by F. M. Mayor
She said to him, ‘I wonder if you would feel more rested in bed?’ The annual answer was forthcoming.
‘Oh dear, no. I shall do very well here.’
She hastened back from the dining-room. She found he had huddled himself in his greatcoat. She again suggested bed in a casual manner that he might not feel himself fussed. He sent a chill through her by answering, ‘I think perhaps I will. I do not feel very well tonight.’
He had never owned such a thing before.
When she had followed him up to bed and attended carelessly to the fire, as if Emma had forgotten something, she went to the window, where she had looked out so happily two hours ago. She stood with her hands clenched to prevent herself from crying out, ‘It has come. Death has come.’
Yet the doctor, when he arrived, and again on his second visit, did not seem anxious.
‘One never can tell at his age, and I wish there wasn’t this nasty ’flu about, but his pulse is very steady. I think it’s the usual thing, and we shall have him out and about in three or four days.’
But it came as no surprise to Mary when Dr King said kindly, his merry face made serious by genuine emotion, for he admired Canon Jocelyn, though he did not understand him, ‘He is not holding his own; it’s got at his lungs,’ and later, ‘It is not hopeless, but you had better not hope too much.’
The nursing duties were so easy that Mary did not feel bound to employ a nurse. He would have been a case, and, as a case, not interesting. A nurse might have chaffed him. Mary had felt sorry for working-class old age at the mercy of kind chaff, but her father –·So Susan nursed at night, and considered every service to him an honour.
There was no younger generation to send for. Aunt Lottie wrote that the weather was too bad for travelling. Mary was able to have the last hours at peace with him. She had often dreaded them in anticipation, but they were not terrible; she did not even find them sad; she was transported above sadness. The soft, south-wind, silver, winter days, particularly English, and his favourites of the year, did not jar on her as unfeeling in their beauty.
Canon Jocelyn asked that Mr Sykes should give him the Sacrament. After the short service Mary left them together. They were friends of fifty years. Each realized that their next meeting would be beyond the grave. Canon Jocelyn did not break through his customary reserve – he was reserved even with Mr Sykes – but, leaning wearily against the pillow, with languid, halting tones he renewed one of their favourite old conversations – a comparison of the Æneid and Paradise Lost, and his dying eyes lit up with a spark of pleasure when it could be made clear that Virgil was superior.
The first day or two he listened with interest to his old friend Guy Mannering,* later he was drowsy and lay silent. Once, when Mary gave him some medicine, he took her hand, saying, ‘Thank you, my child, and for everything.’ He smiled. He looked feeble, but the smile was more tender than usual; it was also mysterious, as if the soul was already beyond her reach. She was sure he knew he was not going to live, and was saying goodbye. She felt as if she must clasp him in her arms, so that Death should not have him. She pressed his hand gently, and said, ‘Dear Father.’
He sometimes broke the silence by murmuring to himself. She heard him whisper, ‘Fanny, my beloved, my beloved one.’ He had never mentioned her mother’s name. Sometimes she imagined he had forgotten her. But his wife had always been far dearer to him than Mary; it was to her his confused mind turned in death. Though she was grudging, Mary did not grudge him to her mother. He smiled to himself. She was astonished to see that he looked young, like the drawing of the handsome, romantic young man who had courted her mother. With occasional words and sighs of unintelligible wandering, his life ebbed away; he passed into lethargy, and slept himself quietly to death.
All the Jocelyns’ friends rallied round Mary. Some offered to stay with her, so that she should not be alone in the house. She was touched by their kindness, but it was belated. They might have done much for her in ordinary times; just now they could do nothing. She wanted to be alone. She was accustomed to solitude, and solitude would be her portion in future. Only in solitude could she realize to the full the mysterious feeling that the house was filled with her father. He had been far from her in life, now he was quite near. She knew the feeling was transient, the result of an unnatural tension, which seems to expand the faculties, but she drank it in as a refreshment for the future, when the jog-trot tedium of ordinary life began again. Pity was lavished on her; she did not need it. She felt apart from the ordinary world, above it, as if it was she who should pity it, not it her. The days passed like a dream; outside things did not touch her. But she regretted that the Herberts were away, so that Mr Herbert could not take part in the funeral service.
'I'he business of moving from the Rectory must be started immediately. She wanted to take a small house in the neighbourhood with Cook, where she could keep in touch with Dedmayne without hampering their successors at the Rectory. She had seen a whitewashed house, with a real East Anglian high-peaked, thatched roof, in a spot not too damp for rheumatism and damp enough for luxuriance. But the project was knocked on the head. Aunt Lottie wrote that her old servant, on whom she relied for everything, was to be married immediately, and she had decided to move into a smaller house. The curate of her church was appointed to a living at Croydon; she thought she would like to follow him there, and would Mary and Cook go and live with her? Mary said yes. She did not blind herself to the drawbacks. She felt as if her heart would break to leave the neighbourhood, and the flat eastern county itself, to decline on Croydon; but she knew it would not, and Aunt Lottie could turn to no one else. Mary was aware she herself had reached an age when she was fortunate in being wanted.
Aunt Lottie came to the Rectory in a paroxysm of fuss. It was an unfavourable omen. Now Mary accepted Dora’s offer of a visit with gratitude. To look through the accumulations and prepare for departure with Aunt Lottie roaming over the house was a staggering task.
Among Canon Jocelyn’s papers Mary found a journal, and, reading it over, she grew to understand him more than she had done in life. Most of it was concerned with his views on literary matters, or referred to his literary projects, but there were occasional expressions of regret, of self-abasement, which she might almost have written herself.
A certain passage particularly struck her. It was one of the few references to herself in the journal: beyond ‘Mary went – Mary returned.’ It was written on the night of Ruth’s death. ‘I consider that poor afflicted life, the countless sufferings which I have done nothing to mitigate. I was helpless before them. Mary devoted herself actively to the task; she has been both sister and mother. She told me just now with tears of her grief. I feel no grief. How should I? I have not deserved to grieve. The feelings of that moment were very bitter. Mary’s nature is infinitely higher than my own; she has much of her mother about her. In the short time that I may be spared, let me endeavour to be more worthy of her.
And she had never ceased to blame him for his indifference to Ruth. She would not recall that he had shown himself more worthy by continuing to behave exactly as before.
Soon the sublimity of grief left Mary. Its place was taken by an overmastering desire to be rid of Aunt Lottie for ever. The prospect of life at Croydon rose before her: interminable sitting in chilly, stuffy rooms, for Aunt Lottie enjoyed her economies; a trickle of chatter, which she seemed more insistent should be answered than at Broadstairs; makings and unmakings of the mind up twenty times a day; putting on one’s things and instantly taking them off; a tracking down of the wind, the rain, the damp, the dust, the glare, the dark, the draught, the fog, the crowds, the motors; a tepid shower of complaints about various people, principally Cook, Mary foresaw, for Aunt Lottie and Cook were already beginning to bicker.
Just now Aunt Lottie did not show her best side. She had left some possessions at Dedmayne years ago; she had never troubled to take them away. The wonder whether they should or should not be sold produced unusu
al activity of mind. Mary could not forget that, though the wind and the time of year made it impossible for her to come and say goodbye to Canon Jocelyn, they had not interfered when it was a matter of furniture.
Dora’s coming was a refreshment. She listened to reminiscences of Canon Jocelyn which would not interest Aunt Lottie, who was already consigning him to the hush of oblivion.
Mary had found in the drawing-room blotting-book a letter Canon Jocelyn had begun to his publisher. She showed it to Dora.
DEAR STEPHENS,’ it ran, ‘I am glad you can arrange for the publication of the Tertullian so soon. You speak of further schemes of work. I do not think it is likely that I shall embark on any new undertaking. My time now must be close at hand. I venture, however, to send you the enclosed, which I hope, will hope, will interfere for you –’ The sentence wandered, and the letter stopped. There were words scratched out, with others inserted. Mary could see the labour it cost to write. She read the few confused lines many times.
‘I shall feel it a charge from him to get my things published now,’ said she. ‘It is the first thing I shall do after the business is finished. Dora,’ she went on, a sudden thought striking her, ‘if I died next week – of course I might live forty years longer, but I might die next week – would you arrange it for me? I was going to ask you if you would have my personal things, and do what you like with them. I want to make my will. Of course everything of value must go to Will’s children, but I should like you to have the rest. I am very much alone, you know; we have no first cousins.’
‘Thank you, Mary,’ said Dora, with her usual calm gravity. ‘I will certainly do my best about the writings and anything else you like to leave me. But why do you speak of dying next week? You don’t feel ill, do you, dear?’
‘No, not at all. I wish I did. Death seems so much nearer and more homely than life.’
‘I know what it is, Mary, but that goes, and one is almost sorry it goes. Looking back, I think almost the best days of my life were just after Father’s death.’
‘Yes,’ said Mary, ‘but I see it would not do for it to last on. I must “Arbeit zurück.” I have been thinking of Mignon’s Requiem* so often lately, but I wish “Arbeit” was not connected with that horrible furniture.’
‘I was wondering whether your aunt could not sell the walnut chairs,’ said Dora. They went back to the ordinary world again, from which Dora’s talk rarely strayed, though her thoughts might.
Mary had many letters. The one she read most often was Mr Sykes’, because it had something of Canon Jocelyn in the old-fashioned turn of the sentences; the terseness and jerkiness of modern English was unpleasant to them both. While Mr Sykes lived, she could feel there was still something of her father left on the earth.
My Dear Mary – You know with what a heavy heart I assisted at the sad ceremony this afternoon. When we grow old we do not fear Death as you who are young, because, as Wesley’s father said, ‘Time has shaken us by the hand, and Death is knocking at the door.’ But I have parted with one who was dearer to me than all others, outside the immediate circle of my family. That gap cannot be filled. Time mercifully mitigates every sorrow, and will mitigate yours, but I know that nothing in this life will ever really make up to you for the loss of your father.
– With my very affectionate remembrances, I remain your old friend,
JAMES SYKES.
There will be much sad business awaiting you in the course of the next few weeks. Could I be of any service, be sure that I will assist you to the utmost of my ability.
This letter was a special comfort to Mary, for some she had received, even from intimate friends, had not quite concealed the writer’s private opinion that now she could begin to live. Those who really entered into Mary’s grief were the old. They did not have the unconscious feeling of the middle-aged that Canon Jocelyn was a belated traveller; it was time he should be gone.
The task of looking through Canon Jocelyn’s precious books was melancholy and unending. The majority were to be sold, but their outsides, if not their insides, were the framework of so much of Mary’s past life that she found it hard to part with them. She gave several away to Canon Jocelyn’s friends. Among others, she asked Mr Herbert to come over and choose.
He arrived while Dora and Aunt Lottie were still with her. She took him into the study, and left him for half an hour.
He looked up on her return.
‘I have taken this volume of Tennyson’s early poems,’ said he. ‘Do you remember your father talking of his admiration for Tennyson the first time he came to Lanchester? And may I have his Virgil also? I have never known any one love Virgil quite as he did. I need not tell you how I shall treasure them both.’
‘He was very fond of that copy of Tennyson,’ said Mary. ‘It was a gift from your father. It is just what he would have wished, that you should have it, and the Virgil too; he was reading it the very afternoon he was taken ill.’
‘Will you write my name in them?’ he said.
She did so; he looked at other books while she wrote.
‘Tea is just ready now,’ she said when she had finished. ‘Will you come into the drawing-room?’
‘Thank you, I must not stay. There’s a meeting at Cayley, which I ought not to miss.’
She felt he might have missed the meeting.
‘You are leaving the neighbourhood, I hear.’
‘Yes. I am going to Croydon with my aunt.’
‘We shall all miss you,’ he said. ‘I hope, after a time, you may find happiness there.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered. ‘It seems impossible at present, but perhaps I may.’
‘Will you give my apologies to your aunt for not saying goodbye to her. Thank you again for these and for letting me come.’
They shook hands; as he did so he said with deep feeling, ‘God bless you for ever, Mary.’
Until that word she had received his sympathy with calm gratitude, but ‘Mary’ on his lips roused all the emotion she thought had perished. At that moment she forgot her father entirely. She would not look at Mr Herbert, she would not speak to him. She bit her lips to keep back any words. If they had come they would have been, ‘Love me again, if only for one instant I must have your love.’
She controlled herself. Feeling how extraordinary he must think her, she began, ‘Mr Herbert, will you –?’
She looked up; he was already gone.
She could not stay in the study. Her senses were all awake that Dora, who could not possibly suspect, might suspect if she were late for tea.
She looked so sad when she came into the dining-room that Dora pressed her hand and whispered, ‘I’m afraid it’s bad this afternoon?’ Mary nodded; Dora must think so.
After this her one desire was to finish with Dedmayne as soon as possible. That solitary lingering over each beloved spot – for Dora and Aunt Lottie both left the Rectory the day after Mr Herbert’s call – that farewell visit to each friend, which she had dreaded yet anticipated with melancholy pleasure, should be abandoned. In three short weeks she left Dedmayne for ever.
27
Mary and Aunt Lottie removed to their suburb. They settled in a red-villa road, constructed in the nineties, with all the modern conveniences of that date, considered inconveniences now. Mary made her own room a kind of microcosm of the Rectory; the rest of the house was crowded with Aunt Lottie’s little objects, and Mary was always tumbling over the footstools.
At first her exasperation with Aunt Lottie was perpetual. Once it became uncontrollable, and she scolded Aunt Lottie. It had the best possible effect. From henceforth Aunt Lottie was a little afraid of Mary. This suited the old lady; she did best with a master. Annie, her old servant, had been a hard one; Mary was gentle. Aunt Lottie became still fonder of Mary.
The early weeks in the new home seemed to stop still, but before Mary was aware she had settled into a routine; after that time galloped.
It was by no means a solitary routine. The good-natured curate, wh
om Aunt Lottie had followed to the suburbs, was now a popular vicar. He had the faculty of collecting people about him: children, families, girls, some bachelors, old and young, widows, and, of course, several genial spinsters. They, the spinsters particularly, welcomed Mary as their own, soothed her shyness, shared weekly periodicals with her, made her join a discussion society, took her to matinées, lectures, concerts, and political and philanthropic meetings. As for good works to share in, they were plentiful as blackberries. Her new friends and Dora Redland, and especially Ella Redland, felt that she made an important advance when she was persuaded to sit on committees – even to become a chairman. The working people took her to their hearts at once. They were accustomed to make friends easily with ladies. If they had waited before opening out in the village way, they would have had no friends, for, after three years in one place, suburban people, whatever their layer in society, become restless and want to move on.
It seemed that now, in middle life, Mary had a late blossoming.
She, who had found it so hard to make friends, was suddenly surrounded with many. The social life of a suburb depends much on the clergy. The vicar was Oxford and, or ‘but,’ as Mr Sykes would have said, an accurate and distinguished scholar. He valued the honourable name of Jocelyn. His influence made the society round him cultivated. If he left, the cultivation would go too; it was not a characteristic of the suburb’s own. Now nobody thought Mary ‘learned’ in an uncomplimentary, only in a complimentary sense. Her qualities were appreciated; she was appealed to and consulted. She stopped being shy; at forty it seemed foolish to be shy.
Her appearance improved. Her dull hair looked better turning grey. The likeness to her father came out, still more the likeness to the distinguished ancestresses. She began to get some Jocelyn dignity; she was talked of as ‘that delightful Miss Jocelyn.’