THE VICAR'S DECISION
Grafton didn't tell Caroline to write her note of invitation to Mrs.
Mercer until the next morning. It was sent to the Vicarage by hand, with
instructions to the bearer to wait for an answer.
Mrs. Mercer took it into her husband's study. In the ordinary way she
would have done this with some expression of gaiety and pleasure, for
she took such variations of life as happy surprises, and could be moved
to excitement even by an invitation to a flower-show, with a garden
party attached.
But this time her face did not light up as she opened and read the note,
and only the thought of the waiting messenger sent her to her husband's
room at once.
"Here is an invitation from Caroline for us to dine at the Abbey
to-night," she said, with a grave face. "Do you wish me to accept it?"
The Vicar was very busy. He looked up from his writing as if he could
hardly detach his thoughts from what he was doing, and said: "What is
to-night? Thursday. There's nothing on, I think. Yes, accept it." Then
he turned to his writing again.
Mrs. Mercer wrote her answer and sent it out. When she had done so she
sat with a thoughtful look upon her face for some time, which gradually
changed to one of decision. Then she went in to her husband's study
again, and shut the door after her as if she meant to stay there. This
was unusual. She was not made to feel herself welcome in that room in
the morning hours.
She was not to be made welcome now. The Vicar had left his writing-table
and was walking up and down the room, with a look on his face that was
not pleasant to see. It didn't grow any more pleasant as he saw her shut
the door behind her with that air which meant that she had something
serious to say to him. "My dear, you're just interrupting me in a train
of thought," he said in an annoyed voice. "If you want to talk about
anything do please wait until lunch time, or at least until the post
comes. I shall have a few minutes to spare then."
For answer she sat herself down in a high-backed chair which stood by
the empty fireplace. "Albert," she said, "I must speak to you. Things
are wrong with us all round, and I am kept out of it all. If I am to be
a true wife to you, and stand by your side in all the difficulties and
troubles which come to us with the people round, I ought to know what is
going on, and not be kept in the dark, as you always keep me."
Tears stood in the little lady's eyes. She had been such a good loyal
wife to him, putting all her money at his disposal, and allowing him to
treat it as if it were his own, and even as if she ought to be thankful
to him for the comfortable home that he could not have given her
himself. She had never felt any disturbance of mind on that score, and
did not feel any now. They were one, and hers was his. But for the trust
and obedience she had given him, never questioning his wisdom, nor
failing to take his side in the repeated disputes and estrangements that
had come about between them and their neighbours, he did owe her return.
The time had come when she could no longer go on putting her whole trust
in him, if he did not show some corresponding trust in her.
He stopped in his walking up and down, and stood before her, the
arrogant frown and look on his face which she knew so well. But
something now told her that she must not be awed into submission by it,
as previously she had always been.
"Really, I don't understand you," he said. "You must leave me to conduct
my own affairs in my own way, as you have always done. You can help me
in the difficulties I have in my work--and they are heavy enough, God
knows, with the sort of people I have to deal with here--by giving me
peace and quietness in my own home. You can help me in no other way. The
troubles I have fall upon my own shoulders, and I am acting rightly by
you in trying to keep you unaffected by them."
"But they do not only fall upon you," she said quietly. "We make friends
with people, and everything seems to be going happily; and then suddenly
we are not friends any longer. Often I have had to find it out for
myself, and sometimes you don't even tell me what has happened to cause
the change. It was so with the Beckleys. I have never known why we left
off being friends with them. And I have never known why there was such
disturbance before Mollie Walter was married. It would have been
natural, as she was almost like your own daughter, as you so often used
to say, that she should have been married from here, and that Mrs.
Walter should have stayed on at the Cottage until after she was married.
But her house at Wilborough was hurried on for her so that Mollie could
be married from there, and you were not even asked to take part in the
ceremony."
He had resumed his pacing of the room during the progress of this
speech, and his look was not so arrogant as it had been.
"I certainly don't propose to go into old questions of that sort," he
said. "They are over and done with, and--"
"I don't wish to go into them either," she said. "I didn't press you to
take me into your confidence then, and I won't do it now. But I think
you ought to tell me what has been the trouble with the Graftons. You
have criticised them from time to time, as you criticise everybody,"--he
frowned at this sentence, which was unlike any she had ever used to
him--"but we have been on friendly terms with them for over a year. At
first we were on _very_ friendly terms with them, and you used to go to
the Abbey in just the same way as you used to run in and out of Stone
Cottage. They have always been as nice as possible to me, but I
couldn't help seeing that they were not as friendly towards you as they
had been. When you left off going there in the intimate way you did at
first, they still asked us to the house fairly often. But this
invitation to dinner to-night is the first we have had from them for
weeks."
He did not usually allow her to speak at this length without
interrupting her, but when you are brought to book about anything it is
as well to know exactly what you have to meet. It may not after all be
so difficult to meet it as you had anticipated.
It was with something like his customary tone that he said: "We have
often discussed the Graftons together, and you know well enough that
there are many things about them which I, as a priest of the Church,
cannot approve of. If there has been any decline of intimacy between us
it is for that reason and that reason alone. They are not what I thought
they were when they first came here, and though in the position in which
I stand towards them I must do my best to keep the peace for the good of
the parish, I shall not surrender one jot or tittle of what I stand for
here, for the sake of keeping in with the rich man of the parish."
It sounded very well to him, but she rather spoilt it by asking in a
quiet voice: "What do you stand for here, Albert?"
Whether or not the necessity of explaining to her the whole gist and
meaning of the Ordination Service withheld him from replying to her at
once, she had time to go on before he spoke.
"I haven't been able to prevent myself asking that question lately," she
said. "I was very much troubled by the way you behaved"--another phrase
to which his ears were quite unaccustomed from her--"about the Coopers.
When you thought that the Bishop had offered Surley to Mr. Leadbetter
you didn't tell me anything about it, but you took me over there so that
you might tell _them_, though you knew what disappointment it would
bring them. Then when they told you that the living had been offered to
Denis, you congratulated them, but you spoke in such a different way to
me as we came home; and you did your best to stir up trouble about it
before you knew that Denis had refused the offer. And even when that did
come out, you couldn't give him any credit for what was a fine action on
his part, as I think, but could only talk about the way his sisters were
served right in doing what they had, and put it about what they had
done, to discredit them."
The Vicar had in fact arrived at the conclusion that Rhoda and Ethel had
opened the Bishop's letter addressed to their brother, which it is
probable that no one else would have guessed at; and righteous
indignation at such an action had been his chief contribution to the
talk that had resulted from the Bishop's offer and its refusal. It was
somewhat disturbing to find that his wife had not taken that indignation
at its face value. He defended himself at some length against her charge
of uncharity, but her silence and her downcast look warned him that he
was not impressing her, and as the ground was not of the strongest he
relinquished it.
"But we will have an end to all this," he said, catching at his
authority, so unexpectedly being questioned. "I can quite see that my
silence as to the Graftons may have been misunderstood by you. The fact
is that for months I have been coming to see that my position here will
become impossible unless the Graftons refrain from meddling in affairs
which are my concern and not theirs. I went down to the Abbey yesterday
to have it out with Grafton once and for all. Either I must be allowed
my own way here in matters which appertain to my office, and that must
be definitely understood, or else I must fight for it, and all pretence
of intimacy and friendship must be abandoned between us. Matters have
come to a crisis. I found Grafton quite irreconcileable. He takes his
stand, as a rich man of that type always does, upon his money."
"Oh, Albert!" she exclaimed.
"I don't mean to say, of course, that he mentions his money, but it
comes down to that. He has bought this place, and imagines that he has
bought all the people who live in it body and soul. I told him very
plainly that he had not bought me, and that I was not for sale, and I
flatter myself that I have given him something to think about. I was at
first very angry, as you no doubt saw when I came home, but I have been
thinking long and earnestly too. If you had not come in just now with a
series of accusations which are really quite unjustified and
exceptionally painful in the midst of a crisis of this sort, I should
have told you in a very short time where my deliberations had led me.
They are serious enough, and as you are concerned in the matter as well
as myself, I should have consulted you before making any actual
decision. But I feel that I can no longer go on here under such
conditions. The work I have spent some of the best years of my life over
is made of no avail, and to go on with it would only be to invite
further failure. Better face all the distress of a complete break, and
the expense of a move, and get away from the place. I had almost made up
my mind to do that, and if you give me your concurrence I shall take the
step without further hesitation. You know that when Sherlock sent the
photograph of that charming little house at Darthead, which he was
prepared to put at the disposal of anybody who would go and help him
there, you said you wished we were in a position to go ourselves. Well,
let us go, I say. It will mean some sacrifice of means, and I shall not
be the ultimate authority at Darthead, as I have been here. But there
will be less to keep up, and with an older man than he had anticipated
getting, Sherlock would only be too glad to give a free hand. In fact he
said that if he could get somebody whom he could thoroughly trust, he
should try to get away for a year at least, and leave his curate in
complete charge. Are you ready to make this new departure with me,
Gertrude, and support me loyally in my reasons for making it?"
By the time he had come to the end of this speech, he had forgotten the
beginning. But she had not, and a proposal that otherwise would have
found her enthusiastic, for she liked change, and the photograph of the
house at Darthead had pleased her enormously, left her for the time
unmoved. For his account of his interview with Grafton by no means
tallied with certain facts in her own possession.
His representation of himself as disapproving of the Graftons to such an
extent that he had finally been forced to deliver an ultimatum was one
of them. He had overwhelmed them with censure when he had thought he had
anything to complain about, but any approach on their part to intimacy
had always been responded to by him, and it was only when it showed
signs of dropping again that he had reverted to his attitude of
disapproval. That disapproval had certainly increased during the last
few months, in which the intimacy had been withheld, but he had shown
himself almost delighted to receive Grafton's note asking him to come
and see him, and had certainly not gone down to the Abbey with any idea
of delivering an ultimatum. He had returned in what was almost a fury,
and she had sat silent and depressed while he had covered the whole
Grafton family with abuse, but had not told her anything of what the new
trouble was about; nor had she asked him. And yet he had made no
difficulty about her accepting Caroline's invitation to dinner that
evening. No doubt he had persuaded himself of the truth of what he was
saying, even as he said it, as his way was. But it carried no
conviction to her.
"I think," she said quietly, "that it would be better for us to go away
from here if we cannot keep friends with any one about us."
Something warned him not to take exception to this speech, or to
expatiate further upon the offences he had received. "We can put all
that behind us now," he said. "I have not been able to make headway
against the forces arrayed against me here, and it will be better for us
to start entirely afresh. There is no need to keep up any ill-feeling
against even the Graftons. That is why we can dine with them to-night,
on the old friendly terms. If I had not decided to leave the place we
should have been obliged to refuse their invitation. I think you will
find no unpleasantness there, if you do and say nothing to arouse it
yourself. When they hear we are going, perhaps they may even be rather
sorry. Whoever comes here after me--Grafton will have to find somebody
himself, and I wish him luck of the job, for a living of this value--I
don't think he will easily find a more devoted parish priest than I have
been, or a Vicar's wife more ready to do her duty than _you_ have been,
my dear."
This tribute, thoroughly deserved but so rarely paid by him, did not
bring instant grateful delighted response from her, as usually it would
have done. Her eyes had been forced open, and could not be closed again
by a careless word of compliment. She knew that even in his last speech
he had not spoken the entire truth to her. His easy words, and his
sudden changes, for which there was always a reason, but a reason that
would not stand any test of sincerity, sounded different to her now.
Would she ever be persuaded and convinced by them again?
He hardly knew how much of truth and how much of falsehood there was in
his words himself. Although he had played lightly with the idea of going
to Darthead--his friend had asked him if he knew of a curate, but it was
not certain that he would accept the offer he would make of himself, or
that he had not by this time found one--all his thoughts had been taken
up with the fight he was going to have with Grafton. It was to have
begun that very evening over Grafton's dinner table, with a statement of
exactly where he stood that should be unmistakeable. Yesterday he had
been unprepared, but now he had his speeches ready; he had been
rehearsing some of them when his wife had come in to him. Grafton would
knuckle under; men of the Vicar's temperament never allow for answers to
the speeches they compose beforehand.
He had not projected his mind clearly into the future, as to what should
happen after he had gained his victory. Grafton had said that if he
stayed on at Abington he should no longer treat him as a friend. Perhaps
he imagined him so overcome by his defeat that he would hardly dare to
hold aloof from him. Perhaps a little whisper of reason in a corner of
his mind prepared him for that complete revulsion of feeling which came
to him under his wife's unexpected attack, and made him as eager to
escape the contest, and to go, as a few minutes earlier he had been to
engage in it and to stay on immoveable.
He had hardly had time to gauge the importance of her change of attitude
towards him. He had not been able to beat down her awkward enquiries
into his conduct as previously he had always nipped the mildest of
protests from her, and kept his dominance over her. But he was far from
suspecting that his reign of unreason was over. She had gone farther in
questioning, and even criticising him, than ever before, but he only had
to treat her with a little more care to bring her to his feet again,
accepting and for the most part admiring everything that he said or did.
But another little whisper of caution from a corner of his mind warned
him that he had better cut the knot of the difficulties which had at
last aroused that spirit of revolt in her, get away from it all, and
start afresh. His mind swung round instantly to a strong desire to get
away from it all, and with credit to himself. Before he had finished the
speech in which he broached his new-found intention to her, he saw
himself leaving Abington with the warmly expressed regrets of his
parishioners in his ears; and, if the vision of an illuminated address
and a handsome piece of plate did not present itself to him quite so
early, it did later.
The next morning Grafton went down to his Estate Office in the village
to see Worthing. They had a little business to transact together. When
it had been finished Grafton said, "By the bye, the Mercers dined with
us last night. They brought rather a surprising piece of news. Mercer
has made up his mind that he has borne the heat and burden of the day in
Abington long enough. He is going to retire, and live in Devonshire--in
a village where he can do a little clerical work for a friend."
Worthing stared at him open-mouthed, and then laughed heartily. "By
Jove, you're a wonder," he said. "How did you do it?"
"How did I do what? I don't know what you're talking about. I'm telling
you about Mercer. It's a charming house they're going to. Mrs. Mercer
brought a photograph of it. Mercer doesn't want to live in idleness.
Though he's borne the burden and heat of the day in this humming hive of
population, he still feels he has a few more years of work in him for
the good of the community. He isn't going to be a curate exactly; he's
going to help his friend, if he doesn't fall out with him--but he didn't
say that."
"Is he really going, or are you pulling my leg?"
"Why should I pull your leg? He's going next month. He's already looking
about for somebody to get up a testimonial to him. He didn't tell me
that either, but I gathered it. He hoped there'd be no fuss. He'd prefer
to say good-bye to his friends and go quietly--no illuminated addresses,
or anything of that sort. But I gathered that he won't refuse one if it
is offered. I rather fancy he has you in his mind, James, as the right
person to see about it."
"I'm damned if I do," said Worthing.