Free Men and Wives by Ivy Compton-Burnett Page A

faint air of hardly finding her sister’s propensity worth considering. “I daresay Mr. Spong would have joined us, if we had persevered.”
    â€œNo!” said Agatha. “No! There are some things that some of us can only bear a certain touch upon.”
    â€œI wonder how soon Mr. Spong will be looking about him for another partner,” said Geraldine, reaching for a book. “I thought he already tended to a wandering eye.”
    â€œNo. Not in this case. No!” said Agatha. “This is a case where devotion has gathered, risen to its height, and will hold to the end. He will go on his way alone. There are some of us for whom that path is laid out. Poor man! My thoughts will be with him to-night in his lonely home. They are with him now, as he goes his way towards it.”
    Dominic was going his way in the Haslams’ carriage to the house of Sir Percy Hardisty.
    â€œAh, now, Spong, I take it as a kindness that you will try to feel at home with us to-night.”
    â€œSir Percy, I can only thank you.”
    â€œYou are saving us from feeling that our touch cannot be borne in trouble,” said Rachel. “That would strike at the very foundations of our union. Will you not have something to drink, Mr. Spong? It is half an hour before dinner.”
    â€œIt would strike, Lady Hardisty, at the foundation of our faith in many things,” said Dominic, stretching backwards to a table in compliance with the degree of his interest. “The touch of certain people is the only thing that can be borne.”
    â€œAh, now, forget it for the moment, Spong,” said Sir Percy. “Don’t be dwelling on it, my boy, to-night. I mean, dwell only on the bright side of it, on all of it; but don’t be feeling alone among old friends.”
    â€œYou may listen to Percy. He knows what can be done from experience,” said Rachel.
    â€œSir Percy, I cannot feel alone amid so much kindness. I will simply feel that she who has left me is with me in spirit.”
    â€œThen you both will feel alike,” said Rachel.
    â€œYou will not misunderstand me, Lady Hardisty,” saidDominic, with a look of perplexity and a resonant utterance of the name, as if granting her full right to bear it, “when I say that to me any thought of a successor to my wife is sacrilege.”
    â€œWell, now, Spong,” said Sir Percy, as if any subject were to bel preferred to the one that obtained, “how about this about the young Bellamys and Dufferin? Because we won’t try you now by going on to ground that is your own. But that is one sort of business.”
    â€œSir Percy, as family lawyer to all of them, I have been brought much into contact with the affair,” said Dominic with an air of grave distaste. “I have done my best to advise each party for his or her individual good, but the upshot is, they are to all intents and purposes of one mind.” He sank into dubious amusement.
    â€œIt is nice of them to agree under such a test,” said Rachel. “We should never know people in ordinary life. Of course the whole of my life is a test. It is quite the best moment in Mr. Spong’s life for us to have him with us, Percy.”
    â€œI am sorry for that poor woman, Mrs. Christy,” said Dominic, with the dilation of his eyes that mention of a woman produced. “It is hard for her to have this trouble with her daughter. I have done all I can to show my sympathy towards her.”
    â€œPercy, we must see about showing sympathy,” said Rachel, “if Mr. Spong doesn’t mind our copying him.”
    â€œLady Hardisty, indeed no,” said Dominic.
    â€œBut the girl will divorce Bellamy, of course,” said Sir Percy.
    â€œNo,” said Dominic in a judicial tone, “apparently not. The fault is entirely on her side, and Bellamy appears to be anxious to keep any slur off himself. It would go hard with him in his profession to take any