Valeria, in spite of her momentary elevation of spirits in resolving never to grieve her father, prepared for the visit to Stear in a discontented frame of mind.
At the last moment Adrian suddenly announced a wish to accompany them.
“My dear! But of course—” The Canon’s pleasure was very evident. “Owen, you will welcome this lad of mine as part of our little excursion, eh? Why not make one of the old-time family parties? Why not let us all go and explore this future home of Owen’s? It’s not very often that I have a free afternoon nowadays — and to have all my dear ones to make holiday with me would be indeed a rare joy.”
He looked round him expectantly.
“The caretaker won’t be able to manage tea for so many,” said Lucilla, looking at Quentillian.
“There speaks my practical housekeeper!
For though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.
“Eh, Lucilla? Could you not contrive a basket for us, my dear, picnic fashion? Come, come, let’s have an impromptu picnic. What say you, young people?”
They said what the Canon wanted them to say. No one, Val felt, could have done otherwise, in the face of his eagerness. She was partly disappointed, and partly relieved. There had been a certain romance in going with Owen to see Owen’s home, with the barely acknowledged wonder whether it might not one day also be hers.
But there was no hint of romance in the solidly packed basket presently produced by Lucilla, and reluctantly carried by Adrian, nor in Flora’s tardiness that nearly caused them to miss the train, nor in her Father’s gentle, humourously worded rebuke to her.
V
If Valeria was slightly discomposed by the tribal nature of the expedition to Stear, Quentillian was seriously annoyed by it. He had figured to himself a grave and gentle readjustment of values, when he should see the place that he had known since boyhood transformed into a setting for the figure of Valeria.
He did not suppose himself to be tempestuously in love, but he had made up his mind that he greatly wished to marry Valeria.
A wistful uncertainty possessed him as to whether Valeria would wish to marry him.
Stear looked forlorn and uninhabited, and the repairs were even less advanced than Quentillian had expected them to be.
He reflected that he ought to be upon the spot, and shuddered involuntarily, and to his disgust, at the lonely prospect.
Since his shell-shock, he had very often been afraid of his own company, and the knowledge was peculiarly galling to him.
“Your lines have fallen to you in pleasant places, Owen,” said the Canon genially.
“You are optimistic, sir,” said Quentillian rather dryly. “It will be months before these men are out of the place.”
“You should move in yourself,” Lucilla suggested.
“I believe I should.”
“Thoughtless Lucilla! Why should Owen leave his present quarters, if he is happy with us, as I trust he is? Aye, dear Owen, you are very welcome at St. Gwenllian whilst your own nest is being prepared for you.”
The Canon’s ready hand sought Quentillian’s arm.
Owen glanced at Lucilla half apologetically, but her gaze, impervious to subtleties, and mildly cheerful, met his very readily.
“Please stay on with us, if you should care to.”
“Thank you,” said Quentillian non-committally.
Later, at the Canon’s suggestion, he took them to visit the church.
“You will one day have the responsibility of finding a new shepherd for the flock here, I understand, Owen.”
“I shall hope for some advice from you, sir.”
“Aye, indeed? It’s a very good living, is it not?
Though that is very far from being the first consideration — very far, indeed.”
“What’s it worth?” Adrian inquired.
“I believe it’s considered worth about £700 a year.”
“A job for a married man,” said Adrian casually. An involuntary flash of amused comprehension passed between Quentillian and Valeria. He understood it to be in reference to this when she said to him in a low voice on leaving the church:
“I don’t think Olga Duffle would make a clergyman’s wife, do you?”
“I should doubt it.”
“But Adrian couldn’t really be thinking of it.”
“I thought he’d decided against the Church.”
“So he has. I think it was one of the greatest disappointments Father has ever had.”
“Your father would only have wished it if Adrian had wished it.”
“Oh, yes,” said Val emphatically. “Naturally, he looks upon it as a question of vocation. Father is the last person to ignore that.”
She hesitated, and then said: “Owen, do you believe that everyone has a vocation?”
The question, to him so oddly reminiscent of the perplexities of a bygone age, nearly made him laugh, but his amusement was wholly tender.
“I don’t believe in a special vocation straight from Heaven for each one of us,” he admitted. “You know, I never can believe that Heaven takes that acute personal interest in individuals that religious people always emphasize when they’re talking about themselves. But, of course, there are certain lines of development”
“I think,” Val said seriously, “that I should like to feel I had a definite job in life, that no one but myself could do. I feel so — indefinite.”
“I believe I might enlighten you on that subject,” Owen replied in measured accents.
“I don’t mean Sales of Work or a botanical collection, Owen.”
“I know you don’t. The sales of work and the collections were never a means of self-expression, were they?”‘
“They did stand for something, though.”
“For your wish to please somebody else?”
“The wish is still there, Owen.”
“Val, you know I think self-abnegation is all wrong.” He was half-laughing, but the flushed face that she turned towards him was altogether earnest.
“Don’t think me arrogant, Val, but I do so wish I could make you see it as I do. Don’t you see that the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice was only the swing of the pendulum, from the brutal old days when men rejoiced in seeing their fellow-creatures tortured and killed? Feelings had to be developed, and so the Sermon on the Mount was preached. The pendulum has swung too far the other way now — charity has come to mean self-advertisement or sentimentality.” Quentillian, deeply interested in his own exposition of views that were by no means new to him, was brought up short by a call from behind him.
“Hi, Owen! Are you walking for a wager? I want to ask you something.”
Quentillian, not at all disposed to welcome Adrian and his interrogations, was obliged to slacken his steps as Valeria did hers.
Adrian was swishing at the long grasses on either side of the road with a slender length of ash.
“Look here, old man, have you got anybody in your eye for that living?”
Adrian’s head was studiously turned towards his depredations with the ash-stick.
“Because if you haven’t — not that it matters to me, particularly, you understand, but I’ve got a friend, who might be the man you want.”
“Who is he?”
“I should have to sound him first,” Adrian explained. “I suppose you’d want a youngish fellow and — and I suppose you’d rather he was married?”
“Not in the least.”
Adrian looked disturbed.
“I thought a parson’s wife was useful in a large, straggling sort of place like this. Not that it matters to me.”
“Is your friend married, Adrian?” Val enquired. Quentillian could not decide whether the simplicity of her manner was ironical or no.
“He isn’t married at present. I think he’s engaged. You see, a living like this would justify a man in getting married, wouldn’t it?”
“It would depend on the sort of person he wished to marry.”
“The sort of girls who marry clergymen never do have money of their own,” said Quentillian, firmly.
On this discouraging pronouncement, they were rejoined by the rest of the party.
Nevertheless Valeria contrived to enquire of Quentillian, in a disturbed murmur:
“What can Adrian be thinking of?”
It was not at all difficult to guess what Adrian could be thinking of, and became still less so as the days slipped by and his infatuation for Miss Olga Duffle led to her inclusion in innumerable games of tennis and impromptu tea-parties at St. Gwenllian.
“What can he see in her?” Valeria demanded, after the fashion of sisters.
Quentillian was unable to provide any adequate explanation of the phenomenon, but he was fully prepared to discuss it, and prolong thereby the sense of intimacy with Valeria.
It seemed to Quentillian that a new, slight, tinge of gravity shadowed Valeria’s frankness.
With all the logic and consistency of most persons so situated, Quentillian alternately viewed this as being hopeful or unhopeful, in the extreme, for the fulfilment of his wishes.
He was slightly amused at finding himself in the extremely conventional position in which he had so often viewed, with dispassionate distaste, the spectacle presented by other men, and this amusement was not without its share in determining him to submit his proposal to Valeria in writing.
A tendency, real, or fancied by Quentillian’s self-consciousness, on the parts of Flora and Adrian at least, to vacate any room in which he and Valeria might be, upon excuses of a shadow-like transparency, finally brought Quentillian to the point of leaving St. Gwenllian, under promise of an early return.
“You must come back, to us, dear Owen — you must come back,” the Canon repeated. “I want many a talk with you yet, and Adrian here will miss the evening confabulations in the smoking-room — eh, Adrian? Stear will hardly be ready for you yet awhile, to our advantage be it spoken, so you must make your home with us in the meanwhile. Come and go quite freely, dear lad.”
“Thank you very much.”
Quentillian felt that he had already said these words all too often, and conscientiously sought to vary the formula.
“It’s been a delightful time altogether, and I’m more than grateful. It’s been wonderful to get such a kind welcome after these years abroad.”
“Ah, dear fellow!”
The Canon’s fine face softened as he laid his arm across the younger man’s shoulders.
“Never doubt your welcome here, Owen,” he said.
Owen suspected significance in the words, and then derided himself.
Whatever his certainties as regarded the Canon, it was with Valeria that Quentillian was concerned, and he could augur nothing from her frank and cordial regret at his departure.
“I shall write to you, Val.”
“Yes, do. And I’ll tell you what happens with Adrian and that Olga.”
“I hope nothing will happen.”
“Oh, no — but it’s amusing.”
She did not look amused. Something of her ripe-apricot bloom had faded, and there were shadows beneath her brown eyes. Before he left St. Gwenllian, Owen said rather earnestly to Lucilla that he thought Valeria looked tired.
“So do I.”
“Is she ill?”
“I don’t think so.
“I should hate to think of her being ill.”
“I don’t think she’s ill, Owen.”
Lucilla evidently accepted his solicitude as a natural thing.
“I’ve always thought that Val needed a greater outlet for her energies than she gets here. She’s very strong, really, and she did splendidly in France when she was working so hard at her Canteen. I wish she could go away and work again.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you think so yourself?”
“Perhaps — if she wished it very much. There are other things besides work, though,” said Owen Quentillian.
“Well—” Lucilla’s favourite monosyllable held, as usual, a sound of concession.
“Couldn’t one do anything for her — take care of her, somehow?”
“I will order a cup of beef-tea for her at eleven o’clock,” said Lucilla with seriousness, but with amusement lurking in her eyes.
They parted upon a mutual smile of excellent understanding.
Quentillian thought that he liked Lucilla, with her impersonal calm, and her unquestioning acceptances.
He wrote to Valeria from London, letters that he felt to be self-conscious, and received uneloquent replies. He had left St. Gwenllian a fortnight when he finally composed an epistle that left him a little — a very little — less than profoundly dissatisfied with his own powers of composition. He received her reply by return of post.
“Owen, dear, I’ve got your letter. I can’t answer it in the way I should like to, making you understand everything that I mean. But do understand first of all that your thinking of me like that makes me very proud, and I wish I was more worth it all.
“I’m glad you loved some one else before, and thank you for telling me. The reason I’m glad is because I used to like some one very much myself once, but it wasn’t like yours, it was only my own foolishness, and never came to anything. But I think perhaps it’s prevented my falling really in love, because, dear Owen, I am not in love with you. If I married you, it would be because you are, as you say, very lonely, and because I am very, very fond of you, and also perhaps, a little, because it would make Father so happy. But none of those reasons are the real, true reason for marrying, are they?
“We have known one another so long, and understand one another. Can’t we discuss it honestly together, before settling anything? Either way, we are always friends, so I will sign myself your friend.
“Valeria Morchard.”
Quentillian read the letter with a strange mingling of disappointment, relief, and mortification.
Nevertheless it was in all sincerity that he wrote to Val of his admiration for her candour.
“You and I are moderns, my dear. Let us, as you wish, discuss the future impersonally, but let me first of all say that when — or if — ever you should come to the decision which I want you to come to, then so far as I am concerned, philosophical discussion will go for nothing. I shall wait for your sign, Val, and if it comes, there shall be no more pen and ink between us, but a meeting for which I long with all my heart.”
“Academic,” said Owen’s inner monitor, relentless as ever.
He posted his letter in spite of it.
It was with relief, and yet with a happiness less defined than he had expected it to be, that Quentillian found himself engaged to Valeria.
He regretted his own absence of ardour, and was all the time aware of a faint, lurking gratification at having so early outlived the illusions of passionate emotion.
He returned to St. Gwenllian.
This time it was Valeria who met him. Something in the simplicity with which she accepted their new relationship touched him profoundly, and rendered of no account his own temperamental subtleties.
It was with a deepening sense of sincerity that Quentillian said to her:
“You have made me very happy, dearest.’’
“I’m glad, Owen. I’m happy too.”
Her hand lay trustfully in his.
‘‘They want to see you so much, at home, Owen. I’ve told them. They’re all so pleased.”
It evidently added to Valeria’s content, that it should be so.
“You know that Father has always really looked upon you as another son, even in the days when you and I got into trouble for playing at Greek sacrificial processions with the guinea pigs on silver salvers.”
They laughed together at the recollection.
The Canon had not been hard upon the classically-minded delinquents.
Quentillian believed himself to have realized fully the adjuncts, necessary and fittin
g in the eyes of the Morchard family, but to himself distasteful in the extreme, of his engagement to Valeria.
He was prepared for conventional congratulations, for the abhorrent necessity of discussing his personal affairs, for an emotional absence of reticence that would differ as widely from his own impersonal, dissecting-room outspokenness as would the Canon’s effusive periods from Quentillian’s cultivated terseness of expression.
Nevertheless, he was less well-armoured, or more severely tried, than he had expected to be.
Canon Morchard seemed to shower welcome, blessings, congratulations upon him. He said:
“Dear lad, you and I must have a long talk together, at no distant date.”
They had many.
It seemed to Quentillian that he saw more of the Canon than of Valeria, in the days that ensued.
“Val, when will you marry me? I’m quite selfish enough to want you to myself” Quentillian said to her with firmness after a week at St. Gwenllian that seemed to him to have been mainly, differentiated from his last visit there by the increased number of one-sided talks with the Canon to which he had been subjected.
Val said tentatively: “The end of January?”
“Why not before Christmas? Stear should be quite ready for us by then.”
It relieved him with a strange intensity to know that he would not, after all, go alone to Stear.
Valeria looked at him, and although her voice when she spoke was serious, a certain mischievous amusement lurked in her eyes.
“Before Christmas, it’s Advent,” she said.
“Advent?”
“I don’t think Father would like my wedding to be during Advent, at all.”
“I see.”
“Oh, don’t be vexed, Owen. It’s only a month’s difference after all.”
“It isn’t that,” began Quentillian candidly, and then shared in her slight, unoffended laughter at his lack of gallantry.
“I only mean, my dear, that I don’t like to see you bound by that sort of convention. Do you really think it can make any difference if we’re married on one particular date rather than another?”
“I’m thinking entirely of Father,” gently said Val, thus altogether evading the real point at issue.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 219