The Rector's Daughter
Page 4
After dinner he brought forth his Cambridge University Calendar, which was to him as the peerage to Sir Walter Eliot, and dissected the distinguished classics of sixty-five and sixty years ago, recollecting accurately the senior, second, and third classics of several generations, and their coaches as well.
‘Miles was fair certainly, hardly a first-rate man, a good grammarian, but his verses were lamentable. Now Fullerton turned out as neat a set of Alcaics* as I ever saw, but he had a finicky mind; there was a want of manliness about him. He went into the Church, and they made him a bishop. He was a ritualist – excessively pleased with his tippets,* and so forth. Webb was an excellent scholar, but he fidgeted every one with his absurdities, and his appearance was unfortunate; his face was hideously marked. Poor fellow, he lost his reason. Armstrong was second-rate in every particular, a puny creature, and immoderately vain. He was always wondering what people thought of him. He pestered your father with questions, until at last even he lost patience, and said, “I can set your mind at rest on that point for ever. They do not think of you at all, because there is nothing to think of.” He took to politics, and flattered the mob. I believe they made a baronet of him.’
Mary liked hearing of old Cambridge. She had heard of it from her childhood, listening half-dreamily, while her father discussed it with his contemporaries – contemporaries who, however else they might differ, relished good wine, were uninterested in smoking or athletics, rather despised the rest of Europe, honoured the Conservative party and even its vagaries, and treated her, whatever their opinion of her might be, with polished deference.
They had dropped away from her father by this time through age or death, and their favourite topics had all the sweetness of early associations. Mary had imbibed their horror of false quantities, though she had forgotten most of her Latin and Greek, and from constant repetition she knew when the point was coming in the classical jokes much better than some of the new curates, who slipped through the theological colleges with as little learning as they could.
Mary could remember some unwary ones embarking on Latin names and being annihilated in Canon Jocelyn’s silver tones. Once a Bishop had come, Colonial, it is true, who told a classical story, prefacing it genially with ‘You must “tick me off,” as the boys say’ (it was no recommendation to Mr Jocelyn that the boys said it) ‘if I make a ghastly howler.’ He did, but Canon Jocelyn thought it unbecoming his own dignity to correct him in the presence of the clergy, whose flocks he was shortly to confirm. He was tracked down afterwards in the Book of Books, and it was discovered he had taken a Poll degree.* From that day Canon Jocelyn gave up the Church as lost.
The conversation passed away from Cambridge to other things. Canon Jocelyn talked of his travels abroad with Mr Herbert’s father, and of Alpine climbing. ‘Your father helped to start the Alpine Club; I was a humble follower, but we had some climbs together before they tamed the mighty Alps and put them into harness.’ Mary heard of parties at the English Legation attached to some of the smaller German courts. ‘They were very merry, very merry, those old days; they seem part of another life.’ Mr Herbert said his father had told him of Canon Jocelyn and a certain beautiful Grand Duchess.
‘Yes, the Princess Sophia did me the honour of accepting the roses I had the temerity to offer her. That was all the bright sunshine of morning, and now it is twilight, and one sees the grave beauty of the approaching night.’
Mary could not help a twinge of indignation. She wondered which had been the bright sunshine of her morning. Had not her life been rather the twilight of a river mist, or even of a London fog? And there had been years before Ruth came back, when she, too, might have been gay. Common sense, her mother’s legacy, came to her aid. Her father must have been born suited to Grand Duchesses, and she, with all the pushing in the world, would never have suited Grand Dukes.
‘It has been a very pleasant evening,’ said Canon Jocelyn when Mr Herbert was gone. ‘I have always said there is nothing like a first-rate Cambridge man. Sometimes one is afraid the type is dying, when one remembers certain specimens of Cambridge men among the Inspectors the Government is good enough to send us; but I see it is not.’ Mary had rarely heard her father so enthusiastic.
The weeks passed, and Mr Herbert read himself in. Canon Jocelyn paid his call, and Mr Herbert returned it. The friendship so happily inaugurated prospered, and Canon Jocelyn began to say now and then, ‘I wonder whether Herbert will be looking in on us this afternoon?’
Meanwhile Lady Meryton sent her promised invitation. ‘Cannot you manage to stay a night or two with us next week? Kathy is here, and I shall have two of my boys with their wives and a nice heap of grandchildren. I am sure you can trust that dear old cook and the nice housemaid to look after Canon Jocelyn while you are away.’
Here was the chance Mary had complained she never got. She thought of the men servants, the vast rooms, the corridors in which she lost her way. She thought of Claudia; she thought above all, of Kathy, superlatively smart and beautiful. She refused, and felt herself a coward.
‘Well, now, Mamma dear, do be satisfied,’ said Claudia. ‘She doesn’t want to come; she likes her dungeon at Dedmayne, and you ought to be very grateful to her, for I don’t believe she plays a single game, even ping-pong, and you would have had her on your hands the whole time, for I couldn’t have helped you. I don’t know what to say to a person who can’t play a game.’
In the happy rush of grandchildren, Lady Meryton forgot Mary.
Life generally has some pervading interest, often a very small one, which engrosses the mind, until it is its turn to be superseded. Ella Redland, the Merytons, Nurse Brown, Mr Herbert, faded into the background. Their place in Mary’s mind was taken by the anticipation of a visit from Dora. There was now no reason there should not be visitors at the Rectory. She was invited and she accepted.
7
When Dora arrived at Cayley Station she saw, among the motors and governess-carts, a shabby phaeton with a long-maned, wily pony. He found more than one hill to walk up on the flat road to Dedmayne, but neither Dora nor Mary wanted to go faster. ‘This road,’ said Dora, ‘I haven’t seen it for sixteen years; it’s not a bit changed. You are, Mary. I shouldn’t have known you, and of course I am. I’m getting so stout. It was clever of you to recognize me.’
‘Your face has hardly changed at all,’ said Mary. ‘I always thought you so lovely.’ Dora had been an unusually pretty, fair, pale girl.
‘Did you, Mary? How nice of you. Yes, I think I was rather pretty. But,’ with enthusiasm, ‘you remember Gertrude? She married, you know, and her eldest little girl is the loveliest child you ever saw.’
When tea came, Canon Jocelyn waited on the visitor with trembling fingers and shambling, yet stately, tread. It seemed as if he must upset the cup. Dora longed to help him – she loved helping, but she knew old people felt it when little offices were taken from them. He liked to perform the duty in silence, so that he might give his whole mind to it. When all wants were satisfied he had leisure for inquiries about the journey. That two hours from London – Dora had come from London, not from Southsea – was referred to as something exceptional.
‘You will hardly care to take much of a walk after your journey, but perhaps when you have rested sufficiently you might like to have a little turn in the garden.’
‘A little turn,’ ‘a stroll,’ ‘a saunter’ on dry gravel walks – these were what Canon Jocelyn, with a flattering assumption of their preciousness and fragility, proposed to lady visitors. But the suggestion was a part of old-fashioned, hospitable politeness. He would have thought poorly of Mary if she said she were tired or wanted to go to bed early, therefore she never did either.
There is a special pleasure in walks round a country clerical garden. It is large enough for variety and small enough for cosiness. It adds to the pleasure if the garden lies next the church, and the trees from the churchyard cast their shadows on the path. But perhaps the charm can only be felt by those
who have known both vicarages and the country from their childhood. Nature helps lazy, inexpert gardeners with particular kindness in September; now the asters, Michaelmas daisies, dahlias, phloxes, and that whole autumn tribe of bright yellow flowers were sprawling in abundance all over the Dedmayne beds.
Canon Jocelyn walked beside Dora. He picked her flowers, first one and then another. The stalks were short, the petals sometimes withered, the species inappropriate for a nosegay, but there was a peculiar charm in the way he handed them. This charm was lost on her. Is all charm only an illusion – the emperor’s new clothes? But by its means, and a certain slow way of shutting his eyes, which created the other illusion that he was formidable, Canon Jocelyn exercised dominion. His learning, integrity, untiring industry, clear judgement did not count for nearly so much; the neighbourhood could not understand them.
He went in; the friends remained in the garden.
‘Father doesn’t often come round the garden with people and talk so much,’ said Mary exultingly. ‘I am sure he enjoyed it.’
‘I am so glad,’ said Dora tranquilly. ‘It is nice he is well enough to enjoy life. I am afraid I don’t quite understand all those stories. I did say I don’t know any Latin, but he didn’t quite realize.’
Canon Jocelyn had formerly been an austere critic of young women, demanding little of them in action, but everything in repose. He had been too fastidious; his children and other young people had never been at ease with him; he had not known them as they really were. He was particularly severe on any trace of affectation or vanity. ‘She is not perfectly natural,’ he would say, and the girl’s doom was sealed.
Mary had fallen short of the ideal in several respects; so had Dora, as the young, unformed daughter of a dull fellow-clergyman with a poor degree from some obscure, small college – ‘I can’t recollect its name, there are so many at Oxford.’ He had approved her good looks. ‘She is a pleasing person,’ he had said, ‘but I wish she had a little more colour, and I fear from those spectacles her sight cannot be very good.’
Then came other strictures.
‘Your friend is very busy with her Sunday Class, and seems admirable in every way, but could she be persuaded to – there is a little, lisping affectation in her way of speaking which is somewhat irritating.’
‘I wonder if Dora Redland ever reads. I am not speaking of the volumes of light fiction which young ladies devour at all hours, but does she ever read?’
Now Canon Jocelyn was old; his still alarming exterior was a shell from which the life inside was gone. His sight was dimmed; he had grown humble; he was even tending towards gratitude to young people for their attention. This showed itself in his comment, ‘It is very pleasant to have Miss Redland with us. She enlarges our circle, which you must not allow to grow too narrow. I did not remember how good-looking she was, and she certainly has much more ability than her sister Ella.’
This was not true, but Ella Redland had made an unfortunate impression on him. She had started the subject of progress. ‘We mustn’t let ourselves be groovy, Canon Jocelyn,’ speaking to him as if he were deaf. ‘We must have a scientific point of view.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Canon Jocelyn. He pronounced ‘Ah’ as if it were ‘myer’, with an indescribable intonation of aloofness. ‘I mean, however much you object to it, we can’t go back. We must be progressive. Eppure si muove.’*
‘Groovy,’ ‘scientific’, ‘progressive’, he winced at the words.
‘Indeed, but it is possible that by progress we may mean different things.’
This much he allowed himself to say. Fearing he might have been discourteous to the daughter of an old friend, he went on: ‘At my age one loses the capacity and, I am afraid, the desire for change. You were quoting Italian just now. We have been reading in one of the magazines an interesting account of the progress,’ with a gracious smile, ‘to use the word, I hope, in an uncontroversial sense, of the new tunnel through the Alps.’
And, in spite of struggles, to the new tunnel Ella was kept till she left.
She had worn a becoming hat, and Canon Jocelyn was melted by beauty, giving it moral qualities which did not belong to it. But he said to Mary, ‘It is remarkable how objectionable some well-intentioned ladies can make themselves.’ This was why Dora had much more ability than her sister Ella.
‘Come and see if there are any more autumn crocuses in the churchyard,’ said Mary to Dora as they wandered happily in the garden. ‘I always look every day.’
A robin flew up to greet them; a toad crawled forth and squatted on the path, turning his bright eyes to Mary while she talked to him. He shared the general predilection of the animal world for human conversation. Mary and Dora stopped to look through the gap in the hedge at the view beyond, quiet, domestic, English scenery – a pond, meadows, and elm trees. These are the solace of the lonely in the country.
Then they walked in the village, a rustic saunter of admiring gardens and tasting fruit. Dora shared in the cottage talk in the special, pleasant voice she kept for parish visits.
‘How difficult the poor are,’ said she on the walk home. ‘Always grumbling. Poor things, I suppose they can’t help it, but I feel in despair about the working-class sometimes.’
‘Do you, Dora? They hate anything new. I rather sympathize with them. I like them better than our class; we understand one another.’
‘Really, Mary, I should never feel that. I love trying to help them, but there’s such a barrier.’
‘I think there is always a barrier with every one,’ said Mary. ‘Even if some unusual emotion seems to break it down, it is there again the next time.’
This thought was beyond Dora; she rarely reflected on life; she did.
When they came in Mary showed Dora curiosities. Households such as the Rectory contained many curiosities – carved chessmen, ivory balls within balls, enamelled snuff-boxes. There were portfolios of sketches by aunts and great-aunts. Sweet landscapes of bright, showery days in October, the earth always brown after a drought, so that no crude green need be employed. Then there were the photograph albums. Several generations were represented: crinoline ladies, none of them pretty, and almost all beautiful; lovely girls of the seventies and eighties; the neat, tight-laced nineties, then a lady-like elegance; lastly, the theatrical period. The whiskered men were a curious combination of mildness and severity; the era of moustaches following, characterless and commonplace.
‘What a number of ancestors you have,’ said Dora. ‘We have none, you know. My grandfather kept a small shop somewhere in Hoxton. Then it was moved to Ealing, and my uncle has it still. I always meant to tell you years ago, and I didn’t. Not that I think it would have made a difference to you, Mary!’
‘No, not with me.’
‘But it would have with your father.’
‘I think it might a little,’ said Mary.
Canon Jocelyn thought trade so inextricably connected with fraud that any one engaged in it must not be expected to be treated on a level with gentlemen. He looked on rich tradesmen with more contempt, supposing that the poor tradesmen had remained more honest. He found few to agree with his harsh, unworldly view.
‘I wish you would tell your father, Mary,’ said Dora. ‘Not that it matters now. Once I thought –’
‘How do you mean?’ said Mary.
‘I’ll tell you later.’
The evening was just a repetition of the visit Dora had paid the Rectory twenty years ago; for the Rectory life was like a chapter of history, twenty years did not count for much with it. Canon Jocelyn offered his arm to form the procession to the dining-room. There was grace before and after meals, proposed by Canon Jocelyn with ‘Shall we ask a blessing?’ Tea, cake, and bread and butter were brought into the dining-room at nine. Then Canon Jocelyn read Shakespeare and Milton aloud, those fireside bulwarks of the old-fashioned home evenings.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Dora. ‘We’re always saying we’ll have some Browning at home in the evenings. We go
to the theatre so seldom we want to see something bright, so Shakespeare never seems to come my way.’
When Canon Jocelyn had gone out of the room she added, ‘What a nice interest for him it is. We try to get Uncle Tom to read, but he gets tired of things so easily.’
She was not idle during the reading; she devised comforts for Canon Jocelyn.
‘I was wondering if he would wear a cardigan if I knitted one for him. I gave a dear old man in my district one, and he’s delighted with it.’
There were prayers at ten, with verses of the psalms read by the family and servants in turn. Then came bedtime. A hip-bath was prepared before the fire in the spare room. The four-post bedstead with crimson canopies and tassels, so high that it had to be climbed into by steps, the lamp and candle-light were all relics of the past.
Mary lingered behind a moment to break to Canon Jocelyn the news of the Redlands’ shop.
‘Oh yes,’ said Canon Jocelyn, with a slight touch of repressing inquisitiveness, ‘a draper’s shop somewhere in the outskirts of London. Mr Redland used sometimes to consult me about his brother’s affairs. The brother was not very capable, nor, for that matter, was Redland himself. He would have done wisely, I believe, to have consulted Kekewich’ (Canon Jocelyn’s man of business) ‘as I advised him. It might have saved him from getting so seriously embarrassed. Redland became involved himself. Mr Sykes and I were able to be of some assistance, otherwise it would have been an unpleasant business.’ This was the time when Canon Jocelyn had refused to lay out the tennis-court.