“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
