by F. M. Mayor
The idiocy of her use of the word narrow-minded fretted him. He answered, ‘Long may they remain narrow-minded!
‘And long may I remain broad.’
He went out of the room and set himself unavailingly to soothe his mind by writing in the study. What did soothe him was the thought of Mary. He had banished it hitherto; today he gave it welcome.
When Kathy’s lustrous eyes had first rested on him he had imagined anything like vulgarity must flee at her glance. She had shown herself to be noisy and vulgar, but nothing more. She was incapable of suggestiveness, not because she was ignorant, but because such things made no difference to her. Her smile was the wrong smile, full of friendliness for all it fell on. It seemed strange that she should occupy herself with what was alien to her; but she followed other people. In hunting she was bold and rash; in things of the mind she was too indolent to have a choice.
Later in the day Kathy said to Mr Herbert, ‘We seem to have had quite a lot of scraps lately, don’t we?’
He had never seen her cry or near crying, but her voice sounded changed as she added, ‘It seems a bit of a mistake our marrying at all.’
It was strongly his feeling at the moment. That she should be nearly crying did not soften, but made his heart hard against her. He answered with a laugh, which wounds so much more than abuse. ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together, so Shakespeare said, who knew everything, particularly, as in this case, age is no doubt very unreasonably crabbed. Age forthwith apologises.’ Such a jocose vein was not natural to him.
‘Everything I do seems wrong,’ said Kathy. ‘Tell me what to do and I’ll be different if I can.’
‘I am not a judge over you. What I admire is not what you admire apparently, and I certainly don’t propose to change my views to your way of thinking; but that does not mean necessarily that I am the arbiter of what is admirable.’
‘You see I don’t know what you meant about the song. Everybody’s singing it, and you said you liked it.’
Her persistent, innocent wonder that he should dislike the song made him feel the breach between them.
‘I don’t believe discussion ever has done any good to anybody. I should be obliged if you would not sing it again, however beautiful you may think it. Is that six? I ought to be at the Parish Council at this moment.’
As he sat at the Parish Council, peacemaking, wise, and benevolent, he loathed himself.
On his return a paralysis of reserve and shame kept him from speaking to her, but she threw herself in his arms, saying, ‘You know you are everything to me, though I don’t seem much to you. I will do anything you want, only let us be as we were first of all.’
This enabled him to speak. ‘It is simply that I am the most detestable, contemptible, damned’ – she did not know how intensely his feelings were roused when he swore; damned was a common word with her – ‘scoundrel that was ever blessed with a woman’s love. I ought never to have married you. I would give anything to be different from what I am, but it’s too late to change. I was always moody, and living alone I indulged in moods, and now they are my masters.’
They got on better after this for several weeks, but they re lapsed. Lesbia came on a visit. Her husband had got an appointment in Nigeria. The privations of the life and the disagreeable climate did not invite the comfort-loving Lesbia to join him. She disliked staying alone in her flat also. She was extravagant; living on her friends suited her better.
She had a curious effect on Kathy, setting her into a screaming flutter of restlessness. They constantly rushed up to town to buy clothes, and show themselves at restaurants. Kathy became insistent on buying the most expensive clothes. Lesbia was a natural mischief-maker; she brought out a side in his wife Mr Herbert had not seen. They seemed to have formed a league to have stupid, schoolboy hoaxes against him. Kathy showed a spiteful relish at his discomfiture. He felt heavy and elderly. He realized he was a wet blanket from a nervous striving to please. Far from being Kathy’s prime source of happiness, it seemed she had turned against him. He was jealous and too proud to own it.
One Sunday Cocky came over. His cousins lived at Mansbridge Hall. He was constantly making his way to Lanchester, that the task of entertaining himself might be placed in Kathy’s hands. Without initiative in that or anything else, he was appreciative of her efforts. Whatever the faults of Kathy and her friends, they were not blasé. The shrieks of mirth which startled the vicarage came from genuine enjoyment.
Now the entertainment was morning service and a half-dead, belated fly crawling over Mr Herbert’s surplice. Kathy, Lesbia, and Captain Wyndham followed its wanderings like little boys of ten. They wrote comments to one another in the vicarage prayer-books, large eighteenth-century volumes presented by a Herbert predecessor, with ample margins to scribble on. Would the fly reach Mr Herbert’s neck before the end of the lesson? Kathy ticked off the verses as Mr Herbert read them. ‘Ten to one he will.’ ‘He won’t.’ ‘Great Scot, the poor chap’s come a cropper in Crab’s hood. He’s deaded! No, he’s resurrected!! Cheers. Come on, man, put your back into it. Stick it. He’s gone down Crab’s back!! He’s tickling Crab like mad. Look at Crab’s wriggles. I shall have a fit!! Careful, Crab, you’ll kill the poor dumb animal.’
They passed the prayer-books to one another. Each sally was greeted with suppressed whispers and giggles. The choir-boys were enchanted; the blacksmith’s eyes (leading bass) started out of his head. Mr Herbert could hear the whispering; he could even hear the words, which were supposed not to reach him. He never had had the animal spirits to be mad with joy at a fly. As a superior, scornful small boy he would have despised the commotion.
After service, when it was possible to secure Kathy alone, he said as pleasantly as he could, ‘I don’t think that business this morning was quite fair on the choir-boys. Jim (the blacksmith) and I, when I first came, had to knock some of them down for their merrymakings in church; you know I told you Arnott had let the place get a bear-garden. We can’t very well knock Cocky down, though I shouldn’t be sorry to do so. Won’t the boys feel sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander? Don’t you think so yourself?’
‘Oh, but I never could sit up and be prunes and prisms,’* said Kathy in a sentence after Lesbia’s own heart. ‘I wasn’t made that way.’
He bit his lip in irritation and said no more.
One Sunday on their honeymoon they had gone to the early communion at a remote church in the fells. When they came out Kathy had taken his arm, and said, looking up at him with a graver expression than usual on her face, ‘I shall never forget this morning.’ Inarticulate about everything, she was specially inarticulate on such matters, but at that moment how near they had been, how perfectly they had understood one another, or was it only seemed to understand? Both thought of that morning now.
Kathy told Lesbia what Mr Herbert had said. She may have begun in a spirit of moderation; Lesbia turned it at once into derision.
‘Oh, the pet,’ she screeched. ‘He’s such a priceless prig, exactly like that old German thing we had when I was small. “I vill not hab ze yong latees scream zo lout.”’
Kathy hated herself, but she did not defend Crab. She had sometimes tried; her defence had merely given Lesbia opportunities for further attack. On other topics she was in the habit of giving Lesbia as good as she got. But Crab was too sensitive a place; she could not be self-possessed.
‘I shall go to church this afternoon,’ said Lesbia, ‘and I shall be a perfect lady, and so will you, Cocky; a perfect lady, mind, not a perfect gentleman.’
‘Righto,’ said Cocky.
‘No,’ said Kathy. ‘We’re going to look for rats in the Glebe barn.’
But this enticement could not keep Lesbia and Cocky from church.
‘Well, I shan’t go,’ said Kathy.
She did go. All her compunction could not dash her enthusiasm at Lesbia and Cocky being perfect ladies. They pointed out the places to one another with unction. Cocky turned faint and Lesbia fan
ned him with her prayer-book. They had not intended to be so amusing, but success intoxicated them. The front pews watched their antics with horror; a rustle of excitement pervaded the church.
Mr Herbert stalked home by himself. He said not one word, good or bad, to Cocky during tea. He addressed Lesbia only as far as his courtesy as a host required it. He could deal with Cocky; he had dealt with several Cockies when he was head of his house at Rugby. He understood him – poor harmless thing – what there was to understand; he was not in the least afraid of him. But Lesbia; he felt as wax before her. What was there to appeal to?
Lesbia and Cocky were not so thick-skinned as Mr Herbert imagined; both were ashamed. Cocky left as soon as he could, with a feeling of discomfort that he had not quite played the game in ‘guying the parson’s show, poor chap.’
Mr Herbert took a walk after tea to fortify himself against Lesbia. He did not for an instant imagine that because Kathy played what she called ‘monkey-tricks’ in church she was incapable of serious feeling. But it was another indication that he and she were poles apart; Kathy should not have married a clergyman. Was his married life henceforth to be a series of remonstrances, recrimination, and bad temper, interspersed with repentant scenes, reconciliations, promises of amendment, and horrible tears? He had come to the conclusion that repentant scenes left them further apart in the end, though there might be a spurious immediate rapprochement. The prospect for the future filled him with dismay, almost with despair.
As he came back he saw Kathy. It was dark, but the starlight showed him her tall, stately figure. She was hurrying, and did not see him. She passed by him; he heard a suppressed sob. He had an impulse to spring forward and kiss her. The unworthy thought restrained him, ‘What’s the use?’
She was on her way to the church. She remembered his showing her the vicarage prayer-books on their first Sunday in Lanchester, pointing out, with the reverent delight of a scholar, the old rosy crimson leather bindings, the Herbert coat of arms finely engraved. It was the time when, for a brief spell, each felt that whatever the other liked they liked too, or would speedily come to like. Kathy rubbed the scribbling out and felt happier, but she could not rub out the fact that she had joined with Lesbia in making a fool of him.
Lesbia had been anxious to avoid a tête-à-tête with Mr Herbert. She was not as brazen as he thought; she was afraid of him. He caught her, however, and began.
‘Lesbia, it seems to me Kathy changes very much when you are here.’
‘Does she?’ cried Lesbia. ‘Poor dear, I’m so glad. I thought her awfully piano when I first came; well, really, we all noticed it.’
‘What I meant was –’
‘Kathy always was the life and soul of everything,’ broke in Lesbia, ‘and of course in a life like this you can’t wonder she gets moped. It’s such a terrific change for her. Of course I know her so well; we’ve always been such pals ever since she was an infant.’
Kathy had often told him how miserable she had been with Lesbia. She said one day, ‘Now I know for the first time in my life what it is to be absolutely and perfectly happy.’ He would not speak of this to Lesbia. Besides, Lesbia was right; lately Kathy had not been happy. He felt he had managed the conversation badly. He now burst straight into what he wanted to say.
‘As the wife of Kathy’s brother, our house is always open to you when you like to make use of it,’ he said, with some of Canon Jocelyn’s stateliness, ‘but I do ask one thing of you.’
He stopped for a moment, wondering how disagreeable Lesbia would make herself.
‘I’m sure, anything to oblige, Crab,’ said Lesbia.
‘Will you never go to Lanchester Church again?’
She was grasping of the grasping. Still, she could not but recall that, becoming involved in some scraps up in town, she had thrown herself on Kathy’s kindness to be whitewashed at the vicarage. She had arrived with large debts; Kathy had spent all that year’s income on her trousseau, and Mr Herbert had paid them.
She blushed, and said, ‘I know it was awfully tiresome of us but it’s all right. Kathy talks so loud, but we’ll all be like the little girl with the curl down the middle of her forehead next Sunday.’
‘Still, I would ask you to keep to that rule,’ he said, frowning at the sentence about Kathy.
‘Oh, but, Crab,’ she said, idiotically hoping to please him, ‘I must come. I think your sermons are so topping.’
‘I fancy that will not be a serious deprivation,’ said he.
This conversation helped to tire Lesbia of Lanchester. She set her heart on the Riviera. She found a doctor who ordered it, and, as she said to Kathy, her own sisters, ‘Bee and Muriel, never put themselves out for a soul, and are simply absorbed in babies. I wish you would come for a week or so. I’m sure Crab could spare you; I was going to say more than spare you, only that’s catty; but I feel we are a little overwhelming for him, and yet you can’t drop out of everything.’
Kathy refused, but after more arguments she consented. Mr Herbert felt aggrieved, but he put no objection in the way. Besides, was it not the wisest thing to do? To break, come back and start afresh, might give their married happiness a new chance.
‘Do you see much of the Herberts, Mary?’ said Ella Redland. ‘I called, but I think she’s an utter bore, just games and hunting. She’ll give Mr Herbert such a wrong impression of women, and I don’t consider him at all sound on the subject anyhow.’
‘I don’t see very much of them,’ said Mary. ‘We don’t see much of anybody, you know. Father took to her.’
‘I am rather wondering how it will turn out. Some people say they don’t get on very well.’
‘Who say so?’
‘Oh, the village people. One of them told my landlady they had a regular row one night, and I do think it’s a mistake a clergyman’s wife hunting. I don’t know what Father would have thought. He never liked Mr Dyson hunting.’
After all her London experiences and association with big movements there peeped out the old natural love of village gossip and tendency to feel shocked.
‘I am certain you are wrong,’ said Mary. ‘You must have forgotten what village people are if you trust to what they say. What struck me, on the contrary, was how ecstatically happy they are. Lady Meryton – she’s Mrs Herbert’s aunt, you know – is delighted about it.’
‘Oh, well, I only just wondered. We had such a splendid meeting on Wednesday, Mary. We had a Labour man down from town, only unluckily the local association is so jealous, and one of the committee –’
The talk turned away from the Herberts.
Mary did not know that she wanted the marriage to be a success, but she could not discuss Mr Herbert’s affairs with Ella Redland.
The gossip was confirmed next day. Lady Meryton came to call. They had touched on various subjects with spirit when Lady Meryton said, ‘Mary, I am so worried ’ (she had seemed, as ever, the entirely prosperous queen). ‘I have come to consult you. It’s about Kathy.’
‘Mrs Herbert?’ said Mary.
‘I was always a little anxious. This quiet life in the country is such a complete change from what she’s been accustomed to. But she seemed so absolutely happy first of all, and now that horrid sister–in-law of hers has got hold of her again. They had quarrelled, and I had hoped it was a permanent break. She’s not good for Kathy and she associates with dreadful rich people who have made their money one doesn’t like to ask how, and pay to have their names in vulgar papers. They go on in a way I can’t bear. I know Kathy doesn’t like it really, but she’s very obstinate, and here’s Lesbia wanting her to go abroad with her. Lesbia ought to join her husband in Nigeria, of course, some women can, and she’s at a loose end, and Kathy is good-natured about every one. I wonder if you could do anything.’
‘Me. I am sure I should be no good.’
‘You and your father have known Mr Herbert so long. I did speak to Kathy, but naturally she thinks me antediluvian, and she doesn’t like me. Her uncle always set
her against us. Claudia says I managed it badly, and that it’s no good interfering.’
‘But I hardly know Mrs Herbert, and I am sure she doesn’t like me, whatever she feels about you.’
‘Yes, she does. She thinks you a little like my sister, the one I told you of. Kathy was very fond of her as a child.’
‘But I can’t think what I should say.’
‘Of course you couldn’t say anything at once; but do try to get to know her, or could you possibly get at Mr Herbert? Sometimes I wish he’d married Maida Bassett; she’s so fond of church.’ (This was a new light on Jim-jam.) ‘I don’t think he knows how to treat a young wife. He expects too much of her, and she’s such a child. I heard him speak so harshly to her one day, and I know Kathy felt it. She doesn’t look happy now. That great difference in age is such a mistake. Either the man tries to come down to the girl’s level and is absurd, or he’s too much of the schoolmaster. I wish you would try, Mary. I know how everybody flies to you for help, and Dr King told me how wonderful you were about his sister-in-law.’ Compliments were second nature to Lady Meryton. ‘I really am in despair. You see there is nobody. She hasn’t any real friends in the neighbourhood except us, and she doesn’t like his mother. I don’t wonder. Old Mrs Herbert is rather strait-laced and tiresome, and one can’t expect too much of a girl in these days. There’s much more in Kathy than meets the eye. She’s so warm-hearted and so absolutely true. And now, Mary dear, when are you coming to us? Next week I am going to the Hirst Blacketts, and it’s almost impossible to get away once one’s there, the grandchildren are so fascinating. The Hunt Jubilee will keep us busy the week after, but after that you must come. I shall drag you by force if everything else fails.’
Mary wrote a note asking Kathy to come to tea. She was walking with the note to Lanchester when she met two riders, Kathy and Lesbia. Mounted on tall horses and in faultless habits, they looked particularly formidable. They both gave cool nods, and were trotting on without stopping, when Mary called to Mrs Herbert, ‘Will you come to tea on Thursday? I was just bringing a note.’