"Do go," Bernadette would say, or "Do stay," as the case might be. "He does like a talk so much." Strangely it appeared that this was the case, provided he could get his talk quietly with a single person and, it must be added, though Arthur's eyes were not yet opened to this, provided that the person was not his wife. From private conversation with her he shrank, ever fearing that something might seem to be demanded of him which he could not give. But he read and thought much, and enjoyed an exchange of ideas. And he took to Arthur with the liking a reserved man often has for one who is expansive and easy of access. Arthur responded to his overtures, at first through a mixture of obligation and good-nature, then with a real interest, to which presently there was added a sympathy rather compassionate, a pity for a man who seemed by nature unable to take the pleasures which lay so plentiful around.
He fretted about money too a thing pathetic to the eyes with which at present Arthur looked on the world. But he did; he might be found surrounded by account-books, rent-books, pass-books, puzzling over them with a forlorn air and a wrinkled brow. It was not long before he took Arthur into his confidence, in some degree at least, about this worry of his.
"We spend a terrible lot of money; I can't think where it all goes," he lamented.
"But isn't it pretty obvious?" laughed Arthur. "You do things in style and you're always doing them!"
"There's this house heavy! And Hilsey always sitting there, swallowing a lot!" Then he broke out in sudden peevishness: "Of course with anything like common prudence " He stopped abruptly. "I'm not blaming anybody," he added lamely, after a pause. And then "Do you keep within your income?"
"I don't just now by a long chalk. But yours is a trifle larger than mine, you know."
"I can't do it. Well, I must raise some money, I suppose."
Arthur did not know what to say. The matter was intimate and delicate; for there could be no doubt who was responsible, if too much money were being spent.
"I'm sure if you well, if you made it known how you feel " he began.
"Yes, and be thought a miser!" His voice sank to a mutter just audible. "Besides all the rest!"
So he had grievances! Arthur smiled within himself. All husbands, he opined, had grievances, mostly unsubstantial ones. He could not believe that Godfrey was being forced into outrunning his means to any serious extent, or that he had any other grave cause for complaint. But, in truth, Godfrey's trouble money apart was an awkward one. He was aggrieved that he had not got what he did not want his wife's affection. And he was aggrieved that she did not want what he had no desire to give her namely, his. The state of things aggrieved him, yet he had no wish at least no effective impulse to alter it. He felt himself a failure in all ways save one the provision of the fine things and the pleasures that Bernadette loved. Was he now to be a failure there too? He clung to the last rag of his tattered pride.
Yet often he was, in his shy awkward way, kindly, gracious, and anxious to make his kinsman feel sure of a constant welcome.
"Coming too often?" he said, in reply to a laughing apology of Arthur's. "You can't come too often, my dear boy! Besides you're a cousin of the house; it's open to you of right, both here and at Hilsey. Bernadette likes you to come too."
"Has she told you so?" Arthur asked eagerly.
"No, no, not in words, but anybody can see she does. We're too grave for her Judith and I and so's Oliver Wyse, I think. She likes him, of course, but with him she can't er "
"Play
about?" Arthur suggested.
"Yes, yes, exactly can't do that sort of thing, as she does with you. He's got too much on his shoulders; and he's an older man, of course." He was walking up and down his library as he talked. He stopped in passing and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder for a moment. "It's good of you not to grudge me a talk either, sometimes."
"But I like talking to you. Why do you think I shouldn't?"
Godfrey was at the other end of the room by now, with his back turned, looking into a book.
"You've never seen Hilsey, have you? Would it bore you to come down for a bit later on? Very quiet there, of course, but not so bad. Not for longer than you like, of course! You could cut it short if you got bored, you know."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of my being bored. I should love it of all things." Indeed the invitation filled him with delight and gratitude. "It's jolly good of you, Godfrey, jolly kind, I think."
Godfrey murmured something like, "See how you like it when you get there," sat down with his back still turned, and obliterated himself with a large book.
He was certainly difficult to know, to get to close quarters with. If he approached you at one moment, he shrank back the next; he seemed to live in equal fear of advances and of rebuffs. It was difficult to know how to take him, what idea to form of him. Plenty of negations suggested themselves readily in connection with him, but positive qualities were much harder to assign; it was easier to say what he was not than what he was, what he did not like than what he did, what he could not do than what he could. At all events what positive qualities he had did not help him much in his life, and were irrelevant to the problems it presented. By nature he was best made for a student, immured in books, free from the cares of position and property, and from the necessity of understanding and working with other people. Fate had misplaced him as a wealthy man, burdened with obligations, cumbered with responsibilities. He had misplaced himself as the husband of a brilliant and pleasure-loving wife. He ought to have been a bachelor the liabilities of bachelors are limited or the mate of an unpretending housewife who would have seen to his dinner and sewn on his buttons. In an unlucky hour of impulse he had elected to play Prince Charming to a penniless Beauty; Prince Charming appearing in a shower of gold. Of all the charms only the gold was left now, and the supply even of that was not inexhaustible, though the Beauty might behave as if it were. He had failed to live up to the promise of his first appearance, to meet the bill of exchange which he had accepted when he married Bernadette. He lacked the qualifications; ardour of emotion, power to understand and value a nature different from his own, an intelligent charity that could recognise the need in another for things of which he felt no need these he had not, any more than he possessed the force of will and character which might have moulded the other nature to his own.