“What is it, little lad? Have you hurt yourself?”
The kind, unsuspicious concern in his voice, as he held out his hand!
Quentillian was certain that a pause had followed the enquiry — Adrian’s opportunity, conceded by Lucilla, even while she knew, as they all did, that he would take no advantage of it.
Then Lucilla had told.
Quentillian’s thoughts went off at a tangent, dwelling for the first time, with a certain surprised admiration, upon Lucilla’s resolute, almost matter-of-fact performance of her painful and alarming task.
Canon Morchard had been incredulous at first, and Lucilla had steadily repeated, and reiterated again and again, the dreadful truth.
A black time had followed.
It assumed the proportions of a twelve-month, in the retrospect. Could it have extended over a week? Strangely enough, Quentillian could not recall the exact fate of Adrian, but he knew that the Canon first fulminated words of wrath and scorn, and at last had actually broken down, tears streaming down his furrowed face, and that the sight of this unrestrained display of suffering had caused the boy Owen to creep from the room, with the strange, sick feeling of one who had witnessed an indecency.
All the children except Lucilla, who indeed scarcely counted as one of them, had avoided Canon Morchard in the ensuing days. They had crept about the house silently, and at meals no one spoke until the Canon had left the room. Owen Quentillian, playing with a ball in the passage and inadvertently bouncing it against the closed study door, had been suddenly confronted by the Canon, and the look of grief and horror fixed upon that handsome face had rendered any spoken rebuke for levity unnecessary.
After all, they had left an impression, those Morchards, all of them, Quentillian reflected.
Lucilla had been calm, matter-of-fact, competent — perhaps a little inhuman. Val, impetuous, noisy, inclined to defiance, yet frankly terrified of her father. Flossie — impossible to think of her as Flora, unless the name was uttered in the Canon’s full, deep tones — surely the prettiest of the three, gentler than Val, less self-assured than Lucilla, timid only with her father. Adrian, of course, did not speak the truth. His contemporaries had known it, although Canon Morchard had not realized the little boy’s habitual weakness. But then he had never realized that the children were afraid of him.
Why had they all been afraid of him?
Quentillian decided that it must have been because of his own phenomenal rectitude, his high standard of honour, and above all and especially, his deep, fundamental sense of religion.
Canon Morchard, undoubtedly, lived “in the presence of God.” Even the little boy Owen had known that, and, thinking backwards, Quentillian was convinced of it still.
He felt curious to see the Canon again. David Morchard had said to him in Mesopotamia: “Go and see him. They’ve none of them forgotten you, and they’ll be glad of first-hand news. I’ve only been home once in five years.”
The shrug of his shoulders had seemed to Quentillian expressive.
But evidently David had judged his family correctly. The Canon had written and invited his old pupil to stay with him.
“It will not only be joy untold to receive news of our dear lad, David, but a real pleasure to us all to welcome you amongst us once more. I have not forgotten my pupil of long ago days, nor my daughters their erstwhile playfellow. You will find all at home, including Adrian. Dear fellow, I had hoped it was to be the Church for him, but he has been so open, so anxious to decide the whole important question rightly, that one can only leave the decision to him in all confidence. I would not hurry him in any way, but his brief Army days are over, thank God, and we have the untold pleasure of having him with us now, so full of fun and high spirits, dear boy. You, with your pre-war experience of Oxford, will perhaps be able to talk things over with him and help him to a right and wise decision.
“You will remember my eldest daughter, Lucilla. She is still my right hand, mothering the younger ones, and yet finding time for all sorts of wider interests than those afforded by her secretarial work for me. I think that you will agree with me that Lucilla’s intellectual abilities, had she been less of a home bird, must have made their mark in the world.
“Valeria is still something of the madcap that perhaps you remember. Her energy and enthusiasm keep us all in the best of spirits, even though we are sometimes a little startled at the new ideas sprung upon us. Both she and Flora worked valiantly during the terrible war years, though I could spare neither of my darlings to leave home for very long at a time. Valeria, however, was six months in France at a Canteen, and I believe rendered really valuable service. Little Flora, as I still call her, gives pleasure to us all with her music, and our men in hospital were sharers in her gift as far as we could manage it.”
Quentillian took up yet another sheet of note-paper covered with small, legible writing. It came back to him with a sense of familiarity, that the Canon had always been an expansive and prolific writer of letters.
“Make us a long visit, my dear boy. There are no near ones to claim you, alas, and I should like you to remember that it was to us that your dear father and mother first confided you when they left you for what we then hoped was to be only a short term of years. God saw otherwise, my dear lad, and called them unto Himself. How incomprehensible are His ways, and how, through it all, one must feel that mysterious certainty ‘all things work together for good, to those that love Him! Those words have been more present to me than I can well tell you, during the years of storm and stress. David’s long, weary time in Mesopotamia tried one high, but when Adrian, my Benjamin, buckled on his armour and went forth, my heart must have failed me, but for that wonderful strength that seems to bear one up in the day of tribulation. How often have I not said to myself: ‘He hath given His angels charge over thee ... in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone!’
“Perhaps you will smile at this rambling letter of an almost-old man, but I fancy that as one grows older, the need to bear testimony becomes ever a stronger and more personal thing. His ways are so wonderful! It seems to me, for instance, a direct gift from His hand that the Owen Quentillian to whom I gave his first Latin prose should be returning to us once more, a distinguished young writer. I wonder if we shall recognize you? I have so vivid a recollection of the white hair and eyelashes that made the village boys call out, ‘Go it, Snowball!’ as they watched your prowess on the football field!
“Well, dear fellow, I must close this. You have only to let us know the day and hour of your arrival, and the warmest of welcomes awaits you.
“I must sign myself, in memory of old happy times,
Yours ever affectionately,
Fenwick Morchard.”
Quentillian, with great precision, folded the sheets together again.
“So Lucilla is a home-bird, Valeria is still something of a madcap, Flora is still ‘little Flora’ and Adrian is a dear lad who is anxious to decide rightly about his future career.”
He wondered doubtfully whether he himself would come to endorse the Canon’s opinion of the Canon’s progeny.
And what was the Canon himself, if labels were to be thus distributed?
The sensation of doubt in Quentillian’s mind was accentuated, but he concluded his reflections by reminding himself, half tolerantly, and half with a certain grimness, that the Canon was at least, according to himself, Quentillian’s ever affectionate Fenwick Morchard.
II
“This is like old times,” said Quentillian.
Lucilla Morchard smiled, shook hands with him, and made no answer, and Quentillian immediately, and with annoyance, became conscious that the occasion was not in the least like old times.
Apparently Miss Morchard did not accept clichés uncritically.
Her face, indeed, expressed a spirit both critical and perceptive. Quentillian could still trace the schoolgirl Lucilla in the clearly-cut, unbeautiful oval, with the jaw slightly underh
ung, grey, short-sighted eyes, and straight black brows. Her dark hair was folded plainly beneath her purple straw hat, but he could discern that there was all the old abundance of it. Her figure was tall and youthful, but her face made her look fully her age. He surmised that Lucilla must be thirty-five, now.
“This time, my father is here to welcome you.”
She turned round, and Quentillian saw the Canon.
“Ah, dear fellow! Welcome — welcome you be, indeed!”
A hand grasped Quentillian’s hand, an arm was laid across his shoulders, and the Canon’s full, hearty voice, very deep and musical, rang in his ears.
Quentillian felt inadequate.
With all the acute self-consciousness of the modern, he was perfectly aware that Canon Morchard’s warmth of feeling and ardour of demonstration awoke in himself nothing but a slight, distinctly unpleasant, sensation of gratitude, and a feeble fear of appearing as unresponsive as he felt.
“I think it’s the same Owen Quentillian, isn’t it?” The steady pressure of the Canon’s arm compelled his unwilling returned prodigal to remain still, facing him, and submit to a scrutiny from kind, narrowed eyes.
“Just the same. All is well — well, indeed.”
The Canon’s hand smote Quentillian gently between the shoulders, as they walked down the platform.
“The trap is waiting, dear boy. They are eager for your arrival, at home. I have my whole goodly company awaiting you, thank God — Lucilla here, and my merry Valeria, and little Flora with her incurably shy ways, and my Benjamin — the youngest of the flock — Adrian. You and Adrian must have many talks, dear lad. I want just such a friend for him as yourself — full of youth, and fun, and merriment, as he is himself, and yet able to help him when it comes to facing the deeper issues — the deeper issues. You young people must have many wise, deep talks, together, such as youth loves. I remember my University days so well and how ‘we tired the sun with talking’ — aye, Owen, your father and I were famous philosophers, once upon a time! How does that strike you, eh?”
It struck Quentillian principally that his father’s contemporary reminded him oddly of a book of late Victorian memoirs, but he did not voice the impression aloud.
Instead, it was a relief to him to be able to make an obvious, and yet perfectly sincere, comment upon the unchanged aspect of the old red-brick house, standing well away from the small town.
“Valeria is our gardener,” said Canon Morchard. “You be consulted about various borders and the like, no doubt. But we have all of us an interest in botany. You must remember that from the old days, eh? There was a collecting craze, if I remember rightly, that led to a great deal of friendly rivalry amongst you children.”
Quentillian’s recollection of the collecting craze differed so drastically from that of the Canon, that he glanced involuntarily at Lucilla. She met his eye calmly, but he fancied a little latent hostility in her unconsciousness.
It rather served to confirm his impression of the extreme lack of spontaneity that had characterized those bygone excursions into the realms of Nature. They had been undertaken, at least by himself and his ally and contemporary, Valeria, with one eye, as it were, upon the Canon’s study window. Even Adrian, if Quentillian remembered rightly, had relaxed the normal enthusiasm of boyhood in the pursuit of bird’s eggs, after the wondrous eye for detail of the bird’s Creator had been sufficiently often pointed out to him.
“Welcome home,” said the Canon happily. “You remember the old garden? I seem to recollect some capital fun going on amongst the old rhododendron bushes at hide-and-seek, eh? We play lawn-tennis, nowadays. I see a sett is going on now. Who is here this afternoon, Lucilla?”
“Captain Cuscaden is playing with Flora, and I suppose it’s Mr. Clover in the far court.”
“To be sure. Clover is my excellent curate, who has been one of ourselves for several years now. Sit ye down, young people, sit ye down. Tea will be out here directly, and the players will no doubt come for refreshment.”
The Canon settled himself with the deliberation of a heavily-built man, and leant back in his wicker chair, with finger-tips joined together, the breeze stirring the thick grey hair upon his temples.
It was a cameo-like head, with something of the ivory colouring of a cameo, but the cameo’s blank orbs were replaced by deeply-set, brilliant hazel eyes of which the flashing, ardent outlook recalled at once the child and the fanatic. Innumerable fine lines were crossed and recrossed at the corners of either socket, but the broad forehead was singularly open and unlined.
Quentillian noted the feminine sweetness of the closed mouth, contrasting with the masculine jut of the strong, prominent jaw. His mind registered simultaneously the recollection of the Canon’s violent and terrifying outbursts of anger, and his astonishing capabilities of tenderness.
The latter expression was altogether predominant, as the tennis players came to join the group under the cedars.
“Valeria — Flora — you need no introductions here, dear lad. Clover, let me present my old pupil — one of whom you have very often heard us speak — Owen Quentillian. This is my very good friend and helper. And . — Ah, — Captain Cuscaden — Mr. Quentillian.”
Quentillian fancied less enthusiasm in this last introduction, and it seemed to him significant that no descriptive phrase followed the name. Either Captain Cuscaden was not worth classifying, or he could not satisfactorily be relegated into any class, and Quentillian suspected that Canon Morchard would resent the latter state of affairs more than the former.
At all events, Cuscaden was good-looking, of bold allure and sunburnt face, revealing the most perfect of teeth in a pleasant smile.
Mr. Clover was sandy and pale and seemed to be talkative.
“I believe I should have known you anywhere,” Valeria Morchard told Quentillian, frankly gazing at him. He was not sorry to have the opportunity of gazing back as frankly at her.
As children, the handsome or unhandsome looks of Val, his inseparable playmate, had naturally interested him not at all. He had vaguely acquiesced in the universal nursery dictum that Flora, with her fair curls and wide, innocent eyes, was pretty, but he now found her blond slenderness insignificant in the extreme compared to Valeria, with her tall and perfectly balanced figure, ripe-apricot bloom, and brown laughing eyes. No longer a very young girl, she somehow combined the poise of her twenty-seven years with a shy, semi-abruptness of diction reminiscent of seventeen.
Quentillian thought her charming.
So, apparently, did the other men.
“And who bore off the palm of victory?”
Canon Morchard indicated the tennis court.
“We won, at five games all. A very good sett,” Clover replied. “My partner’s service is almost invincible.”
Canon Morchard smiled.
“We think Valeria’s service is her strong point,” he explained to Quentillian. “She was coached by our dear David, and David is no mean player, I assure you. Little Flora needs to stand up to the ball better — stand up to the ball better. Flora has the feminine tendency to hit out too soon — eh, Flora? Our champion is Adrian, however. You and he will have some great contests, I foresee.”
The more the Canon foresaw, the more did Quentillian’s own aspirations turn in search of contrary directions. The only diversion of those predicted by his host, of which he felt able to tolerate the thought, was that of being consulted by Valeria upon the herbaceous borders.
“Clover, there, has a particularly good stroke on to the back line, but you’ll get to know it. Have you played at all since you left the ‘Varsity?”
“I got a good deal of tennis when I was home on leave in nineteen-sixteen, but nothing after that, when I was in Mesopotamia.”
“Were you not in Flanders, dear boy?”
“In ‘fifteen and ‘sixteen,” said Quentillian briefly. He wished to remember neither his two years on the Western front, nor his many months in Hospital with shell-shock.
“W
here did you and David meet, in Mesopotamia?” inquired Lucilla.
Quentillian had forgotten her presence, if not her existence, but he felt grateful to her for sparing him the tentative category of his soldiering capabilities which he suspected the Canon of having in readiness.
He was not, however, given time to answer Lucilla’s question.
The Canon’s hand was uplifted.
“Ah, Lucilla my dear — please! My little talk with Owen there, is to come later. There is so much that I want to hear about our David — much, indeed. And you shall have your share of news about your brother, my child, but wait — at least wait — until we have had our little private talk together.”
Lucilla bent her head a little under the rebuke either in acquiescence or to conceal some slight confusion; but Valeria blushed hotly and unmistakably, and everyone looked constrained except the Canon, who looked rather severe, rather grieved, and at the same time perfectly serene. When he spoke again, it was with marked suavity.
“Tell us something of your literary work, dear fellow,” he requested Quentillian. “I am ashamed to say that I have read nothing of yours, as yet. My time is so little my own. Lucilla here is our literary critic.”
He placed his thin, beautiful hand, for a fleeting moment upon his eldest daughter’s hand.
“Lucilla tells me that she knows your work. Critical essays, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Quentillian gravely acknowledged the truth of the assertion. His self-consciousness, rather enhanced than diminished in him a keen appraisement, perhaps rather less detached than he would have liked it to be, of his own literary value.
“I published a small volume of essays before the war, but since then I have only been a very occasional contributor to one or two of the reviews.”
“Ah, yes. You must let me see what you have done, some day. This is the era of youth. Indeed, some of the things I see in print today strike me as not only crude and immature, but absolutely mischievous — false, foolish, shallow teaching from those who have never submitted to be taught themselves. I am not afraid of that in your case, Owen. But remember this, all you young people: Nothing can be of real or lasting value that is not founded upon the broad principles of Christianity — charity, self-sacrifice, humility, loving kindness. One feels that, more than ever, nowadays, when cynicism is so much in fashion.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 215