‘I wonder if they can,’ said Cassius.
‘If so, the blame is mine.’
‘Their opinion of you would hardly be the same as your opinion of yourself.’
‘Then perhaps the blame is theirs,’ said Mr Clare. ‘Children are not always blameless.’
‘I wonder if they ought to see their own mother,’ said Cassius, keeping his tone even. ‘Yοu know she has returned to the place?’
‘Yes, I know,’ said his wife.
‘I am not a man who cannot change his mind.’
‘It seems that you are not.’
‘The best way to deal with a mistake is to rectify it.’
‘If a mistake has been made.’
‘It is never too late to mend.’
‘A poor saying,’ said Mr Clare.
‘Not to mend ourselves,’ said Flavia. ‘To mend what we have done, it is often too late. I think it generally is.’
‘Do you feel with me that we took a wrong course?’ said Cassius.
‘No, I think we did the best thing. I do not say there was any good thing.’
‘No mistake was made at the time,’ said Mr Clare. ‘None could have been made.’
‘A man’s feelings may change,’ said his son, not looking at anyone.
‘You need not tell us, my boy. You give us the proof.’
‘They have a way of returning,’ said Flavia, ‘with the return of the things that caused them. Just as they pass with their passing.’
‘You think you are very wise and deep,’ said her husband.
‘Well, it sounded as if she was,’ said Mr Clare.
‘And the words suggested it to Cassius,’ said Flavia, ‘and he is not prone to such opinion.’
‘One woman and two men!’ said Cassius, as if to himself. ‘I suppose this is what it must be.’
‘And would a second woman mend matters?’ said his wife. ‘Well, perhaps she might. She might be the right person in the right place, doing the thing she could do.’
‘My dear, good wife!’ said Cassius, in another and louder tone. ‘My helpmeet in the troubles of life! How I depend on you in my mind, if I have my own ways of showing it! I know you understand me.’
‘Well, that is fortunate,’ said his father. ‘It might not be so.’
‘I want your advice, Flavia. I ask for it, my dear. Would you advise me to approach my first wife? Your opinion will be mine.’
‘I hardly know what my opinion is. I have not thought. I should not think. It has not bearing on the matter.’
‘Ah, I have never met a little woman with such an opinion of herself. Or one with a better right to it. But why not help a simple man in his own way? Unless you are afraid of what is in your mind. I daresay we all are really.’
‘Oh, well, afraid of that. But we should not betray it. We always take great care.’
‘To involve other people and protect ourselves?’
‘Well, think what care that would need.’
‘The thing to do is to keep it in our minds and to continue to be afraid of it,’ said Mr Clare.
‘Well, what else could we do?’ said his daughter-in-law. ‘There is no danger that we shall accustom ourselves to it. It is not true that we get used to anything.’
‘You both talk as if you had dark thoughts on a heroic scale,’ said Cassius, as if this were a too ambitious claim.
‘Just on the ordinary scale,’ said his wife.
‘Now here is a letter come by hand,’ said Cassius. ‘And I declare the one I dreaded! I might have known it. I expect I did know in my mind, and that is what put me into such a state. Well, what a thing to confront a man in the first half of the day, and cast a cloud over the rest of it!’
‘Letters usually come at breakfast,’ said his father. ‘And then the effect might be on the whole day.’
‘And that is helpful, is it? And common is the commonplace, and empty chaff well meant for grain. That things are common would not make my own less bitter. Never morning wore to evening but something of the kind took place.’
‘It does sound rather like the whole day,’ said Flavia.
‘Yes, you can be clever about it. How does that affect the position?’
‘I think it improves it a little. What does the letter say?’
‘Read it to us, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.
‘Oh, yes, and have you and Flavia throwing your wit over it, and treating me as if I were a culprit, instead of a man expected to be married to two wives at once, and to offer up one of them to the mockery of the other. What a demand to be made on a man! I could not have believed it.’
‘I do not believe it,’ said his wife.
‘Come, you can be explicit, my boy,’ said Mr Clare.
‘I am putting it as plainly as I can. Surely two wives is explicit enough for anyone. Or would you want it to be ten? Would that be more explicit?’
‘No, it would be less,’ said Flavia. ‘It would need a good deal more explanation.’
‘Well, have the truth,’ said her husband. ‘Have it and make what you can of it. Here am I told by my first wife that she is coming to encounter my second, and to break up our family life, and take our children away from us, and be a heroine and a martyr through it all! Though she does not want to see me. Oh, no, there is no mention of that. Though what harm it would do her I am at a loss to say. She did it day and night for five years.’
‘And felt she could do it no longer,’ said Flavia, in an expressionless tone.
‘And I felt the same, I can tell you, and felt it no less. To have those eyes boring straight into mine, as if they would read my very soul, and probably find I hadn’t one into the bargain! It was as much as flesh and blood could stand. I had come to an end as much as she had.’
‘Is she returning to the place for good?’ said Mr Clare.
‘Coming back to her home, as she puts it,’ said Cassius, referring to the letter. ‘As if this house had not been her home for years! There is no need to be invidious, is there? Coming back to that brother and sister, and to that house with books all over it, and little else that I could ever see. Well, if she prefers it to this, I wish her joy of it.’
‘She hardly has the choice of the two,’ said his father. ‘And she has come with a purpose and told you of it.’
‘Oh, yes, she wants something for herself. There is no need to say that.’
‘I should not have thought it need be said of her, from what I have heard,’ said Flavia.
‘Yes, be magnanimous about her. We know your view of yourself.’
‘It is the way to make it everyone’s view of her,’ said Mr Clare. ‘And there is no harm in her taking it.’
‘Yes, I am the one who is criticized and condemned, and seen as a common creature blundering between two highminded women, and inflicting myself on both. That is my position. I must put up with it.’
‘What is it that your first wife wants for herself?’ said Flavia.
‘Oh, I thought you said she would not want anything.’
‘But you did not take that view.’
‘And I do not take it,’ said Cassius. ‘She seems to me to want all she can get, as in her way she always did. She and I parted by mutual consent, but no one was to know that but ourselves. Oh, no, she was the martyr and I the culprit, and the world had to see it like that. And now she thinks she can call the tune, as if it were the truth. It is a thing that makes my blood boil.’
Cassius was a broad, solid man about fifty, with a broad, fair face, small, light eyes, thick, uncertain hands, and flat, not uncomely features, that responded to his emotions. His father, who was like him, had a stronger growth of bone, that raised and strengthened his features to the point of handsomeness. Flavia looked a creature of another blood between them. She seemed to watch her husband, while her father-in-law simply accepted him. Mr Clare saw his son as he was, and kept his feeling for him, and Flavia seemed to fear to do the one, in case she should cease to do the other.