Bewildering Cares

by Peck,Winifred

  “I was thirty-nine last birthday,” said Miss Croft, simply. “But I can assure you I feel more like nineteen to-day. Though, oh dear, it does seem so unkind when I think of Cousin Benjamin; but it’s ten years since I even spoke to him and he was quite odd then! I assure you I have been walking through the streets feeling like Pippa Passes, absurd as it seems, even in spite of the War! I keep thinking of such odd little luxuries … for years I have lost Diana of the Crossways from my set of Meredith and have never quite seen the way to purchasing another copy … and I always felt a Cambridge sausage a little beyond my means, though they are so far from the best make. And it will be so odd to choose one’s shoes instead of looking through any of my size in sale reductions. … However, I mustn’t go on like this.”

  I suppose it was these confidences which led her further still, for as she got up to go, she said, bending down to smooth the new black kid glove over her moonstone, “I have often read with such interest of those cases where a woman feels that some man whom she—in whom she takes an interest, feels himself removed from her by any difference in age, or station, or fortune. It always seems such a sad position, doesn’t it?”

  “Like a Queen having to propose to a Prince Consort,” I said, sympathetically. “But don’t you think in real life that if two people are feeling the same—affection—at the same moment they discover the truth without words? I don’t suppose that many proposals get really said in real life.” I smiled as I spoke, remembering how Arthur and I were alone on the river, and we both retrieved a paddle which had dropped from our canoe at the same moment, and looked up at each other as our hands clasped on it accidentally—and the next thing I remember is telling him how odd it was when I’d always vowed I would never marry a parson!

  ‘“One moment long—or only a little longer’,” quoted Miss Croft, softly. “I fear you may be only thinking of youth and passion, my dear. Well, I must be going. You have been so sweet and sympathetic.”

  “But not practical!” I said. “You must come and see Arthur about your most generous proposal, and you must be here, too, when he tells Mr. Elgin of this delightful surprise. Write your exact proposal to Arthur, will you, and then come in to tea on Saturday, and I’ll ask Mr. Elgin, too? I’m sure you’d like to see him when he hears the news, and we needn’t say at once who the benefactor is, if you’d rather not. Of course, he must know very soon.”

  Miss Croft had only just left when Arthur arrived home. He was on his way to his Confirmation Class at the Girls’ High School, but I could not quite restrain myself from my matrimonial agency reflections till the evening. And by that time the news about Mr. Strang’s illness on one hand, and the interview he had had with Archdeacon Pratt about our poor curate on the other, made him very tired and depressed.

  “I wonder”, he said, “why, with the world as it is, and life as it is, you women are so eternally interested in the propagation of the human race?”

  When a husband says “you women” to his wife it is always best to leave the subject, and, after all, Arthur had indulged me in speculation about the Weekes’ affair only two nights before! He was soon nodding peacefully over his Saint John, and I got down Pillars of the House by Charlotte M. Yonge, and found comfort in the reflection that at least I have not thirteen children, and that my husband is not just about to die of consumption, leaving me to support them on £150 a year!

  As Kate was “in” for once I had fewer interruptions than usual. She has, we fear, rather a rough and ready manner of dealing with applicants at the door, but it is probably just as efficacious as my wavering suggestions. “Be off with you for a bit of no good”, was one loud cheerful remark I overheard, and in the three other cases acquaintances of hers were urged, after long draughty chats, to “go straight off and see what you could get out of old Weekes”, which is her invariable form of suggesting recourse to the Secretary of the Benevolent Fund. I was only called out to help to fill up a form for a dependant’s allowance and, later on, to hear Mrs. Jones’s difficulties about sending Doris off properly clad to the Convalescent Home, and luckily I have a store of old children’s clothes, the gifts of my relatives, which enabled us to settle that problem very satisfactorily. It was less satisfactory to hear from Kate that two sick people had sent their relatives to ask Arthur to visit them to-night, and all I could do was to see that he had a tolerable supper before he went out again. “And you might just as well worry about me for a change, instead of Dick or Finland”, were his parting words when he set out again at half-past eight. He did not get home again till nearly twelve o’clock, an interval during which, I must confess, I thought very favourably of the celibacy of the clergy.

  VII

  Friday

  It was, I regret to say, eleven o’clock on Friday morning before I began my Quiet Day.

  Mrs. Pratt looked at me with a long equine glance of reproach as I slipped into a seat as near the door as I could find in the old Rectory drawing-room. (Why is it that in clerical and other meetings these seats are always full and those in the front row empty?) Is it due to modesty or, as I was tempted to feel this morning, a malicious if subconscious desire to show up the latecomer? Most of the ladies assembled had been, as Dick would say profanely, hard at it being quiet since eight o’clock, so of course I felt a spiritual black-leg. And as the ban of silence was laid on our lips for the whole day, I could not present my quite adequate excuses. I could only hope that Mrs. Pratt and the others were laying to heart the charming address on charity and the sin of misjudging others of whose lives we know so little.

  “I always get my household orders done the day before,” Mrs. Eardley-Gage, our hostess, said to me the other day, when she invited me. “Every one of my servants knows exactly what their work will be, and that it is their business to help me by keeping any worldly cares from me.” She is a charming, willowy, ethereal looking woman, quite ten years younger than myself, with no children, and with money of her own. That, and the comparatively large stipend of the Stampfield Parish Church, make it possible for her to keep four servants in her nice roomy Georgian rectory, so that they have each other to confide in, tied as Mrs. Gage’s lips are all day, if anything goes wrong. Whereas if I hadn’t begun the day badly by finding Kate in tears, and having to lay aside all plans to console her, all alone as she is, I should surely have been wanting in Christian charity. I did not really believe that Private Jenkins was going to France next week—this climax has been foretold, as I said, ever since the first week in September. I am not even sure if Kate was not using it principally as an argument for going home to his people with him for Saturday night; but if it were true, and I had refused Kate leave, how could I ever forgive myself? So, of course, we agreed that she must go, and I had to plan the meals for this new emergency.

  “It’s not”, said Kate, comfortingly, “as if you and the Master ever did more than peck at your food. Why not a good roast for the two of you to-night, and then you can take cuts off it cold all the week-end?”

  “But, Kate, it’s Friday!” I said, my heart sinking lower than ever, as I realized this meant that Kate hoped to be off before lunch-time on Saturday. “And a Friday in Lent!”

  “Oh, go along with your Lent! I’ve no patience with it,” said Kate. “Why, Maggie Murphy, whose grannie at the Court is ever so pi, tells me that the Pope says he’s no objection to a good joint any day now there’s a war on!”

  That is all very well, but the Pope quite certainly wouldn’t meet Miss Grieve or one of the parish ladies at the butcher’s when he was ordering a roast for Friday night. After a strange but inevitable diversion of our conversation to the discussion of Kate’s new costume, and its suitability for a visit to the Jenkinses in their remote country village; the sad medical history of Mrs. Jenkins, who, if she’s been tapped once has been tapped a dozen times; Kate’s views on Hitler, and the report that five aeroplanes flew over Stampfield last night, in hot search, apparently, for our Vicarage, we suddenly arrived at a happy compromise. Kate pro
mised to hustle up with her work to-morrow and have lunch for us all (and Jenkins too, no doubt) at a quarter-to-one, so that she can clean up (this refers, I fear, to Kate’s person rather than to the lunch things) and “make the 1.42 Blue”. Again I readjusted the meals, and was just starting for the little shops round the corner when Arthur looked out of the study.

  “This is very lucky,” he said. He had been worried about the Sunday services, and so had I, ever since Mr. Strang fell ill. It is too much for Arthur to have two Early Celebrations (usually well attended), Sung Matins and another Celebration, Catechism and Evensong, with no assistance. We had already tapped the sources of those clergy in the diocese who used to be called guinea-pigs, and only this morning our last hope had failed. “The Archdeacon has just rung up to say that he’ll be glad to help me with the Early Services if we can put him up on Saturday night. He hasn’t got petrol enough to get home on Saturday evening and out again next morning, when he’s preaching here. It’s really very kind of him, so I hope you’ll forgive me for accepting off-hand and saying we would be delighted.”

  There was an appalling blow to fall on me after my promise to Kate! I think Arthur must have felt a little doubtful about that “delighted”, as he retreated hastily and shut the study door with a sort of “now for my sermon” note. I went down to Kate once more, trying to remind myself that Bishops should be given to hospitality, but as Arthur isn’t one, and Bishops presumably have adequate staffs, it didn’t seem to help. Kate’s sympathy was profound, though naturally it did not go as far as to make her offer to change her weekend. I just refrained from telling her that if Jenkins is not sent abroad this month, and I have a complete breakdown, I shall expect her to put flowers on my grave; again I readjusted my shopping-list with special reference to toilet-soap, new bed-lamp burner, call about man for window sash, and flowers for dinner-table. Kate also promised to try to get in Mrs. Sime to oblige on Saturday night, if it’s not true that old Sime has been at Lil with a chopper and is in gaol!

  Besides all these jobs I had to call at the Strangs, and as ill-luck would have it, Mrs. Strang answered the door herself. Poor little thing! Anxiety makes some people hard and defiant and others weak and helpless; but in her case I had to go through both phases. Standing in the minute chilly hall, she told me that her husband had been hounded to death by the malice of the parish, and she considered my husband responsible.

  “He’s ever, ever so ill, the night nurse says. She says she’s never seen such a case of pneumonia.”

  “Come, come, Mrs. Strang!” The competent-looking day nurse emerged from the bedroom, shutting the door very softly behind her. “You’ll wake your good husband if you talk so loud. And I don’t think you quite understood Nurse Wethers. All she said was that she had never seen one or two symptoms in such a case as this before, and they are not at all necessarily bad ones. But I’d be very glad if you’d send a message to the chemist to hurry up with the oxygen.”

  At that Mrs. Strang began to weep hysterically, and drew me into the drawing-room to tell me that the day nurse was a harsh brute, that no-one but myself had ever tried to be kind to her in the whole of Stampfield, and that if anything happened to Herbert she would die, go into a Roman convent, and write to the papers about it, all apparently simultaneously. Luckily, as the baby began to cry and the oxygen was needed, I couldn’t stop to try to soothe her much, and indeed the only words which really came to my mind with any force were, “Consider what a great girl you are!” But I promised that Arthur would pray for her husband at the Mid-day Service (which I fear she seemed to feel more of the nature of a revenge than anything else), and took care to let Mrs. Weekes know, when I met her in the grocer’s, that poor Mr. Strang was very ill indeed and his wife absolutely beside herself. I saw in Mrs. Weekes’ eye a gleam which foretold that she would soon be on her way in the car with grapes, champagne, chicken-broth, one frock at least for the baby, and flowers and cooked meats for Mrs. Strang; so my shopping hadn’t been wasted. Then I looked in at the Vicarage with my message, got caught at the door by Mrs. Higgs, asking if I could spare linen for bandages, found two telephone calls which had to be answered at once (both engaged to begin with) and so arrived at the Old Rectory at last, longing to break the rule of silence at once, and tell Mrs. Pratt and everyone else that I’d like them to have treated my morning methodically.

  I regret to say that as I was reviewing my activities, I discovered that the Words on Charity had changed to an Address on Meditation. It was in fact only borne in on me because all the others had stopped scribbling notes (in which I couldn’t join as I had no paper but the dairy receipt and an old bus ticket), and were listening with the rapt repressive looks which every good parson’s wife but myself, I feel, can adopt naturally at will.

  Mrs. Eardley-Gage had it, of course, to perfection. In her youth she was, we all know, the childhood’s pet of all the leading Anglican divines of her day. Her father was a prominent man on every Church Committee in Westminster, and her curls (now, I noticed, distinctly flattened) were stroked by a great Archbishop, her infant mots quoted by a great Canon of Saint Paul’s, and she bore proudly the nickname of Bobo, given to her by an even more famous Bishop because she confided to him that Bishops were more alarming than geese. When one of that great clan of noble Anglican families who rose into prominence in Gladstone’s later days, stayed at the Rectory, he was distinctly heard to call her Bobo twice in the presence of the Pratts, and when she is sitting, as she did now, with her fair, saintly face upturned, her frail figure gracefully erect, her thin fingers clasping her loose diamond rings, and her mind so clearly remote from all mundane affairs, I have a mad longing to get up and address her as Bobo and see what happens. As this is clearly due to nothing but the deadly sin of envy, I rebuked myself now severely, and reminded myself how charming and unusual a witness she is to that gracious wealthy set in society which adorns so many biographies of the last generation. As my forebears were for the most part hard-headed Evangelical colonels, who would have regarded their little holy jokes as profane, and described their little services in Bishops’ chapels (black mantillas for the ladies at Compline) as hotbeds of Papacy, her old world doesn’t touch mine; and sometimes I wonder if there can be any real friendship between those whose households run on four greased wheels, and those like myself who have to trundle along with a one-wheeled barrow, and spend all their time keeping it straight. Perhaps what is really at the root of the trouble is that she hasn’t approved of Dick, and Dick has described her as an Anglican pussy-face, ever since we left the house together, after a croquet party with two of her gay yet serious Anglican nieces, and Dick declared outside the open windows, with an emphasis which must have been overheard, that he believed even the balls and hoops had been baptized by an Archbishop.

  The Address ended, and we all moved across the hall to the Rector’s study, now fitted as a temporary chapel, with a great deal of polite drawings-back and waving of hands over our precedence. All the bedroom chairs had been collected, and I made a mental note to avoid if possible, on our next progress here, the very exiguous and sharp-backed cane seat in front of me, which cut my arms and slid away from me if I leant on it. (Mrs. Pratt had manoeuvred herself far more wisely opposite a good solid sofa which could sustain her weight.)

  Father Merrion, who was in charge of our retreat, urged us at this point, in the quiet hushed whisper which suited his ascetic face and figure so well, to remember that it is a danger in meditation to become too wholly detached from the conscious, thinking self. Great care, he emphasized, must be taken, in emptying the intellect, to listen only to the Interior Voice until we are sure of our spiritual armour. With this warning to my conscious mind I was indeed horrified to discover that I had spent the first few minutes in trying to discover the Rector as a chubby schoolboy in a Radley group, in remembering with horror that I hadn’t ordered enough fish to do for kedgeree on Sunday morning as well as supper to-night, and, lastly, that if we went on much longer I should r
elapse into what Anglo-Catholics call, I believe, the Protestant Squat, or collapse on the floor altogether. It is very strange and shame-making to possess, in my profession, a mind that will not turn to order to holy things. When I am put for a walk, or visiting some of the poor people I love, or alone in my bedroom, I do sometimes feel conscious of all that spiritual world in the fourth dimension just beyond our vision or conscious apprehension. And I don’t think I ever see a sudden view of hills beyond our street, or a tree in blossom, or tulips in massed colours on a barrow without remembering Francis Thompson’s words: “Sworn to poverty he forswore not beauty but worshipped through the lamp beauty the Light, God.” And in my visits to the Hospital and my friends in my district, how often I recall words of a war poet, which, said Arthur, came to him like a vision on the way to Damascus:

  “We that have seen man broken

  We know man is divine.”

  But I fear I quite understood what Kate meant when she withdrew herself from an admirable girls’ society, saying, “Shut me up with a pack of women in a small room, and I go all goosey, Ma’am.”

  It is a sin, this resistance to communal emotion, I know, and I try to correct it; but I suppose a wandering mind is the inevitable revenge of time on a housekeeper, whose duty it is to think of a dozen things at once; and my tendency to flippancy and criticism have been sadly rejuvenated by a really amusing son, and never damped by a husband who values sincerity rather than conventional expressions of thought. But what I really wonder always is how many of the congregation are feeling just as I do, and wandering just as I do. Because as you grow older, you do recognize that there is nothing unusual about yourself, and that they may be thinking much the same thoughts as mine, even while they look at Mrs. Lacely and wish they were as attentive as she is.

  Again I pulled myself up and tried to meditate, but by this time the text on which we were to concentrate had wholly eluded me, and by fumbling in a prayer-book I only hit the Psalm which, as a clerical correspondent in The Times so wittily pointed out, would just coincide with meat-rationing: “They run hither and thither for meat and are not satisfied.” No other woman present, I am quite sure, could have sunk to such a low level of inward debate between the respective merits of point steak and neck of mutton for a household of three, when we all rose and trouped back to the drawing-room.