“Buttermere, sound that gong in the proper manner immediately. And don’t make that booming that will shatter the roof. Sound it as we always have it, or leave the house.”
When a normal volume of sound had ensued, Godfrey followed his wife, settling his shoulders and resuming an easy expression.
“Well, Harriet, so you have written your letter to Spong,” he said, as Buttermere pulled out his chair with an appearance of unusual interest. “I can tell that you have a little sense of accomplishment. And no wonder, I am sure. It does you good to have a little something to get through.”
“My dear Godfrey, one small thing cannot fill a human being’s horizon.”
“Yes, well, but we are all concerned about poor Spong. I am afraid you have tired yourself, my dear.”
“I don’t know why. It is you who have put an unusual strain on yourself.”
“Oh, what? An unusual strain on myself! That is what you call it, when I take it upon myself to see that things are going right for you all! I am not sure it is not a strain. Oh, well, have it that way. I have put a strain on myself. I never do anything, do I? Well, I do then. Who keeps the peace, and adapts himself first to one mood and then to anotner, and let’s himself be passive or be active, or be taken up the wrong way or the right, just as it is all wanted? Who does it? I should like to ask. I don’t know who else would do it. I don’t indeed.”
“Would you like Matthew or Buttermere to carve for you?” said Harriet.
“No, I shouldn’t like Matthew or Buttermere to carve for me. And neither would any of you like it. It has been tried before, hasn’t it? Matthew hacks the joint as if he were cutting a quarry in a cliff, and Buttermere gives little, lady’s slices that are cold before they are seen, whether it it is the kind of meat to be cut thin or not, and takes a time about it that would see us all into our graves. And I am a fine carver!” The speaker withdrew for a moment from his task, and continued with his mouth opening wide. “I can carve any kind of joint as a gentleman should carve it. And it isn’t everybody’s job, I can tell you.”
“Well, well, my dear, get on,” said his wife.
“Get on! I have finished,” said Godfrey grimly, laying down his implements and giving an adjusting touch to his own plate.
“A result worthy of a life-work,” said Jermyn.
“Life-work! Yes, well, that may be what it all is,” said his father. “Why, I was quite offended for a moment. I declare that I was. Well, how did you get on with your old ladies, Gregory?”
“We had a long talk,” said Gregory in a serious tone.
“What did you talk about, darling?” said Harriet.
“Yes, that is what beats me,” said Godfrey, taking something from a handed dish. “It passes my understanding.”
“We talked about you,” said Gregory to his mother. “And about Spong and his wife. Agatha had just had her letter from him. She wrote her answer, and gave it to me to post. Kate was rather out of form in her talk to-day.”
“Agatha! Kate!” said his father. “Well, I declare. Agatha, Kate! Do you call them that to their faces, may I ask?”
“Only Kate,” said Gregory. “But I think of the others by their Christian names. Kate is a good deal younger than you are, Father.”
“Well, that may be,” said Godfrey. “But she put off her pinafore some time before you did.”
“Twenty-six years,” said Gregory in a satisfied tone.
“Twenty-six years!” said his father. “Agatha and Kate!”
“What have you said in your letter to Spong?” said Gregory to Harriet. “It is so subtle to write things that have no meaning.”
“They were not without meaning to me, my dear. I said simply that my thoughts were with him in his trouble, as they were. There is no need to be subtle in saying the simple truth.”
“Ah, it is your mother you take after in your knack with a pen, Jermyn,” said Godfrey.
“Poor Mother is hoist with her own petard indeed,” said Jermyn.
“I have always known that, my son,” said Harriet. “There is nothing unnatural in your resembling one of your parents. I am only anxious that you should direct your talents towards a certain result.”
“The higher the thing, the less certain the result must be,” said Jermyn.
“Yes, there is something in that, Harriet,” said Godfrey, looking up with a serious face from peeling some fruit.
“Perhaps you put your aims too high,” said Harriet. “The years may slip away with nothing done.”
“‘This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it,’”
quoted Gregory.
“He may die in simple ignorance that he has done nothing,” said Harriet.
“Ah, so he may,” said Godfrey, dropping his fruit and recovering it.
“There is something to be said for doing that,” said Griselda.
“We most of us do it,” said Jermyn, looking out of the window.
“Well, Jermyn, and have you been out with your notebook to-day?” said his father, cordially proceeding with the subject.
“Not to-day. I have been with Griselda to luncheon with the Hardistys. But Mellicent and I had a talk that bore on my work.”
“Oh, did you? Well, that is a mark to Mellicent. I daresay a woman would be an appreciator of poetry. Still, that is one to her.”
Matthew gave a laugh.
“I don’t know why you should all unite in efforts to jar upon me,” Jermyn broke out. “I can’t explain how I have called down on myself such endeavour to exasperate. I am sure it is natural that I should go and talk to a friend. It would not do to depend on my family.”
“Oh, my boy, my dear boy!” expostulated Godfrey, leaning to touch his son’s shoulder, while Harriet sat with her head bent, seeming to wrestle with her thoughts. “We are not trying to exasperate you. We would not do it for the world. We would rather be exasperated ourselves. We have the greatest respect for all letters and science, and all the things that you and Matthew do. We know they are the greatest and the most to be respected things in the world. You have often told us so. And we know that that is the opinion of all thinking people. If you ever do anything with your poetry, there will be two proud people in the world, and those will be your mother and me. And if you do not, we shall be proud of you for having tried, prouder of you than if you had succeeded, knowing that there is more faith in honest doubt, more success in true failure, than in half the achievements we hear about. That is how we feel about it.”
“You can’t say it is not enough, Jermyn,” said Griselda.
“Well, perhaps I am at the height of my honour now. They say these experiences fall short,” said Jermyn.
“My dear, good, gifted boy!” said Harriet.
Chapter V
The Rector Of the Haslams’ village, the Reverend Ernest Bellamy, seemed what he was, a man who had chosen the church because of its affinity to the stage in affording scope for dramatic gifts. He was a tall, dark, handsome man, with a suggestion of nervous energy and nervous weakness, who showed at forty how he had looked in his youth. As he stood at the house of his wife’s mother, a modest dwelling in the neighbouring town, his movements betrayed that he was rallying his powers with a view to a scene to be enacted within. His mother-in-law came to the door herself, a small, energetic woman of sixty, with grey hair, high-boned features, and the kind of spareness and pallor that goes with strength.
“Well, Ernest, you are a living proof that absence makes the heart grow fond. I have never looked forward more to one of our stimulating wars with words. I always think that every mind, at whatever point it is situated in the mental scale, is the better for being laid on the whetstone and sharpened to its full keenness.”