February was nearly over when Peter came back from his Algerian honeymoon, and found Starvecrow waiting to receive him. It was the mild end of a rainy day, with the air full of yellow sunshine, which was reflected in the floods of the Tillingham marshes. The house was faintly bloomed with it, and its windows shone like golden pools. Peter caught his first glimpse from the top of Brede Eye hill, and his heart grew warm in the chill English dusk as no African sun had made it. “Look!” he said to Vera, and pointed over the top of Conster’s firs at the grey and golden house with its smoking chimneys—for the first time the smoke of his own fires was going up from Starvecrow.
The car—the splendid Sunbeam which Vera’s parents had given as their wedding-present—swept down into the valley, over the Tillingham bridge, and up Starvecrow’s twisting drive, reflecting the rushing hazels and apple-trees in the mirror of its polished sides. Without noise or jar it stopped outside the porch—“Wait for the man, dear,” said Vera, but Peter was out, staring enraptured at his own front door. He had a foolish, ridiculous feeling that he wanted to carry her across the threshold, but was deterred by the appearance of a smart parlourmaid, also by Vera’s obvious unpreparedness for so primitive an entrance.
So he contented himself with kissing her in the delightful drawing-room that led out of the hall. A large wood fire burned in the open fireplace, and bright cretonnes were in rather sophisticated contrast to oak beams and pure white walls. The house had been thoroughly overhauled, and amazing treasures had come to light in the way of Tudor fireplaces and old oak. It seemed to Peter that it was now more like a small country house than the farmhouse of his love and memory, but certainly these things were more appropriate than the Greenings’ rather ramshackle furniture, Victorian wallpapers and blackleaded grates.
“Isn’t it lovely?” breathed Vera, crouching down by the fire and warming her delicate hands.
“Yes, it is,” said Peter—“and so are you.”
He put his hand on her little close-fitting hat and tilted back her head till her full, rather oriental lips were under his. He loved her long, satisfying kisses, so unlike the uneasy ones of most English girls—he told himself that it was this Eastern quality in her love, inherited through the Jewish blood of her fathers, which had made the last few weeks so wonderful.
A minute later the parlourmaid brought in tea, and they had it together beside the singing hearth. There was no light in the room except the dancing glow on beams and walls, the reflections from polished silver and lustre-ware. Vera did not talk much, for she was tired, and after tea she said she would like to go up to her room and lie down before dinner. Peter offered to go with her and read her to sleep—he could not bear to be away from her very long—but Vera said she would rather be quiet, in which no doubt she was wise, for the gods had not given Peter the gift of reading aloud.
Well, perhaps it was all to the good that she did not want him, because he would have to go up to Conster some time this evening, and he would rather go now than after dinner, when he could be sitting on the hearthrug at Vera’s feet keeping their first watch together by their own fire. So though he was feeling a bit fagged himself after the journey, he put on his overcoat again and went out into the early darkness which was thick with a new drizzle.
Starvecrow was lost in the night, except for a golden square which was Vera’s room, and the distant sulky glow of a lantern among the barns. Only a gleaming of puddles and the water in the ruts showed him the farm drive—which had remained a farm-drive in spite of the Asher’s wish that it should become an avenue; for, as he pointed out to them, his traffic of wagons would do for nothing more genteel. As he reached the bottom, the distant murmur of a car, far away in the network of lanes between Starvecrow and Vinehall, made him unaccountably think of Stella. Queer ... it must be just a year since he had seen her last. How many things had happened since then, and how seldom he thought of her now—poor little girl!... And yet he had loved her—there was no good making out that he hadn’t—and he had been grief-stricken when she had gone away—thought a dozen times of calling her back and letting Starvecrow and the rest go hang.... It merely showed that Mary was right, and love, like everything else, could die. Would his love for Vera die?—why not, since his love for Stella had died?—But his love for Vera was so warm and alive—So had his love for Stella been once. Oh, damn! he was getting into a melancholy mood—it must be the effect of the journey. Thank God! here he was at Conster and wouldn’t have much more time for the blues, though the thought of seeing his family again did not give him any overwhelming pleasure.
He found his father and mother and two sisters in the drawing-room, and it seemed to him that their greeting had a queer, uneasy quality about it, a kind of abstraction—as if their thoughts were centred on something more engrossing than his return. When he had gone his round of kisses and handshakes, Lady Alard seemed suddenly to express the real interest of the party by crying in a heartbroken voice——
“Peter! what do you think has happened?”
“What?” cried Peter sharply. He had a vision of a foreclosing mortgagee.
“It’s Mary!” wailed Lady Alard—“Julian is divorcing her.”
“Mary!”
Peter was genuinely shocked—the Alards did not appear in the divorce court; also his imagination was staggered at the thought of Mary, the fastidious, the pure, the intense, being caught in the coarse machinery of the state marriage laws.
“Yes—isn’t it utterly dreadful? It appears he’s had her watched by detectives ever since she left him, and now they’ve found something against her—at least they think they have. It was that time she went abroad with Meg Sellons, and Charles joined them at Bordighera—which I always said was unwise. But the worst of all, Peter, is that she says she won’t defend herself—she says that she’s done nothing wrong, but she won’t defend herself—she’ll let Julian put her away, and everyone will think she’s—oh, Peter, this will finish me—it really will. When I got Mary’s letter I had the worst attack I’ve had for years—we had to send for Dr. Mount in the middle of the night. I really thought——”
Sir John interrupted her——
“You’d better let me finish, Lucy. The subject is legal, not medical. Mary has behaved like a fool and run her head into Julian’s trap. I don’t know how much there is in it, but from what she says I doubt if he has much of a case. If she’ll defend it, she’ll probably be able to clear herself, and what’s more I bet she could bring a counter-petition.”
“That would be a nasty mess, wouldn’t it, Sir?” said Peter.
“Not such a nasty mess as my daughter being held up in all the newspapers as an adulteress!”
“Oh, John!” cried Lady Alard—“what a dreadful thing to say before the girls!”
“Doris is old enough to hear the word now if she’s never heard it before, and Jenny—she’s Emancipated, and a great deal older than you and me. I tell you I object to my daughter being placarded in the penny papers as an adulteress, and I’d much rather she proved Julian an adulterer.”
“Is that possible, sir?” asked Peter.
“Of course it is—the man’s been on the loose for a year.”
“If that’s all your evidence——”
“Well, I haven’t had him followed by detectives, but I can turn a few on now, and——”
“Really, Sir, I do agree with Mary that it would be better to leave the matter alone. An undefended case can be slipped through the papers with very little fuss, while if you have a defence, to say nothing of a cross-petition ... it isn’t as if she particularly wanted to keep Julian as a husband—I expect she’s glad to have the chance of getting rid of him so easily.”
“I daresay she is. I daresay she wants to marry that old ass Charles Smith. But what about her reputation?—what about ours? I tell you I’m not going to stand still and have filth thrown at me by the press. I’m proud of my name if you aren’t.”
“It really seems to me that the matter rests with Mary—if she doesn’t want to defend herself....”
“Mary must think of her family—it ought to come before her private feelings.”
The words seemed an echo of a far-back argument—they reminded Peter dimly of his own straits last year. The family must come first.... That time it was money, now it was reputation. After all, why not? There was no good holding to the one and letting the other go. But he was sorry for Mary all the same.
“Well, I can’t stay any longer now. I must be getting back to dinner. I’ll bring Vera up tomorrow morning.”
“Mary’s coming down in the afternoon.”
“Oh, is she?”
“Yes—I’ve wired for her. I insist on her listening to reason.”
So Mary would have to face Peter’s choice—family duty against personal inclination.... Well, after all he hadn’t made such a bad thing of it.... He thought of Vera waiting for him at Starvecrow, and in spite of the fret of the last half-hour a smile of childlike satisfaction was on his face as he went home.
Peter was out early the next morning, when the first pale sunshine was stealing up the valley of the Tillingham, flooding all the world in a gleam of watery gold. He had awoken to the music of his farm, to the crowing of his cocks, to the stamping of his cattle in their stalls, to the clattering of his workmen’s feet on the cobbles of the yard. Starvecrow was his home, his place for waking up and falling asleep, for eating his food and warming himself at his fire, for finding his wife at the end of the day, for the birth of his children.... He had, as he stood that morning in the yard, a feeling both of proud ownership and proud adoption.
The whole farm, house and buildings, looked tidy and prosperous. It had lost that rather dilapidated, if homely, air it had worn before his marriage. Though the Ashers might have neither enough capital nor inclination to pay off the debts of their son-in-law’s family, they had certainly been generous in the matter of their daughter’s home. But for them the place could never have been what it was now—trimmings and clippings, furnishings and restorings had been their willingly paid price for Alard blood. The whole farm had been repaired, replanted and restocked. Indeed Starvecrow was now not so much a farm as a little manor, a rival to Conster up on the hill. Was this exactly what Peter had intended for it?—he did not stop to probe. No doubt his imagination had never held anything so solid and so trim, but that might have been only because his imagination had planned strictly for the possible, and all that had been possible up to his falling in love with Vera was just the shelter of that big kindly roof, the simplicity of those common farmhouse rooms, with the hope and labour of slow achievement and slow restoration.
Still, he was proud of the place, and looked round him with satisfaction as he walked down the bricked garden path, beside the well-raked herbaceous border. He went into the yard where his men were at work—he now employed two extra hands, and his staff consisted of a stockman, a shepherd, a ploughman, and two odd men, as well as the shepherd’s wife, who looked after the chickens and calves.
Going into the cowhouse he found Jim Lambard milking the last of the long string of Sussex cows. He greeted his master with a grin and a “good marnun, sur”—it was good to hear the slurry Sussex speech again. Peter walked to the end of the shed where two straw-coloured Jerseys were tethered—one of them, Flora, was due to calve shortly, and after inspecting her, he went out to interview the stockman. John Elias had held office not only in Greening’s time, but in the days before him when Starvecrow was worked by a tenant farmer—he was an oldish man who combined deep experience and real practical knowledge with certain old-fashioned obstinacies. Peter sometimes found him irritating to an intense degree, but clung to him, knowing that the old obstinacies are better than the new where farm-work is concerned, and that the man who insists on doing his work according to the rules of 1770 is really of more practical value than the man who does it according to the rules of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union. Elias had now been up a couple of nights with the Jersey, and his keen blue eye was a trifle dim from anxiety and want of sleep. Peter told him to get off to bed for a few hours, promising to have him sent for if anything should happen.
He then sent for the ploughman, and discussed with him the advisability of giving the Hammer field a second ploughing. There was also the wheat to be dressed in the threshing machine before it was delivered to the firm of corn-merchants who had bought last year’s harvest. A final talk with his shepherd about the ewes and prospects for next month’s lambing—and Peter turned back towards the house, sharp-set for breakfast and comfortably proud of the day’s beginning. He liked to think of the machinery of his farm, working efficiently under his direction, making Starvecrow rich.... Conster might still shake on its foundations but Starvecrow was settled and established—he had saved Starvecrow.
The breakfast-room faced east, and the sunshine poured through its long, low window, falling upon the white cloth of the breakfast table, the silver, the china and the flowers. The room was decorated in yellow, which increased the effect of lightness—Peter was thrilled and dazzled, and for a moment did not notice that breakfast had been laid only for one. When he did, it gave him a faint shock.
“Where’s your mistress?” he asked the parlourmaid, who was bringing in the coffee—“isn’t she coming down?”
“No, sir. She’s taking her breakfast upstairs.”
Peter felt blank. Then suddenly he realised—of course she was tired! What a brute he was not to think of it—it was all very well for him to feel vigorous after such a journey, and go traipsing round the farm; but Vera—she was made of more delicate stuff.... He had a feeling as if he must apologise to her for having even thought she was coming down; and running upstairs he knocked at her door.
“Come in,” said Vera’s rather deep, sweet voice.
Her room was full of sunshine too, but the blind was down so that it did not fall on the bed. She lay in the shadow, reading her letters and smoking a cigarette. Peter had another shock of the incongruous.
“My darling, are you dreadfully tired?”
“No—I feel quite revived this morning,” and she lifted her long white throat for him to kiss.
“Have you had your breakfast?”
“All I want. I’m not much of a breakfast eater, that’s one reason why I prefer having it up here.”
“But—but aren’t you ever coming down?”
“Poor boy—do you feel lonely without me?”
“Yes, damnably,” said Peter.
“But, my dear, I’d be poor company for you at this hour. I’m much better upstairs till ten or eleven—besides it makes the day so long if one’s down for breakfast.”
Peter looked at her silently—her argument dispirited him: “the day so long.”... For him the day was never long enough. He suddenly saw her as infinitely older and tireder than himself.
“Run down and have yours, now,” she said to him, “and then you can come up and sit with me for a bit before I dress.”
The next day Mary Pembroke came to Conster, and that same evening was confronted by her family. Sir John insisted on everyone being present, except Gervase—whom he still considered a mere boy—and the daughters-in-law. Vera was glad to be left out, for she had no wish to sit in judgment on a fellow woman, in whose guilt she believed and with whose lies she sympathised, but Rose was indignant, for she detected a slight in the omission.
“Besides,” she said to her husband, “I’m the only one who considers the problem chiefly from a moral point of view—the rest think only of the family, whether it will be good or bad for their reputation if she fights the case.”
“What about me?” asked her husband, perhaps justly aggrieved—“surely you can trust me not to forget the moral side of things.”
“Well, I hope so I’m sure. But you must speak out and not be afraid of your father.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“Indeed you are—you never can stand up to him. It’s he who manages this parish, not you.”
“How can you say that?”
“What else can I say when you still let him read the lessons after he created such a scandal by saying ‘damn’ when the pages stuck together.”
“Nobody heard him.”
“Indeed they did—all the three first rows, and the choir boys. It’s so bad for them. If I’d been in your place he shouldn’t have read another word.”
“My dear, I assure you it wasn’t such a scandal as you think—certainly not enough to justify a breach with my father.”
“That’s just it—you’re afraid of him, and I want you to stand your ground this time. It’s not right that we should be looked down upon the way we are, but we always will be if you won’t stick up for yourself—and I really fail to see why you should countenance immorality just to please your father.”
Perhaps it was owing to this conversation with his wife that during most of the conference George sat dumb. As a matter of fact, nobody talked much, except Sir John and Mary. Mary had a queer, desperate volubility about her—she who was so aloof had now become familiar, to defend her aloofness. Her whole nature shrank from the exposure of the divorce court.
“But what have you got to expose?” cried Sir John when she used this expression, “you tell me you’ve done nothing.”
“I’ve loved Julian, and he’s killed my love for him—I don’t want that shown up before everybody.”
“It won’t be—it doesn’t concern the case.”
“Oh, yes, it does—that sort of thing always comes out—‘the parties were married in 1912 and lived happily together till 1919, when the respondent left the petitioner without any explanation’—it’ll be all to Julian’s interest to show that he made me an excellent husband and that I loved him devotedly till Something—which means Somebody—came between us.”
“He’ll do that if you don’t defend the case.”
“But it won’t be dwelt on—pored over—it won’t provide copy for the newspapers. Oh, can’t anybody see that when a woman makes a mistake like mine she doesn’t want it read about at the breakfast tables of thousands of—of——”
“One would understand you much better,” said Doris, who for a few moments had been swallowing violently as a preliminary to speech—“one would understand you much better if what you objected to was thousands of people reading that you’d been unfaithful to the husband you once loved so much.”
“But it wouldn’t be true.”
“They’d believe it all the same—naturally, if the decree was given against you.”
“I don’t care about that—it’s what’s true that I mind people knowing.”
“Don’t be a fool,” interrupted Sir John—“you’re not going to disgrace your family for an idea like that.”
“I’ll disgrace it worse if I give the thing all the extra publicity of a defended suit.”
“But, Mary dear,” said Lady Alard—“think how dreadful it will be for us as well as for you if the decree is given against you. There’s Jenny, now—it’s sure to interfere with her prospects—What did you say, Jenny?”
“Nothing, Mother,” said Jenny, who had laughed.
“But you don’t seem to consider,” persisted Mary, “that even if I defend the case I may lose it—and then we’ll all be ever so much worse off than if I’d let it go quietly through.”
“And Julian have his revenge without even the trouble of fighting for it!” cried Sir John. “I tell you he’s got nothing of a case against you if you choose to defend it.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Appearances are pretty bad.”
“Egad, you’re cool, Ma’am!—But I forgot—you don’t care tuppence what people think as long as they don’t think what’s true. But, damn it all, there’s your family to be considered as well as yourself.”
“Is it that you want to marry Charles Smith?” asked Peter. “If she does, Sir, it’s hardly fair to make her risk....”
“Listen to me!” George had spoken at last—the voice of morality and religion was lifted from the chesterfield. “You must realise that if the decree is given against her, she will not be free in the eyes of the Church to marry again. Whereas if she gets a decree against her husband, she would find certain of the more moderate-minded clergy willing to perform the ceremony for the innocent partner.”
“I don’t see that,” said Peter rudely—“she’d be just as innocent if she lost the suit.”
“She wouldn’t be legally the innocent partner,” said George, “and no clergyman in the land would perform the ceremony for her.”
“Which means that the Church takes the argument from law and not from facts.”
“No—no. Not at all. In fact, the Church as a whole condemns, indeed—er—forbids the re-marriage of divorced persons. But the Church of England is noted for toleration, and there are certain clergy who would willingly perform the ceremony for the innocent partner. There are others—men like Luce, for instance—who are horrified at the idea of such a thing. But I’ve always prided myself on——”
“Hold your tongue, George,” broke in his father, “I won’t have you and Peter arguing about such rubbish.”
“I’m not arguing with him, Sir. I would scarcely argue with Peter on an ecclesiastical subject. In the eyes of the Church——”
“Damn the eyes of the Church! Mary is perfectly free to re-marry if she likes, innocent or guilty. If the Church won’t marry her, she can go to the registrar’s. You think nothing can be done without a clergyman, but I tell you any wretched little civil servant can do your job.”
“You all talk as if I wanted to marry again—” Mary’s voice shot up with a certain shrill despair in it. “I tell you it’s the last thing in the world I’d ever do—whatever you make me do I would never do that. Once is enough.”
“It would certainly look better if Mary didn’t re-marry,” said Doris, “then perhaps people would think she’d never cared for Commander Smith, and there was nothing in it.”
“But why did you go about with him, dear?” asked Lady Alard—“if you weren’t really fond of him?”
“I never said I wasn’t fond of him. I am fond of him—that’s one reason why I don’t want to marry him. He’s been a good friend to me—and I was alone ... and I thought I was free.... I saw other women going about with men, and nobody criticising. I didn’t know Julian was having me watched. I didn’t know I wasn’t free—and that now, thanks to you, I’ll never be free.”
She began to cry—not quietly and tragically, as one would have expected of her—but loudly, noisily, brokenly. She was broken.
The next morning Sir John drove up to London to consult his solicitors. The next day he was there again, taking Mary with him. After that came endless arguments, letters and consultations. The solicitors’ advice was to persuade Julian Pembroke to withdraw his petition, but this proved impossible, for Julian, it now appeared, was anxious to marry again. He had fallen in love with a young girl of nineteen, whose parents were willing to accept him if Mary could be decorously got rid of.
This made Sir John all the more resolute that Mary should not be decorously got rid of—if mud was slung there was always a chance of some of it sticking to Julian and spoiling his appearance for the sweet young thing who had won the doubtful prize of his affections. He would have sacrificed a great deal to bring a counter-petition, but very slight investigations proved that there was no ground for this. Julian knew what he was doing, and had been discreet, whereas Mary had put herself in the wrong all through. Sir John would have to content himself with vindicating his daughter’s name and making it impossible for Julian to marry his new choice.
Mary’s resistance had entirely broken down—the family had crushed her, and she was merely limp and listless in their hands. Nothing seemed to matter—her chance of a quiet retreat into freedom and obscurity was over, and now seemed scarcely worth fighting for. What did it matter if her life’s humiliation was exposed and gaped at?—if she had to stand up and answer dirty questions to prove her cleanness?... She ought to have been stronger, she knew—but it was difficult to be strong when one stood alone, without weapon or counsellor.
Jenny and Gervase were on her side, it is true, but they were negligible allies, whether from the point of view of impressing the family, or of any confidence their advice and arguments could inspire in herself. Vera Alard, though she did not share the family point of view, had been alienated by her sister-in-law’s surrender—“I’ve no sympathy with a woman who knows what she wants but hasn’t the courage to stand out for it,” she said to Peter. In her heart she thought that Mary was lying—that she had tried Charles Smith as a lover and found him wanting, but would have gladly used him as a means to freedom, if her family hadn’t butted in and made a scandal of it.
As for Peter, he no longer felt inclined to take his sister’s part. He was angry with her for her forgetfulness of her dignity. She had been careless of her honour, forgetting that it was not only hers but Alard’s—she had risked the family’s disgrace, before the world and before the man whose contempt of all the world’s would be hardest to bear. Peter hated such carelessness and such risks—he would do nothing more for Mary, especially as she had said she did not want to marry Charles Smith. If she had wanted that he would have understood her better, but she had said she did not want it, and thus had lost her only claim to an undefended suit. For Peter now did not doubt any more than his family that Julian would fail to prove his case.
Outside the family, Charles Smith did his best to help her. He came down to see her and try to persuade her people to let the petition go through undefended. But he was too like herself to be much use. He was as powerless as she to stand against her family, which was entering the divorce court in much the same spirit as its forefathers had gone to the Crusades—fired by the glory of the name of Alard and hatred of the Turk.
“I’m disappointed in my first co-respondent,” said Gervase to Jenny after he had left—“I’d expected something much more spirited—a blend of Abelard, Don Juan and Cesare Borgia, with a dash of Shelley. Instead of which I find a mild-mannered man with a pince-nez, who I know is simply dying to take me apart and start a conversation on eighteenth-century glass.”
“That’s because he isn’t a real co-respondent. You’ve only to look at Charles Smith to be perfectly sure he never did anything wrong in his life.”
“Well, let’s hope the Judge and jury will look at him, then.”
“I hope they won’t. I’m sure Mary wants to lose.”
“Not a defended case—she’d be simply too messed up after that.”
“She’ll be messed up anyhow, whether she wins or loses. There’ll be columns and columns about her and everything she did—and didn’t do—and might have done. Poor Mary ... I expect she’d rather lose, and then she can creep quietly away.”
“Do you think she’ll marry Smith?”
“No, I don’t. He’d like to marry her, or he thinks he’d like to, but I’m pretty sure she won’t have him.”
“Then she’d better win her case—or the family will make her have him.”
“George says she can’t marry again unless she’s the ‘innocent party.’”
“I don’t think what George says will make much difference. Anyhow, it’s a silly idea. If the marriage is dissolved, both of ’em can marry again—if the marriage isn’t dissolved, neither of ’em can, so I don’t see where George’s innocent party comes in. That’s Stella’s idea—part of her religion, you know—that marriage is a sacrament and can’t be dissolved. I think it’s much more logical.”
“I think it’s damned hard.”
“Yes, so do I. But then I think religion ought to be damned hard.”
“I’ll remind you of that next time I see you lounging in front of the fire when you ought to be in church. You know you hurt George’s feelings by not going.”
“I’m not partial to George’s sort of religion.”
“I hope you’re not partial to Stella’s—that would be another blow for this poor family.”
“Why?—it wouldn’t make any difference to them. Not that you need ever be afraid of my getting religion ... but if I did I must say I hope it would be a good stiff sort, that would give me the devil of a time. George arranges a nice comfortable service for me at eleven, with a family pew for me to sleep in. He preaches a nice comfortable sermon that makes me feel good, and then we all go home together in the nice comfortable car and eat roast beef and talk about who was there and how much there was in the collection. That isn’t my idea of the violent taking the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.”
“Are you trying to make me think that you’d be pious if only you were allowed to wear sandals and a hair shirt?”
“Oh, no, Jenny dear. But at least I can admire that sort of religion from a distance.”
“The distance being, I suppose, from here to Birmingham?”
“May I ask if you are what is vulgarly called getting at me?”
“Well, I’d like to know how long this correspondence between you and Stella has been going on.”
“Almost ever since she left—but we’ve only just got on to religion.”
“Be careful—that’s all. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“How?—with Stella or with Stella’s ideas?”
“Both,” said Jenny darkly.
Charles Smith was not allowed to come down again. The solicitors declared it advisable that Mary should see nothing of him while proceedings were pending. Indeed it was necessary to guard her reputation like a shrine. She stayed at Conster while the weeks dragged through the spring, and when in May Sir John and Lady Alard went for their yearly visit to Bath, it was decided that she should go to the Vicarage, so that a polish of sanctity and ecclesiastical patronage might be given to her stainlessness.
So she packed her belongings—helped by Jenny instead of Gisèle, whose wages had been beyond her means ever since her plunge for freedom—and they were taken to where Leasan Parsonage stood hidden among May trees and lilac bushes down Leasan lane.
Mary was not personally looking forward to the change, though the atmosphere of Conster was eruptive, and though one felt the family solidarity more strongly at the Manor than at the Parsonage, and was also—in spite of luxury—more conscious of the family’s evil days. Her feeling for Rose was almost fear—her bustle, her curiosity, her love of rule, her touch of commonness provoked an antipathy which was less dislike than alarm. She also shrank from the ugliness and discomforts of the Vicarage life—Rose was supposed to have a gift for training Raw Girls, and, as Gervase once said even when the girls ceased to be actually raw, they were still remarkably underdone. Chatter, scoldings, creaking footsteps, and the smell of bad cooking filled the house all day—George, whom Mary was inclined to like in spite of his stupidity, took the usual male refuge in flight, and spent most of his time shut up in his study, which shared the sanctity of Leasan church and could be invaded by no one but his wife.
There were also two rather colourless children, Lillian and Edna, whose governess—a more cultured type of Raw Girl—made a sixth at luncheon. It had always been a secret grief to Rose that she had never had a son; her only comfort was that no other Alard had done so up till now. But this comfort would probably be taken from her soon. Vera would be sure to have a son—Jewesses always did.... Rose thought vaguely about Abraham....
The day started early at Leasan Parsonage—not that there was any particular reason why it should, but eight o’clock breakfast was Rose’s best protest against the sloppy ways of Conster, where you came down to breakfast when you liked, or had it upstairs. Mary was addicted to the latter vice, and on her first morning at Leasan came down heavy-eyed, with that especial sense of irritation and inadequacy which springs from a hurried toilet and a lukewarm bath.
“So you wear a tea-gown for breakfast,” said Rose, who wore a sports coat and a tweed skirt.
“A breakfast gown.”
“It’s the same thing. In fact you might call it a dressing-gown with those sleeves. Edna, don’t drink your tea with a spoon.”
“It’s too hot, Mother.”
“Well, leave it till it gets cooler. Don’t drink it with a spoon—you’ll be pouring it into your saucer next. George, what are your letters about today?”
“Income tax mostly—and there’s Mr. Green writing again about a Choral Celebration.”
“Well, you must be firm with him and tell him we can’t possibly have one. I told you what it would be, engaging an organist who’s used to such things—they won’t give them up.”
“I thought it might be possible to arrange it once a month, at an hour when it won’t interfere with Matins.”
“Nonsense, dear. The boys’ voices could never manage it and the men would go on strike.”
“They’re becoming fairly general, you know, even in country churches.”
“Well, I think it’s a pity. I’ve always distrusted anything that tends to make religion emotional.”
“I can’t understand anyone’s emotions—at least voluptuous emotions—being stirred by anything our choir could do.”
“George!—‘voluptuous’”—a violent shake of the head—“pas devant les enfants. Who’s your cheque from?”
“Dr. Mount. He’s very generously subscribing to the Maternity Fund. He says ‘I feel I’ve got a duty to Leasan as well as Vinehall, as I have patients in both parishes.’”
“I call that very good of him, for I know he never makes more than five hundred a year out of the practice. By the way, have you heard that Stella’s back?”
“I saw her driving through Vinehall yesterday. Edna and Lillian, you may get down now for a great treat, and have a run in the garden before Miss Cutfield comes.”
“May we go to meet Miss Cutfield?”
“If you don’t go further than the end of the lane. That’s right, darlings—say your grace—‘for what we have received,’ Edna, not ‘about to’—now run away.”
“Why are you sending away the children?” asked George.
“Because I want to talk about Stella Mount.”
“But why is Stella unfit to discuss before the children?”
“Oh, George—you must know!—it was simply dreadful the way she ran after Peter.”
“You don’t think she’s still running after him?”
“I think it’s a bad sign she’s come back.”
“Her father wanted her, I expect. That chauffeur-secretary he had was no good. Besides, I expect she’s got over her feeling for Peter now.”
“I’m sure I hope she has, but you never know with a girl like Stella. She has too many ways of getting out of things.”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“Oh, confession and all that. All she has to do is to go to a Priest and he’ll let her off anything.”
“Come, come, my dear, that is hardly a fair summary of what the Prayer Book calls ‘the benefit of absolution.’ My own position with regard to confession has always been that it is at least tolerable and occasionally helpful.”
“Not the way a girl like Stella would confess,” said Rose darkly—“Oh, I don’t mean anything wrong—only the whole thing seems to me not quite healthy. I dislike the sort of religion that gets into everything, even people’s meals. I expect Stella would rather die than eat meat on Friday.”
“But surely, dear,” said George who was rather dense—“that sort would not encourage her to run after a married man.”
“Well, if you can’t use your eyes! ... she’s been perfectly open about it.”
“But she hasn’t been here at all since he married.”
“I’m talking of before that—when she was always meeting him.”
“But if he wasn’t married you can hardly accuse her of running after a married man.”
“He’s married now. Don’t be so stupid, dear.”
Peter was a little annoyed to find that Stella had come back. It would perhaps be difficult to say why—whether her return was most disturbing to his memory or to his pride. He would have angrily denied that to see her again was in any sense a resurrection—and he would just as angrily have denied that her attitude of detached friendliness was disagreeable to his vanity. Surely he had forgotten her ... surely he did not want to think that she could ever forget him....
He did not press these questions closely—his nature shrank from unpleasant probings, and after all Stella’s presence did not make anything of that kind necessary. He saw very little of her. She came to tea at Starvecrow, seemed delighted with the improvements, was becomingly sweet to Vera—and after that all he had of her was an occasional glimpse at Conster or on the road.
It could not be said, by any stretch of evidence, that she was running after a married man. But Rose Alard soon had a fresh cause for alarm. Stella was seeing a great deal too much of Gervase. She must somehow have got into touch with the younger brother during her absence from home, for now on her return there seemed to be a friendship already established. They were occasionally seen out walking together in the long summer evenings, and on Sundays he sometimes went with her to church at Vinehall—which was a double crime, since it disparaged George’s ministrations at Leasan.
“I should hate to say she was mercenary,” said Rose reflectively, “but I must say appearances are against her—turning to the younger brother as soon as she’s lost the elder.”
“I don’t see where the mercenariness comes it,” said Mary—“Gervase won’t have a penny except what he earns, and there’s Peter and his probable sons, as well as George, between him and the title.”
“But he’s an Alard—I expect Stella would like to marry into the family.”
“I fail to see the temptation.”
“Well, anyhow, I think it very bad taste of her to take him to church at Vinehall—it’s always been difficult to get him to come here as it is, and George says he has no influence over him whatever.”
Mary only sighed. She could not argue with Rose, yet she had a special sympathy for a woman who having had love torn out of her heart tried to fill the empty aching space as best she could. Of course it was selfish—though not so selfish in Stella as it had been in herself, and she hoped Stella would not have to suffer as she had suffered. After all, it would do Gervase good to be licked into shape by a woman like Stella—he probably enjoyed the hopelessness of his love—if indeed it was hopeless ... and she could understand the relief that his ardent, slightly erratic courtship must be after Peter’s long series of stolid blunders.
But Stella was not quite in the position Mary fancied. She was not letting Gervase court her, indeed he would never have thought of doing so. She seemed definitely apart from any idea of love-making—she set up intangible barriers round herself, which even his imagination could not cross. Perhaps some day ... but even for “some day” his plans were not so much of love as of thinking of love.
Meanwhile she fulfilled a definite need of his, just as he fulfilled a need of hers. She gave him an outlet for the pent-up thoughts of his daily drives, and the society of a mind which delighted him with its warmth and quickness. Gervase too had a quick mind, and his and Stella’s struck sparks off each other, creating a glow in which he sometimes forgot that his heart went unwarmed. Their correspondence had been a slower, less stimulating version of the same process. They had discussed endless subjects through the post, and now Stella had come home in the midst of the most interesting. It was the most interesting to him because it was obviously the most interesting to her. She had bravely taken her share in their other discussions, but he soon discovered that she was too feminine to care about politics, too concrete to grasp abstractions, and that in matters of art and literature her taste was uncertain and often philistine. But in the matter of religion she showed both a firmer standing and a wider grasp. Indeed he was to find that her religion was the deepest, the most vital and most interesting part of her—in it alone did the whole Stella come alive.
The topic had been started by the tragedy of Mary’s marriage, and at first he had been repulsed by her attitude, which he thought strangely unlike her in its rigidity. But as time went on he began to contrast it favourably with George’s compromises—here was a faith which at least was logical, and which was not afraid to demand the uttermost.... They continued the discussion after she had come home, and he was surprised to see what he had hitherto looked upon equally as a fad and a convention, a collection of moral and intellectual lumber, show itself almost shockingly as an adventure and a power. Not that Stella had felt the full force of it yet—her life had always run pretty smoothly through the simplicities of joy and sorrow, there had been no conflict, no devastation. But strangely enough he, an outsider, seemed able to see what she herself possibly did not realise—that she carried in her heart a force which might one day both make and break it.
It had been his own suggestion that he should go with her to church, though he did not know whether it was to satisfy a hope or dismiss a fear. He had lost the detached attitude with which he had at first approached the subject, much as he would have approached Wells’s new novel or the Coalition Government. To his surprise he found himself at ease in the surroundings of Vinehall’s Parish Mass. Its gaiety and homeliness seemed the natural expression of instinctive needs. Vinehall church was decorated in a style more suggestive of combined poverty and enterprise than of artistic taste; the singing—accompanied rather frivolously on a piano—was poor and sometimes painful; the sermon was halting and trite. These things were better done by brother George at Leasan. But the Mass seemed strangely independent of its outward expression, and to hold its own solemn heart of worship under circumstances which would have destroyed the devotions of Leasan. Here, thought Gervase, was a faith which did not depend on the beauty of externals for its appeal—a faith, moreover, which was not afraid to make itself hard to men, which threw up round itself massive barriers of hardship, and yet within these was warm and sweet and friendly—which was furthermore a complete adventure, a taking of infinite risks, a gateway on unknown dangers....
As he knelt beside Stella in a silence which was like a first kiss, so old in experience did it seem, in spite of the shock of novelty, he found that the half-forgotten romances of his childhood were beginning to take back their colours and shine in a new light. Those figures of the Mother and her Child, the suffering Son of Man, the warm-hearted, thick-headed, glorious company of the apostles, which for so long had lived for him only in the gilt frames of Renaissance pictures, now seemed to wake again to life and friendliness. Once more he felt the thrill of the Good Shepherd going out to see the lost sheep ... and all the bells of heaven began to ring.
George Alard could not help being a little vexed at Gervase’s new tendencies. He told himself that he ought to be glad the boy was going to church at all, for he had been negligent and erratic for a long time past—he ought not to feel injured because another man had won him to some sense of his duty. But he must say he was surprised that Luce had succeeded where he himself had failed—Luce was a dry, dull fellow, and hopelessly unenterprising; not a branch in his parish of the C.E.M.S. or the A.C.S. or the S.P.G., no work-parties or parish teas, and no excitement about the Enabling Act and the setting up of a Parochial Church Council which was now occupying most of George’s time. Still, he reflected, it was probably not so much Luce as Stella Mount who had done it—she was a pretty girl and perhaps not too scrupulous, she had persuaded Gervase. Then there had always been that curious streak in his brother’s character which differentiated him from the other Alards. George did not know how to describe it so well as by Ungentlemanliness. That part of Gervase which had revolted from a Gentleman’s Education and had gone into an engineering shop instead of to Oxford was now revolting from a Gentleman’s Religion and going to Mass instead of Dearly Beloved Brethren. There had always seemed to George something ungentlemanly about Catholicism, though he prided himself on being broad-minded, and would have introduced one or two changes on High Church lines into the services at Leasan if his father and his wife had let him.
“Apart from every other consideration, I’m surprised he doesn’t realise how bad it looks for him to go Sunday to Vinehall when his brother is Vicar of Leasan.”
“He goes with Stella,” said Mary.
“I think that makes it worse,” said Rose.
“Why?” asked Peter.
He had come in to see George about his election to the Parochial Church Council, which his brother was extremely anxious should take place, but for which Peter had no wish to qualify himself. George had hoped that the bait of a seat on the Council, with the likelihood of being elected as the Parish’s representative at the Diocesan Conference, might induce Peter to avail himself once more of the church privileges which he had neglected for so long. It was uphill work, thought poor George, trying to run a parish when neither of one’s brothers came to church, and one’s father said ‘damn’ out loud when reading the lessons....
“Why?” asked Peter, a little resentful.
Rose looked uneasy——
“Well, everyone knows she used to run after you and now she’s running after Gervase.”
“She didn’t run after me and she isn’t running after Gervase,” said Peter; then he added heavily—“I ran after her, and Gervase is running after her now.”
“Oh!” Rose tossed her head—“I own I once thought ... but then when you married Vera ... well, anyhow I think she ought to discourage Gervase more than she does, and I insist that it’s in extremely bad taste for her to take him to church at Vinehall.”
“Perhaps he likes the service better,” said Mary, who during this discussion had been trying to write a letter and now gave up the effort in despair.
“Oh, I daresay he does—he’s young and excitable.”
“There’s nothing very exciting at Vinehall,” said George—“I don’t think Luce has even a surpliced choir these days.”
“Well, there’s incense and chasubles and all that—Gervase always did like things that are different.”
“I must say,” said Mary, who was perhaps a little irritated at having nowhere to write her letter (the Raw Girl being in devastating possession of her bedroom)—“I must say that if I had any religion myself, I’d like a religion which at least was religion and not soup.”
“What do you mean?”
Both George and Rose sat up stiffly, and even Peter looked shocked.
“Well, your religion here seems chiefly to consist in giving people soup-tickets and coal-tickets, and having rummage sales. Stella Mount’s religion at least means an attempt at worship, and at least.... Oh, well—” she broke down rather lamely—“anyhow it makes you want something you haven’t got.”
“We can most of us do that without religion,” said Peter, getting up.
Rose looked meaningly after him as he went out of the room, then she looked still more meaningly at her husband—it was as if her eyes and eyebrows were trying to tell him her conviction that Peter was finding life unsatisfactory in spite of Vera and Starvecrow, indeed that he regretted Stella—had he not championed her almost grotesquely just now? ... and he had talked of wanting something he had not got....
George refused to meet her eyes and read their language. He too rose and went out, but he did not follow Peter. He felt hurt and affronted by what Mary had said—“soup” ... that was what she had called the religion of her parish church, of her country, indeed, since George was convinced that Leasan represented the best in Anglicanism. Just because he didn’t have vestments and incense and foreign devotions, but plain, hearty, British services—because he looked after people’s bodies as well as their souls—he was to be laughed at by a woman like Mary, who—but he must not be uncharitable, he was quite convinced of Mary’s innocence, and only wished that her prudence had equalled it.
He walked out through the French windows of his study, and across the well-kept Vicarage lawn. Before him, beyond the lilacs Leasan’s squat towers stood against a misty blue sky. With its wide brown roof spreading low over its aisles almost to the ground the church was curiously like a sitting hen. It squatted like a hen over her brood, and gave a tender impression of watchfulness and warmth.... The door stood open, showing a green light that filtered in through creeper and stained glass. George went in, and the impression of motherly warmth was changed to one of cool emptiness. Rows of shining pews stretched from the west door to the chancel with its shining choir-stalls, and beyond in the sanctuary stood the shining altar with two shining brass candlesticks upon it.
George went to his desk and knelt down. But there was something curiously unprayerful in the atmosphere—he would have felt more at ease praying in his study or at his bedside. The emptiness of the church was something more than an emptiness of people—it was an emptiness of prayer. Now he came to think of it, he had never seen anyone at prayer in the church except at the set services—a good collection of the neighbouring gentlefolk at Matins, a hearty assembly of the villagers at Evensong, a few “good” people at the early celebration, and one or two old ladies for the Litany on Fridays—but never any prayer between, no farm lad ever on his knees before his village shrine, or busy mother coming in for a few minutes’ rest in the presence of God....
But that was what they did at Vinehall. He had looked into the church several times and had never seen it empty—there was always someone at prayer ... the single white lamp ... that was the Reserved Sacrament of course, theologically indefensible, though no doubt devotionally inspiring ... devotion—was it that which made the difference between religion and soup?
George felt a sudden qualm come over him as he knelt in his stall—it was physical rather than mental, though the memory of Mary’s impious word had once again stirred up his sleeping wrath. He lifted himself into a sitting position—that was better. For some weeks past he had been feeling ill—he ought to see a doctor ... but he daren’t, in case the doctor ordered him to rest. It was all very well for Mary to gibe at his work and call it soup, but it was work that must be done. She probably had no idea how hard he worked—visiting, teaching, sitting on committees, organising guilds, working parties, boy scouts, Church of England Men’s Society ... and two sermons on Sunday as well.... He was sure he did more than Luce, who had once told him that he looked upon his daily Mass as the chief work of his parish.... Luce wouldn’t wear himself out in his prime as George Alard was doing.... Soup!
Mary went back to Conster for the uneasy days of the Summer. Her heart sickened at the dragging law—her marriage took much longer to unmake that it had taken to make. She thought of how her marriage was made—Leasan church ... the smell of lilies ... the smell of old lace ... lace hanging over her eyes, a white veil over the wedding-guests, over her father as he gave her away, over her brother as he towered above her in surplice and stole, over her bridegroom, kneeling at her side, holding her hand as he parted her shaking fingers ... “with this ring I thee wed” ... “from this day forward, till death do us part.”... How her heart was beating—fluttering in her throat like a dove ... now she was holding one fringed end of George’s stole, while Julian held the other—“that which God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”
And now the unmaking—such a fuss—such a business this putting asunder! Telegrams, letters, interviews ... over and over again the story of her disillusion, of her running away, of her folly ... oh, it was all abominable, but it was her own fault—she should not have given in. Why could she never endure things quite to the end? When she had found out that Julian the husband was not the same as Julian the lover, but an altogether more difficult being, why had her love failed and died? And now that love was dead and she had run away from the corpse, why had she allowed her family to persuade her into this undignified battle over the grave? Why had she not gone quietly out of her husband’s life into the desolate freedom of her own, while he turned to another woman and parted her fingers to wear the pledge of his eternal love.
If only she had been a little better or a little worse!... A little better, and she could have steadied her marriage when it rocked, a little worse and she could have stepped out of it all, cast her memories from her, and started the whole damn thing over again as she had seen so many women do. But she wasn’t quite good enough for the one or bad enough for the other, so she must suffer as neither the good nor the bad have to suffer. She must pay the price for being fine, but not fine enough.
In Autumn the price was paid. For three days counsel argued on the possibility or impossibility of a woman leaving one man except for another—on the possibility or impossibility of a woman being chaste when in the constant society of a male friend—on the minimum time which must be allowed for misconduct to take place. Waiters, chambermaids, chauffeurs gave confused evidence—there was “laughter in court”—the learned judge asked questions that brought shame into the soft, secret places of Mary’s heart—Julian stood before her to tell her and all the world that she had loved him once.... She found herself in the witness-box, receiving from her counsel the wounds of a friend.... Of course Julian must be blackened to account for her leaving him—was she able to paint him black enough? Probably not, since the verdict was given in his favour.
Most of the next day’s papers contained photographs of Mrs. Pembroke leaving the divorce court after a decree nisi had been obtained against her by her husband, Mr. Julian Pembroke (inset).
In spite of the non-committal attitude of his solicitors, Sir John Alard had been sure that to defend the suit would be to vindicate Mary and her family against the outrageous Julian. He would not believe that judgment could go against his daughter except by default, and now that this incredible thing had happened, and Mary had been publicly and argumentatively stripped of her own and Alard’s good name, while Julian, with innocence and virtue proclaimed by law, was set free to marry his new choice, he felt uncertain whether to blame most his daughter’s counsel or his daughter herself.
Counsel had failed to make what he might out of Julian’s cross-examination ... what a fruitful field was there! If only Sir John could have cross-examined Julian himself! There would have been an end of that mirage of the Deceived and Deserted Husband which had so impressed the court.... But Mary was to blame as well as counsel. She really had been appallingly indiscreet ... her cross-examination—Lord! what an affair! What a damn fool she had made of herself!—Hang it all, he’d really have thought better of her if she’d gone the whole hog ... the fellow wasn’t much good in the witness-box either ... but he’d behaved like a gentleman afterwards. He had made Mary a formal proposal of marriage the morning after the decree was given. The only thing to do now was for her to marry him.
Lady Alard marked her daughter’s disgrace by sending for Dr. Mount in the middle of the night, and “nearly dying on his hands” as she reproachfully told Mary when she returned to Conster the next afternoon. Mary looked a great deal more ill than her mother—dazed and blank she sat by Lady Alard’s sofa, listening to the tale of her sorrows and symptoms, only a slow occasional trembling of her lip showing that her heart was alive and in torment under the dead weight of her body’s stupefaction. All her mind and being was withdrawn into herself, and during the afternoon was in retreat, seeking strength for the last desperate stand that she must make.
After tea, Peter arrived, looking awkward and unhappy—then George, looking scared and pompous. Mary knew that a family conclave had been summoned, and her heart sank. What a farce and a sham these parliaments were, seeing that Alard was ruled by the absolute monarchy of Sir John. No one would take her part, unless perhaps it was Gervase—Uranus in the Alard system—but he would not be there today; she must stand alone. She gripped her hands together under the little bag on her lap, and in her dry heart there was a prayer at last—“Oh, God, I have never been able to be quite true to myself—now don’t let me be quite untrue.”
As soon as the servants had cleared away the last of the tea things—there had been a pretence of offering tea to Peter and George, as if they had casually dropped in—Sir John cast aside all convention of accident, and opened the attack.
“Well,” he said to his assembled family—“it’s been a dreadful business—unexpectedly dreadful. Shows what the Divorce Court is under all this talk about justice. There’s been only one saving clause to the whole business, and that’s Smith’s behaviour. He might have done better in the witness-box, but he’s stuck by Mary all through, and made her a formal offer of marriage directly the decree was given.”
“That was the least he could do,” said Peter.
“Of course; you needn’t tell me that. But I’ve seen such shocking examples of bad faith during the last three days.... It’s a comfort to find one man behaving decently. I’m convinced that the only thing Mary can do is to marry him as soon as the decree is made absolute.”
George gave a choking sound, and his father’s eye turned fiercely upon him.
“Well, sir—what have you to say?”
“I—I—er—only that Mary can’t marry again now—er—under these new circumstances ... only the innocent partner....”
“You dare, Sir! Damn it all—I’ll believe in my own daughter’s innocence in spite of all the courts in the country.”
“I don’t mean that she isn’t innocent—er—in fact—but the decree has been given against her.”
“What difference does that make?—if she was innocent before the decree she’s innocent after it, no matter which way it goes. Damn you and your humbug, Sir. But it doesn’t matter in the least—she can marry again, whatever you say; the law allows it, so you can’t stop it. She shall be married in Leasan church.”
“She shall not, Sir.”
A deep bluish flush was on George’s cheek-bones as he rose to his feet. Sir John was for a moment taken aback by defiance from such an unexpected quarter, but he soon recovered himself.
“I tell you she shall. Leasan belongs to me.”
“The living is in your gift, Sir, but at present I hold it, and as priest of this parish, I refuse to lend my church for the marriage of the guil—er—in fact, for—the marriage.”
“Bunkum! ‘Priest of this parish’—you’ll be calling yourself Pope next. If you can’t talk sense you can clear out.”
George was already at the door, and the hand he laid upon it trembled violently.
“Don’t go!”—it was Mary who cried after him—“there’s no need for you to upset yourself about my marriage. I haven’t the slightest thought of getting married.”
But George had gone out.
There was an uneasy shuffle of relief throughout the room. The situation, though still painful, had been cleared of an exasperating side-issue. But at the same time Mary was uncomfortably aware that she had changed the focus of her father’s anger from her brother to herself.
“What do you mean?” he rapped out, when the sound of George’s protesting retreat had died away.
“I mean that you and George have been arguing for nothing. As I told you some time ago, I haven’t the slightest intention of marrying Charles.”
“And why not, may I ask?”
“Because I’ve had enough of marriage.”
“But Mary, think of us—think of your family,” wailed Lady Alard—“what are we going to do if you don’t marry?”
“I can’t see what difference it will make.”
“It will make all the difference in the world. If you marry Charles and go abroad for a bit, you’ll find that after a time people will receive you—I don’t say here, but in London. If you don’t marry, you will always be looked upon with suspicion.”
“Why?”
“Married women without husbands always are.”
“Then in spite of all the judges and juries and courts and decrees, I’m still a married woman?”
“I don’t see what else you’re to call yourself, dear. You’re certainly not a spinster, and you can’t say you’re a widow.”
“Then if I marry again I shall have two husbands, and in six months Julian will have two wives.”
Lady Alard began to weep.
“For God’s sake! let’s stop talking this nonsense,” cried Sir John. “Mary’s marriage has been dissolved, and her one chance of reinstating herself—and us—is by marrying this man who’s been the cause of all the trouble. I say it’s her duty—she’s brought us all into disgrace, so I don’t think it’s asking too much of her to take the only possible way of getting us out, even at the sacrifice of her personal inclinations.”
“Father—I never asked you to defend the case. I begged you not to—all this horror we have been through is due to your defence.”
“If you’d behaved properly there would have been no case at all, and if you had behaved with only ordinary discretion the defence could have been proved. When I decided that we must, for the honour of the family, defend the case, I had no idea what an utter fool you had been. Your cross-examination was a revelation to me as well as to the court. You’ve simply played Old Harry with your reputation, and now the only decent thing for you to do is to marry this man and get out.”
“I can get out without marrying this man.”
“And where will you go?”
“I shall go abroad. I have enough money of my own to live on quietly, and I needn’t be a disgrace to anyone. If I marry Charles I shall only bring unhappiness to both of us.”
“Oh, Mary, do be reasonable!” cried Lady Alard—“do think of the girls”—with a wave that included both twenty-two and thirty-eight—“and do think how all this is your own fault. When you first left Julian, you should have come here and lived at home, then no one would ever have imagined anything. But you would go off and live by yourself, and think you could do just the same as if you weren’t married—though I’m sure I’d be sorry to see Jenny going about with anyone as you went about with Charles Smith. When I was engaged to your father, we were hardly ever so much as left alone in a room together——”
“Your reminiscences are interesting, my dear,” said Sir John, “but cast no light on the situation. The point is that Mary refuses to pay the price of her folly, even though by doing so she could buy out her family as well as herself.”
“I fail to see how.”
“Then you must be blind.”
“It seems to me it would be much better if I went right away. I’ve made a hideous mess of my life, and brought trouble upon you all—I acknowledge that; but at least there’s one thing I will not do—and that is walk with my eyes open into the trap I walked into ten years ago with my eyes shut.”
“Then you need expect nothing more from your family.”
“I won’t.”
“Father,” said Peter—“if she isn’t fond of the chap....”
Mary interrupted him.
“Don’t—it isn’t quite that. I am fond of him. I’m not in love with him or anything romantic, but I’m fond of him, and for that very reason I won’t take this way out. He’s twenty years older than I am, and set in his bachelor ways—and I firmly believe that only chivalry has made him stand by me as he has done. He doesn’t in his heart want to marry a woman who’s ruined and spoiled ... and I won’t let him throw himself away. If I leave him alone, he can live things down—men always can; but if I marry him, he’ll sink with me. And I’ve nothing to give him that will make up to him for what he will suffer. I won’t let him pay such a price for ... for being ... kind to me.”
Nobody spoke a word. Perhaps the introduction of Charles Smith’s future as a motive for refusing to use him to patch up the situation struck the Alards as slightly indecent. And Mary suddenly knew that if the argument were resumed she would yield—that she was at the end of her resources and could stand out no longer. Her only chance of saving Charles’s happiness and her own soul now lay in the humiliation of flight. There is only one salvation for the weak and that is to realise their weakness. She rose unsteadily to her feet. A dozen miles seemed to yawn between her and the door....
“Where are you going, Mary?” asked Sir John—“we haven’t nearly finished talking yet.”
Would anybody help her?—yes—here was Jenny unexpectedly opening the door for her and pushing her out. And in the hall was Gervase, his Ford lorry throbbing outside in the drive.
“Gervase!” cried Mary faintly—“if I pack in ten minutes, will you take me to the station?”
It was a very different packing from that before Mary’s departure eighteen months ago. There was no soft-treading Gisèle, and her clothes, though she had been at Leasan six months, were fewer than when she had come for a Christmas visit. They were still beautiful, however, and Mary still loved them—it hurt her to see Jenny tumbling and squeezing them into the trunk. But she must not be critical, it was as well perhaps that she had someone to pack for her who did not really care for clothes and did not waste time in smoothing and folding ... because she must get out of the house quickly, before the rest of the family had time to find out what she was about. It was undignified, she knew, but her many defeats had brought her a bitter carelessness.
The sisters did not talk much during the packing. But Mary knew that Jenny approved of what she was doing. Perhaps Jenny herself would like to be starting out on a flight from Alard. She wondered a little how Jenny’s own affair was going—that unacknowledged yet obsessing affair. She realised rather sadly that she had lost her sister’s confidence—or perhaps had never quite had it. Her own detachment, her own passion for aloofness and independence had grown up like a mist between them. And now when her aloofness was destroyed, when some million citizens of England were acquainted with her heart, when all the golden web she had spun round herself was torn, soiled and scattered, her sister was gone. She stood alone—no longer set apart, no longer veiled from her fellows by delicate self-spun webs—but just alone.
“Shall I ring for Pollock?” said Jenny.
“No, I’d much rather you didn’t.”
“Then how shall we manage about your trunk?—it’s too heavy for us to carry down ourselves.”
“Can’t Gervase carry it?”
“Yes—I expect he could.”
She called her brother up from the hall, and he easily swung up the trunk on his shoulder. As he did so, and Mary saw his hands with their broken nails and the grime of the shop worked into the skin, she realised that they symbolised a freedom which was more actual than any she had made. Gervase was the only one of the family who was really free, though he worked ten hours a day for ten shillings a week. Doris was not free, for she had accepted the position of idle daughter, and was bound by all the ropes of a convention which had no substance in fact. Peter was not free because he had, Mary knew, married away from his real choice, and was now bound to justify his new choice to his heart—George was not free, he was least free of all, because individual members of the family had power over him as well as the collective fetish. Jenny was not free, because she must love according to opportunity. Slaves ... all the Alards were slaves ... to Alard—to the convention of the old county family with its prosperity of income and acres, its house, its servants, its ancient name and reputation—a convention the foundations of which were rotten right through, which was bound to topple sooner or later, crushing all those who tried to shelter under it. So far only two had broken away, herself and Gervase—herself so feebly, so painfully, in such haste and humiliation, he so calmly and carelessly and sufficiently. He would be happy and prosperous in his freedom, but she ... she dared not think.
However, Jenny was thinking for her.
“What will you do, Mary?” she asked, as they crossed the hall—“where are you going?”
“I’m going back to London. I don’t know yet what I’ll do.”
“Have you enough money? I can easily lend you something—I cashed a cheque yesterday.”
“Oh, I’m quite all right, thanks.”
“Do you think you’ll go abroad?”
“I’ll try to. Meg is going again next month. I expect I could go with her.”
They were outside. Mary’s box was on the back of the lorry, and Gervase already on the driver’s seat. It was rather a lowly way of leaving the house of one’s fathers. Mary had never been on the lorry before, and had some difficulty in climbing over the wheel.
Jenny steadied her, and for a moment kept her hand after she was seated.
“Of course you know I think you’re doing the only possible thing.”
“Yes ... thank you, Jenny; but I wish I’d done it earlier.”
“How could you?”
“Refused to defend the case—spared myself and everybody all this muck.”
“It’s very difficult, standing up to the family. But you’ve done it now. I wish I could.... Goodbye, Mary dear, and I expect we’ll meet in town before very long.”
“Goodbye.”
The Ford gargled, and they ran round the flower-bed in the middle of Conster’s gravel sweep. Jenny waved farewell from the doorstep and went indoors. Gervase began to whistle; he seemed happy—“I wonder,” thought Mary, “if it’s true that he’s in love.”
During the upheaval which followed Mary’s departure, George Alard kept away from Conster. He wouldn’t go any more, he said, where he wasn’t wanted. What was the good of asking his advice if he was to be insulted—publicly insulted when he gave it? He brooded tenaciously over the scene between him and his father. Sir John had insulted him not only as a man but as a priest, and he had a right to be offended.
Rose supported him at first—she was glad to find that there were occasions on which he would stand up to his father. George had been abominably treated, she told Doris—really one was nearly driven to say that Sir John had no sense of decency.
“He speaks to him exactly as if he were a child.”
“He speaks to us all like that.”
“Then it’s high time somebody stood up to him, and I’m very glad George did so.”
“My dear Rose—if you think George stood up....”
After a time Rose grew a little weary of her husband’s attitude, also though she was always willing to take up arms against the family at Conster, she had too practical an idea of her own and her children’s interests to remain in a state of war. George had made his protest—let him now be content.
But George was nursing his injury with inconceivable perseverance. Hitherto she had often had to reproach him for his subservience to his father, for the meekness with which he accepted his direction and swallowed his affronts.
“If you can put up with his swearing in church, you can put up with what he said to you about Mary.”
“He has insulted me as a priest.”
“He probably doesn’t realise you are one.”
“That’s just it.”
She seemed to have given him fresh cause for brooding. He sulked and grieved, and lost interest in his parish organisations—his Sunday School and Mothers’ Union, his Sewing Club and Coal Club, his Parochial Church Council—now established in all its glory, though without Peter’s name upon the roll, his branches of the S.P.G., the C.E.M.S., all those activities which used to fill his days, which had thrilled him with such pride when he enumerated them in his advertisements for a locum in the Guardian.
He developed disquieting eccentricities, such as going into the church to pray. Rose would not have minded this if he had not fretted and upset himself because he never found anyone else praying there.
“Why should they?” she asked, a little exasperated—“They can say their prayers just as well at home.”
“I’ve never been into Vinehall church and found it empty.”
“Oh, you’re still worrying about Gervase going to Vinehall?”
“I’m not talking about Gervase. I’m talking about people in general. Vinehall church is used for prayer—mine is always empty except on Sundays.”
“Indeed it’s not—I’ve often seen people in it, looking at the old glass, and the carving in the South Aisle.”
“But they don’t pray.”
“Of course not. We English don’t do that sort of thing in public. They may at Vinehall; but you know what I think of Vinehall—it’s un-English.”
“I expect it’s what the whole of England was like before the Reformation.”
“George!” cried Rose—“you must be ill.”
Only a physical cause could account for such mental disintegration. She decided to send for Dr. Mount, who confirmed her diagnosis rather disconcertingly. George’s heart was diseased—had been diseased for some time. His case was the exact contrast of Lady Alard’s—those qualms and stabs and suffocations which for so long both he and his wife had insisted were indigestion, were in reality symptoms of the dread angina.
He must be very careful not to overstrain himself in any way. No, Dr. Mount did not think a parish like Leasan too heavy a burden—but of course a complete rest and holiday would do him good.
This, however, George refused to take—his new obstinacy persisted, and though the treatment prescribed by Dr. Mount did much to improve his general condition, mental as well as physical, he evidently still brooded over his grievances. There were moments when he tried to emphasise his sacerdotal dignity by a new solemnity of manner which the family at Conster found humorous, and the family at Leasan found irritating. At other times he was extraordinarily severe, threatening such discipline as the deprivation of blankets and petticoats to old women who would not come to church—the most irreproachable Innocent Partner could not have cajoled the marriage service out of him then. He also started reading his office in church every day, though Rose pointed out to him that it was sheer waste of time, since nobody came to hear it.
Social engagements of various kinds had always filled a good deal of George Alard’s life—he and Rose received invitations to most of the tea-parties, tennis-parties and garden-parties of the neighbourhood. He had always considered it part of his duty as a clergyman to attend these functions, just as he had considered it his duty to sit on every committee formed within ten miles and to introduce a branch of every episcopally-blessed Society into his own parish. Now with the decline of his interest in clubs and committees came a decline of his enthusiasm for tennis and tea. Rose deplored it all equally——
“If you won’t go to people’s parties you can’t expect them to come to your church.”
“I can and I do.”
“But they won’t.”
“Then let them stop away. The Church’s services aren’t a social return for hospitality received.”
“George, I wish you wouldn’t twist everything I say into some ridiculous meaning which I never intended—and I do think you might come with me to the Parishes this afternoon. You know they’re a sort of connection—at least everyone hopes Jim won’t marry Jenny.”
“I don’t feel well enough,” said George, taking a coward’s refuge—“not even to visit such close relations,” he added with one of those stray gleams of humour which were lost on Rose.
“Well, this is the second time I’ve been out by myself this week, and I must say.... However, if you don’t feel well enough.... But I think you’re making a great mistake—apart from my feelings....”
She went out, and George was left to the solitude and peace of his study. It was a comfortable room, looking out across the green, cedared lawn to the little church like a sitting hen. The walls were lined with books, the armchairs were engulfing wells of ease—there was a big writing-table by the window, and a rich, softly-coloured carpet on the floor. Rose’s work-bag on a side-table gave one rather agreeable feminine touch to the otherwise masculine scene. The room was typical of hundreds in the more prosperous parsonages of England, and George had up till quite recently felt an extraordinarily calm and soothing glow in its contemplation. It was ridiculous to think that a few words from his father—his father who was always speaking sharp, disparaging words—could have smashed all his self-satisfaction, all his pride of himself as Vicar of Leasan, all his comfortable possession of Leasan Vicarage and Leasan Church.... But now he seemed to remember that the dawn of that dissatisfaction had been in Leasan Church itself, before his father had spoken—while he was kneeling there alone among all those empty, shining pews....
He would go out for a walk. If he stopped at home he would only brood—it would be worse than going to the Parishes. He would go over and see Dr. Mount—it would save the doctor coming to the Vicarage, perhaps—there must be a visit about due—and they could have a chat and some tea. He liked Dr. Mount—a pleasant, happy, kind-hearted man.
The day was good for walking. The last of Autumn lay in ruddy veils over the woods of Leasan and Brede Eye. The smell of hops and apples was not all gone from the lanes. George walked through his parish with a professional eye on the cottages he passed. Most of the doors were shut in the afternoon stillness, but here and there a child swinging on a gate would smile at him shyly as he waved a Vicarial hand, or a woman would say “Good afternoon, Sir.” The cottages nearly all looked dilapidated and in want of paint and repair. George had done his duty and encouraged thrift among his parishioners, and the interiors of the cottages were many of them furnished with some degree of comfort, but the exterior structures were in bad condition owing to the poverty of the Manor. He cleared his throat distressfully once or twice—had one the right to own property when one could not afford to keep it in repair?... His philanthropic soul, bred in the corporal works of mercy, was in conflict with his racial instinct, bred in the tradition of the Squires.
When he came to Vinehall, he found to his disappointment that Dr. Mount was out, and not expected to be home till late that evening. George felt disheartened, for he had walked three miles in very poor condition. He would have enjoyed a cup of tea.... However, there was nothing to be done for it, unless indeed he went and called on Luce. But the idea did not appeal to him—he and the Rector of Vinehall were little more than acquaintances, and Luce was a shy, dull fellow who made conversation difficult. He had better start off home at once—he would be home in time for a late tea.
Then he remembered that the carrier’s cart would probably soon be passing through Vinehall and Leasan on its way from Robertsbridge station to Rye. If he went into the village he might be able to pick it up at the Eight Bells. Unfortunately he had walked the extra half-mile to the inn before he remembered that the cart went only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and today was Wednesday. He would have to walk home, more tired than ever. However, as he passed through the village, he thought of the church, partly because he was tired and wanted to rest, partly because Vinehall church always had a perverse fascination for him—he never could pass it without wanting to look in ... perhaps he had a secret, shameful hope that he would find it empty.
He crossed the farmyard, wondering why Luce did not at all costs provide a more decent approach, a wonder which was increased when, on entering the church, he found he had admitted not only himself but a large turkey, which in the chase that followed managed somehow to achieve more dignity than his pursuer. After three laps round the font it finally disappeared through the open door, and George collapsed on a chair, breathing hard, and not in the least devout.
The church had none of the swept, shiny look of Leasan, nor had it Leasan’s perfume of scrubbing and brass-polish; instead it smelt of stale incense, lamp-oil and old stones—partly a good smell and partly an exceedingly bad one. It was seated with rather dilapidated chairs, and at the east end was a huge white altar like a Christmas cake. There were two more altars at the end of the two side aisles and one of them was furnished with what looked suspiciously like two pairs of kitchen candlesticks. But what upset George most of all were the images, of which, counting crucifixes, there must have been about a dozen. His objections were not religious but aesthetic—it revolted his artistic taste to see the Christ pointing to His Sacred Heart, which He carried externally under His chin, to see St. Anthony of Padua looking like a girl in a monk’s dress, to see the Blessed Virgin with her rosary painted on her blue skirt—and his sense of reverence and decency to see the grubby daisy-chain with which some village child had adorned her. Luce must have bought his church furniture wholesale at a third-rate image shop....
George wished he could have stopped here, but he was bound to look further, towards the white star which hung in the east Yes ... it was just as usual ... a young man in working clothes was kneeling there ... and an immensely stout old woman in an apron was sitting not far off. Certainly the spectacle need not have inspired great devotional envy, but George knew that in his own parish the young man would probably have been lounging against the wall opposite the Four Oaks, while the old woman would have been having a nap before her kitchen fire. Certainly neither would have been found inside the church.
There was a murmur of voices at the back of the south aisle, and looking round George saw one or two children squirming in the pews, while behind a rather frivolous blue curtain showed the top of a biretta. Luce was hearing confessions—the confessions of children.... George stiffened—he felt scandalised at the idea of anyone under twelve having any religious needs beyond instruction. This squandering of the sacraments on the young ... as if they were capable of understanding them....
He turned to go out, feeling that after all the scales had dropped on the debit side of Vinehall’s godliness, when he heard behind him a heavy tread and the flutter of a cassock. Luce had come out of his confessional.
“Why—Mr. Alard.”
George was a little shocked to hear him speak out loud, and not in the solemn whisper he considered appropriate for church. The Rector seemed surprised to see him—did he want to speak to him about anything?
“Oh, no—I only looked in as I was passing.”
“Seen our new picture?” asked Luce.
“Which one?” The church must have contained at least a dozen pictures besides the Stations of the Cross.
“In the Sacrament Chapel.”
They went down to the east end, where Luce genuflected, and George, wavering between politeness and the Bishop of Exeter’s definition of the Real Presence, made a sort of curtsey. There was a very dark oil painting behind the Altar—doubtful as to subject, but the only thing in the church, George told himself, which had any pretence to artistic value.
“Mrs. Hurst gave us that,” said Luce—“it used to hang in her dining-room, but considering the subject she thought it better for it to be here.”
He had dropped his voice to a whisper—George thought it must be out of respect to the Tabernacle, but the next minute was enlightened.
“She’s asleep,” he said, pointing to the stout old woman.
“Oh,” said George.
“Poor old soul,” said Luce—“I hope the chair won’t give way—they sometimes do.”
He genuflected again, and this time the decision went in favour of the Bishop of Exeter, and George bowed as to an empty throne. On their way out his stick caught in the daisy-chain which the Mother of God was wearing, and pulled it off.
He and Luce walked out of the church together and through the farmyard without speaking a word. The silence oppressed George and he made a remark about the weather.
“Oh, yes, I expect it will,” said Luce vaguely.
He was a tall, white-faced, red-headed young man, who spoke with a slight stutter, and altogether, in his seedy cassock which the unkind sun showed less black than green, seemed to George an uninspiring figure, whose power it was difficult to account for. How was it that Luce could make his church a house of prayer and George could not? How was it that people thought and talked of Luce as a priest, consulted him in the affairs of their souls and resorted to him for the sacraments—whereas they thought of George only as a parson, paid him subscriptions and asked him to tea?
He was still wondering when they came to the cottage where the Rector lived—instead of in the twenty-five-roomed Rectory which the Parish provided, with an endowment of a hundred and fifty pounds a year. They paused awkwardly at the door, and the awkwardness was increased rather than diminished by Luce inviting him to come in. George’s first impulse was to decline—he felt he would rather not have any more of the other’s constraining company—but the next minute he realised that he now had the chance of a rest and tea without the preliminary endurance of a long and dusty walk. So he followed him in at the door, which opened disconcertingly into the kitchen, and through the kitchen into the little study-living-room beyond it.
It was not at all like George’s study at Leasan—the floor had many more books on it than the wall, the little leaded window looked out into a kitchen garden, and the two armchairs both appeared so doubtful as possible supports for George’s substantial figure that he preferred, in spite of his fatigue, to sit down on the kitchen chair that stood by the writing-table. He realised for the first time what he had always known—that Luce was desperately poor, having nothing but what he could get out of the living. Probably the whole did not amount to two hundred pounds ... and with post-war prices ... George decided to double his subscription to the Diocesan Fund.
Meantime he accepted a cigarette which was only just not a Woodbine, and tried to look as if he saw nothing extraordinary in the poverty-stricken room. He thought it would be only charitable to put the other at his ease.
“Convenient little place you’ve got here,” he remarked—“better for a single man than that barrack of a Rectory.”
“Oh, I could never have lived in the Rectory. I wonder you manage to live in yours.”
George muttered something indistinct about private means.
“It’s difficult enough to live here,” continued Luce—“I couldn’t do it if it wasn’t for what people give me.”
“Are your parishioners generous?”
“I think they are, considering they’re mostly poor people. The Pannells across the road often send me over some of their Sunday dinner in a covered dish.”
George was speechless.
“And I once found a hamper in the road outside the gate. But after I’d thanked God and eaten half a fowl and drunk a bottle of claret, I found it had dropped off the carrier’s cart and there was no end of a fuss.”
“Er—er—hum.”
There was a knock at the outer door, and before Luce could say “Come in,” the door of the study opened and a small boy stuck his head in.
“Please, Father, could you lend us your ink?—Mother wants to write a letter.”
“Oh, certainly, Tom—take it—there it is; but don’t forget to bring it back.”
The small boy said nothing, but snatched his booty and went out.
“Are your people—er—responsive?” asked George.
“Responsive to what?”
“Well—er—to you.”
“Oh, not at all.”
“Then how do you get them to come to church?”
“I don’t—Our Lord does.”
George coughed.
“They come to church because they know they’ll always find Him there—in spite of me.”
George could not keep back the remark that Reservation was theologically indefensible.
“Is it?” Luce did not seem much interested. “But I don’t keep the Blessed Sacrament in my church for purposes of theology, but for practical use. Suppose you were to die tonight—where would you get your last Communion from if not from my tabernacle?”
George winced.
“This is the only church in the rural deanery where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved and the holy oils are kept. The number of people who die without the sacraments must be appalling.”
George had never been appalled by it.
“But why do you reserve publicly?” he asked—“that’s not primitive or catholic—to reserve for purposes of worship.”
“I don’t reserve for purposes of worship—I reserve for Communion. But I can’t prevent people from worshipping Our Lord. Nobody could—not all the Deans of all the cathedrals in England. Oh, I know you think my church dreadful—everybody does. Those statues ... well, I own they’re hideous. But so are all the best parlours in Vinehall. And I want the people to feel that the church is their Best Parlour—which they’ll never do if I decorate it in Anglican good taste, supposing always I could afford to do so. I want them to feel at home.”
“Do you find all this helps to make them regular communicants?”
“Not as I’d like, of course; but we’re only beginning. Most of them come once a month—though a few come every week. I’ve only one daily communicant—a boy who works on Ellenwhorne Farm and comes here every evening to cook my supper and have it with me.”
George was beginning to feel uncomfortable in this strange atmosphere—also he was most horribly wanting his tea. Possibly, as Luce had supper instead of dinner, he took tea later than usual.
“Of course,” continued the Rector, “some people in this place don’t like our ways, and don’t come to church here at all. Some of my parishioners go to you, just as some of yours come to me.”
“You mean my brother Gervase?”
“I wasn’t thinking of him particularly, but he certainly does come.”
“The Mounts brought him.”
“In the first instance, I believe. I hope you don’t feel hurt at his coming here—but he told me he hadn’t been to church for over a year, so I thought....”
Not a sign of triumph, not a sign of shame—and not a sign of tea. It suddenly struck George as a hitherto undreamed-of possibility that Luce did not take tea. His whole life seemed so different from anything George had known that it was quite conceivable that he did not. Anyhow the Vicar of Leasan must be going—the long shadows of some poplars lay over the garden and were darkening the little room into an early twilight. He rose to depart.
“Well, I must be off, I suppose. Glad to have had a chat. Come and preach for me one day,” he added rashly.
“With pleasure—but I warn you, I’m simply hopeless as a preacher.”
“Oh, never mind, never mind,” said George—“all the better—I mean my people will enjoy the change—at least I mean——”
He grabbed desperately at his hat, and followed his host through the kitchen to the cottage door.
“Here’s Noakes coming up the street to cook supper,” said Luce—“I didn’t know it was so late.”
George stared rather hard at the Daily Communicant—having never to his knowledge seen such a thing. He was surprised and a little disappointed to find only a heavy, fair-haired young lout, whose face was the face of the district—like a freckled moon.
“I’m a bit early tonight, Father; but Maaster sent me over to Dixter wud their roots, and he said it wun’t worth me coming back and I’d better go straight on here. I thought maybe I could paint up the shed while the stuff’s boiling.”
“That’s a good idea—thanks, Noaky.”
“Father, there’s a couple of thrushes nesting again by the Mocksteeple. It’s the first time I’ve seen them nest in the fall.”
“It’s the warm weather we’ve been having.”
“Surelye, but I’m sorry for them when it turns cold.... Father, have you heard?—the Rangers beat the Hastings United by four goals to one....”
When George had walked out of the village he felt better—he no longer breathed that choking atmosphere of a different world, in which lived daily communicants, devout children, and clergymen who hadn’t always enough to eat. It was not, of course, the first time that he had seen poverty among the clergy, but it was the first time he had not seen it decently covered up. Luce seemed totally unashamed of his ... had not made the slightest effort to conceal it ... his cottage was, except for the books, just the cottage of a working-man; indeed it was not so comfortable as the homes of many working men.
George began to wonder exactly how much difference it would have made if he had been poor instead of well-to-do—if he had been too poor to live in his comfortable vicarage, too poor to decorate his church in “Anglican good taste” ... not that he wouldn’t rather have left it bare than decorate it like Vinehall ... what nonsense Luce had talked to justify himself! The church wasn’t the village’s Best Parlour ... or was it?...
He felt quite tired when he reached Leasan, and Rose scolded him—“You’d much better have come with me to the Parishes.”... However, it was good to sit at his dinner-table and eat good food off good china, and drink his water out of eighteenth-century glass that he had picked up in Ashford.... Luce was not a total abstainer, judging by that story of the claret.... It is true that the creaking tread of the Raw Girl and the way she breathed down his neck when she handed the vegetables made him think less disparagingly of the domestic offices of the Daily Communicant; but somehow the Raw Girl fitted into the scheme of things—it was only fitting that local aspirants for “service” should be trained at the Vicarage—whereas farm-boys who came in to cook your supper and then sat down and ate it with you ... the idea was only a little less disturbing than the idea of farm-boys coming daily to the altar.... He wondered if Rose would say it was un-English.
“Oh, by the way, George”—Rose really was saying—“a message came down from Conster while you were out, asking you to go up there after dinner tonight.”
George’s illness had brought about a kind of artificial peace between the Manor and the Vicarage.
“What is it now? Have you been invited too?”
“No—I think Sir John wants to speak to you about something.”
“Whatever can it be?—Mary’s in Switzerland. It can’t be anything to do with her again.”
“No—I believe it’s something to do with Gervase. I saw Doris this evening and she tells me Sir John has found out that Gervase goes to confession.”
“Does he?—I didn’t know he’d got as far as that.”
“Yes—he goes to Mr. Luce. Mrs. Wade saw him waiting his turn last Saturday when she was in Vinehall church taking rubbings of the Oxenbridge brass. I suppose she must have mentioned it when she went to tea at Conster yesterday.”
“And my father wants me to interfere?”
“Of course—you’re a clergyman.”
“Well, I’m not going to.”
“George, don’t talk such nonsense. Why, you’ve been complaining about your father’s disrespect for your priesthood, and now when he’s showing you that he does respect it——”
“He’s showing it no respect if he thinks I’d interfere in a case like this.”
“But surely you’ve a right—Gervase is your brother and he doesn’t ever come to your church.”
“I think it would be unwise for me to be my brother’s confessor.”
“It would be ridiculous. Whoever thought of such a thing?”
“Then why shouldn’t he go to Luce?—and as for my church, he hasn’t been to any church for a year, so if Luce can get him to go to his ... or rather if Our Lord can get him to go to Luce’s church....”
“I do hope it won’t rain tomorrow, as I’d thought of going into Hastings by the ’bus.”
Rose had abrupt ways of changing the conversation when she thought it was becoming indelicate.
George went up to Conster after all. Rose finally persuaded him, and pushed him into his overcoat. She was anxious that he should not give fresh offence at the Manor; also she was in her own way jealous for his priestly honour and eager that he should vindicate it by exercising its functions when they were wanted instead of when they were not.
There was no family council assembled over Gervase as there had been over Mary. Only his father and mother were in the drawing-room when George arrived. Gervase was a minor in the Alard household, and religion a minor matter in the Alard world—no questions of money or marriage, those two arch-concerns of human life, were involved. It was merely a case of stopping a silly boy making a fool of himself and his family by going ways which were not the ways of squires. Not that Sir John did not think himself quite capable of stopping Gervase without any help from George, but neither had he doubted his capacity to deal with Mary without summoning a family council. It was merely the Alard tradition that the head should act through the members, that his despotism should be as it were mediated, showing thus his double power both over the rebel and the forces he employed for his subjection.
“Here you are, George—I was beginning to wonder if Rose had forgotten to give you my message. I want you to talk to that ass Gervase. It appears that he’s gone and taken to religion, on the top of a dirty trade and my eldest son’s ex-fiancée.”
“And you want me to talk him out of it?” George was occasionally sarcastic when tired.
“Not out of religion, of course. Could hardly mean that. But there’s religion and religion. There’s yours and there’s that fellow Luce’s.”
“Yes,” said George, “there’s mine and there’s Luce’s.”
“Well, yours is all right—go to church on Sundays—very right and proper in your own parish—set a good example and all that. But when it comes to letting religion interfere with your private life, then I say it’s time it was stopped. I’ve nothing against Luce personally——”
“Oh, I think he’s a perfectly dreadful man,” broke in Lady Alard—“he came to tea once, and talked about God—in the drawing-room!”
“My dear, I think this is a subject which would be all the better without your interference.”
“Well, if a mother hasn’t a right to interfere in the question of her child’s religion....”
“You did your bit when you taught him to say his prayers—I daresay that was what started all the mischief.”
“John, if you’re going to talk to me like this I shall leave the room.”
“I believe I’ve already suggested such a course once or twice this evening.”
Lady Alard rose with dignity and trailed to the door.
“I’m sure I hope you’ll be able to manage him,” she said bitterly to George as she went out, “but as far as I’m concerned I’d much rather you argued him out of his infatuation for Stella Mount.”
“There is always someone in my family in love with Stella Mount,” said Sir John, “and it’s better that it should be Gervase than Peter or George, who are closer to the title, and, of course, let me hasten to add, married men. But this is the first case of religious mania we’ve ever had in the house—therefore I’d rather George concentrated on that. Will you ask Mr. Gervase to come here?”—to the servant who answered his ring.
“Mr. Gervase is in the garage, sir.”
“Send him along.”
Gervase had been cleaning the Ford lorry, having been given to understand that his self-will and eccentricity with regard to Ashford were to devolve no extra duties on the chauffeur. His appearance, therefore, when he entered the drawing-room, was deplorable. He wore a dirty suit of overalls, his hands were black with oil and grime, and his hair was hanging into his eyes.
“How dare you come in like that, sir?” shouted Sir John.
“I’m sorry, sir—I thought you wanted me in a hurry.”
“So I do—but I didn’t know you were looking like a sweep. Why can’t you behave like other people after dinner?”
“I had to clean the car, sir. But I’ll go and wash.”
“No, stay where you are—George wants to speak to you.”
George did not look as if he did.
“It’s about this new folly of yours,” continued Sir John. “George was quite horrified when I told him you’d been to confession.”
“Oh, come, not ‘horrified’,” said George uneasily—“it was only the circumstances.... Thought you might have stuck to your parish church.”
“And you’d have heard his confession!” sneered Sir John.
“Well, sir, the Prayer Book is pretty outspoken in its commission to the priest to absolve——”
“But you’ve never heard a confession in your life.”
This was true, and for the first time George was stung by it. He suddenly felt his anger rising against Luce, who had enjoyed to the full those sacerdotal privileges which George now saw he had missed. His anger gave him enough heat to take up the argument.
“I’m not concerned to find out how Luce could bring himself to influence you when you have a brother in orders, but I’m surprised you shouldn’t have seen the disloyalty of your conduct. Here you are forsaking your parish church, which I may say is also your family church, and traipsing across the country to a place where they have services exciting enough to suit you.”
“I’m sorry, George. I know that if I’d behaved properly I’d have asked your advice about all this. But you see I was the heathen in his blindness, and if it hadn’t been for Father Luce I’d be that still.”
“You’re telling me I’ve neglected you?”
“Not at all—no one could have gone for me harder than you did. But, frankly, if I’d seen nothing more of religion than what I saw at your church I don’t think I’d ever have bothered about it much.”
“Not spectacular enough for you, eh?”
“I knew you’d say something like that.”
“Well, isn’t it true?”
“No.”
“Then may I ask in what way the religion of Vinehall is so superior to the religion of Leasan?”
“Just because it isn’t the religion of Vinehall—it’s the religion of the whole world. It’s a religion for everybody, not just for Englishmen. When I was at school I thought religion was simply a kind of gentlemanly aid to a decent life. After a time you find out that sort of life can be lived just as easily without religion—that good form and good manners and good nature will pull the thing through without any help from prayers and sermons. But when I saw Catholic Christianity I saw that it pointed to a life which simply couldn’t be lived without its help—that it wasn’t just an aid to good behaviour but something which demanded your whole life, not only in the teeth of what one calls evil, but in the teeth of that very decency and good form and good nature which are the religion of most Englishmen.”
“In other words and more briefly,” said Sir John, “you fell in love with a pretty girl.”
Gervase’s face darkened with a painful flush, and George felt sorry for him.
“I don’t deny,” he said rather haltingly, “that, if it hadn’t been for Stella I should never have gone to Vinehall church. But I assure you the thing isn’t resting on that now. I’ve nothing to gain from Stella by pleasing her. We’re not on that footing at all. She never tried to persuade me, either. It’s simply that after I’d seen only a little of the Catholic faith I realised that it was what I’d always unconsciously believed ... in my heart.... It was my childhood’s faith—all the things I’d ‘loved long since and lost awhile.’”
“But don’t you see,” said George, suddenly finding his feet in the argument, “that you’ve just put your finger on the weak spot of the whole thing? This ‘Catholic faith’ as you call it was unconsciously your faith as a child—well, now you ought to go on and leave all that behind you. ‘When I became a man I put away childish things.’”
“And ‘whosoever will not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.’ It’s no good quoting texts at me, George—we might go on for ever like that. What I mean is that I’ve found what I’ve always been looking for, and it’s made Our Lord real to me, as He’s never been since I was a child—and now the whole of life seems real in a way it didn’t before—I don’t know how to explain, but it does. And it wasn’t only the romantic side of things which attracted me—it was the hard side too. In fact the hardness impressed me almost before I saw all the beauty and joy and romance. It was when we were having all that argument about Mary’s divorce.... I saw then that the Catholic Church wasn’t afraid of a Hard Saying. I thought, ‘Here’s a religion which wouldn’t be afraid to ask anything of me—whether it was to shut myself up for life in a monastery or simply to make a fool of myself.’”
“Well, on the whole, I’m glad you contented yourself with the latter,” said Sir John.
George said—“I think it’s a pity Gervase didn’t go to Oxford.”
“Whether he’s been to Oxford or not, he’s at least supposed to be a gentleman. He may try to delude himself by driving off every morning in a motor lorry, but he does in fact belong to an old and honourable house, and as head of that house I object to his abandoning his family’s religion.”
“I never had my family’s religion, Sir—I turned to Catholicism from no religion at all. I daresay it’s more respectable to have no religion than the Catholic religion, but I don’t mind about being respectable—in fact, I’d rather not.”
“You’re absorbing your new principles pretty fast—already you seem to have forgotten all family ties and obligations.”
“I can’t see that my family has any right to settle my religion for me—at least I’m Protestant enough to believe I must find my own salvation, and not expect my family to pass it on to me. I think this family wants to do too much.”
“What d’you mean, Sir?”
“It wants to settle all the private affairs of its members. There’s Peter—you wouldn’t let him marry Stella. There’s Mary, you wouldn’t let her walk out by the clean gate——”
“Hold your tongue! Who are you to discuss Peter’s affairs with me? And as for Mary—considering your disgraceful share in the business....”
“All right, Sir. I’m only trying to point out that the family is much more autocratic than the Church.”
“I thought you said that what first attracted you to the Church was the demands it made on you. George!”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Am I conducting this argument or are you?”
“You seem better able to do it than I, Sir.”
“Well, what did I send you to Oxford for, and to a theological college for, and put you into this living for, if you can’t argue a schoolboy out of the Catholic faith?”
“I’ve pointed out to Gervase, Sir, that the so-called Catholic movement is not the soundest intellectually, and that I don’t see why he should walk three miles to Vinehall on Sundays when he has everything necessary to salvation at his parish church. I can’t go any further than that.”
“How d’you mean?”
“I can’t reason him out of his faith—why should I? On the contrary, I’m very glad he’s found it. I don’t agree with all he believes—I think some of it is extravagant—but I see at least he’s got a religion which will make him happy and keep him straight, and really there’s no cause for me to interfere with it.”
George was purple.
“You’re a fool!” cried Sir John—“you’re a much bigger fool than Gervase, because at least he goes the whole hog, while you as usual are sitting on the fence. It’s just the same now as when I asked you to speak to Mary. If you’d go all the way I’d respect you, or if you’d go none of the way I’d respect you, but you go half way.... Gervase can go all the way to the Pope or to the devil, whichever he pleases—I don’t care now—he can’t be as big a fool as you.”
He turned and walked out of the room, banging the door furiously behind him. The brothers were left alone together. Gervase heaved a sigh of relief.
“Come along with me to the garage,” he said to George, “and help me take the Ford’s carburetor down.”
“No, thanks,” said George dully—“I’m going home.”
He had failed again. As he walked through the thick yellow light of the Hunter’s Moon to Leasan, he saw himself as a curiously feeble and ineffective thing. It was not only that he had failed to persuade his brother by convincing arguments, or that he had failed once more to inspire his father with any sort of respect for his office, but he had somehow failed in regard to his own soul, and all his other failures were merely branches of that most bitter root.
He had been unable to convince Gervase because he was not convinced himself—he had been unable to inspire his father because he was not inspired himself. All his life he had stood for moderation, toleration, broad-mindedness ... and here he was, so moderate that no one would believe him, so tolerant that no one would respect him, so broad-minded that the water of life lay as it were stagnant in a wide and shallow pond instead of rushing powerfully between the rocky, narrow banks of a single heart....
He found Rose waiting for him in the hall.
“How late you are! I’ve shut up. They must have kept you an awful time.”
“I’ve been rather slow coming home.”
“Tired?”
“I am a bit.”
“How did you get on? I expect Gervase was cheeky.”
“Only a little.”
“Have you talked him round?”
“I can’t say that I have. And I don’t know that I want to.”
“George!”
Rose had put out the hall lamp, and her voice sounded hoarse and ghostly in the darkness.
“Well, the boy’s got some sort of religion at last after being a heathen for years.”
“I’m not sure that he wouldn’t be better as a heathen than believing the silly, extravagant things he does. I don’t suppose for a minute it’s gone really deep.”
“Why not?”
“The sort of thing couldn’t. What he wants is a sober, sensible, practical religion——”
“Soup?”
“George!”
“Well, that’s what Mary called it. And when I see that the boy has found adventure, discipline and joy in faith, am I to take it away and offer him soup?”
“George, I’m really shocked to hear you talk like that. Please turn down the landing light—I can’t reach it.”
“Religion is romance,” said George’s voice in the thick darkness of the house—“and I’ve been twelve years trying to turn it into soup....”
Rose made up her mind that her husband must be ill, therefore she forebore further scolding or argument, and hurried him into bed with a cup of malted milk.
“You’ve done too much,” she said severely—“you said you didn’t feel well enough to come with me to the Parishes, and then you went tramping off to Vinehall. What can you expect when you’re so silly? Now drink this and go to sleep.”
George went to sleep. But in the middle of the night he awoke. All the separate things of life, all the differences of time and space, seemed to have run together in one sharp moment. He was not in the bed, he was not in the room ... the room seemed to be in him, for he saw every detail of its trim mediocrity ... and there lay George Alard on the bed beside a sleeping Rose ... but he was George Alard right enough, for George Alard’s pain was his, that queer constricting pain which was part of the functions of his body, of every breath he drew and every beat of his heart ... he was lying in bed ... gasping, suffering, dying ... this was what it meant to die.... Rose! Rose!
Rose bent over her husband; her big plaits swung in his face.
“What’s the matter, George?—are you ill?”
“Are you ill?” she repeated.
Then she groped for a match, and as soon as she saw his face, jumped out of bed.
No amount of bell-ringing would wake the Raw Girls, so Rose leaped upstairs to their attic, and beat on the door.
“Annie! Mabel! Get up and dress quickly, and go to Conster Manor and telephone for Dr. Mount. Your master’s ill.”
Sundry stampings announced the beginning of Annie’s and Mabel’s toilet, and Rose ran downstairs to her husband. She lit the lamp and propped him up in bed so that he could breathe more easily, thrusting her own pillows under his neck.
“Poor old man!—Are you better?” Her voice had a new tender quality—she drew her hand caressingly under his chin—“Poor old man!—I’ve sent for Dr. Mount.”
“Send for Luce.”
It was the first time he had spoken, and the words jerked out of him drily, without expression.
“All right, all right—but we want the doctor first. There, the girls are ready—hurry up, both of you, as fast as you can, and ask the butler, or whoever lets you in, to ’phone. It’s Vinehall 21—but they’re sure to know.”
She went back into the room and sat down again beside George, taking his hand. He looked dreadfully ill, his face was blue and he struggled for breath. Rose was not the sort of woman who could sit still for long—in a moment or two she sprang to her feet, and went to the medicine cupboard.
“I believe some brandy would do you good—it’s allowed in case of illness, you know.”
George did not seem to care whether it was allowed or not. Rose gave him a few drops, and he seemed better. She smoothed his pillows and wiped the sweat off his face.
She had hardly sat down again when the hall door opened and there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. It must be the girls coming back—Rose suddenly knew that she was desperately glad even of their company. She went to the door, and looked out on the landing. The light that streamed over her shoulder from the bedroom showed her the scared, tousled faces of Gervase and Jenny.
“What’s up, Rose?—Is he very bad?”
“I’m afraid so. Have you ’phoned Dr. Mount?”
“Yes—he’s coming along at once. We thought perhaps we could do something?”
“I don’t know what there is to do. I’ve given him some brandy. Come in.”
They followed her into the room and stood at the foot of the bed. Jenny, who had learned First Aid during the war, suggested propping him higher with a chair behind the pillows. She and Gervase looked dishevelled and half asleep in their pyjamas and great-coats. Rose suddenly realised that she was not wearing a dressing-gown—she tore it off the foot of the bed and wrapped it round her. For the first time in her life she felt scared, cold and helpless. She bent over George and laid her hand on his, which were clutched together on his breast.
His eyes were wide open, staring over her shoulder at Gervase.
“Luce ...” he said with difficulty—“Luce....”
“All right,” said Gervase—“I’ll fetch him.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have Canon Potter, dear?—He could come in his car.”
“No—Luce ... the only church.... Sacrament....”
“Don’t you worry—I’ll get him. I’ll go in the Ford.”
Gervase was out of the room, leaving Jenny in uneasy attendance. A few minutes later Doris arrived. She had wanted to come with the others, but had felt unable to leave her room without a toilet. She alone of the party was dressed—even to her boots.
“How is he, Rose?”
“He’s better now, but I wish Dr. Mount would come.”
“Do you think he’ll die?” asked Doris in a penetrating whisper—“ought I to have woken up Father and Mother?”
“No—of course not. Don’t talk nonsense.”
“I met Gervase on his way to fetch Mr. Luce.”
“That’s only because George wanted to see him—very natural to want to see a brother clergyman when you’re ill. But it’s only a slight attack—he’s much better already.”
She made expressive faces at Doris while she spoke.
“There’s Dr. Mount!” cried Jenny.
A car sounded in the Vicarage drive and a few moments later the doctor was in the room. His examination of George was brief. He took out some capsules.
“What are you going to do?” asked Rose.
“Give him a whiff of amyl nitrate.”
“It’s not serious? ... he’s not going to....”
“Ought we to fetch Father and Mother?” choked Doris.
“I don’t suppose Lady Alard would be able to come at this hour—but I think you might fetch Sir John.”
Rose suddenly began to cry. Then the sight of her own tears frightened her, and she was as suddenly still.
“I’ll go,” said Jenny.
“No—you’d better let me go,” said Doris—“I’ve got my boots on.”
“Where’s Gervase?” asked Dr. Mount.
“He’s gone to fetch Mr. Luce from Vinehall—George asked for him.”
“How did he go? Has he been gone long?”
“He went in his car—he ought to be back quite soon. Oh, doctor, do you think it’s urgent ... I mean ... he seems easier now.”
Dr. Mount did not speak—he bent over George, who lay motionless and exhausted, but seemingly at peace.
“Is he conscious?” asked Rose.
“Perfectly, I should say. But don’t let him speak.”
With a queer abandonment, unlike herself, Rose climbed on the bed, curling herself up beside George and holding his hand. The minutes ticked by. Jenny, feeling awkward and self-conscious, sat in the basket armchair by the fireplace. Dr. Mount moved quietly about the room—as in a dream Rose watched him set two lighted candles on the little table by the bed. There was absolute silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock. Rose began to feel herself again—the attack was over—George would be all right—it was a pity that Gervase had gone for Mr. Luce. She began to feel herself ridiculous, curled up with George in the bed ... she had better get out before Sir John came and sneered at her very useful flannel dressing-gown ... then suddenly, as she looked down on it, George’s face changed—once more the look of anguish convulsed it, and he started up in bed, clutching his side and fighting for his breath.
It seemed an age, though it was really only a few minutes, that the fight lasted. Rose had no time to be afraid or even pitiful, for Dr. Mount apparently could do nothing without her—as she rather proudly remembered afterwards, he wouldn’t let Jenny help at all, but turned to Rose for everything. She had just begun to think how horrible the room smelt with drugs and brandy, when there was a sound of wheels below in the drive.
“That’s Gervase,” said Jenny.
“Or perhaps it’s Sir John....”
But it was Gervase—the next minute he came into the room.
“I’ve brought him,” he said—“is everything ready?”
“Yes, quite ready,” said Dr. Mount.
Then Rose saw standing behind Gervase outside the door a tall stooping figure in a black cloak, under which its arms were folded over something that it carried on its breast.
The Lord had come suddenly to Leasan Parsonage.
Immediately panic seized her, a panic which became strangely fused with anger. She sprang forward and would have shut the door.
“Don’t come in—you’re frightening him—he mustn’t be disturbed.... Oh, he’d be better, if you’d only let him alone....”
She felt someone take her arm and gently pull her aside—the next moment she was unaccountably on her knees, and crying as if her heart would break. She saw that the intruder no longer stood framed in the doorway—he was beside the bed, bending over George, his shadow thrown monstrous on the ceiling by the candle-light.... What was he saying?...
“Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof....”