by F. M. Mayor
Canon Jocelyn watched her drinking it. She knew by his attitude that he thought it strange anybody should require tea twice in the afternoon.
‘Has anything happened while I have been away?’
‘I don’t know what you call anything happening. Poor Sykes has something to put up with in his new curate. He tells me he preached his first sermon last Sunday evening. In the course of it he spoke of the Medea of Virgil who slew her children. Sykes thinks of advising him to keep to safer themes another time. Apparently he is quite an authority on cricket scores. Sykes says the bishop warmly recommended the fellow. I’m not at all surprised to hear it.’
She laughed, but even when she was amused she could not be entirely at ease. It was want of ease made her remark, ‘The dahlias are coming out already, I see. It’s a very early year.’
He was not interested in flowers, and he cared still less for talking about them. This frame of mind cut off tracts of conversational openings. But he answered politely, ‘The flowers must be still more advanced at Broadstairs.’
‘Oh yes, it’s much warmer there.’
It was his turn to start a topic.
‘You say the train was late?’
‘Yes, we were eleven minutes late.’
‘I have no doubt they started from town at the correct time; they always lose at the junction.’
‘Yes, it was just before we got into the station. I think we must have waited ten minutes outside.’
‘The line wants widening there very much, but I remember Sir John Leyland telling me some years ago that they were demanding such heavy compensation for the land that the Company hesitated to embark on the expense.’
‘I wonder who the land belonged to?’
‘Oh, just small local tradesmen, I fancy.’
‘I met Dr Mills at Cayley. He wanted to be remembered to you.’
‘Ah, yes.’
He liked talking about trains. Does any man not like talking about trains? But at the mention of Dr Mills she could see his eyes wandering towards the door. There was a pause. ‘I think there is time for me to do a little more work before dinner,’ said he, and he went back to the study.
It was what she expected. She knew her father did not care for long conversations, or, indeed, short ones, particularly at unusual times, and between tea and dinner was unusual. Yet she felt wounded almost to tears.
That conversation was typical. They would pass the whole round of the year, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, without anything more intimate. In his sympathy for Mr Sykes her father had been unusually communicative. ‘I should hate it if he snapped,’ she thought, ‘but it would make us seem more friendly.’ It was only in his sermons, written in limpid and beautiful English and simple enough for the slow village congregation, that she heard the result of his learning and long meditation. Once, when she was much younger, she challenged some conclusion of his sermons. Looking back, she saw timidity had made her sound truculent. He said, ‘I think one should only proclaim one’s views on such difficult and serious subjects after systematic study. I have some books in the library which I could lend you.’ Time and experience showed her she had asked for what would be difficult to many, and the hardest thing in life to him. For several years she had ceased to question him.
‘If men are only to meet in this life,’ she reflected, ‘and pass most of it fretting one another because they cannot get nearer, it would all be intolerable.’ She remembered her mother’s smile when she was dead. She felt it a kind of guarantee that there might be a time when she would see her father face to face.
Then Cook came for a chat. ‘Oh, he has missed you,’ said she. ‘There was the day the Archdeacon, and Mrs Waters, and the three young ladies came, and Emma had gone to her aunt, and he come to me, and he says, “I don’t know what we shall do about tea.” I says, “Don’t you trouble yourself, sir. Everything shall be sent up just as Miss Mary should wish it to be.” “Oh,” he says, “if Miss Mary was here she would pour it out.” So I says, “Let me put it before Mrs Waters, sir; you’ll see that won’t trouble her.” Then two evenings ago he had an attack of his cramp. I heard him moving, for I was sleeping next door, as you give orders, Miss Mary, and I went in to him, and he says, “If Miss Mary was here she would know what to do.” “Let me write to her in the morning,” I says, “and we’ll have her back on Wednesday? That soothed him wonderful, but after I rubbed him he settled down quite quiet, and he was well in the morning and wouldn’t have you wrote to.’
Mary laughed and was comforted.
5
The Rectory settled down easily into its new routine. The nurse left; Ruth’s room became a spare room; Canon Jocelyn went on writing in the study. Every one else felt the death a relief, but Mary found the house empty and her life empty. Even Cook could not sympathize with her. She would not show her thought openly – that now Mary must marry. During Ruth’s lifetime Mary had never contemplated it; it would be impossible to leave her. She had not repined at youth slipping away with its natural desires unfulfilled. Canon Jocelyn had not contemplated her marriage either. And now at eighty-two his mind could not expand to make room for such a new idea; his very few remaining years must go on in their usual way. He would have esteemed Mary more if she had been married; a range of consideration and pleasures would then have been her due. He would not have treated her as a little girl. As things were, she had had her change of air with her aunt; enough had been done.
Mary had come back at the beginning of August. The topic of the moment was the inauguration of a village nurse at Dedmayne. All had been settled by Miss Redland, the elder sister of Mary’s friend Dora, an energetic ‘Labour’ spirit, recently returned to the neighbourhood. It was she who arranged the sale of work on the Rectory lawn, and the speeches from herself and Lady Meryton, the grande dame of the neighbourhood.
When Canon Jocelyn first came to Dedmayne he found Mrs Cann, who said charms over her patients. He had never disturbed himself to change her. He was inclined to regard illness (he was rarely ill) as an opportunity for resignation, and thought the modern concentration on health regrettable.
Old Susan, uncertificated, with no strings and no veil, had taken Mrs Cann’s place, and he thought she did very well. Susan had cared for Ruth, and Mary clung to her as part of her sad past, from which she refused to be free.
The inauguration ceremony occupied the minds of Dedmayne to the brim. There was always something to notice: whether it was Miss Redland’s rough familiarity – she treated every one alike on principle – or Miss Gage’s flutter of spirits – was she as a teacher sufficiently in the public eye? – or Susan’s distress at Miss Redland’s reference to ‘no real qualification,’ and delight at Lady Meryton’s consolations. ‘Miss Redland may be what they call an educated woman, but her ladyship’s real gentry,’ was the verdict of all. These would be topics for weeks when the great day was over. Even Canon Jocelyn was moved from his usual meditation to read Tennyson to Lady Meryton after tea. But Mary, to outward appearance the assiduous hostess, felt apart from the innocent afternoon, preyed upon ceaselessly by the sense of her loneliness. Her duties ended with an hour’s talk with Lady Meryton, when Miss Redland and the village guests had gone. Afterwards she looked back on that hour as the turning-point in her life.
Lady Meryton was a cousin of Canon Jocelyn. In the daughter of a peer, married to a rich baronet, Canon Jocelyn scented the possibilities of patronage, and, in spite of advances from the Merytons, had very little to do with them. Mary remembered occasional afternoons in her childhood and teens at Meryton Court, when various tall sons and daughters of the house had terrified her because they were so old. By this time tall grandsons and grand-daughters were beginning to terrify her because they were so young. But she had fallen adoringly at Lady Meryton’s feet, and was always ready to fall again.
Lady Meryton was over seventy, but she was still a beauty. Her head had never been turned. She was as used to being adored as having her breakfast. From childhood
onward her relations, doctor, tradespeople, lawyers, children, husband, governesses, and secretaries, and now, above all, her unmarried daughter Claudia, shielded her from the roughness of the world. She had only to be charming. That duty she fulfilled to perfection, and she had a warm affectionate nature.
Claudia, apart from her mother, lived for hunting. She was like a Juggernaut car to everything that got in its way. ‘If only my people would have a little sense, and sell the Court, and get something in Leicestershire. Everybody’s letting their places go now. I don’t say the hunting is bad here, but it isn’t Leicestershire. But what my two excellent parents love is muddling about with tenants and old women and things, and the hunting goes to pot.’
Lady Meryton gossiped to Mary about the neighbourhood in the old-fashioned county way. ‘Nurse Brown (the new importation) isn’t a bad woman – we had her at Yeabsley, you know, a little apt to take offence and pet the richer cases, but I think in nurses one has to expect that, and I know several instances where she has been really kind. What a good little speech Ella Redland made, and how handsome she looked. My husband will call her “the Unnecessary Female,” so I’m afraid she’s only known to us as the U.F. She will be so terribly active, and her dreadful socialistic views – she really ought to know better. I always think those inspectors the Government send down should be excused, because they know nothing of country people, but Ella was at Clouston till she was quite grown-up, and Mrs Redland was such a nice comfortable thing, and I’m sure she got none of her views from Mr Redland; he was a most harmless little man.’
Mary wondered if she and her father were also described as ‘nice,’ ‘comfortable,’ and ‘harmless’ things. But Lady Meryton had adored her Jocelyn mother, and for her sake loved all Jocelyns. Only, among the host of sons, daughters, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, to whom she was fondly attached, and her husband, who was all in all to her, her life was over full without Mary.
Yet it was the superlatively prosperous Lady Meryton who understood and comforted Mary.
‘Your life reminds me so much of my dearest sister’s,’ she said. ‘She looked after my brother. He was rather like little Ruth, and when he died she looked after my father. She was the best of all of us; she was never married – that is so often the way, I think – and the whole weight of the family seemed to fall on her. My two older sisters were abroad with their husbands, and it was the time my children were coming. I cannot tell you how I envied her, really being able to serve those she loved. When I lost my little girl of scarlet fever, I was not allowed even to come near her because of the infection. I was nursing baby at the time. It’s forty-five years ago now, and I’ve never forgotten it. A life like yours has wonderful compensations.’
Mary saw the tears in her eyes. ‘I tell you, Mary dear, because I think you will understand, and some people don’t; even my dearest Claudia, who is so good to me, doesn’t. But, Mary, I wanted to say, don’t let yourself get too much of a hermit’
‘I feel so different from people – so stupid.’
‘Yes, that is what my sister Eleanor said. But it is just shyness, which you shouldn’t yield to.’
‘Sometimes I want to see people, and then when I do I shrink up.’
‘That’s right. You ought to want to see people, and though you say you shrink up, I assure you you manage to conceal it. You have a touch of your charming mother. It came out so today, when I saw you and Ella talking to the people, such a contrast. In little Ruth’s lifetime, of course, you were tied. You gave your heart to her, and you will never forget her, but try not to pine. I know how you feel, Mary. Eleanor said it was like losing a baby, when my brother died. My niece, Kathy Hollings, is coming in September. You must meet her. She’s a great tall thing now, and so lovely. We haven’t seen as much of her as I should like, for her guardian, my brother-in-law, chose to have a stupid quarrel with my husband. She has no proper home, poor child, and her brother has married one of those dreadful smart people I cannot bear. I want to get her away from that influence. We’re having a big house party for Kathy; she’s up to all sorts of fun.’
Mary remembered Kathy, a crushing, beautiful child, an accomplished horsewoman at seven, having a bande à part with Claudia at twenty-four, because Mary made such a poor exhibition with an old cob of the Merytons. She had no wish to meet Kathy again.
Lady Meryton had kept her best bit of gossip for the last. ‘Have you heard about Lanchester? Robert Herbert is coming to the Vicarage. It will be so nice to have one of the family at last. The Herberts still have the presentation, you know.’
The name Herbert took Mary back to her childhood. Mr Herbert’s father had been her father’s dearly-loved friend. She could remember Robert, a handsome, supercilious undergraduate. They had not seen him for many years. He would be a stranger, and her father did not like strangers. There would be duty calls; there might be a tea-party or two. Then her father would find something to criticize, and make excuses for not seeing anything more of his brother clergyman.
Other thoughts were occupying Lady Meryton – the same thoughts which had occupied Cook and the boarding-house. How nice if Mary married Robert. She was quickly adding up ages, and planning tête-à-tête.
‘You must be sure and get him to Dedmayne, Mary; it is so good for the younger clergy to meet your father.’ When she went to bed that night Mary felt less solitary; she knew not why.
6
The news of the appointment to Lanchester was confirmed in a letter to Canon Jocelyn. In old age letters, genuine letters, apart from bills and circulars, resume the thin trickle of childhood. Canon Jocelyn was the more intrigué that he could not think who his correspondent might be.
It was Mrs Herbert, the widow of his friend. He had always kept up with her; according to both their ideas they were frequently corresponding. But it was nine years since she had written – so time flies in old age – and he had forgotten her handwriting. ‘He is very much looking forward to the pleasure of seeing you again,’ she wrote. ‘He well remembers your kindness to him in his undergraduate days.’ The object of the letter was now completed, but there was more to come in Mrs Herbert’s pointed hand.
The miserable weather we have been having lately has been a great disappointment. After that long cold spring, which put everything late, our poor almond blossom was actually flowering in April! I had hoped that the summer might have been a compensation, but the cruel winds we had in August made the temperature actually lower than in December. My sister and I have missed the drives to Beachy Head and Hurst Castle, which we always look forward to so much; but September is sometimes a lovely month, and we are hoping for a few bright restful days next week, when my niece will be staying with us. My sister-in-law begs to unite with me in very kindest remembrances to yourself and Mary, whom I remember seeing how many years ago! –Yours most truly,
EMMELINE HERBERT.
Such a letter was pleasant to Canon Jocelyn, recalling his early days. He would not have written it himself, but the ladies he had known and liked best, all, literary and intellectual, and unliterary and unintellectual, wrote in that manner, nor, however intimate they might have been, would they have omitted one fact about the seasons, or have cared to add much of a more personal nature.
Mary’s recollections of the writer were of herself at an awkward ten, thirteen, and seventeen, and of Mrs Herbert, as what at that time she called ‘fashionable and satirical.’ Since then Mrs Herbert had been delicate, and living at Eastbourne with a sister-in-law; she had not come to Dedmayne again. She had invited Mary to pay long visits, but Mary had declined them; for some years the invitations had ceased.
The news roused an interest in her father which she had seldom seen. That early friendship had been, next to his marriage, the deepest feeling of Canon Jocelyn’s life.
A few days after the letter Mr Herbert came to call. He was paying a preliminary visit at Lanchester before settling in. He was now neither handsome nor supercilious. Mary thought h
e had interesting eyes, and liked his long, rather wolf-like mouth. She could watch him as she sat at the tea-table, for he was listening intently to her father, unaware that she was staring at him.
Canon Jocelyn was talking about Mr Herbert’s father, and his voice was faltering, almost breaking, when he said, ‘There was no one like your father – no one.’ The emotion from an old man of eighty-two was touching. Mary was glad that it was displayed before some one who would know how to treat it. She thought of a noisy clergyman or two of their acquaintance, and shuddered. Her eyes met Mr Herbert’s; he had turned his head a little to give her father time to recover. He had been moved also, and she liked his expression.
Canon Jocelyn had, when he chose, unusual powers of pleasing in conversation. Mary was accustomed to visitors becoming engrossed in him. Politeness satisfied, or hardly satisfied, they left her alone. This she did not mind in the least. Mr Herbert satisfied politeness entirely, with something left over. It was Canon Jocelyn who impressed him certainly; it was of him he thought continuously as he walked home, but he remembered Miss Jocelyn’s face, when she looked at her father. She had a sweet smile.
He rose to go shortly after tea, but it had transpired that he was bringing out an edition of Donne, whose sermons were particular favourites with Canon Jocelyn. He was begged to come into the study and see a rare folio, and then other old editions were shown, and Mary could hear the continual rise and fall of the two voices. The first gong rang while they were still busy looking and talking, and when Mr Herbert stood up in compunction, Canon Jocelyn invited him to dinner, saying, ‘If you share your father’s taste for port, there is a very fair wine I should like you to try.’ And the precious vintage, which lingered in the cellar year after year, was brought up in his honour.
Either it or Mr Herbert’s society unloosed Canon Jocelyn’s tongue. Mary had hardly ever known him so genial. Mr Herbert was a Cambridge man, which was a refreshment in a dry land, for what University men there were in the neighbourhood were Oxford, or came from upstart places, which Canon Jocelyn would not call a university. Such unfortunates could not relish the full flavour of a Cambridge joke, and recently there had been little chance for Canon Jocelyn to remark, as it gave him pleasure to do, ‘He had no depth; the foundations had not been securely laid – more what one might call the Oxford stamp. There have no doubt been certain eminent and really sound scholars among them, but I think it is fair to say the Oxford mind is superficial.’