“You really were a long while saying it,” said Harriet.
“Oh, a long while, was I? I suppose I may be permitted — Well, I grant you I wasn’t too quick about it, but I should have been quicker if I had been allowed my own pace. I hope you are not in for a bad day, Harriet.”
“That is not a suitable thing to say to anyone who is not the victim of a recurring malady,” said his wife in an acutely suffering tone. “Why should I be subject to insinuations that I am situated in some peculiar way? I hope you are not any of you in for a bad day.”
“I fear we are, all of us,” said Matthew.
“Oh well, you know, Harriet, you are prone to find things trying at times, more trying than most of us. Come, don’t make a quarrel with me over that. You are not always at the top of your form, not always inclined to look at the bright side of everything. We don’t any of us take it amiss. There now, I have told you we don’t.”
“You may spare yourself, Godfrey, I am clear that you find yourselves magnanimous and forbearing, and me a burden.”
“Oh now, come, Harriet whatever is there magnanimous in steeling ourselves against what cannot be helped, against what comes from someone’s being too sensitive to face things as tougher people face them?” Godfrey’s voice naturally rose upon a successful note.
“You do well to stop, Godfrey. Your meaning is clear.”
“Well, then, everything is all right if my meaning is clear. There is an end of the matter in that case.”
“Then let us turn to something else. You did not speak the word to Matthew I asked you to. It comes through to me that you did not. The burden of father and mother will again fall on me.”
“Don’t let it fall on anyone,” said Jermyn. “Burdens make habits of falling.”
“And let something pass that ought to be said, and something lapse that ought to be done,” said his mother.
“That would be lovely,” said Gregory.
“No, my son, it would be wrong,” said Harriet in a voice that made her daughter start. “I had hoped my children had learnt so much from me.”
“The heart grows sick with hope deferred,” muttered Matthew.
“It does, my dear. I am a heartsick woman,” said his mother. “That is a fitter term for me than any that have been used.”
“I suppose I am the spur to your eloquence,” said Matthew, “and a woman whose marriage has been less fortunate than yours. Camilla will only gain from being the helpless victim of your bitter spirit. I wonder if any woman’s marriage has been more fortunate than yours. It amazes me that you can demand so much and give so little.”
“Matthew, Matthew, my boy!” said Godfrey, with warning. “Of course I give everything to your mother that is in me. She may demand the whole. You must understand that.”
“I understand it,” said his son. “She understands it too.”
“Matthew,” said Harriet, at once conscious and sincere in a broken cry, “has ever a loving mother heard such words from her son?”
“No, I should think not; there would hardly be need for them,” said Matthew.
“Oh, Matthew, now, now. Harriet, don’t bear too hard on the boy; don’t lay so much on him. He is a highly strung lad and says things as they come to his mind. He is more your son than mine, as I have always said. I have always said that, Harriet. That is why I find him such a companion; he reminds me of you. Come, don’t be so heavy on him. You ought to understand each other better.”
“Has he any duty to me?” said Harriet. “Or is all the duty on my side?”
“Mothers have a good deal of it,” said Jermyn. “That is why it is hard to be a mother.”
“I should not have thought you would see it even in that spirit,” said Harriet. “But, my dear, it is not a joke for me.”
“No, but try to see it as a joke, Harriet,” said her husband imploringly. “Try to take it with a sense of humour, because everything has its funny side, you know.”
“Not so many things should have,” said his wife.
“You complain of my writing poetry, Mother,” said Jermyn. “You ought to be thankful I am not a writer of tragedies, as a son of yours.”
“I should be thankful to see you really write anything, my son.”
“Oh, now, Harriet, that is not a fair thing to say,” said Godfrey, almost laughing. “You must not say things to the children to hit and hurt them. It is not like you, my darling, not like the old self you used to be. No, our children will do their best, the most and the least they can do; and their parents’ duty is to cheer and believe in them; that is their mother’s part.”
“Well, I don’t know what Father expects me to do my best in,” said Griselda to her mother, making an unseen movement with her hand.
“My darling child!” said her father, in simple acknowledgment of the effort.
“I don’t know either, my dear,” said Harriet, held by the exclamation from her natural maternal response. “It would be wasting words for me to tell you the turn I should like your life to take.”
“No, no, leave the dear child alone, Harriet. Don’t make her all upset and put out the first thing in the day. Let her have her breakfast in peace. Give one of them a chance of it. What if she does see a little of the rector? He isn’t a man we need mind her being seen with, surely?”
“That is all you want for your only daughter, Godfrey?”
“No, no, not all I want for her. I don’t want anything for her. I want her to stay at home and be with me. But a girl can’t only look to her father and her family.”
“Well, Father, Jermyn, Griselda and I have been through the trial by ordeal,” said Matthew. “Is Gregory to escape as usual?”
“Oh, Gregory would rather go and talk to a strange old woman than spend an hour with his mother,” said Harriet in a suddenly wailing tone.
Godfrey met the eyes of his two eldest sons, and Matthew rose to his feet.
“Mother, I don’t know if you realise in what an inconceivably senseless way you are behaving. I can only hope you don’t, for the sake of your respect for yourself, and our respect for you. Do you think it an advantage to estrange your husband and family, and go your way with nothing in your life but deeper sinking into selfish bitterness? We shall not alter our lives and our aims for the whims of one woman. You may have your opinions. We have ours. We show extreme forbearance to your weakness, as if you look at things straight, you cannot but see. You have an excellent husband, dutiful sons, and a daughter who could only be a pleasure to a woman with the feelings of a mother. We have not spoken before; I am not going to speak any longer now. But if you do not pull yourself up in time, you will find yourself one day a very lonely old woman.”
He sat down, breathing hard, and his mother, who had heard him with her chin resting on her hand, answered in a low tone of easy contempt, her eyes going slowly to him from lowered lids.
“So you have told us you are not going to speak any longer, Matthew. We might have been glad of that information before. As for my finding myself one day a very lonely old woman, I have found myself that for a long time.” Her eyelids fell lower and her lip shook.
Godfrey looked at her with a stricken expression, and made a movement to rise, but checked himself to consider, and the hesitation did its work.
“I have an excellent husband and dutiful sons! A husband who will not abate one jot the things that are my daily torment; sons who pursue their selfish aims without a thought of my bitter suffering; an eldest son who can speak to his mother as Matthew has spoken to me; who can brutally and publicly expose her weaknesses, or what he considers to be such, hers, who has never exposed his, give simple praise to himself for an egotism no one but himself has mistaken for anything better, demand more from her who has taken nothing and given all! That is what I have in my husband and sons.”