Men and Wives by Ivy Compton-Burnett Read Free Book Online Page B

work.”
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œOh, 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.”
    â€œYou can’t say it is not enough, Jermyn,” said Griselda.
    â€œWell, perhaps I am at the height of my honour now. They say these experiences fall short,” said Jermyn.
    â€œMy 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.
    â€œWell, 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.”
    â€œI thank you for your welcome. I may not be undeserving of it, but it is nevertheless kind and just to give it,” said Bellamy in a sonorous voice, as he followed her. “For you have not been blind to the truth.”
    â€œI hope truth is always apparent to me. It makes such a good vantage ground for surveying everything from the right angle,” said Mrs. Christy, who suspected she had a remarkable brain, and found that her spontaneous conversation proved it beyond her hopes. “You and Camilla find my parlour constricted, but ‘stone walls do not a prison make’ to minds whose innocence takes them for an hermitage. I had almost taken refuge in some oft-quoted lines.”
    â€œIt was as well you were prevented,” said her daughter, looking up from her seat by the fire, a tall, fair woman of thirty, with the family resemblance to her mother, that may lie on the surface or very deep. “Those lines don’t happen to serve as a refuge at the moment.”
    â€œWell, Camilla,” said Bellamy, his eyes steady on his wife’s face.
    â€œI fear that lines rise to my mind at every juncture,” said Mrs. Christy, moving her hand. “I must plead guilty to an ingrained habit.”
    â€œA