V

“Are the boys coming?” said the Reverend Henry Bentley.

“They are out of their room, Father,” said his daughter.

“I asked you if they were coming.”

“They are out of their room, Father. We are all a little late this morning.”

“I know we are late. I asked you if they were coming.”

Mr. Bentley rang the bell, and took his seat. He was an upright, white-haired man in the fifties. He had been a parson and a younger son, and had come later into the family estate.

Two boys of twelve and thirteen edged into the room, with the words, “Good morning, Father.”

Mr. Bentley simply turned his eyes on them; and the younger showed the behaviour natural to continual gratitude, by vaguely capering.

The daughter was a tall young woman of thirty, with a pointed chin, and a small, compressed, peaceful mouth. She was the child of Mr. Bentley by an earlier marriage. He was a widower for the second time.

“I am sorry we are late, Father.”

Mr. Bentley did not look at her. He bowed his head over the breakfast with an air of not sharing the general thanklessness. Delia raised her head a little after the rest. There was a suggestion about her of remembering their being late.

“We shall have a windy walk to the college chapel,” said Mr. Bentley.

“What did you say, Father?” said Delia.

Mr. Bentley did not answer.

“We shall have a windy walk to the chapel,” he presently said, in a still lower voice.

“What did you say, Father?”

Mr. Bentley did not answer.

“Would you like lunch at one or half-past, Father?”

Mr. Bentley was silent.

“Would you like lunch at one or half-past, Father?”

Mr. Bentley was silent.

“Father, I think you heard me.”

“Since it is the fashion this morning to be deaf, I may as well follow it. I might ask how many people had heard me.”

“How late you were home last night, Father! Was the train delayed?”

“I walked from the station. The train was not delayed. It is not a distance one can walk in a minute.”

“You are so good in those ways, Father. We all ought to copy you.”

“I might as well not go on trying to do my best in any way, for all the attention that is paid to me. I am getting tired of things. I cannot say that I am not. And as for copying me, other people in my house certainly should not do less than I. John, if you cannot control your fidgeting, you must go. I cannot bear it.”

There was a long silence.

“Have you not a word to say this morning, Harry? Nobody would think that I went to the expense of sending you to Mr. Herrick’s, to see you sitting there like a stock, as if you could not open your mouth.”

“No, I have nothing to say, Father.”

Mr. Bentley looked round.

“Do not think of letting me keep you, Father,” said Delia.

“I am not able to think of it. I am going to my writing. I have a good deal to do before chapel. That will give you time.”

Mr. Bentley’s writing was held to have bearing on his property, and it gave him the position of the breadwinner.

When they were returning from the chapel, Mr. Bentley spoke.

“An intellectual fellow, the chaplain. He gives you a sermon to think over, a sermon with some stuff in it. I dare say it is natural that the boys should not care to listen to him.”

Delia was silent.

“Really, I shall be glad when their self-absorption gets to such a pitch, that I am justified in closing my doors to them. I am beginning to feel that they have spoilt my home long enough.”

Delia was silent, and Mr. Bentley turned back to the boys.

“Come, come, walk a little more briskly, and as if you were not so utterly given up to self-indulgence. Ah! self-indulgence is a thing I am not enough down upon in my family.”

When the lunch was brought, the elder boy did not see. Mr. Bentley came to the table slowly, his expression unsympathetic towards any promptness.

“Harry, pray stop swinging your foot in that worrying manner.”

“Oh, I did not notice,” said the boy. “Did you speak to me?”

“I do not think I did. I believe we have not spoken since we came in. But I wonder what kind of an experience it is, never to be awake, or alive to anything outside oneself. I wonder what the result would have been, if I had spent my life in a state of lethargy, with no thought for anything outside myself. It would have been a nice thing for other people. Really, sometimes I get tired of denying myself, and wishing for nothing for my own life, and meeting simply with the kind of thing that I meet with.”

“Is it I who have brought this on everyone, Father?”

“Is it you? Oh, yes, you are sure to be the prominent figure in your own view of anything.”

“I cannot alter my nature,” muttered the boy.

“Your nature! Even when you open your mouth, it is the same. You can, of course, adapt yourself to other people, as we all do, as I have done through my life, more than you could ever realize. If I had had visions about my nature, I do not know what would have become of all of you.”

There was again silence.

“What was the text, Harry?” said Mr. Bentley.

Harry answered rightly.

“John, what was the text?”

John gave a start, and lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and his father looked away from him.

The family settled to books.

“What are you reading, John?”

John made a reply.

“I hope you are really reading it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what is your book, Harry?”

Harry rose and offered the book to his father.

Mr. Bentley glanced at it, and went to his desk. His pen caught the paper.

“Another pen,” he said, turning his eyes on his elder son, but somehow held from the use of his name.

“Harry, are you deaf, and too self-indulgent to stir?”

There was a silence.

“Boys,” said Mr. Bentley, his eyes still on his pen, “you seem to make it a custom now to be with us on Sunday afternoons. I have said nothing of it that I can remember. As you are not of much good to anyone, I think we have perhaps had enough of you.”

The boys disappeared.

“Father, need you write any more today?” said Delia, later. “You will be quite tired before the week begins. Is it necessary?”

“Urgent business letters about the property which we are living on, are necessary. I should not have done any work today, if I had felt I could leave it.”

“Are you going to do anything tonight, Father?”

“No, I think I have done enough for one day, especially as I shall have to be up and about by seven o’clock tomorrow.”

Mr. Bentley had chosen the morrow for an inspection of his estate, that is, he would rise to his duty while his family lay at ease.

“It is eight o’clock, Delia,” he said, as if the evening meal’s not being ready to the moment was not to be conceived.

Mr. Bentley carved as one not shirking daily burdens, by reason of a particular one about to fall upon him.

“What were you doing all the time you were upstairs, Harry?”

“Oh, different things, Father.”

“What things?”

“Oh, just little, ordinary things, Father.”

“What things? You must know what you have been doing?”

“I have not been doing anything in particular. We were only upstairs a few hours, Father.”

“I do not require you to tell me how long you were upstairs. And I should like to know when you will do something, Harry. Just suppose that I spent my life without ever doing anything. There would be a very different life for you, to going every day to Mr. Herrick’s, and having money spent on you without any trouble for yourself. You would soon get to know the difference, very soon.”

Next morning Mr. Bentley came slowly down his staircase. He was late for his train, his reason for further delay. He walked to his place with an air of uncertainty whether to remain.

“Ring the bell, Harry,” he said, replacing a cover on a dish, and leaning back to read a letter.

“Is it too cold for you, Father?” said Delia. “We kept on and on expecting you, and wondering whether to send it down to be kept hot. But I was afraid it would get too dry.”

“Your wondering whether to send it down to be kept hot, was not of much good, if you had made up your mind it would get too dry,” said Mr. Bentley. He paused once or twice in his speech, and did not lift his eyes.

“I did not think you would be so long, Father. You were so nearly ready when I passed your room.”

Mr. Bentley gave a casual glance at his daughter. He had done what remained with the utmost slowness, and a bitter sense of lookers-on.

“Take this down, and do me some fresh,” he said to the maid.

“Delia, can we go?” said Harry.

“Ask father if he will excuse you,” said Delia.

“Father, can we go? It is past school-time.”

“If it is past school-time, why did you not ask to go at the proper time? Why ask at all, if not at the right time? And using that ridiculous voice, as if there were some benefit to me in your sitting there! You are here to satisfy your own appetites. Go, of course. I do not want you.”

Mr. Bentley observed his sons as they left the room.

“I have never met a man so unfortunate in his children. Self-conscious, conceited, with the manners of clowns! Sitting there, thinking their society such a benefit, and then the first words they utter to do with themselves! Neither of them taking the trouble to say good morning to me, but speaking fast enough as soon as they wanted to get off to their own pursuits! It is unbelievable.”

“I do not think Harry is well. I think he has one of his headaches coming. I have thought so all breakfast time.”

“And why did you not speak of it, if you saw it? Why did you sit there and take no notice of a child you knew to be ill? Really, Delia, I should not have believed it. It is a hard thing, a hard thing, a hard thing. I may not have done much to lead my children as I would have them go, but my example should not have led them to this. It should not.”

Delia rose and left the room.

Mr. Bentley was about to follow her, when she reentered, forcing him to pause. He stood with his head and arms so rigid that they shook. Delia edged by him, and stood with her eyes on his face.

“Come, speak, Delia. Do not be mysterious. It is the worst breach of manners. What secret can there be?”

“Can I speak to you, Father?”

“Speak? Of course you can speak. Do get out of this way of making mysteries. Speak, and try to be natural and to the point.”

“John and Harry have come home, Father. They want to speak to you, I think.”

“Want to speak to me! Want to speak! Of all the habits my family has ever had! Call them in, and let them speak, make them speak. I will have no more of it. It makes me too ashamed.”

“Let me pass, will you please, Father.”

“Oh, it is nothing that requires anyone to be put about for it. They have come back because they ‘want to speak,’ I believe. My children are fond of that plea.”

“Father, we must see if anything is the matter with them.”

“Harry! John! Come in at once, and tell your sister what you want with her.”

“Well, what is it that you have to say, that you have come home from school when the morning has hardly begun? Let us hear it, so that you can get back again. I do not like this easy breaking off for any reason that comes to hand.”

“I have a headache,” said Harry. “Mrs. Merry sent us home to tell Delia.”

Delia went out of the room with the boy.

“John, go after your sister, and come back at once, and tell me all about your brother, I must know if I am needed. I will put off my journey today.”

“You will not be needed. Harry did not even want you to be told.”

“Oh, you idiotic, self-absorbed children! Have you not reason to grasp, that it is what is good for Harry that has to be thought of? Can you not bring yourselves to some real concern for your brother? Must you go on, thinking of nothing but how things can be settled for you to see the least trouble? Oh, that I could get you to see it! But I have given it up. As I say, I will give up my journey today. I will be ready to hear what is best to do, and ready to do it.”

John gave a caper.

“You see, John, it is not always an easy thing to bring people to see what is right, when one is at the head of a household where people are fond of going their own way, whether it is the right way or not. It cannot be done, my boy, without much of what must seem to people who do not understand⁠—and my family are people who do not understand, I am sorry to say⁠—to be needless, and even trying. But you will look back upon what your father did, when I am no longer with you, and see that it was not done easily.”

John looked at his father with rising tears.

Mr. Bentley just laid a hand on his head, and went upstairs and stood by himself, repeating his speech with additions which had not occurred to him.

When he went down later, he saw that his daughter had dropped a spoon she had brought from the sick room. He watched her look with a resolve not to help the search, and sat down and opened the paper.

“Well, I have to go on under this fresh burden of anxiety. It is not an easy thing to do, for anyone who cannot sink at once into his own affairs. Ah, it is a sad thing in many ways to be wrought upon by things outside oneself.”

“I am sure we all feel about Harry. But he is not really ill. And it is hardly right to make a great trouble of a little one.”

“You are a self-satisfied young woman.”

“Self-satisfied? Oh, you do not know me, I think, Father. And I am sure I have no right to be self-satisfied. I am many things I should not be. I am quite conscious of that.”

“You are a wonderful young woman, to be conscious that you are not perfect.”

“I think we are all rather out of sorts, and strung up, so to speak, about it.”

“It is a great thing if Harry gets over this,” said Mr. Bentley. “It is hardly to be expected, I suppose, in such a case of neglect, though of course it is right to do everything as if we did expect it.”

There was silence.

“Well, upon my word, you all make life very hard for a man. I do not know what I have done, that I should be subjected to this. Here I have done my best for all these years, gone on doing all I could do; never lost patience; never dwelt upon what I might have had. And now, because I try to keep a wise and firm hand over people for their own good, and to prevent them from sinking down, down, down, for their own sakes⁠—whose, if not for theirs, I should like to know?⁠—to be given as much to bear as if I were a tyrant and a monument of selfishness, instead of⁠ ⁠… ! Oh, it will not bear discussing. Why should I discuss it? Some people have much from others, and some have nothing and give all. It is just that, I suppose.”

“There is John come in again from school,” said Delia. “I will go out and tell him not to come in.”

Delia was capable of revenge.

“Oh, what does it matter whether he comes in or not?” said Mr. Bentley, his eyes dilating. “That is not the sort of thing to give our thought to now. It is not a time for thinking about nothing.”

Delia turned to the door.

“John,” called Mr. Bentley, “come into the room, and hear what there is to be heard about Harry. It is not right that you should not hear of your own brother. I will have no concealments and associations on false pretences in my family. Ah! That is what makes family breaches. That is what leads to them.”

“Did you call me, Father? I had gone upstairs. I was not quite sure.”

“You heard me call, I suppose?”

“Yes, Father. That is why I came down.”

“Then I imagine you were sure. Really, John, you talk as if you were not in your right mind. I suppose, after all, you are too stupid, and childish for your age to be told anything, even what it is not right that you should not know. Go away, then. Go away to your own concerns. I will not tell you, then.”

At this point the maid brought in a note of concern from Emily.

“Do you see much of Mr. Herrick and Miss Herrick?” said Mr. Bentley, when he had read it.

“No, Father.”

“How much do you see of them? You know what I mean.”

“Not⁠—not much, not at all, Father.”

“Do you see anything of anyone, may I ask? Does anyone have anything to do with you? Teach you, for instance?”

“Mr. Merry, and Mr. Burgess, and Miss Basden; and Mrs. Merry, sometimes.”

“I think Miss Herrick is very charming,” said Delia.

“Oh, don’t be so obvious, Delia. Don’t be too obvious. We all know that. That is what made me ask about it. That is what it is, of course. Well, I shall have a very fair idea of what to say when we go to that prize-giving.”

As he returned from the prize-giving Mr. Bentley spoke.

“This wind makes exceedingly trying walking. We never seem to be without it now.”

“We do have it very often. I hope the boys will think to put on their coats to come home.”

“Oh, from that school? I expect that Merry will wrap them up, and watch them out of sight, to see they do not step in the puddles. That is the sort of thing they are accustomed to there, I think.”

Delia was silent.

“I wish I could find a school for them more like the one I was sent to as a boy.”

“I do not think Mr. Merry is as easygoing with them as he seems. I think that is just his little way.”

“I was not speaking of his being easygoing, or about his little way. I was thinking of his being such an unmitigated nincompoop. Such talk as his no sane man would credit, if he did not hear it with his ears. It is enough to ruin a boy to listen to it.”

“Mrs. Merry is a nice woman,” said Delia.

“What difference does it make, whether she is a nice woman or not? That does not teach the boys, or help them to earn their living. And I do not know if Miss Herrick is a nice woman. I should think not. But I do know that she does not do either.”

They entered the house in silence.

“Whatever on earth are those boys doing? Palavering about, handing cups to people they have never seen! They are fonder of waiting on strangers than on their father.”

“They have to do it, Father. They do not enjoy it.”

“Do not enjoy it! It is the only sort of thing that John does enjoy. I wish I had sons more like myself.”

The boys came in.

“Oh, we have had the prize-giving! Harry has got his prize. We had to hand round the tea.”

“You spent a very long time in handing round tea. I spoke to Mr. Merry about you both. He had not much to say for you.”

“And you seem to have a great many friends at that school, as far as I can judge. Giggling, and talking, even while the prizes were being given away! It does not look as if you had no friends to ask to your home, as always seems to be the case, when I ask you why you do not bring them here, and let us have an idea what kind of people you are with, when you are away from us all day at such an expense. There are very few of them who have been brought up as you have; I am sure of that. Anyone would think you would be proud to let them see your father and your sister and your surroundings. I can’t think what makes you so affected and self-conscious about it. Now, once for all, what is it?”

“Well, do not speak, then, do not speak. Go off to your own employment, and settle down by yourselves; and do not say a word to your father, who makes sacrifices all day, that you may have every advantage; and was trying to arrange something else, that you might have further pleasure. Go away then, and do not speak. Behave as my children always do. Go away, without a word, to your own concerns.”