by F. M. Mayor
Mary hesitated. ‘I expect you’ll be rather hostile,’ said Brynhilda.
‘I think she’s abhorrent,’ said Mary.
‘What a jolly word! She’s rather a wonderful person, but she is a little abhorrent. She has a sort of perverted mind which makes her interesting. She likes to hand picture post-cards round – you know the sort suburban people look at in twos, and are awfully shocked. I wonder if she’ll have an understanding with Tommy. I thought she looked rather like it tonight, but you can’t really tell. Aunt Ellen was horror-struck at her views, but I never feel they’re my affair. Who is it says “Moral indignation is the only sin”? That’s rather profound.’
‘Do you think nothing matters, then – that nothing is right and wrong’?’
‘I think things matter extraordinarily, but as to right and wrong that the Victorians were so portentous and glib about, I don’t know. I mean laughter and lightness and good-humour carry you through most things. Life is meant for experience; that’s the thing that counts.’
‘I can’t agree with you,’ said Mary, shutting her lips like her father.
‘No, you would feel like Dermott. He specializes in disapproving; that’s the Roman Catholicism. I quite see his point of view, but isn’t it intellectually lazy? I wish you could see Dermott again. Stay another night.’
But Mary had determined not to meet Dermott again.
Brynhilda’s talk bewildered Mary, repelled and fascinated. Some was incomprehensible. Brynhilda was versed in the arts of intimacy; she had a charming suggestion of flattery in her: ‘Of course you would think that.’ Mary confided more of her life and her ideas than she knew. Friendship seemed easy; at Dedmayne even acquaintanceship was often leaden-footed. Canon Jocelyn chilled the beginnings with criticism. The society of Mrs Plumtree, with whom she was to spend her second night, loomed dully before Mary in comparison. She broke her promise of arriving for an early tea, and went with Brynhilda to a matinée.
Brynhilda on her side was attracted by Mary.
‘You must come again,’ she said when they parted. ‘And I want to see your Rectory. I shall bring Salome one day – or are you too far off for a Sunday tramp? – then we could all come, get to you for lunch, and put in a Eucharist or something; it would be jolly to see it. I don’t know anything about church and clergymen. They always seemed to me not real – just cardboard. It was stupid.’
‘She’s rather wild and crushed, and a perfect lady. Such an odd type – but nice, don’t you think so?’ said Brynhilda to Dermott.
‘First I thought her dull and then I thought her a kind of governess; she talked my head off. Sorry, but I can’t go into any raptures.’
It was late in the afternoon when Mary made her way to Mrs Plumtree. Rain had been falling; the pavements were reflecting the electric lights in long streams. There is a particular charm in those damp London twilights, a freedom from the weight of routine, responsibility, and duty, which suited well with Mary’s present thoughts. She felt the fascination of Brynhilda’s life. For the first time in her life she was envious.
Mrs Plumtree’s face was glued to the window. She lived in a villa at Shepherd’s Bush. She was one of the many Canon Jocelyn had secretly helped with money and advice. He was an oracle to her. To entertain his daughter was her best return, her greatest treat. This had only been possible at the rarest intervals.
‘Oh, Mary,’ she said tearfully, ‘I thought there must have been a dreadful accident, and Gladys had made you one of her seed-cakes – but never mind. She was so disappointed; however –’
It was with difficulty Mary persuaded Mrs Plumtree to have the cake for supper. She heard it described many times before she ate it, and the lemon sole also.
Mrs Plumtree was a faded specimen of the generation that is almost gone. Mary knew through and through all the views Mrs Plumtree held on the minute range of subjects which interested her – servants, medicines, aspidistras, knitting patterns, sermons, and the wide range of subjects which shocked her and roused disapproval – dogs, barrel-organs, all hymn tunes earlier than 1860, all branches of Christendom (except St James’ Church), especially Unitarians, white and magenta flowers, people wearing black (unless they were in mourning), the present fashions in dress, whatever it was – one might almost say the present fashion in anything. Mary could have screamed. She was not far from echoing ‘Moral indignation is the only sin.’ They sat and sat.
‘I am staying up an hour later, Mary dear; it is such a treat to have you here.’
Twenty-four hours ago Mary had been shocked and miserable at the flat. Did she cherish a mad notion that it was better to be shocked and miserable in heaven than dull in hell? lf so, going home in the train she returned to herself. She knew she excelled in one branch of knowledge – old ladies. She thought of the matinée. She had deliberately given Mrs Plumtree three hours of avoidable torment. For what? Nothing. For the future she would stay at home, and no one should see her writings again. She despised herself for ever showing them. She was, as Ella Redland called it in C.O.S. days, now long forgotten, ‘unhelpable.’ It was better to know; it would stop her restlessness. She wept. Not without a pang could she recall that she was despised by Dermott and the other intellectual young people, shocking though they might be.
Cook told her that evening Canon Jocelyn had been to Lanchester the day before.
‘Prince knows the turn quite well there now,’ said Mary. ‘We go so often.’
‘Ah, my dear, you’ll be going to the Vicarage once too often,’ said Cook. ‘And we shan’t get you back again.’
Mary did not understand, but laughed. In village life she often had to laugh at jokes without a point. Thinking it over, she realized the point. She knew it was impossible, nevertheless she did not care now who despised her.
Canon Jocelyn had missed Mary when she was away. Now she had broken loose and shown she could leave him, he respected her more. They had an almost flowing conversation on architecture at dinner.
The next day was Sunday, the busy Sunday of the clergyman’s household, her favourite day in the week. It began with the early service, held but once a month, for Canon Jocelyn looked askance at early celebrations as a fruit of the Oxford movement. The early service was a delight to Mary. She loved the walk thither in the dark winter mornings, seeing the gravestones stand out in the fog. She would have liked to have fasted before partaking. But this Canon Jocelyn would have considered affectation and self-willed childishness, so Mary, in a spirit of abstinence, finished the tea and bounteous bread-and-butter provided by Cook with affectionate zeal. Mary thought fasting would have given her yet more share in the silence of Nature and of the dead, and in the stillness of the Church with its wondrous smell of old wood, old leather, and old sweet confined air, which recalled the generations who had worshipped there, their bodies now peaceful dust. At that time what was impossible in ordinary life became easy – to feel in communion, not merely with her mother and sister and the dead who had been known to her, but with the excellent Dedmayne fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers, of whom the old people had so often spoken, gone from the earth over a hundred years ago. Her contact with Brynhilda’s set made the morning walk more precious.
There was a low arch and some tracery left, a relic of the old church, and one of the odd allegorical figures that the medieval masons amused themselves with sticking about their sacred places. Cromwell’s generals must have forgotten to smash him. He had been Mary’s playfellow in childhood during her father’s long morning sermons, and he was her friend still. After Kensington and the flat she greeted him and his seven hundred years with particular affection.
Canon Jocelyn had an old-fashioned feeling of Sunday as a day apart. It was a busy day for Mary, with morning Sunday school, evening service, and a walk with Miss Gage.
‘Miss Jocelyn, dear,’ said Miss Gage. Mary did not like being called ‘dear’ by Miss Gage, but never summoned up pluck to check it; occasionally Miss Gage called her ‘treasure.
’
‘You’re looking a lot better now after your trip to town, but you were ever so white and drawn before you went away.’
Mary had her father’s dislike to observations on health, particularly when they were a mark of affection. She knew she had never looked drawn, but Miss Gage must imagine it was her two nights’ absence which wrought the change. Of course it was Cook’s words about Mr Herbert.
On Sunday evening Canon Jocelyn read aloud Cowper, Vaughan, or George Herbert. The sleepy cadence of his voice, though he always declared he was not sleepy, mixed with Mary’s dreaming thoughts. Then she woke up to play till bedtime from Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. Her father only liked slow and soft passages. He was not musical, but he loved certain things, going back as usual seventy years, because his mother had played them. He hummed the melodies incorrectly but sweetly to himself in a voice still true, though age had taken most of its sound away.
Mary thought to herself that Mrs Plumtree’s mind resembled her villa drawing-room with its blinds half-down; Brynhilda’s and her set were like the crude brightness of the flat; Canon Jocelyn’s she compared to his study, sumptuous in learning and spare in luxury.
12
Mr Herbert’s acquaintance with Dedmayne Rectory prospered. He came there constantly while autumn was turning into mild green winter. He went about the garden with Canon Jocelyn and Mary, sometimes with Mary alone. He enjoyed the robins as much as Mary did, the arches made by the bare branches, the early afternoon sun shining on the cocks’ scarlet combs, the odds and ends of berries and brown leaves, and other tender beauties of winter. He and his had come from the country. Lanchester had been theirs for many generations, though the family had not been able to live there. He loved it the more, because much of his life had passed in factory surroundings. He had an affection for his eastern county stronger than any artist’s admiration. He shared, too, Mary’s fondness for old books or old anything, as links which bound the present to a loved past.
Not merely did Mr Herbert visit Dedmayne, he persuaded Canon Jocelyn to visit Lanchester. He had some rare seventeenth-century folios he wanted to show, and, the pony being ill, he could not bring them to Dedmayne. This bait caught Canon Jocelyn. In general he disliked having meals out of his own house. When he preached or attended meetings in the neighbourhood, he had to be entertained by his brother clergy, but these receivings of hospitality he considered a burden almost too heavy to be borne. He consented to come for an old-fashioned ‘happy day,’ with lunch, a leisurely afternoon, and tea to follow.
It actually was a happy day. Canon Jocelyn and Mr Herbert roamed about the Rectory study, each picking out books, taking them to one another to show and discuss. They stood with one leg on a chair, balancing the larger volumes against the back; uncomfortable arrangements, but agreeable to them. Sometimes Mr Herbert tried to make Mary talk, but she was just as pleased to listen. It was an indulgence she could not often give herself; she missed it as a departed pleasure. At her present age it distressed people if she appeared to be left out, so she found some one even shyer than herself who must be talked to.
At one moment Mary feared for the peace of the afternoon. Canon Jocelyn had been reading some stanzas of ‘The Lotus Eaters’ with exquisite intonation. Then he said, ‘I cannot tolerate these young coxcombs who won’t read Tennyson – that is to say, the early Tennyson-. Like many poets, he wrote too much in later life. They spend all their time over the new-fangled poets. It is lamentable.’
‘I don’t think I agree, sir,’ said Mr Herbert. ‘It’s hard on a writer if his contemporaries won’t back him up. A man shouldn’t stand aside from his generation. I did when I was an undergraduate, and I now think I was rather a prig.’
‘Unfortunately for you there were only ephemeral names in your time, no one like Tennyson.’
‘Yes, you have the affection, not exactly of a contemporary, but you were much nearer him than we are. If the generation of Tennyson’s youth had carried out your principles, they would not have looked at any one more recent than Wordsworth. The lamp of literature must be handed on.’
‘Possibly,’ said Canon Jocelyn, ‘but there may be a false light. Now Tennyson was a true light, a poet worthy of the name.’
‘Possibly’ was a great concession on Canon Jocelyn’s part. He did not like to be disagreed with.
The discussion drifted amicably into a comparison of centuries – what sort of literature each century appreciated. Canon Jocelyn spoke of them as favourite friends or enemies – the eighteenth century, for instance, was an enemy – seeming more intimate with them, as indeed he was, than with his own.
He had been head and shoulders above the neighbourhood not only in learning, but in grasp and judgement. In old age this superiority was slipping from him. He felt it; he showed his feeling in snubs. It would have grieved Mary if Mr Herbert had been made aware of this weakness. People now found it safer to agree with Canon Jocelyn. They wrapped him in cotton-wool. Mary blushed when they agreed; then she did it herself. It pained him particularly if she differed. Being her father and a man, he felt he must know better, whatever her age. He had, as it were, knelt at the feet of his wise, unintellectual wife; he had a poor opinion of other women’s minds. It may have been because his bodily faculties were so powerful that Canon Jocelyn could not resign himself to old age, and so had not attained to the sweetening wisdom, the spirit above small matters, which may be old age’s compensation.
Canon Jocelyn and Mr Herbert’s talk turned to the Greek Testament. They had discussed a passage in Galatians, when Canon Jocelyn said, ‘I have often thought of those words of St Paul, “I know when to abound and when not to abound.” His powers were abridged; he was restricted, and he was not only contented, but joyful. The dimming of faculties is bound to come with advancing years, and one allows oneself to grow soured and melancholy.’
‘But have not winter and the close of day their special compensating beauties?’ said Mr Herbert.
‘Yes, for those who have had the strength to learn the last and hardest lesson of life – to be content to be a cumberer of the ground.* If not, the winter of old age is ugly.’
Canon Jocelyn turned to his book, as if not desiring an answer. Mary began, ‘Oh, father –’ but felt he would rather she said nothing. They sat in silence, then Mr Herbert asked him about a grammatical point in another epistle. They discussed it, leaving Mary time to indulge herself in jealousy. She had had the hope that she was making her father’s period of age not unhappy. She had cheerfully sacrificed something for the hope, apparently in vain. It was in Mr Herbert, the comparative stranger, he confided, not in her. Her unhappiness was at its height when Mr Herbert proposed they should go into the garden.
She-tried to think of some fresh topic – Mr Herbert and she usually had many – when he began, ‘Your father was speaking sadly of the uselessness of age. I shrank from intruding my views upon him, but I think the world cannot get on without the special qualities which belong to old age. I cannot tell you what a privilege I have found my intercourse with your father.’
‘Yes, perhaps for you it is,’ she said, ‘because he can talk to you.’ Before she could stop herself she broke out, ‘But I am nothing to him, simply nothing.’
She could not say more; she was in tears. She remembered in childhood paroxysms because some one had been praised when she had not, or because she thought she had been unjustly treated. She had hoped her tears were things of the past.
‘Miss Jocelyn – don’t – I –’ began Mr Herbert in perturbation. ‘Let us sit down, if this will be not too damp for you.’
They sat. She tried to compose herself, but, having once given way, it was not easy to be calm in a moment.
‘I believe I can explain what – er – what you speak of in your father.’ he said stammeringly. ‘It is not want of love, if you will let me say what I, an outsider, can judge of better than you. I see your father’s reliance and dependence on you at every turn. But in that matter of speaking it is jus
t those dearest to us it is most hard to open out to, because they are dearest; I mean if, as I am, people are cursed with a reserved temperament. I love my mother and my mother loves me, but I could no more speak to her as I am doing to you now than fly over the moon.’
He kept his head turned away. She looked at him, feeling too agitated to notice where she was looking; she saw him shake it energetically to emphasize his earnestness.
She whispered, ‘Thank you, thank you very much.’
Each felt drawn to the other. It struck him how beautifully her eyes shone when the tears were in them. She seemed easy to talk to. As a clergyman he had sometimes been called on to console women, but he had never considered himself an adept with them; he had not liked them, shrinking in repulsion from the too patent fact how much some liked him.
He wished to go on comforting Mary; he wished still more to talk about himself; he was not in the habit of doing so. He felt an unusual zest in depreciating himself. At that moment a seed was sown from which a plant of love was to spring.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘reserve is partly one’s own fault. I would not venture to judge your father, but I feel it was so in my own case. I believe I first got the idea at Rugby. But when I was a young man I imagined reserve was a symptom of strength and manliness, whereas, on the contrary, it is a weakness, which has cut me off from the best things in life. By the time I had realized that, I could not get free.’
Mary had now recovered herself, and speaking steadily, she said, ‘I don’t know what came over me just now. Father is so far above me in mind, I can’t be much of a companion for him. If I could have been, he would not have become so shut up in himself. Now you are come he will be less lonely. I haven’t seen him so happy for years as he has been with you.’
She could say this sincerely; her fit of jealousy was past. She knew her nature was grasping, the quality she thought most repulsive.
‘I should think your father is far above most of us,’ said he. ‘I wonder why it is this generation has stopped producing people of any pre-eminence.’