The Rector's Daughter

by F. M. Mayor

  ‘I do like to hear you speak about Father. He rather bewilders the clergy round about when he will talk to them, which is not very often. He dislikes the ones who want to be very High Church; and he is not interested in guilds and clubs. I can’t think what he would do if he were set down at a boys’ club.’

  ‘Yes, playing soccer with the lads is since his day.’

  ‘Of course the people call all the clergy and the doctors “old” So-and-so when they talk among themselves, but Father is always the Canon; one of the women told me. She said, “He treats us all like queens.” I never can imagine what he with his reserve says when he goes to the dying or mourners, but people often say, “I shall never forget what the Canon was to me.”’

  ‘I admired your father very much as an undergraduate, rather against my intentions, for my father had spoken so often of him, and it is in the nature of offspring always to dislike what their parents like; but I had to own my father had shown good taste.’

  ‘Oh, but your father,’ said Mary, not quite understanding the slight causticness of his humour; ‘he came to stay with us three or four times. I remember him playing bear with us, as if he loved it as much as we did. When I was a little girl Father was writing his commentary, and if we had games he came out of the library and told us not to make a noise. When I was thirteen, and had a passion for Scott, your father talked about him to me as if I were an equal. I remember him saying, ‘‘Don’t bother about the heroines; they’re all stage pokers. Go for the kings and queens; that’s where Scott’s first-rate. Royalty was his natural element.” I remember his exact words, because I was so gratified and so shocked about the heroines.’

  ‘Yes, he loved children, and every one else, I think. I would give anything to be more like him. I wish you would make me.’

  He did not say this in what might be called ‘a particular manner’; perhaps he himself could not have said exactly what he meant by it. At that moment he had a curious exalted feeling that he could say anything to her.

  She was so taken aback she could only stammer, ‘I, oh, I could never do anything,’ and the servant summoning Mr Herbert just then on parish business, the conversation was broken off. At tea it was Virgil the whole time until they left.

  After this intimacy both had a cold fit, but they soon were as warm as before. Mr Herbert showed Mary some scholarly translation he had made from Greek lyrics. The happy conversations these translations evoked tempted Mary to show her writings too. But the Dermott episode had made her go into her shell. She would not try again, and she had a hypersensitive fancy that she did not want Mr Herbert to like her for her writings, but for her own everyday self.

  She supposed her winter was passing as ordinary winters passed, but she was changing. She began to have longings she never had before. Her mind frequently recurred to the question which occupied Shakespeare’s heroines, ‘What is love?’

  One winter day when Dora Redland had come to stay with Ella, she and Mary met for a walk. Mary suddenly started the subject. ‘I wish you would tell me something about love. I should think no one ever reached my age and knew so little, except of love in books. Father has never mentioned love, and Aunt Lottie treated it as if it ought not to exist. There were you and Will, but I was so young for my age I never took it in.’

  ‘What a funny thing to ask!’ said Dora. ‘I don’t think I know much about it either. There was one of the curates at Southsea – I never imagined he cared at all for me; I had hardly ever spoken to him. I think some one else had refused him. That makes them susceptible, I believe, and also the time of year and wanting to marry.’ There was a mild severity, perhaps cynicism, in this speech, which astonished Mary.

  ‘But, Dora, don’t you think there is a Love

  “Which alters not with Time’s brief hours and days,

  But bears it out even to the edge of Doom”?’

  ‘Take care, Mary dear, you stepped right into that puddle. Wait a minute. Let me wipe your coat. I am not quite sure that I understand what you were saying!

  ‘Don’t you think there is a firm, lasting love?’

  ‘Dear Father and Mother’s was, I feel sure, but people are so different nowadays. Now, Gertrude – you remember how lovely she was? – she had numbers of offers, and she married a man who seemed devoted to her, but – I don’t mind telling you, you will never see him – it hasn’t lasted. Hardly any of my friends have married, but one, a dear little thing, her husband went away with some one else; it was dreadful. And people are so lax about it nowadays. It’s bad enough when a man does it, but when it’s a woman – I cannot think how there are such women. Not that I come across it, I’m thankful to say.’

  Mary’s mind saw Brynhilda’s flat and Priscilla Leach blinking and talking of ‘adventures.’ It was strange to think Dora and she belonged to the same nation.

  ‘So you see, Mary,’ went on Dora, ‘I don’t seem to have come across very happy marriages, but I oughtn’t really to talk about it. I was never attractive to men.’

  This admission might have come reluctantly from many women. Dora spoke of it with the same indifferent cheerfulness as she did of her beauty.

  ‘Oh, but you had Will,’ said Mary. ‘No one has ever been near falling in love with me. I think it must be that I am meant to do without it. I can. There may be a woman who can’t, and she has what I might have had.’

  ‘Perhaps that is it. It’s a nice thought,’ said Dora. ‘I think the best women don’t marry. Men are so strange about what sort of women they like.’

  ‘To love and be loved,’ said Mary musingly. ‘Did you feel it like a key, Dora, to let you out of prison, and open a treasure-house to you?’

  ‘Is that a pretty bit out of your writings?’ said Dora with a kindness that would have checked the flow, but Mary was not listening. ‘I have longed for it,’ she went on.

  She spoke with an intensity that startled Dora. She turned round; she looked at Dora. Neither Mary not Canon Jocelyn often troubled to open their eyes wide. Once Dora as a child had seen his open, when they were blazing with anger. Now Mary’s eyes burnt too, with a fire which made Dora uncomfortable. She turned away, and wondered when they would get back again to the dear, quiet Mary she knew.

  ‘I have sometimes thought – ’ Mary said with feeling, ‘the kisses –’

  They were alone, and it was nearly dark. Dora was middle-aged, if not Mary, but she blushed. Then she remembered something, and smiled. She too had had her fire, a little domestic fire that warmed the small chamber of her heart. ‘One day Will kissed me. He oughtn’t to have done it, still –’ She gave a little laugh, which made her look ten years younger. ‘But it’s all over and gone out of one’s life, and the working time comes, and I am not sure that I want it back. What was that striking? I must be getting back; I had no idea it was so late. I promised Ella to address some envelopes before post-time.’

  13

  Some weeks after this conversation Mary and Mr Herbert were again walking about the garden at Lanchester. This had become a familiar occupation. The clerical gardens of Dedmayne and Lanchester had not been so walked in for many a year.

  The equinoctial wind rushed through the branches of the old elms and roared like the sea. It gave a colour to Mary’s cheeks; her eyes dilated and brightened; the spirit which sometimes showed itself in her writings looked forth. Mr Herbert saw her eyes. If Mary had only been meek and sweet, he would have liked and respected her, nothing more. Now in a moment he knew she was the dearest object of his heart.

  He suddenly broke the thread of the conversation and did not answer her question. She thought he must be getting tired of her. People sometimes seem to think this at the moment they are being fallen in love with. She proposed they should rejoin her father. He implored her to stay in the garden. His ‘you must’ was not to be resisted. She stayed.

  ‘That is to say, if you are sure this wind isn’t too much for you,’ said Mr Herbert.

  ‘No indeed. I love it better than anything in na
ture, except black clouds.’

  ‘That’s a harsh, not to say morbid taste, isn’t it?’

  ‘There is something beyond ourselves in the wind and clouds. I never feel heaven can be at all like July.’

  ‘“Thy gardens and thy gallant walks continually are green,”’ he quoted. ‘That authority seems to think, on the contrary, that heaven will always be July.’

  ‘I should miss autumn and winter trees, shouldn’t you?’

  ‘I should very much. At the same time, I want to be rid of the east winds in heaven. Perhaps there may be a special corner for you, however, with hurricanes, hail, lightning, thunder, and water-spouts. I hope there will often be a lull that I may come and visit you.’ As he said these words he became shy. She did not notice it, and laughed. He recovered himself and went on. ‘You and the psalms rather agree in your favourite natural phenomena. I expect you include snow and ice, lions and high mountains dragons and all deeps.’

  ‘If dragons mean snakes, I hate them, and they give me a sort of nightmare feeling that all good is an illusion and evil the only reality.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t agree with you at all. I like the old python at the Zoo. He’s a friend of mine, and I never bothered about good being an illusion. Why should it be an illusion more than evil?’

  ‘You have stronger faith than I. I envy you.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Herbert. ‘I carry the burden of our generation. We have lost the abounding, buoyant faith my father had. I had it too when I was ordained. I thought it would last for ever, but that was not to be.’

  ‘It was a great strength,’ said Mary. ‘Things must be so easy when one has it.’

  ‘Looking back on my own life, perhaps too easy,’ said Mr Herbert. ‘I don’t know. And abounding faith is very exasperating. “Unclouded by enthusiasm,” as Gibbon says. You should have heard Miss Redland and the Archdeacon clouded by enthusiasm last Tuesday.’

  He pursed up his lips quizzically.

  ‘You don’t mean that, Mr Herbert,’ said she, smiling. She went on with a sigh. ‘I wish I had some of their enthusiasm. They do something, they care for something. “So thou, because thou art lukewarm, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” I often feel that should be said about me.’

  ‘You, Miss Jocelyn. I cannot tell you,’ he said, stammering with earnestness – ‘I wish I could tell you how I admire all you do, all you –’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, cutting him short vehemently. ‘I do nothing.’

  ‘Actual doing is of little importance.’

  ‘No, I know what one does cannot be taken into account, so much of it is mistaken, but if one is stagnant –’

  ‘Then let’s have enthusiasm with all its horrors,’ said he.

  They both laughed.

  ‘But don’t imagine,’ he added seriously, ‘that I don’t know the danger of middle-aged doubting paralysis and want of faith. I dread it above all things. I have never told any one – I should only tell you – but at one time the dread was so great,’ his voice shook, ‘I felt I should give up my orders. But faith returns, and now in times of dryness I see one must be content to trudge along in the dark, and occasionally a chink of light comes through.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ she said. Tears came into her eyes, and she felt tears were near his also.

  They were silent; soon they were again opening their hearts to one another. They told thoughts, hopes, speculations they had never spoken of. More than once each cried joyfully, ‘I knew you were going to say that.’ Neither ever forgot that talk. Mary thought, above all, of those wonderful words, ‘I have never told any one. I should only tell you.’ Only once in their lives were they ever to feel so near again.

  Both had hitherto put the thought of marriage away. Mr Herbert’s father had lost money. Until quite recently, when a considerable fortune had been left him by a cousin, he had had only enough to support his mother. He had not even allowed himself friendship with women; he would not risk falling in love. Now he might taste its joys.

  His love was already kindling a spark in Mary. Before she knew it, she was caught as thoroughly as he. He was not a coxcomb, sure that he must be acceptable, but he had a feeling that they understood one another and were meant for one another. He was not in the desperate hurry of a youthful lover. He was vain or middle-aged enough to go and take a cure for rheumatism before he came to the point; he did not choose to propose as an invalid.

  His mother suspected that he was in love with Mary. She had suspected it some time before there was anything to suspect. In September she and her sister-in-law had paid him their annual visit. He had escorted them to Dedmayne for lunch and tea. It had always been right that the sister-in-law, as younger, stronger, unmarried, less accomplished in Italian and music, above all, as a Herbert not a Lessingham, should remain in the background, and the rule was not relaxed at Dedmayne. The fact that Mrs Herbert had lost her husband after a blissful marriage of twenty-five years gave her, according to Victorian ideas, a claim to unremitting attention from Miss Herbert. She, with no twenty-five years of bliss, had to our eyes, if any one was to be petted, a stronger claim. The two ladies were very happy together. Isabel carried the wraps, and was contradicted whenever Mrs Herbert wanted to contradict.

  That Dedmayne day was long. Mary, enduring it, could hardly be amused to see the agonies of formality Canon Jocelyn and Mrs Herbert, both sincerely attached, were inflicting upon one another. Honoured by the presence of lady guests, Canon Jocelyn could not enjoy himself with serious literary discussion. The conversation wandered round the chilliness of the evenings, the damage done by storms, the dreadful news of floods in China, back to the chilly evenings without finding a resting-place. Mrs Herbert was an especially formidable old lady, and Mary was shy. She showed it in fussiness about the shawls and footstools. Mr Herbert was shy also; he became stiff and dumb. A ramble round the garden was proposed. Mary, from nervousness, ran to fetch Mrs Herbert’s pretty bonnet; she fell down and cut her shin. She felt she was keeping every one waiting, and she took out her garden hat for rainy weather by mistake. Mrs Herbert’s acute old eye noticed the hat at once.

  In the garden the two gentlemen escorted Mrs Herbert. Mary had a friendly talk with Isabel, who had no dignity or pretensions to intellect. At the early tea Mrs Herbert could not bring herself to eat the smallest morsel of bread-and-butter ‘so soon after my luncheon.’ Mary was grateful to the ‘chilly evenings’ for taking them away at four, while a bright sun was still high in the heavens.

  Mrs Herbert, with the awkward reserve of the old ladies of her day, stumbled into a question about Mary to her son. She longed for his marriage. But she hoped for a daughter-in-law like her two nieces, elegant and rather High Church, one writing books about saints, the other illustrating them. She knew Mary was sweet and good, but, content to endure personal shabbiness, she wanted something beautiful and more of the world for him. Though Mary saw eye to eye with her on all important points, Mrs Herbert was tempted to be exigeante and condescending with her.

  When Mr Herbert owned his desire, Mrs Herbert remarked – she was lacking in worldly wisdom – what plain children good-looking parents often had, in a naive hope that this would be a deterrent.

  ‘That is true, mother,’ said he perversely, ‘but I must cling to the hope that Miss Jocelyn may overlook that and take me as I am.’

  As regarded Mary, he was armed against every attack. He felt, with a lover’s vehemence, that he preferred plain people, that she was beautiful, and that he did not care a jot whether she was plain or beautiful.

  Mr Herbert came to say goodbye before he went to Buxton. He was without experience in such affairs. He had decided it was due to Mary to say no words of love till he proposed. ‘You do not know what this six months has been,’ said he, ‘getting to know your father and –’ Here he stopped, but something in his manner and his eye told a tale even to Mary which confirmed Cook’s prediction.

  With the possibility that he was in love wi
th her came the certainty she was in love with him. She did not dwell much on marriage, certainly not in that practical part of marriage, going to Lanchester. Curiously enough the question of leaving her father did not much perplex her. A romantic sentiment that if Mr Herbert wanted her she must follow him wherever he went was about as far as she got in plans.

  After long hesitation she wrote and asked Dora her opinion. She felt it a kind of betrayal of Mr Herbert, but if Dora had been a sister, she would have confided in her. The first part of the letter sailed easily along, a continuance of the topics and small jokes they had enjoyed together. ‘You thought Miss Gage would be the next to fall out with Nurse, and so she is. Nurse said to her, “Now then, Girlie, I shall smack you if you don’t take care!” “But some people like that,” I said. “Oh yes, the workin’ class,” said Miss Gage, “but not some one like what I am!” Isn’t it unfortunate? Nurse says she thinks a bright manner in nursing is half the battle.

  ‘Don’t say I never go to the Merytons, for I did go, and Claudia and I talked about owls. She likes them as much as I do. She said, “You’re the one person I’ve met who knows how owls do their courting; we must go and owl together,” I saw her last week at the Archdeacon’s and she wouldn’t look at me, she was so busy with Lady Violet Ware.’

  Now came the difficult part of the letter – Mr Herbert. After many tearings up and beginnings again, Mary confided to Dora her reasons for hope. She told Mr Herbert’s ‘I wish you would make me,’ and then scratched it out.

  If Dora felt surprised, in the smallest degree unfavourably surprised, her answer did not show it.

  Dearest Mary – I think from all you say it certainly does sound as if Mr Herbert means something serious. I am very glad. I think he is such a nice man, and you will have all your taste for books in common. It is most fortunate that Lanchester is so near; it will hardly be leaving your father. It makes all the difference in a parish to have a good clergyman’s wife; it is as important as what the clergyman himself is, sometimes, I think, almost more important. We have all been very busy with a baby show! Fancy me with two darling twins, one on each arm; such nice fat things. The mother is a dear little woman. The weighing was most exciting, and the mothers were all as keen as mustard. I must stop now. We all send kindest remembrances to your father. Mother says I am particularly to remember hers. – Your loving