! I don’t know why they should be assigned especially to me.”
“It seems to be going too well where it is, for us to think of change,” said Harriet. “I hope your sister can continue to hold it.”
“Whatever is thought best by everyone, is what I should like,” said Agatha.
“Then keep it, Mrs. Calkin, keep it,” said Godfrey. “My wife must not do as much as she used. She will come in and join you sometimes.”
“We have done what we could to fill your place to Gregory,” said Agatha, turning to Harriet, as if modestly to change the subject. “He has been in, I think, whenever he has known I should be by myself. I hope you find he has not suffered as much as you feared?”
“I have not found yet how much any of them has suffered,” said Harriet, sending her eyes round her children’s faces, and keeping them on Gregory’s. “I trust none of them too much; I think not. I know what kindness you have shown us.”
“I hope you will let Gregory keep up his intercourse with us? I should be sad, really genuinely sad”—Agatha paused for impartial apportionment of feeling—“to see it broken. I feel there is something I can give him, that I think he will tell you I have given.”
“He probably will not, as you have given it,” said Harriet smiling. “And Gregory does what he chooses in his friendships. You have found that he does.”
“No. No. I daresay he will not speak of it. I think you are subtler than I am there. I think he will not.”
“Sir Percy and Lady Hardisty!” said Buttermere.
“Harriet, we have come without being asked, because you have not asked us. We should not do such a thing without a reason. We supposed our welcome went without saying, as that was the way it went. Yours goes so much without, that I should be nervous lest Percy should speak, if that was his tendency.”
Rachel’s voice grew hurried and helpless, and she withdrew her eyes from Harriet’s face.
“Rachel!” said Godfrey. “After all you have done for us in Harriet’s absence, it cannot be said in mere words that you should have been here to enhance her homecoming. But our thoughts have been so engrossed with her, that they have hardly got outside our four walls. Our other friends would not be with us to-day, if they had not thought of it themselves, if they had not shown us the same kindness that you are showing.”
Dominic looked down at his bread and fingered it, and Agatha raised a face that cordially confirmed this account of her position.
“Percy has come to drive me over. He did not think he was wanted. Johnson is ill, and Percy will have sympathy with people he employs, though it spoils the old-world atmosphere that is the point of him. I have come to have coffee with you in your own room, Harriet. I have had my luncheon, so you cannot have the rest of yours. Percy had better have it; he wants it, as I hurried him over his.”
“No, no, don’t get up, my dear,” said Sir Percy, as Griselda would have relieved him of the duties of her mother’s place. “An old man can make himself useful. Mrs. Calkin, you will allow me? Mrs. Calkin, Buttermere.”
“Well, come upstairs with me, Harriet. Percy will look after them all,” said Rachel, moving and talking quickly to cover the meeting. “I shall be glad of some of your coffee. Our coffee is poison; cheap things are; I can’t help the vulgarity of truth. I might have brought some of it for your guests. I can’t conceive why you didn’t think of it, instead of giving all your attention to yourself. Why, Harriet, my little one, what is it?”
Harriet had flung herself into Rachel’s arms and broken into weeping.
“Haven’t you really had the fit of crying that goes with coming home? I thought people just crossed the threshold and burst into tears. Of course I understand; it was Buttermere. Your emotions have had no outlet.”
“Rachel, my husband and children! They can do without me. That is why I have not sent for you; I have not had the heart. I have come home to find they can live with me away.”
“Of course they can. What else were they to do? You must not force people to do things, and then complain of their doing them.”
“I should not mind it. They had to get used to my being away. They could not help it, though they did it easily. I should not even mind their going against what I wished for them, though it was almost from the moment I left them. Their lives are their own.”
“It was not from that moment. You did not see that one,” said Rachel. “And what is it you do mind?”
“I know the moment would have been one by itself,” went on Harriet, raising her face and smiling sadly. “But it was followed by few others of its kind. It is not that I would think of it; it would only be thinking of myself. But I see them with new eyes, Rachel, my husband and children, whom I feel I have not dealt fairly by. I understand it was because of me, because I tried them beyond their strength, that they broke away when I was gone.”
“Well, if they had a reason, and one you can understand! And it sounds a dreadful thing for you to do, dear.”
“Godfrey is led like a child,” said Godfrey’s wife. “I feel now that I always knew it. I would not mind his spending too much; he never had a business brain; and I can put things straight. But he gives up the whole trend of his life at the touch of a hand. I would not speak of his supporting what we have set ourselves against; things are not wrong because we are against them; we will say they are not wrong. But his whole attitude to serious things is blurred and easy. He has been made what he is, first by his parents, then by his wife, and now by his friends and his children.”
“Poor Godfrey! You do all take advantage of him. We seem to be the only people who do not. I claim that he shows no trace of my influence or Percy’s. But that is not what you mean.”
“He shows very little of mine at the moment,” continued Harriet with the same smile. “Of course he will come back to it, is coming back. But that is all the same thing. I hardly know what man he is in himself.”
“I know exactly from hearing you describe him,” said Rachel.
“I know now from hearing myself. And I should not complain; he has had to get to know me, my poor Godfrey. And so have my children, enough to feel they must make the most of being without me. They all made the most of it, all of them, Rachel! There is Gregory, my Gregory, my dearest thing on earth, who binds me to life—-—”
“No, that is an exaggeration, Harriet. You know he did not bind you to it, that nothing did.”
“He is in the grip of that worn-out woman,” said Harriet, with what for her was startling bitterness. “It is the wrong thing for him, and it may end anywhere.”
“You know it may not. It can end nowhere. It can only end. It shows how little worn out you are, that you have not had to face that.”
“Rachel, if I thought it was simple jealousy, I would put it from me. If I find it is that, I will put it from me. But it is not only that. I admit that I think the feeling Gregory has for middle-aged women, should be mine; that it should be both earned and given, but I ask nothing that is not mine. If he were to fall in love with Percy’s Polly, I would simply rejoice.”
“Well, he shall fall in love with her then,” said Rachel. “So there is an end of Gregory, simple rejoicing. And there is an end of Griselda too, because of course she has to marry Ernest Bellamy; everyone would have to. I should have to myself, if I agreed with you that feelings between the young and old could lead anywhere. So we can go on to Matthew and Jermyn. They have not taken advantage of your being away; they used to try to research and write poetry under your eyes; and now they seem to have done it. You have come back to find them more than the same sons to you.”
“They are the same in that they still put ambition for themselves before a more generous service. I will see it as a ground for pride. I will conquer my own disappointment, though I dread theirs. But I am troubled by their persuading their father to pour out the family money on them, money not meant for their own purposes. They are not the same sons there.”
“People have to persuade people to pour out money on them. It is never meant for their own purposes, and persuasion is the only thing. Now is this the truth coming?”
“It is Matthew and Camilla!” broke out Harriet. “It is Camilla as a wife for Matthew! I cannot bear it, Rachel. I cannot suffer it to be. She will take him into the wide and easy way that ends in darkness. She is taking him now. My son, my son!”
“Matthew is as easily led as Godfrey, is he? You have got them into the way of being led. You did that, and then you left them.”
“It was not by my own will that I left them,” said Harriet. “And as to that, Rachel, I hope I can say, ‘God’s will be done’.”
“It sounds unnatural from you; and your exceptions are so arbitrary.”
“I will gather myself together,” said Harriet. “I will gird on my armour; I will stand up to the fray. I will fight my husband and children, my best beloved. That is what I have before me.”
“Is it worth it, apart from the sound of it? Of course it is for that.”
“I know you are trying to save me. But I do not shrink from the sacrifice.”
“Then it is not a sacrifice for you. It is unnatural not to shrink from sacrifice for other people, but things must not be shirked because they go against the grain.”
“You are only trying to save me.”
“Why ‘only’? Why should I not put you first? You are first to me, and you are evidently first to yourself.”
“No, I am not,” said Harriet.
“Well, God’s will be done, or rather your will be done, Harriet. You seemed to think the first should hardly happen so often.”