by F. M. Mayor
She continued to like plenty of young men about with whom she could be noisy. Mr Herbert had at first been jealous of them and conscious of his middle age. But Kathy made it clear that to disturb himself about them was a waste of energy. ‘I like having somebody to play round with when you have your meetings and things, and I always shall.’ There they left it. Mr Herbert thought young men a strange interest. She had young women also. They all made a noise, and gave the village much to talk about. It was rather proud of Kathy’s success with the opposite sex. It regarded her in a curious way as a something between a mistress, a mother, and a younger sister, and loved to give advice, coupled with admiration, concerning her management of the Glebe farm.
The husband and wife did not grow like each other, but in process of time Mr Herbert realized that, living in the twentieth century, and having definitely joined the party of the younger generation, it was no good wincing at what he formerly had considered vulgarity. Kathy, though always desiring to please him, continually forgot what points distressed him. She made one sacrifice, she banished the words ‘ripping,’ ‘putrid,’ ‘damn,’ and ‘infernal’ from her mouth when speaking before the village, servants, or children. It was a sacrifice. She thought it ‘narrow-minded.’ an expression she continued to be fond of.
It was through his wife Mr Herbert got into touch with the village and the village with him. Her beaming kindness smoothed away the resentment sometimes roused by his tart or sarcastic retorts. She regarded his learning and literary work somewhat as he regarded her young men; her forbearance helped his parishioners to bear with them too. For, with the spread of education, they looked upon learning as a waste of time; it did not hold the privileged place it had in Canon Jocelyn’s prime. It would have outraged Mary that the high faculties of the mind she so much valued, his wife should smile on indulgently as the pretty tricks of a child. Yet Kathy loved and honoured him with all her powers. He loved her and honoured her also, much more than in the first year of their married life, when he knew nothing about her.
He looked back on a day which revealed his love both to Kathy and to himself. Kathy was driving the little boys and Mansfield, now Nanny, in the new pony-cart. Mansfield had cast aside her bright plumes to take the veil in the form of the smartest of nurse’s uniforms, turning her back on the Italian chauffeur and such vain delights all for love of the adored one. The pony was a consolation for the loss of Taffy. Kathy was taking it out for the first time. A sidecar came screeching and surging round a sharp turn on the wrong side of the road. There was only just time to get the pony out of the way. Mansfield screamed, and clutched one of the children so tight that he began to cry. The sidecar rushed on with bursts and explosions, and the pony bolted.
‘Shut up,’ said Kathy, glaring at Mansfield. Mansfield was cowed instantly into silence.
‘Isn’t this jolly, kids?’ cried Kathy, nodding at the children, whose eyes were growing large with terror. ‘Lovely bumps.’ At that moment Mr Herbert came over a stile into the lane. He was horrified to see the cart flying towards him.
‘Stop Pixie!’ called out Kathy.
He tried, but he had the scholar’s bad sight and clumsy fingers; his efforts were vain.
‘All right,’ cried she, smiling at him gaily.
They were not very likely to meet any one before there was a sharp turn into the high-road, where the motors dashed at top-most speed. Mr Herbert ran after the cart, stumbled, fell, scrambled up, ran after them again, and met Kathy with Pixie restored to composure, trotting quietly towards him. Two of Kathy’s adoring farmers had caught and stopped the pony.
‘The boys are as right as rain,’ cried Kathy. ‘We all are.’ He squeezed her hand and clasped the children, who threw themselves on to his knees when he got into the cart.
‘Nanny, I shan’t take you next time we run away,’ said Kathy, but her nod softened the sting of reproof. Mr Herbert said his pleasant word to Mansfield also. In a minute or two they were at home. Kathy went to the nursery to see that the children were tranquilly occupied with their Teddy bears under the nursemaid’s charge. Then she came down to the study and, to Mr Herbert’s surprise, fell into an honest hearty fit of hysterics – as Mansfield was already doing on Dennis’s shoulder. When she could get out her words connectedly, she said, ‘The children, oh, Crab, can you forgive me? I ought to have waited till I knew Pixie better. I thought we were absolutely done for.’
‘The children,’ he said; ‘I don’t believe I ever thought of them. It was you.’ He held her convulsively. She looked up at him and saw his face.
‘Then you really do care frightfully,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe you quite did. I knew you did rather, all that was necessary, but not all that. You oughtn’t to; it’s absurd.’
When they had got to calmer topics he said, ‘We’d better get rid of the pony if she’s going to misbehave like that.’
‘Oh, poor lamb, it was only that infernal cad of a motor hog.’
‘But if she’s going to object to all motors I am afraid her life won’t be worth living, or ours either.’
‘No, Crab really; she’s a thorough lady. I can see she is. I’ve thought of a bit Claudia has for Duke that will settle her.’
Kathy did not care about being a lady herself, but she liked her horse to be.
To a ‘blood’ like Kathy it had been almost as trying to have a loved husband bungle over a horse as for a scholar like Mr Herbert to have a loved wife sing an indecent song. But Kathy was more forbearing than he had been. She had made up her mind to the deficiency when she became engaged, and she never allowed herself to resent it.
Kathy’s birthday fell a week after this incident. In the morning he put a poem on her dressing-table, entitled, ‘To Kathy.’ It described his devotion, but it must have lacked the simplicity of great art, for Kathy hardly understood a word except the title. She flung her arms round his neck, and cried, ‘I can’t make much of it, but I think it’s wonderful, awfully good, and I do love you.’ So that Mary’s words came true, ‘Mistakes sometimes turn out right in the end.’
Being relieved of her fears for the marriage, Mrs Herbert could now venture to criticize her daughter-in-law, and even, in a dignified and elegant manner, to snap, a popular habit in Mrs Herbert’s prime. Kathy took the pleasant sting out of snapping by paying no attention to it, nor to Mrs Herbert’s suggestions and lamentations about the young men. Still, occasionally the snaps told more than Mrs Herbert would have liked, for she never wanted her snaps to rankle. Kathy was not very fond of her mother-in-law; and the annual discussions and congratulations over her improvement, which she knew went on between Lady Meryton and Mrs Herbert at the September visit to Lanchester, never ceased to annoy her.
25
It appeared that Mary’s life had come full circle back to the emptiness when Ruth first died. There had been Dora, Brynhilda and the hope for her writings, Mr Herbert, and last Kathy. Her heart had been very busy, now there seemed nothing for it to do. Mr Herbert would never want her any more. She had had the satisfaction of serving him through Kathy; Kathy did not want her either. Dora was still away in China, and Brynhilda she had long lost sight of.
Change and decay in all around I see.
Hitherto this had seemed an incorrect description of Dedmayne; nothing did change. Now the truth of the line came home to her. But thirty-nine is a less bitter age than thirty-five; she was more able to face loneliness. None the less, it was a red-letter day when she heard from Dora. She was back in England, and her first visit must be to Dedmayne, if they could put her up for two nights next week.
She came. China and all the wonders of the East had left her just where she was, her mind not enlarged, her standard not lowered.
She described her experiences. ‘There are numbers of foreigners, you know, Mary. One was really nice – a Frenchman. He played tennis splendidly, and was almost like an Englishman. Gertrude took some time getting into things, but the shops are not bad, and they say Harrod may be startin
g a branch. The natives are just like children. Walter says they simply don’t understand kindness; they get so independent at once. My great friend out there was the wife of a missionary. She was teaching the girls to do lovely drawn-thread work, really as good as one can get in the London shops, and the brown babies are too sweet for anything.’
There she was – her own pleasant, limited self, as palatable to Mary as good country bread.
She, on her side, was delighted to revisit Dedmayne.
‘Canon Jocelyn is not a day older,’ said she. ‘His voice was splendid in that beautiful sermon last night. I wish you looked better Mary. We must feed you up. I shall go and talk to Cook.’ She always noticed the physical more than the mental, or she might have seen that what had changed most was Mary’s expression. Her eyes had always been sad; they were perhaps sadder now, but they had gained that special something which often makes the eyes of the middle-aged more interesting, even more beautiful, than the eyes of youth.
Mary found there was a barrier between them – Mr Herbert’s kiss. To open her heart freely had been a need of her warm nature from childhood – a need which had never been satisfied. She had, too, a conscientiousness of repulsion against concealment which was morbid, perhaps, a weakness, but a strength. When Dora said, with the delight in other people’s virtues which was one of her characteristics, ‘Mary, I do think you’re the best person I’ve ever met,’ Mary longed to tell her all, to be no longer under false pretences. And it was true. If Dora had known of Mr Herbert, Mary would have forfeited her high place for ever.
They had embarked on one of Dora’s stories, long, certainly, and in this case, though not in most cases, painfully interesting. ‘And one thought she seemed so respectable – dressed so quietly. When she told me there was going to be a baby, I said, “I cannot think how you could have done it, Annie,” and she said, “He seemed so unhappy, and she did lead him a life.” He was married, which made it so much worse. “It was all over in a rush, but I know it was wrong.” She wants us to take her back, but we couldn’t, could we?’
‘No,’ said Mary, ‘I suppose you couldn’t, but in a way I wish you would. I feel’ – her heart beat, she made a sudden resolution – ‘I feel I understand it more now.’
‘Understand what more now?’
‘I know love isn’t everything, not even the most important thing. I used to think it was, but doesn’t Shakespeare say it’s like a madness? It makes one do the thing one hates most, and yet one would not, no, one would not have had it.’
‘What do you mean, Mary?’
‘Once I – there was a man – I would rather tell you, Dora –’ She became a prey to the incoherence which had exasperated Canon Jocelyn in her girlhood.
‘Yes, I am not all you think me. It was before I was ill and came to Southsea. It really was the strain of that –’
In counting up her misfortunes Mary might have included that the narrow, uncomprehending Dora was her only intimate friend, if she had not already mentioned Dora’s active sympathy in counting up her advantages. Had Dora not been Dora, she would now have told her all. But she saw Dora’s gentle, innocent gaze, benevolent to almost all, particularly benevolent to her, turn to hardness. The resolution which had nerved her failed suddenly. If she had gone on talking all night, she could never have made Dora understand. She shrank into herself and said, ‘Never mind, it was nothing, at least nothing I can talk about.’
The secret remained a barrier between them. Mary never felt for Dora what she had felt before. In the close friendship which lasted till death, Mary was never entirely at ease with her again. They sat silent. Dora felt her heart beating. She was convinced that Mary was going out of her mind, and the flushed face, burning eyes, and hurried, stuttering words gave grounds for uneasiness. She braced herself to speak in a few seconds, and said with peculiar gentle cheerfulness, which indicated exactly what was in her mind, ‘Seeing Annie in the hospital brought back my old hospital days. You know I trained for some time, don’t you, and then my ankles were too weak.’ She talked on about hospital as a doctor entertains a patient when his mind is occupied with another case. After the right interval of distraction she said, ‘Mary, dearest, you look a little tired, and so am I. What about early bed tonight?’
She did not go to bed herself, but listened long outside Mary’s door, and heard her tossing, for Mary’s night was broken with questioning of what she ought to have done.
At exactly the right hour for refreshment Dora brought Mary ‘a little cup of Benger.* I have just been making myself some, and it’s so soothing. Let me arrange your bed for you, dear, and your pillow. I was wondering whether maltine wouldn’t be a good thing in the middle of the morning. Gertrude found it splendid.’
She watched with a careful eye next day, but could see no further sign of the hallucination. She said to Mildred when she went home, ‘I think the strain of Canon Jocelyn ·– he’s wonderful, but it is a strain – is beginning to tell on dear Mary. She is getting a little neurotic –’ She had picked up that favourite nurse’s word in hospital. ‘I shall go there as often as I can.’
26
Early one winter afternoon Mary came into the drawing-room. She found Canon Jocelyn sitting by the fire. It was an unusual time for him to be there.
‘I came just now,’ said he, ‘to get some stamps’ – he never would keep stamps in his study, only notepaper – ‘and my eye caught this on your table.’
It was a poem Mary had written the night before, and forgotten to put away.
‘I must ask your pardon for prying at what does not belong to me, but I took the liberty of reading it. There is a want of finish, an unevenness here and there in the rhythm’ (Canon Jocelyn was an authority on metre), ‘but there are some striking lines in it. Is it your own composition?’
Mary blushed, and said it was.
‘Indeed; I had no idea that your talents turned in that direction. Have you any other specimens? I should like to see them.’
She could not believe her ears. She went upstairs, and brought down a small pile of manuscript. He read it attentively, commenting here and there. She felt she had never sufficiently realized the range and acuteness of his critical powers. He said more than once, ‘Your thought was this, I imagine, but you have not made it as limpidly clear as a poet should. I have no poetic gift. You will clothe what I mean in a suitable form, but should there not be so and so?’ and he expressed exactly what had been in her mind.
It was easier for him to understand her thoughts than she knew – they were often his own – only all these years they neither would, nor could, speak of them to one another.
‘Strange,’ he said, ‘that you were never a literary character. You had more feeling for scholarship than any of your brothers, and was there not some childish composition which showed promise? but never since then. It was a pity you did not let me see these before.’ She remembered her article on education. ‘I will write a line to Stephens’ (his publisher) ‘tonight. He might advise you. I think they should be published.’
At tea he said, ‘I have never had any of the higher gifts of the writer – creative power, imagination. What I have been able to do is due to hard work. Minds with creative imagination can do more.’ He looked at Mary with a sweet, grave smile of congratulation, and said, ‘I think the Almighty has blessed you with this great gift, Mary.’ Such an austere life and home as Mary’s was not unpropitious soil for the nurture of a poet, but Canon Jocelyn’s judgement was today sweetened and softened by approaching decline. He thought her tender woodland poems better than they were. A week ago he would have liked them, but not so well. Some mysterious foreshadowing made him draw near to Mary, and love her writings because they were hers.
Canon Jocelyn talked on for half an hour as he never had before. He spoke of his beginnings in authorship; he discussed the books he had written. Mary noticed that sometimes his sentences were not perfectly coherent, and he took up the poem he had liked best and said, after re-reading
it, ‘I had not seen that. That is as good as any.’
From time to time, when he was tired, his memory weakened, but Dr King had told her not to be anxious. ‘He’ll be all right when he’s rested,’ and hitherto he always had been.
She was summoned by Emma. A woman had sent up for something from the parish medicine chest. As she went out of the room she heard him murmur with a certain bewilderment, but contentedly, ‘That’s a great comfort about Mary.’
She went upstairs and got what was wanted. On the way down she stood by the landing window. The twilight was disappearing into darkness; there was the wonderful pause which comes between the two. The chestnut tree stood out against the sapphire sky, black, calm, and majestic. Such a winter’s twilight is perhaps the most beautiful of all aspects of the year. She had never failed since she was a child to gaze at it on some December or January afternoon. Every year it sent a thrill of inexplicable happiness through her, which she felt at no other season. Today her happiness was increased. She and her father had never been so near to one another. His praise had been nectar to her; his smile was more precious still. The desire of many years was accomplished. But she forgot how frail is any building whose foundations are old age.
When she returned to the drawing-room her father was still there, reading Virgil to himself.
‘I think I shall not be working any more today,’ he said. ‘I feel a little tired.’
Each winter for some years he had had a chill, and was forced to submit to bed and Dr King for three or four days. Such a remark was the general precursor of his chills. Mary was accustomed to it, and knew its harmlessness, but it always made her heart give an unreasonable quake. When the gong rang he said he would not go into the dining-room. ‘I will stay quietly here.’ She had his bed prepared, and his fire lighted upstairs.