Sunday in Grosvenor Place
Mr. Kennedy, though he was a most scrupulously attentive member of
Parliament, was a man very punctual to hours and rules in his own
house,--and liked that his wife should be as punctual as himself.
Lady Laura, who in marrying him had firmly resolved that she would do
her duty to him in all ways, even though the ways might sometimes be
painful,--and had been perhaps more punctilious in this respect than
she might have been had she loved him heartily,--was not perhaps
quite so fond of accurate regularity as her husband; and thus, by
this time, certain habits of his had become rather bonds than habits
to her. He always had prayers at nine, and breakfasted at a quarter
past nine, let the hours on the night before have been as late as
they might before the time for rest had come. After breakfast he
would open his letters in his study, but he liked her to be with
him, and desired to discuss with her every application he got from
a constituent. He had his private secretary in a room apart, but he
thought that everything should be filtered to his private secretary
through his wife. He was very anxious that she herself should
superintend the accounts of their own private expenditure, and had
taken some trouble to teach her an excellent mode of book-keeping.
He had recommended to her a certain course of reading,--which was
pleasant enough; ladies like to receive such recommendations; but Mr.
Kennedy, having drawn out the course, seemed to expect that his wife
should read the books he had named, and, worse still, that she should
read them in the time he had allocated for the work. This, I think,
was tyranny. Then the Sundays became very wearisome to Lady Laura.
Going to church twice, she had learnt, would be a part of her duty;
and though in her father’s household attendance at church had never
been very strict, she had made up her mind to this cheerfully. But
Mr. Kennedy expected also that he and she should always dine together
on Sundays, that there should be no guests, and that there should be
no evening company. After all, the demand was not very severe, but
yet she found that it operated injuriously upon her comfort. The
Sundays were very wearisome to her, and made her feel that her lord
and master was--her lord and master. She made an effort or two to
escape, but the efforts were all in vain. He never spoke a cross word
to her. He never gave a stern command. But yet he had his way. “I
won’t say that reading a novel on a Sunday is a sin,” he said; “but
we must at any rate admit that it is a matter on which men disagree,
that many of the best of men are against such occupation on Sunday,
and that to abstain is to be on the safe side.” So the novels were
put away, and Sunday afternoon with the long evening became rather
a stumbling-block to Lady Laura.
Those two hours, moreover, with her husband in the morning became
very wearisome to her. At first she had declared that it would be her
greatest ambition to help her husband in his work, and she had read
all the letters from the MacNabs and MacFies, asking to be made
gaugers and landing-waiters, with an assumed interest. But the work
palled upon her very quickly. Her quick intellect discovered soon
that there was nothing in it which she really did. It was all form
and verbiage, and pretence at business. Her husband went through it
all with the utmost patience, reading every word, giving orders as
to every detail, and conscientiously doing that which he conceived
he had undertaken to do. But Lady Laura wanted to meddle with high
politics, to discuss reform bills, to assist in putting up Mr. This
and putting down my Lord That. Why should she waste her time in
doing that which the lad in the next room, who was called a private
secretary, could do as well?
Still she would obey. Let the task be as hard as it might, she would
obey. If he counselled her to do this or that, she would follow his
counsel,--because she owed him so much. If she had accepted the half
of all his wealth without loving him, she owed him the more on that
account. But she knew,--she could not but know,--that her intellect
was brighter than his; and might it not be possible for her to lead
him? Then she made efforts to lead her husband, and found that he was
as stiff-necked as an ox. Mr. Kennedy was not, perhaps, a clever man;
but he was a man who knew his own way, and who intended to keep it.
“I have got a headache, Robert,” she said to him one Sunday after
luncheon. “I think I will not go to church this afternoon.”
“It is not serious, I hope.”
“Oh dear no. Don’t you know how one feels sometimes that one has got
a head? And when that is the case one’s armchair is the best place.”
“I am not sure of that,” said Mr. Kennedy.
“If I went to church I should not attend,” said Lady Laura.
“The fresh air would do you more good than anything else, and we
could walk across the park.”
“Thank you;--I won’t go out again to-day.” This she said with
something almost of crossness in her manner, and Mr. Kennedy went to
the afternoon service by himself.
Lady Laura when she was left alone began to think of her position.
She was not more than four or five months married, and she was
becoming very tired of her life. Was it not also true that she was
becoming tired of her husband? She had twice told Phineas Finn that
of all men in the world she esteemed Mr. Kennedy the most. She did
not esteem him less now. She knew no point or particle in which
he did not do his duty with accuracy. But no person can live
happily with another,--not even with a brother or a sister or a
friend,--simply upon esteem. All the virtues in the calendar,
though they exist on each side, will not make a man and woman happy
together, unless there be sympathy. Lady Laura was beginning to
find out that there was a lack of sympathy between herself and her
husband.
She thought of this till she was tired of thinking of it, and then,
wishing to divert her mind, she took up the book that was lying
nearest to her hand. It was a volume of a new novel which she had
been reading on the previous day, and now, without much thought about
it, she went on with her reading. There came to her, no doubt, some
dim, half-formed idea that, as she was freed from going to church by
the plea of a headache, she was also absolved by the same plea from
other Sunday hindrances. A child, when it is ill, has buttered toast
and a picture-book instead of bread-and-milk and lessons. In this
way, Lady Laura conceived herself to be entitled to her novel.
While she was reading it, there came a knock at the door, and
Barrington Erle was shown upstairs. Mr. Kennedy had given no orders
against Sunday visitors, but had simply said that Sunday visiting was
not to his taste. Barrington, however, was Lady Laura’s cousin, and
people must be very strict if they can’t see their cousins on Sunday.
Lady Laura soon lost her headache altogether in the animation
of discussing the chances of the new Reform Bill with the Prime
Minister’s private secretary; and had left her chair, and was
standing by the table with the novel in her hand, protesting this
and denying that, expressing infinite confidence in Mr. Monk, and
violently denouncing Mr. Turnbull, when her husband returned from
church and came up into the drawing-room. Lady Laura had forgotten
her headache altogether, and had in her composition none of that
thoughtfulness of hypocrisy which would have taught her to moderate
her political feeling at her husband’s return.
“I do declare,” she said, “that if Mr. Turnbull opposes the
Government measure now, because he can’t have his own way in
everything, I will never again put my trust in any man who calls
himself a popular leader.”
“You never should,” said Barrington Erle.
“That’s all very well for you, Barrington, who are an aristocratic
Whig of the old official school, and who call yourself a Liberal
simply because Fox was a Liberal a hundred years ago. My heart’s in
it.”
“Heart should never have anything to do with politics; should it?”
said Erle, turning round to Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy did not wish to discuss the matter on a Sunday, nor yet
did he wish to say before Barrington Erle that he thought it wrong
to do so. And he was desirous of treating his wife in some way
as though she were an invalid,--that she thereby might be, as it
were, punished; but he did not wish to do this in such a way that
Barrington should be aware of the punishment.
“Laura had better not disturb herself about it now,” he said.
“How is a person to help being disturbed?” said Lady Laura, laughing.
“Well, well; we won’t mind all that now,” said Mr. Kennedy, turning
away. Then he took up the novel which Lady Laura had just laid down
from her hand, and, having looked at it, carried it aside, and placed
it on a book-shelf which was remote from them. Lady Laura watched him
as he did this, and the whole course of her husband’s thoughts on the
subject was open to her at once. She regretted the novel, and she
regretted also the political discussion. Soon afterwards Barrington
Erle went away, and the husband and wife were alone together.
“I am glad that your head is so much better,” said he. He did not
intend to be severe, but he spoke with a gravity of manner which
almost amounted to severity.
“Yes; it is,” she said, “Barrington’s coming in cheered me up.”
“I am sorry that you should have wanted cheering.”
“Don’t you know what I mean, Robert?”
“No; I do not think that I do, exactly.”
“I suppose your head is stronger. You do not get that feeling
of dazed, helpless imbecility of brain, which hardly amounts to
headache, but which yet--is almost as bad.”
“Imbecility of brain may be worse than headache, but I don’t think it
can produce it.”
“Well, well;--I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Headache comes, I think, always from the stomach, even when produced
by nervous affections. But imbecility of the brain--”
“Oh, Robert, I am so sorry that I used the word.”
“I see that it did not prevent your reading,” he said, after a pause.
“Not such reading as that. I was up to nothing better.”
Then there was another pause.
“I won’t deny that it may be a prejudice,” he said, “but I confess
that the use of novels in my own house on Sundays is a pain to me.
My mother’s ideas on the subject are very strict, and I cannot think
that it is bad for a son to hang on to the teaching of his mother.”
This he said in the most serious tone which he could command.
“I don’t know why I took it up,” said Lady Laura. “Simply, I believe,
because it was there. I will avoid doing so for the future.”
“Do, my dear,” said the husband. “I shall be obliged and grateful if
you will remember what I have said.” Then he left her, and she sat
alone, first in the dusk and then in the dark, for two hours, doing
nothing. Was this to be the life which she had procured for herself
by marrying Mr. Kennedy of Loughlinter? If it was harsh and
unendurable in London, what would it be in the country?