Green Lanes lay midway between the market town of Galton and the large
village of Newton Candover. It is a small, tumble-down hamlet remote
from any highroad, the confluence of four deserted by-ways leading to
other hamlets upon the wooded downland of which Green Lanes was the
highest point. Hare Hall, the family mansion of the Iredales, was quite
two miles away in the direction of Newton Candover and was let for a
long term of years to a rich stockbroker. Philip himself lived at The
Old Farm, an Elizabethan farm-house which he had filled with books. The
only other "gentleman" in Green Lanes was the vicar, Mr. Dorward, with
whom Philip had quarreled. The squire as lay rector drew a yearly
revenue of £300, but he refused to allow the living more than £90 until
the vicar gave up his ritualistic fads, to which, though he never went
inside the church, he strongly objected.
Sylvia's first quarrel with Philip was over the vicar, whom she met
through her puppy's wandering into his cottage while he was at tea and
refusing to come out. She might never have visited him again if Philip
had not objected, for he was very shy and eccentric; but after two more
visits to annoy Philip, she began to like Mr. Dorward, and her
friendship with him became a standing source of irritation to her
husband and a pleasure to herself which she declined to give up. Her
second quarrel with Philip was over his sister Gertrude, who came down
for a visit soon after they got back from Como. Gertrude, having until
her brother's marriage always lived at The Old Farm, could not refrain
from making Sylvia very much aware of this; her conversation was one
long, supercilious narrative of what she used to do at Green Lanes, with
which were mingled fears for what might be done there in the future.
Philip was quite ready to admit that his sister could be very
irritating, but he thought Sylvia's demand for her complete exclusion
from The Old Farm for at least a year was unreasonable.
"Well, if she comes, I shall go," Sylvia said, sullenly.
"My dear child, do remember that you're married and that you can't go
and come as you like," Philip answered. "However, I quite see your point
of view about poor Gertrude and I quite agree with you that for a time
it will be wiser to keep ourselves rather strictly to ourselves."
Why could he not have said that at first, Sylvia thought. She would have
been so quickly generous if he had, but the preface about her being
married had spoiled his concession. He was a curious creature, this
husband of hers. When they were alone he would encourage her to be as
she used to be; he would laugh with her, show the keenest interest in
what she was reading, search for a morning to find some book that would
please her, listen with delight to her stories of Jimmy Monkley or of
her father or of Blanche, and be always, in fact, the sympathetic
friend, never obtruding himself, as lover or monitor, two aspects of him
equally repugnant to Sylvia. Yet when there was the least likelihood not
alone of a third person's presence, but even of a third person's hearing
any roundabout gossip of her real self, Philip would shrivel her up with
interminable corrections, and what was far worse, try to sweeten the
process by what she considered fatuous demonstrations of affection. For
a time there was no great tension between them, because Sylvia's
adventurous spirit was occupied by her passion for knowledge; she felt
vaguely that at any time the moment might arrive when mere knowledge
without experience would not be enough; at present the freedom of
Philip's library was adventure enough. He was most eager to assist her
progress, and almost reckless in the way he spurred her into every
liberty of thought, maintaining the stupidity of all conventional
beliefs--moral, religious, or political. He warned her that the
expression of such opinions, or, still worse, action under the influence
of them, would be for her or for any one else in the present state of
society quite impossible; Sylvia used to think at the time that it was
only herself as his wife whom he wished to keep in check, and resented
his reasons accordingly; afterward looking back to this period she came
to the conclusion that Philip was literally a theorist, and that his
fierce denunciations of all conventional opinions could never in any
circumstances have gone further than quarreling with the vicar and
getting married in a registry-office. Once when she attacked him for his
cowardice he retorted by citing his marriage with her, and immediately
afterward apologized for what he characterized as "caddishness."
"If you had married me and been content to let me remain myself," Sylvia
said, "you might have used that argument. But you showed you were
frightened of what you'd done when you sent me to Hornton House."
"My dear child, I wanted you to go there for your own comfort, not for
mine. After all, it was only like reading a book; it gave you a certain
amount of academic theory that you could prove or disprove by
experience."
"A devil of a lot of experience I get here," Sylvia exclaimed.
"You're still only seventeen," Philip answered. "The time will come."
"It will come," Sylvia murmured, darkly.
"You're not threatening to run away from me already?" Philip asked, with
a smile.
"I might do anything," she owned. "I might poison you."
Philip laughed heartily at this; just then Mr. Dorward passed over the
village green, which gave him an opportunity to rail at his cassock.
"It's ridiculous for a man to go about dressed up like that. Of course,
nobody attends his church. I can't think why my father gave him the
living. He's a ritualist, and his manners are abominable."
"But he looks like a Roman Emperor," said Sylvia.
Philip spluttered with indignation. "Oh, he's Roman enough, my dear
child; but an Emperor! Which Emperor?"
"I'm not sure which it is, but I think it's Nero."
"Yes, I see what you mean," Philip assented, after a pause. "You're
amazingly observant. Yes, there is that kind of mixture of sensual
strength and fineness about his face. But it's not surprising. The line
between degeneracy and the 'twopence colored' type of religion is not
very clearly drawn."
It was after this conversation that, in searching for a picture of
Nero's head to compare with Mr. Dorward's, Sylvia came across the
Satyricon of Petronius in a French translation. She read it through
without skipping a word, applied it to the test of recognition, and
decided that she found more satisfactorily than in any book she had yet
read a distorting mirror of her life from the time she left France until
she met Philip, a mirror, however, that never distorted so wildly as to
preclude recognition. Having made this discovery, she announced it to
him, who applauded her sense of humor and of literature, but begged her
to keep it to herself; people might get a wrong idea of her; he knew
what she meant and appreciated the reflection, but it was a book that,
generally speaking, no woman would read, still less talk about, and
least of all claim kinship with. It was of course an immortal work of
art, humorous, witty, fantastic.
"And true," Sylvia added.
"And no doubt true to its period and its place, which was southern Italy
in the time of Nero."
"And true to southern England in the time of Victoria," Sylvia insisted.
"I don't mean that it's exactly the same," she went on, striving almost
painfully to express her thoughts. "The same, though. I _feel_ it's
true. I don't _know_ it's true. Oh, can't you understand?"
"I fancy you're trying to voice your esthetic consciousness of great art
that, however time may change its accessories, remains inherently
changeless. Realism in fact as opposed to what is wrongly called
realism. Lots of critics, Sylvia, have tried to define what is worrying
you, and lots of long words have been enlisted on their behalf. A better
and more ancient word for realism was 'poetry'; but the word has been
debased by the versifiers who call themselves poets just as painters
call themselves artists--both are titles that only posterity can award.
Great art is something that is made and that lives in itself; like that
stuff, radium, which was discovered the year before last, it eternally
gives out energy without consuming itself. Radium, however, does not
solve the riddle of life, and until we solve that, great art will remain
undefinable. Which reminds me of a mistake that so-called believers
make. I've often heard Christians maintain the truth of Christianity,
because it is still alive. What nonsense! The words of Christ are still
alive, because Christ Himself was a great poet, and therefore expressed
humanity as perhaps no one else ever expressed humanity before. But the
lying romantic, the bad poet, in fact, who tickles the vain and
credulous mob with miracles and theogonies, expresses nothing. It is a
proof of nothing but the vitality of great art that the words of Christ
can exist and can continue to affect humanity notwithstanding the
mountebank behavior attributed to Him, out of which priests have
manufactured a religion. It is equally surprising that Cervantes could
hold his own against the romances of chivalry he tried to kill. He may
have killed one mode of expression, but he did not prevent _East Lynne_
from being written; he yet endures because Don Quixote, whom he made,
has life. By the way, you never got on with Don Quixote, did you?"
Sylvia shook her head.
"I think it's a failure on your part, dear Sylvia."
"He is so stupid," she said.
"But he realized how stupid he was before he died."
She shrugged her shoulders. "I can't help my bad taste, as you call it.
He annoys me."
"You think the Yanguseian carriers dealt with him in the proper way?"
"I don't remember them."
"They beat him."
"I think I could beat a person who annoyed me very much," Sylvia said.
"I don't mean with sticks, of course, but with my behavior."
"Is that another warning?" Philip asked.
"Perhaps."
"Anyway, you think Petronius is good?"
She nodded her head emphatically.
"Come, you shall give a judgment on Aristophanes. I commend him to you
in the same series of French translations."
"I think Lysistrata is simply splendid," Sylvia said, a week or so
later. "And I like the Thesmos-something and the Eck-something."
"I thought you might," Philip laughed. "But don't quote from them when
my millionaire tenant comes to tea."
"Don't be always harping upon the dangers of my conversation," she
exhorted.
"Mayn't I even tease you?" Philip asked, in mock humility.
"I don't mind being teased, but it isn't teasing. It's serious."
"Your sense of humor plays you tricks sometimes," he said.
"Oh, don't talk about my sense of humor like that. My sense of humor
isn't a watch that you can take out and tap and regulate and wind up and
shake your head over. I hate people who talk about a sense of humor as
you do. Are you so sure you have one yourself?"
"Perhaps I haven't," Philip agreed, but by the way in which he spoke
Sylvia knew that he would maintain he had a sense of humor, and that the
rest of humanity had none if it combined to contradict him. "I always
distrust people who are too confidently the possessors of one," he
added.
"You don't understand in the least what I mean," Sylvia cried out, in
exasperation. "You couldn't distrust anybody else's sense of humor if
you had one yourself."
"That's what I said," Philip pointed out, in an aggrieved voice.
"Don't go on; you'll make me scream," she adjured him. "I won't talk
about a sense of humor, because if there is such a thing it obviously
can't be talked about."
Lest Philip should pursue the argument, she left him and went for a long
muddy walk by herself half-way to Galton. She had never before walked
beyond the village of Medworth, but she was still in such a state of
nervous exasperation that she continued down the hill beyond it without
noticing how far it was taking her. The country on either side of the
road ascended in uncultivated fields toward dense oak woods. In many of
these fields were habitations with grandiose names, mostly built of
corrugated iron. Sylvia thought at first that she was approaching the
outskirts of Galton and pressed on to explore the town, the name of
which was familiar from the rickety tradesmen's carts that jogged
through Green Lanes. There was no sign of a town, however, and after
walking about two miles through a landscape that recalled the pictures
she had seen of primitive settlements in the Far West, she began to feel
tired and turned round upon her tracks, wishing she had not come quite
so far. Suddenly a rustic gate that was almost buried in the unclipped
hazel hedge on one side of the road was flung open, and an elderly lady
with a hooked nose and fierce bright eyes, dressed in what looked at a
first glance like a pair of soiled lace window-curtains, asked Sylvia
with some abruptness if she had met a turkey going in her direction.
Sylvia shook her head, and the elderly lady (Sylvia would have called
her an old lady from her wrinkled countenance, had she not been so
astonishingly vivacious in her movements) called in a high harsh voice:
"Emmie! There's a girl here coming from Galton way, and _she_ hasn't
seen Major Kettlewell."
In the distance a female voice answered, shrilly, "Perhaps he's crossed
over to the Pluepotts'!"
Sylvia explained that she had misunderstood the first inquiry, but that
nobody had passed her since she turned back five minutes ago.
"We call the turkey Major Kettlewell because he looks like Major
Kettlewell, but Major Kettlewell himself lives over there."
The elderly lady indicated the other side of the road with a vague
gesture, and went on:
"Where can that dratted bird have got to? Major! Major! Major!
Chuch--chick--chilly--chilly--chuck--chuck," she called.
Sylvia hoped that the real major lived far enough away to be out of
hearing.
"Never keep a turkey," the elderly lady went on, addressing Sylvia. "We
didn't kill it for Christmas, because we'd grown fond of it, even
though he is like that old ruffian of a major. And ever since he's gone
on the wander. It's the springtime coming, I suppose."
The elderly lady's companion had by this time reached the gate, and
Sylvia saw that she was considerably younger, but with the same
hall-mark of old-maidishness.
"Don't worry any more about the bird, Adelaide," said the new-comer.
"It's tea-time. Depend upon it, he's crossed over to the Pluepotts'.
This time I really will wring his neck."
Sylvia prepared to move along, but the first lady asked her where she
was going, and, when she heard Green Lanes, exclaimed:
"Gemini! That's beyond Medworth, isn't it? You'd better come in and have
a cup of tea with us. I'm Miss Horne, and my friend here is Miss
Hobart."
Sunny Bank, as this particular tin house was named, not altogether
inappropriately, although it happened to be on the less sunny side of
the road, was built half-way up a steepish slope of very rough ground
from which enough flints had been extracted to pave a zigzag of
ascending paths, and to vary the contour of the slope with a miniature
mountain range of unused material without apparently smoothing the areas
of proposed cultivation.
"These paths are something dreadful, Emmie," said Miss Horne, as the
three of them scrambled up through the garden. "Never mind, we'll get
the roller out of the hedge when Mr. Pluepott comes in on Wednesday.
Miss Hobart nearly got carried away by the roller yesterday," she
explained to Sylvia.
A trellised porch outside the bungalow--such apparently was the correct
name for these habitations--afforded a view of the opposite slope, which
was sprinkled with bungalows surrounded like Sunny Bank by heaps of
stones; there were also one or two more pretentious buildings of red
brick and one or two stony gardens without a dwelling-place as yet.
"I suppose you're wondering why the name over the door isn't the same as
the one on the gate? Mr. Pluepott is always going to take it out, but he
never remembers to bring the paint. It's the name the man from whom we
bought it gave the bungalow," said Miss Hobart, crossly. Sylvia read in
gothic characters over the door Floral Nook, and agreed with the two
ladies that Sunny Bank was much more suitable.
"For whatever else it may be, it certainly isn't damp," Miss Horne
declared. "But, dear me, talking of names, you haven't told us yours."
Sylvia felt shy. It was actually the first time she had been called upon
to announce herself since she was married. The two ladies exclaimed on
hearing she was Mrs. Iredale, and Sylvia felt that there was a kind of
impropriety in her being married, when Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who
were so very much older than she, were still spinsters.
The four small rooms of which the bungalow consisted were lined with
varnished match-boarding; everything was tied up with brightly colored
bows of silk, and most of the pictures were draped with small curtains;
the bungalow was full of knickknacks and shivery furniture, but not full
enough to satisfy the owners' passion for prettiness, so that wherever
there was a little space on the walls silk bows had been nailed about
like political favors. Sylvia thought it would have been simpler to tie
a wide sash of pink silk round the house and call it The Chocolate Box.
Tea, though even the spoons were tied up with silk, was a varied and
satisfying meal. The conversation of the two ladies was remarkably
entertaining when it touched upon their neighbors, and when twilight
warned Sylvia that she must hurry away she was sorry to leave them.
While she was making her farewells there was a loud tap at the door,
followed immediately by the entrance of a small bullet-headed man with
quick black eyes.
"I've brought back your turkey, Miss Horne."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Pluepott. There you are, Emmie. You were right."
At this moment the bird began to flap its wings as violently as its
position head downward would allow; nor, not being a horse, did it pay
any attention to Mr. Pluepott's repeated shouts of "Woa! Woa back, will
you!"
"I think you'd better let him flap outside, Mr. Pluepott," Miss Hobart
advised.
Sylvia thought so too when she looked at the floor.
"Shall I wring its neck now or would you rather I waited till I come in
on Wednesday?"
"Oh, I think we'll wait, thank you, Mr. Pluepott," Miss Horne said.
"Perhaps you wouldn't mind shutting him up in the coop. He does wander
so. Are you going into Galton?"
Mr. Pluepott replied, as he confined Major Kettlewell to his barracks,
that, on the contrary, he was driving up to Medworth to see about some
beehives for sale there, whereupon Miss Horne and Miss Hobart asked if
he would mind taking Mrs. Iredale that far upon her way.
A few minutes later Sylvia, on a very splintery seat, was jolting along
beside Mr. Pluepott toward Medworth.
"Rum lot of people hereabouts," he said, by way of opening the
conversation, "Some of the rummest people it's ever been my luck to
meet. I came here because my wife had to leave the Midlands. Chest was
bad. I used to be a cobbler at Bedford. Since I've been here I've become
everything--carpenter, painter, decorator, gardener, mason, bee expert,
poultry-keeper, blacksmith, livery-stables, furniture-remover, house
agent, common carrier, bricklayer, dairyman, horse-breaker. The only
thing I don't do now is make boots. Funny thing, and you won't believe
it, but last week I had to buy myself the first pair of boots I ever
bought since I was a lad of fifteen. Oh, well, I like the latest better
than the last, as I jokingly told my missus the other night. It made her
laugh," said Mr. Pluepott, looking at Sylvia rather anxiously; she
managed to laugh too, and he seemed relieved.
"I often make jokes for my missus. She's apt to get very melancholy with
her chest. But, as I was saying, the folk round here they beat the band.
It just shows what advertisement will do."
Sylvia asked why.
"Well, when I first came here, and I was one of the three first, I came
because I read an advertisement in the paper: 'Land for the Million in
lots from a quarter of an acre.' Some fellow had bought an old farm that
was no use to nobody and had the idea of splitting it up into lots.
Originally this was the Oak Farm Estate and belonged to St. Mary's
College, Oxford. Now we call it Oaktown--the residents, that is--but
when we applied the other day to the Galton Rural District Council, so
as we could have the name properly recognized, went in we did with the
major, half a dozen of us, as smart as a funeral, one of the wise men of
Gotham, which is what I jokingly calls Galton nowadays, said he thought
Tintown would be a better name. The major got rare and angry, but his
teeth slipped just as he was giving it 'em hot and strong, which is a
trick they have. He nearly swallowed 'em last November, when he was
taking the chair at a Conservative meeting, in an argument with a
Radical about the war. They had to lead him outside and pat his back.
It's a pity the old ladies can't get on with him. They fell out over
blackberrying in his copse last Michaelmas. Well, the fact is the
major's a bit close, and I think he meant to sell the blackberries. He's
put up a notice now 'Beware of Dangerous Explosives,' though there's
nothing more dangerous than a broken air-gun in the whole house. Miss
Horne was very bitter about it; oh, very bitter she was. Said she always
knew the major was a guy, and he only wanted to stuff himself with
gunpowder to give the boys a rare set out on the Fifth."
"How did Miss Horne and Miss Hobart come here?" Sylvia asked.
"Advertisement. They lived somewhere near London, I believe; came into a
bit of money, I've heard, and thought they'd settle in the country. I
give them a morning a week on Wednesdays. The man they bought it off had
been a tax-collector somewhere in the West Indies. He swindled them
properly, but they were sorry for him because he had a floating
kidney--floating in alcohol, I should think, by the amount he drank. But
they won't hear a word against him even now. He's living in Galton and
they send him cabbages every week, which he gives to his rabbits when
he's sober and throws at his housekeeper when he's drunk. Sunny Bank!
I'm glad it's not my Bank. As I jokingly said to my missus, I should
soon be stony-broke. Ah, well, there's all sorts here and that's a
fact," Mr. Pluepott continued, with a pensive flick at his pony. "That
man over there, for instance." He pointed with his whip through the
gathering darkness to a particularly small tin cottage. "He used to play
the trombone in a theater till he played his inside out; now he thinks
he's going to make a fortune growing early tomatoes for Covent Garden
market. You get him with a pencil in his hand of an evening and you'd
think about borrowing money from him next year; but when you see him
next morning trying to cover a five-by-four packing-case with a broken
sash-light, you'd be more afraid of his trying to borrow from you."
With such conversation did Mr. Pluepott beguile the way to Medworth; and
when he heard that Sylvia intended to walk in the dusk to Green Lanes he
insisted on driving her the extra two miles.
"The hives won't fly away," he said, cheerfully, "and I like to make a
good job of a thing. Well, now you've found your way to Oaktown, I hope
you'll visit us again. Mrs. Pluepott will be very glad to see you drop
in for a cup of tea any day, and if you've got any comical
reading-matter, she'd be glad to borrow from you; for her chest does
make her very melancholy, and, being accustomed to having me always
about the house when I was cobbling, she doesn't seem to get used to
being alone. Only the other day she said if she'd known I was going to
turn into a Buffalo Bill she'd rather have stayed in Bedford. 'Land for
the Millions!' she said, 'I reckon you'd call it Land for the Million,
if you had to sweep the house clean of the mud you bring into it.' Well,
good night to you. Very glad I was able to oblige, I'm sure."
Philip was relieved when Sylvia got back. She had never been out for so
long before, and she teased him about the running away, that he had
evidently imagined. She felt in a good humor after her expedition, and
was glad to be back in this dignified and ancient house with its books
and lamplight and not a silken bow anywhere to be seen.
"So you've been down to that abomination of tin houses? It's an absolute
blot on the countryside. I don't recommend too close an
acquaintanceship. I'm told it's inhabited by an appalling set of
rascals. Poor Melville, who owns the land all 'round, says he can't keep
a hare."
Sylvia said the people seemed rather amusing, and was not at all
inclined to accept Philip's condemnation of them; he surely did not
suggest that Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, for instance, were poachers?
"My dear child, people who come and live in a place like the Oak Farm
Estate--Oaktown, as they have the impudence to call it--are there for no
good. They've either done something discreditable in town or they hope
to do something discreditable in the country. Oh yes, I've heard all
about our neighbors. There's a ridiculous fellow who calls himself a
major--I believe he used to be in the volunteers--and can't understand
why he's not made a magistrate. I'm told he's the little tin god of
Tintown. No, no, I prefer even your friendship with our vicar. Don't be
cross with me, Sylvia, for laughing at your new friends, but you mustn't
take them too seriously. I shall have finished the text I'm writing this
month, and we'll go up to London for a bit. Shall we? I'm afraid you're
getting dull down here."
The spring wore away, but the text showed no signs of being finished.
Sylvia suggested that she should invite Gladys and Enid Worsley to stay
with her, but Philip begged her to postpone the invitation while he was
working, and thought in any case it would be better to have them down in
summer. Sylvia went to Oaktown once or twice, but said nothing about it
to Philip, because from a sort of charitableness she did not want him to
diminish himself further in her eyes by airing his prejudices with the
complacency that seemed to increase all the time they stayed in the
country.
One day at the end of April Miss Horne and Miss Hobart announced they
had bought a governess-car and a pony, built a stable, and intended to
celebrate their first drive by calling on Sylvia at Green Lanes. Mr.
Pluepott had promised, even if it should not be on a Wednesday, to
superintend the first expedition and gave his opinion of the boy whom it
was proposed to employ as coachman. The boy in question, whom Mr.
Pluepott called Jehuselah, whether from an attempt to combine a
satirical expression of his driving and his age, or too slight
acquaintance with Biblical personalities, was uncertain, was known as
Ernie to Miss Horne and Miss Hobart when he was quick and good, but as
Ernest when he was slow and bad; his real name all the time was Herbert.
"Good heavens!" Philip ejaculated, when he beheld the governess-car from
his window. "Who on earth is this?"
"Friends of mine," said Sylvia. "Miss Horne and Miss Hobart. I told you
about them."
"But they're getting out," Philip gasped, in horror. "They're coming
here."
"I know," Sylvia said. "I hope there's plenty for tea. They always give
me the most enormous teas." And without waiting for any more of Philip's
protests she hurried down-stairs and out into the road to welcome the
two ladies. They were both of them dressed in pigeon's-throat silk under
more lace even than usual, and arrived in a state of enthusiasm over
Ernie's driving and thankfulness for the company of Mr. Pluepott, who
was also extremely pleased with the whole turn-out.
"A baby in arms couldn't have handled that pony more carefully," he
declared, looking at Ernie with as much pride as if he had begotten him.
"We're so looking forward to meeting Mr. Iredale," said Miss Horne.
"We hear he's a great scholar," said Miss Hobart.
Sylvia took them into the dining-room, where she was glad to see that a
gigantic tea had been prepared--a match even for the most profuse of
Sunny Bank's.
Then she went up-stairs to fetch Philip, who flatly refused to come
down.
"You must come," Sylvia urged. "I'll never forgive you if you don't."
"My dearest Sylvia, I really cannot entertain the eccentricities of
Tintown here. You invited them. You must look after them. I'm busy."
"Are you coming?" Sylvia asked, biting her lips.
"No, I really can't. It's absurd. I don't want this kind of people here.
Besides, I must work."
"You sha'n't work," Sylvia cried, in a fury, and she swept all his books
and papers on the floor.
"I certainly sha'n't come now," he said, in the prim voice that was so
maddening.
"Did you mean to come before I upset your books?"
"Yes, I probably should have come," he answered.
"All right. I'm so sorry. I'll pick everything up," and she plunged down
on the floor. "There you are," she said when everything was put back in
its place. "Now will you come?"
"No, my dear. I told you I wouldn't after you upset my things."
"Philip," she cried, her eyes bright with rage, "you're making me begin
to hate you sometimes."
Then she left him and went back to her guests, to whom she explained
that her husband had a headache and was lying down. The ladies were
disappointed, but consoled themselves by recommending a number of
remedies which Miss Horne insisted that Sylvia should write down. When
tea was finished, Miss Hobart said that their first visit to Green Lanes
had been most enjoyable and that there was only one thing they would
like to do before going home, which would be to visit the church. Sylvia
jumped at an excuse for not showing them over the house, and they set
out immediately through the garden to walk to the little church that
stood in a graveyard grass-grown like the green lanes of the hamlet
whose dead were buried there. The sun was westering, and in the golden
air they lowered their voices for a thrush that was singing his vespers
upon a moldering wooden cross.
"Nobody ever comes here," Sylvia said. "Hardly anybody comes to church
ever. The people don't like Mr. Dorward's services. They say he can't be
heard."
Suddenly the vicar himself appeared, and seemed greatly pleased to see
Sylvia and her visitors; she felt a little guilty, because, though she
was great friends with Mr. Dorward, she had never been inside the
church, nor had he ever hinted he would like her to come. It would seem
so unkind for her to come like this for the first time with strangers,
as if the church which she knew he deeply loved was nothing but a
tea-time entertainment. There was no trace of reproachfulness in his
manner, as he showed Miss Horne and Miss Hobart the vestments and a
little image of the Virgin in peach-blow glaze that he moved caressingly
into the sunlight, as a child might fondle reverently a favorite doll.
He spoke of his plans for restoration and unrolled the design of a
famous architect, adding with a smile for Sylvia that the lay rector
disapproved of it thoroughly. They left him arranging the candlesticks
on the altar, a half-pathetic, half-humorous figure that seemed to be
playing a solitary game.
"And you say nobody goes to his church!" Miss Horne exclaimed. "But he's
most polite and charming."
"Scarcely anybody goes," Sylvia said.
"Emmie," said Miss Horne, standing upright and flashing forth an eagle's
glance. "_We_ will attend his service."
"That is a very good idea of yours, Adelaide," Miss Hobart replied.
Then they got into the governess-car with much determination, and with
friendly waves of the hand to Sylvia set out back to Oaktown.
When Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had left, Sylvia went up-stairs to have
it out with Philip. At this rate there would very soon be a crisis in
their married life. She was a little disconcerted by his getting up the
moment she entered his room and coming to meet her with an apology.
"Dearest Sylvia, you can call me what you will; I shall deserve the
worst. I can't understand my behavior this afternoon. I think I must
have been working so hard that my nerves are hopelessly jangled. I very
nearly followed you into the churchyard to make myself most humbly
pleasant, but I saw Dorward go 'round almost immediately afterward, and
I could not have met him in the mood I was in without being unpardonably
rude."
He waited for her with an arm stretched out in reconciliation, but
Sylvia hesitated.
"It's all very well to hurt my feelings like that because you happened
to be feeling in a bad temper," she said, "and then think you've only
got to make a pleasant little speech to put everything right again.
Besides, it isn't only to-day; it's day after day since we've been
married. I feel like Gulliver when he was being tied up by the
Lilliputians. I can't find any one big rope that's destroying my
freedom, but somehow or other my freedom is being destroyed. Did you
marry me casually, as people buy birds, to put me in a cage?"
"My dear, I married you because I loved you. You know I fought against
the idea of marrying you for a long time, but I loved you too much."
"Are you afraid of my loyalty?" she demanded. "Do you think I go to
Oaktown to be made love to?"
"Sylvia!" he protested.
"I go there because I'm bored, bored, endlessly, hopelessly,
paralyzingly bored. It's my own fault. I never ought to have married
you. I can't think why I did, but at least it wasn't for any mercenary
reason. You're not to believe that. Philip, I do like you, but why will
you always upset me?"
He thought for a moment and asked her presently what greater freedom she
wanted, what kind of freedom.
"That's it," she went on. "I told you I couldn't find any one big rope
that bound me. There isn't a single thread I can't snap with perfect
ease, but it's the multitude of insignificant little threads that almost
choke me."
"You told me you thought you would like to live in the country," he
reminded her.
"I do, but, Philip, do remember that I really am still a child. I've got
a deep voice and I can talk like a professor, but I'm still a hopeless
kid. I oughtn't to have to tell you this. You ought to see it for
yourself if you love me."
"Dearest Sylvia, I'm always telling you how young you are, and there's
nothing that annoys you more," he said.
"Oh, Philip, Philip, you really are pathetic! When did you ever meet a
young person who liked to have her youth called attention to? You're so
remote from beginning to understand how to manage me, and I'm still
manageable. Very soon I sha'n't be, though; and there'll be such a
dismal smash-up."
"If you'd only explain exactly," he began; but she interrupted him at
once.
"My dear man, if I explain and you take notes and consult them for your
future behavior to me, do you think that's going to please me? It can
all be said in two words. I'm human. For the love of God be human
yourself."
"Look here, let's go away for a spell," said Philip, brightly.
"The cat's miaowing. Let's open the door. No, seriously, I think I
should like to go away from here for a while."
"By yourself?" he asked, in a frightened voice.
"Oh no, not by myself. I'm perfectly content with you. Only don't
suggest the Italian lakes and try to revive the early sweets of our
eight months of married life. Don't let's have a sentimental rebuilding.
It will be so much more practical to build up something quite new."
Philip really seemed to have been shaken by this conversation. Sylvia
knew he had not finished his text, but he put everything aside in order
not to keep her waiting; and before May was half-way through they had
reached the island of Sirene. Here they stayed two months in a crumbling
pension upon the cliff's edge until Sylvia was sun-dried without and
within; she was enthralled by the evidences of imperial Rome, and her
only regret was that she did not meet an eccentric Englishman who was
reputed to have found, when digging a cistern, at least one of the lost
books of Elephantis, which he read in olive-groves by the light of the
moon. However, she met several other eccentrics of different
nationalities and was pleased to find that Philip's humanism was, with
Sirene as a background, strong enough to lend him an appearance of
humanity. They planned, like all other visitors to Sirene, to build a
big villa there; they listened like all other visitors to the Italian
and foreign inhabitants' depreciation of every villa but the one in
which they lived, either because they liked it or because they wanted to
let it or because they wished new-comers to fall into snares laid for
themselves when they were new-comers.
At last they tore themselves from Sirenean dreams and schemes, chiefly
because Sylvia had accepted an invitation to stay at Arbour End. They
lingered for a while at Naples on the way home, where Sylvia looked
about her with Petronian eyes, so much so, indeed, that a guide mistook
what was merely academic curiosity for something more practical. It cost
Philip fifty liras and nearly all the Italian he knew to get rid of the
pertinacious and ingenious fellow.
Arbour End had not changed at all in a year. Sylvia, when she thought
of Green Lanes, laughed a little bitterly at herself (but not so
bitterly as she would have laughed before the benevolent sunshine of
Sirene) for ever supposing that she and Philip could create anything
like it. Gladys and Enid, though they were now fifteen, had not yet
lengthened their frocks; their mother could not yet bring herself to
contemplate the disappearance of those slim black legs.
"But we shall have to next term," Gladys said, "because Miss Ashley's
written home about them."
"And that stuck-up thing Gwendyr Jones said they were positively
disgusting," Enid went on.
"Yes," added Gladys, "and I told her they weren't half as disgusting as
her ankles. And they aren't, are they, Sylvia?"
"Some of the girls call her marrow-bones," said Enid.
Sylvia would have preferred to avoid any intimate talks with Mrs.
Worsley, but it was scarcely to be expected that she would succeed, and
one night, looking ridiculously young with her fair hair hanging down
her back, she came to Sylvia's bedroom, and sitting down at the end of
her bed, began:
"Well, are you glad you got married?"
At any rate, Sylvia thought, she had the tact not to ask if she was glad
she had taken her advice.
"I'm not so sorry as I was," Sylvia told her.
"Ah, didn't I warn you against the first year? You'll see that I was
right."
"But I was not sorry in the way you prophesied. I've never had any
bothers with the country. Philip's sister was rather a bore, always
wondering about his clothes for the year after next; but we made a
treaty, and she's been excluded from The Old Farm--wait a bit, only till
next October. By Jove! I say, the treaty'll have to be renewed. I don't
believe even memories of Sirene would enable me to deal with Gertrude
this winter. No, what worries me most in marriage is not other people,
but our two selves. I hate writing Sylvia Iredale instead of Sylvia
Scarlett. Quite unreasonable of me, but most worries are unreasonable. I
don't want to be owned. I'm a book to Philip; he bought me for my
binding and never intended to read me, even if he could. I don't mean
to say I was beautiful, but I was what an American girl at Hornton House
used to call cunning; the pattern was unusual, and he couldn't resist
it. But now that he's bought me, he expects me to stay quite happily on
a shelf in a glass case; one day he may perhaps try to read me, but at
present, so long as I'm taken out and dusted--our holiday at Sirene was
a dusting--he thinks that's enough. But the worm that flies in the heart
of the storm has got in, Victoria, and is making a much more unusual
pattern across my inside--I say, I think it's about time to drop this
metaphor, don't you?"
"I don't think I quite understand all you're saying," said Victoria
Worsley.
Sylvia brought her hand from beneath the bedclothes and took her
friend's.
"Does it matter?"
"Oh, but I like to understand what people are saying," Mrs. Worsley
insisted. "That's why we never go abroad for our holidays. But, Sylvia,
about being owned, which is where I stopped understanding. Lennie
doesn't own me."
"No, you own _him_, but I don't own Philip."
"I expect you will, my dear, after you've been married a little longer."
"You think I shall acquire him in monthly instalments. I should find at
the end the cost too much in repairs, like Fred Organ."
"Who's he?"
"Hube's brother, the cabman. Don't you remember?"
"Oh, of course, how silly of me! I thought it might be an Italian you
met at Sirene. You've made me feel quite sad, Sylvia. I always want
everybody to be happy," she sighed. "I am happy--perfectly happy--in
spite of being married."
"Nobody's happy because of being married," Sylvia enunciated, rather
sententiously.
"What nonsense you talk, and you're only just eighteen!"
"That's why I talk nonsense," Sylvia said, "but all the same it's very
true nonsense. You and Lennie couldn't have ever been anything but
happy."
"Darling Lennie, I think it must be because he's so stupid. I wonder if
he's smoking in bed. He always does if I leave him to go and talk to
anybody. Good night, dear."
Sylvia returned to her book, wondering more than ever how she could have
supposed a year ago that she could follow Victoria Worsley along the
pathway of her simple and happy life.
The whole family from Arbour End came to London for the ten days before
term began, and Sylvia stayed with them at a hotel. Gladys and Enid had
to get their new frocks, and certain gaps in Hercules's education had to
be filled up, such as visiting the Zoo and the Tower of London and the
Great Wheel at Earl's Court. Sylvia and the twins searched in vain for
the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, but they found Mabel selling
Turkish Delight by herself at a small stall in another part of the
Exhibition. Sylvia thought the best way of showing her penitence for the
heartless way she had treated her was to buy as much Turkish Delight as
could possibly be carried away, since she probably received a percentage
on the takings. Mabel seemed to bear no resentment, but she was rather
shy, because she mistook the twins for Sylvia's sisters-in-law and
therefore avoided the only topic upon which she could talk freely, which
was men. They left the florid and accommodating creature with a callow
youth who was leaning familiarly across the counter and smacking with a
cane his banana-colored boots; then they ate as much Turkish Delight as
they could and divided the rest among some ducks and the Kaffirs in the
kraal.
Sylvia also visited Hornton House and explained to Miss Ashley why she
had demanded the banishment of Gertrude from Green Lanes.
"Poor Gertrude, she was very much upset," Miss Ashley said.
Sylvia, softened by the memories of a so happy year that her old school
evoked, made up her mind not to carry on the war against Gertrude. She
felt, too, a greater charity toward Philip, who, after all, had been the
cause of her being given that so happy year, and she went back to
Hampshire with the firm intention of encouraging this new mood that the
last four months had created in her. Philip was waiting on the platform
and was so glad to see her again that he drove even more absent-mindedly
than usual, until she took the reins from him and whipped up the horse
with a quite positive anticipation of home.
Sylvia learned from Philip that the visit of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart
had influenced other lives than their own, for it seemed that Miss
Horne's announcement of their attendance in future at Mr. Dorward's
empty church had been fully carried out. Not a Sunday passed but that
they drove up in the governess-car to Mass, so Philip said with a wry
face for the word; what was more, they stayed to lunch with the vicar,
presided at the Sunday-school, and attended the evening service, which
had been put forward half an hour to suit their supper.
"They absolutely rule Green Lanes ecclesiastically," Philip said. "And
some of the mercenary bumpkins and boobies 'round here have taken to
going to church for what they can get out of the two old ladies. I'm
glad to say, however, that the farmers and their families haven't come
'round yet."
Sylvia said she was glad for Mr. Dorward's sake, and she wondered why
Philip made such a fuss about the form of a service in the reality of
which, whatever way it was presented, he had no belief.
"I suppose you're right," he agreed. "Perhaps what I'm really afraid of
is that our fanatical vicar will really convert the parish to his
childish religion. Upon my soul, I believe Miss Horne has her eye upon
me. I know she's been holding forth upon my iniquitous position as lay
rector, and these confounded Radicals will snatch hold of anything to
create prejudice against landowners."
"Why don't you make friends with Mr. Dorward?" Sylvia suggested. "You
could surely put aside your religious differences and talk about the
classics."
"I dare say I'm bigoted in my own way," Philip answered. "But I can't
stand a priest, just as some people can't stand cats or snakes. It's a
positively physical repulsion that I can't get over. No, I'm afraid I
must leave Dorward to you, Sylvia. I don't think there's much danger of
your falling a victim to man-millinery. It'll take all your strength of
mind, however, to resist the malice of these two old witches, and I
wager you'll be excommunicated from the society of Tintown in next to no
time."
Sylvia found that Philip had by no means magnified the activities of
Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, and for the first time on a Sunday morning
at Green Lanes a thin black stream of worshipers flowed past the windows
of The Old Farm after service. It was more than curiosity could bear;
without saying a word to anybody Sylvia attended the evening service
herself. The church was very small, and her entrance would have
attracted much more attention than it did if Ernie, who was holding the
thurible for Mr. Dorward to put in the incense, had not given at that
moment a mighty sneeze, scattering incense and charcoal upon the altar
steps and frightening the woman at the harmonium into a violent discord,
from which the choir was rescued by Miss Horne's unmoved and harsh
soprano that positively twisted back the craning necks of the
congregation into their accustomed apathy. Sylvia wondered whether fear,
conversion, or extra wages had induced Ernie to put on that romantic
costume which gave him the appearance of a rustic table covered with a
tea-cloth, as he waited while the priest tried to evoke a few threads of
smoke from the ruin caused by his sneeze. Sylvia was so much occupied in
watching Ernie that she did not notice the rest of the congregation had
sat down. Mr. Dorward must have seen her, for he had thrown off the
heavy vestment he was wearing and was advancing apparently to say how
d'ye do. No, he seemed to think better of it, and had turned aside to
read from a large book, but what he read neither Sylvia nor the
congregation had any idea. She decided that all this standing up and
kneeling and sitting down again was too confusing for a novice, and
during the rest of the service she remained seated, which was at once
the most comfortable and the least conspicuous attitude. Sylvia had
intended to slip out before the service was over, as she did not want
Miss Horne and Miss Hobart to exult over her imaginary conversion, but
the finale came sooner than she expected in a fierce hymnal outburst
during which Mr. Dorward hurriedly divested himself and reached the
vestianel. Miss Horne had scarcely thumped the last beat on the
choir-boy's head in front of her, the echoes of the last amen had
scarcely died away, before the female sexton, an old woman called
Cassandra Batt, was turning out the oil-lamps and the little
congregation had gathered 'round the vicar in the west door to hear Miss
Horne's estimate of its behavior. There was no chance for Sylvia to
escape.
"Ernest," said Miss Horne, "what did you sneeze for during the
Magnificat? Father Dorward never got through with censing the altar, you
bad boy."
"The stoff got all up me nose," said Ernie. "Oi couldn't help meself."
"Next time you want to sneeze," said Miss Hobart, kindly, "press your
top lip below the nose, and you'll keep it back."
"I got too much to do," Ernie muttered, "and too much to think on."
"Jane Frost," said Miss Horne, quickly turning the direction of her
attack, "you must practise all this week. Suppose Father Dorward gets a
new organ? You wouldn't like not to be allowed to play on it. Some of
your notes to-night weren't like a musical instrument at all. The Nunc
Dimittis was more like water running out of a bath. 'Lord, now lettest
thou thy servant depart in peace,' are the words, not in pieces, which
was what it sounded like the way you played it."
Miss Jane Frost, a daughter of the woman who kept the Green Lanes shop,
blushed as deeply as her anemia would let her, and promised she would do
better next week.
"That's right, Jane," said Miss Hobart, whose part seemed to be the
consolation of Miss Horne's victims. "I dare say the pedal is a bit
obstinate."
"Oh, it's turble obstinate," said Cassandra, the sexton, who, having
extinguished all the lamps, now elbowed her way through the clustered
congregation, a lighted taper in her hand. "I jumped on un once or twice
this morning to make um a bit easier like, but a groaned at me like a
wicked old toad. It's ile that a wants."
The congregation, on which a good deal of grease was being scattered by
Cassandra's taper in her excitement, hastened to support her diagnosis.
"Oh yass, yass, 'tis ile that a wants."
"I will bring a bottle of oil up during the week," Miss Horne
proclaimed. "Good night, everybody, and remember to be punctual next
Sunday."
The congregation murmured its good night, and Sylvia, to whom it
probably owed such a speedy dismissal, was warmly greeted by Miss Horne.
"So glad you've come, Mrs. Iredale, though I wish you'd brought the lay
rector. Lay rector, indeed! Sakes alive, what will they invent next?"
"Yes, we're so glad you've come, dear," Miss Hobart added. Mr. Dorward
came up in his funny quick way. When they were all walking across the
churchyard, he whispered to Sylvia, in his funny quick voice:
"Church fowls, church fowls, you know! Mustn't discourage them. Pious
fowls! Godly fowls! An example for the parish. Better attendance
lately."
Then he caught up the two ladies and helped them into the vehicle,
wishing them a pleasant drive and promising a nearly full moon shortly,
after Medworth, very much as if the moon was really made of cheese and
would be eaten for supper by Miss Horne and Miss Hobart.
When Sylvia got back to The Old Farm she amused Philip so much with her
account of the service that he forgot to be angry with her for doing
what at first he maintained put him in a false position.
All that autumn and winter Miss Horne and Miss Hobart wrestled with
Satan for the souls of the hamlet; incidentally they wrestled with him
for Sylvia's soul, but she scratched the event by ceasing to appear at
all in church, and intercourse between them became less frequent; the
friends of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had to be all or nothing, and not
the least divergence of belief or opinion, manners or policy, was
tolerated by these two bigoted old ladies. The congregation,
notwithstanding their efforts, remained stationary, much to Philip's
satisfaction.
"The truth is," he said, "that the measure of their power is the pocket.
Every scamp in the parish who thinks it will pay him to go to church is
going to church. The others don't go at all or walk over to Medworth."
Her contemplation of the progress of religion in Green Lanes, which,
however much she affected to laugh at it, could not help interesting
Sylvia on account of her eccentric friend the vicar, was temporarily
interrupted by a visit from Gertrude Iredale. Remembering what Miss
Ashley had told her, Sylvia had insisted upon Philip's asking his sister
to stay, and he had obviously been touched by her suggestion. Gertrude
perhaps had also taken some advice from Miss Ashley, for she was
certainly less inclined to wonder what her brother would do about his
clothes the year after next. She could not, however, altogether keep to
herself her criticism of the housewifery at The Old Farm, a simple
business in Sylvia's eyes, which consisted of letting the cook do
exactly as she liked, with what she decided were very satisfactory
results.
"But it's so extravagant," Gertrude objected.
"Well, Philip doesn't grumble. We can afford to pay a little extra every
week to have the house comfortably run."
"But the principle is so bad," Gertrude insisted.
"Oh, principle," said Sylvia in an airy way, which must have been
galling to her sister-in-law. "I don't believe in principles. Principles
are only excuses for what we want to think or what we want to do."
"Don't you believe in abstract morality?" Gertrude asked, taking off her
glasses and gazing with weak and earnest eyes at Sylvia.
"I don't believe in anything abstract," Sylvia replied.
"How strange!" the other murmured. "Goodness me! if I didn't believe in
abstract morality I don't know where I should be--or what I should do."
Sylvia regarded the potential sinner with amused curiosity.
"Do tell me what you might do," she begged. "Would you live with a man
without marrying him?"
"Please don't be coarse," said Gertrude. "I don't like it."
"I could put it much more coarsely," Sylvia said, with a laugh. "Would
you--"
"Sylvia!" Gertrude whistled through her teeth in an agony of
apprehensive modesty. "I entreat you not to continue."
"There you are," said Sylvia. "That shows what rubbish all your scruples
are. You're shocked at what you thought I was going to say. Therefore
you ought to be shocked at yourself. As a matter of fact, I was going to
ask if you would marry a man without loving him."
"If I were to marry," Gertrude said, primly, "I should certainly want to
love my husband."
"Yes, but what do you understand by love? Do you mean by love the
emotion that makes people go mad to possess--"
Gertrude rose from her chair. "Sylvia, the whole conversation is
becoming extremely unpleasant. I must ask you either to stop or let me
go out of the room."
"You needn't be afraid of any personal revelations," Sylvia assured her.
"I've never been in love that way. I only wanted to find out if you had
been and ask you about it."
"Never," said Gertrude, decidedly. "I've certainly never been in love
like that, and I hope I never shall."
"I think you're quite safe. And I'm beginning to think I'm quite safe,
too," Sylvia added. "However, if you won't discuss abstract morality in
an abstract way, you mustn't expect me to do so, and the problem of
housekeeping returns to the domain of practical morality, where
principles don't count."
Sylvia decided after this conversation to accept Gertrude as a joke, and
she ceased to be irritated by her any longer, though her sister-in-law
stayed from Christmas till the end of February. In one way her presence
was of positive utility, because Philip, who was very much on the
lookout for criticism of his married life, was careful not to find fault
with Sylvia while she remained at Green Lanes; it also acted as a
stimulus to Sylvia herself, who used her like a grindstone on which to
sharpen her wits. Another advantage from Gertrude's visit was that
Philip was able to finish his text, thanks to her industrious docketing
and indexing and generally fussing about in his study. Therefore, when
Sylvia proposed that the twins should spend their Easter holidays at The
Old Farm, he had no objection to offer.
The prospect of the twins' visit kept Sylvia at the peak of pleasurable
expectation throughout the month of March, and when at last, on a
budding morn in early April, she drove through sky-enchanted puddles to
meet them, she sang for the first time in months the raggle-taggle
gipsies, and reached the railway station fully half an hour before the
train was due. Nobody got out but the twins; yet they laughed and talked
so much, the three of them, in the first triumph of meeting, that
several passengers thought the wayside station must be more important
than it was, and asked anxiously if this was Galton.
Gladys and Enid had grown a good deal in six months, and now with their
lengthened frocks and tied-back hair they looked perhaps older than
sixteen. Their faces, however, had not grown longer with their frocks;
they were as full of spirits as ever, and Sylvia found that while they
still charmed her as of old with that quality of demanding to be loved
for the sheer grace of their youth, they were now capable of giving her
the intimate friendship she so greatly desired.
"You darlings," she cried. "You're like champagne-cup in two beautiful
crystal glasses with rose-leaves floating about on top."
The twins, who with all that zest in their own beauty which is the
prerogative of a youth unhampered by parental jealousy, frankly loved to
be admired; Sylvia's admiration never made them self-conscious, because
it seemed a natural expression of affection. Their attitude toward
Philip was entirely free from any conventional respect; as Sylvia's
husband he was candidate for all the love they had for her, but when
they found that Philip treated them as Sylvia's toys they withheld the
honor of election and began to criticize him. When he seemed shocked at
their criticism they began to tease him, explaining to Sylvia that he
had obviously never been teased in his life. Philip, for his part, found
them precocious and vain, which annoyed Sylvia and led to her seeking
diversions and entertainment for the twins' holidays outside The Old
Farm. As a matter of fact, she had no need to search far, because they
both took a great fancy to Mr. Dorward, who turned out to have an
altogether unusual gift for drawing nonsensical pictures, which were
almost as funny as his own behavior, that behavior which irritated so
many more people than it amused.
The twins teased Mr. Dorward a good deal about his love-affair with Miss
Horne and Miss Hobart, and though this teasing may only have coincided
with Mr. Dorward's previous conviction that the two ladies were managing
him and his parish rather too much for his dignity and certainly too
much for his independence, there was no doubt that the quarrel between
them was prepared during the time that Gladys and Enid were staying at
Green Lanes; indeed, Sylvia thought she could name the actual afternoon.
Sylvia's intercourse with Miss Horne and Miss Hobart was still friendly
enough to necessitate an early visit to Sunny Bank to present the twins.
The two ladies were very fond of what they called "young people," and at
first they were enraptured by Gladys and Enid, particularly when they
played some absurd school-girl's trick upon Major Kettlewell. Sylvia,
too, had by her tales of the island of Sirene inspired them with a
longing to go there; they liked nothing better than to make her describe
the various houses and villas that were for sale or to let, in every one
of which in turn Miss Horne and Miss Hobart saw themselves installed.
On the particular afternoon from which Sylvia dated the preparation of
the quarrel, they were all at tea with Mr. Dorward in his cottage. The
conversation came round to Sirene, and Sylvia told how she had always
thought that the vicar resembled a Roman Emperor. Was it Nero? He was
perhaps flattered by the comparison, notwithstanding the ladies' loud
exclamations of dissent, and was anxious to test the likeness from a
volume of engraved heads which he produced. With Gladys sitting on one
arm of his chair and Enid on the other, the pages were turned over
slowly to allow time for a careful examination of each head, which
involved a good deal of attention to Mr. Dorward's own. In the end Nero
was ruled out and a more obscure Emperor was hailed as his prototype,
after which the twins rushed out into the garden and gathered strands of
ivy to encircle his imperial brow; Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, who had
taken no part in the discussion, left immediately after the coronation,
and though it was a perfectly fine evening, they announced, as they got
into their vehicle, that it looked very much like rain.
Next Sunday the ladies came to church as usual, but Mr. Dorward kept
them waiting half an hour for lunch while he showed the twins his
ornaments and vestments, which they looked at solemnly as a penance for
having spent most of the service with their handkerchiefs in their
mouths. What Miss Horne and Miss Hobart said at lunch Sylvia never found
out, but they drove away before Sunday-school and never came back to
Green Lanes, either on that Sunday or on any Sunday afterward.
All that Mr. Dorward would say about the incident was:
"Church fowls! Chaste fowls! Chaste and holy, but tiresome. The vicar
mustn't be managed. Doesn't like it. Gets frightened. Felt remote at
lunch. That was all. Would keep on talking. Got bored and more remote.
Vicar got so remote that he had to finish his lunch under the table."
"Oh no, you didn't really?" cried the twins, in an ecstasy of pleasure.
"You didn't really get under the table, Mr. Dorward?"
"Of course, of course, of course. Vicar always speaks the truth.
Delicious lunch."
Sylvia had to tell Philip about this absurd incident, but he would only
say that the man was evidently a buffoon in private as well as in
public.
"But, Philip, don't you think it's a glorious picture? We laughed till
we were tired."
"Gladys and Enid laugh very easily," he answered. "Personally I see
nothing funny in a man, especially a clergyman, behaving like a clown."
"Oh, Philip, you're impossible!" Sylvia cried.
"Thanks," he said, dryly. "I've noticed that ever since the arrival of
our young guests you've found more to complain of in my personality even
than formerly."
"Young guests!" Sylvia echoed, scornfully. "Who would think, to hear you
talk now, that you married a child? Really you're incomprehensible."
"Impossible! Incomprehensible! In fact thoroughly negative," Philip
said.
Sylvia shrugged her shoulders and left him.
The twins went back to school at the beginning of May, and Sylvia, who
missed them very much, had to fall back on Mr. Dorward to remind her of
their jolly company. Their intercourse, which the twins had established
upon a certain plane, continued now upon the same plane. Life had to be
regarded as Alice saw it in Wonderland or through the looking-glass.
Sylvia remembered with irony that it was Philip who first introduced her
to those two books; she decided he had only liked them because it was
correct to like them. Mr. Dorward, however, actually was somebody in
that fantastic world, not like anybody Alice met there, but another
inhabitant whom she just happened to miss.
To whom else but Mr. Dorward could have occurred that ludicrous
adventure when he was staying with a brother priest in a remote part of
Devonshire?
"I always heard he was a little odd. However, we had dinner together in
the kitchen. He only dined in the drawing-room on Thursdays."
"When did he dine in the dining-room?" Sylvia asked.
"Never. There wasn't a dining-room. There were a lot of rooms that were
going to be the dining-room, but it was never decided which. And that
cast a gloom over the whole house. My host behaved in the most
evangelical way at dinner and only once threw the salad at the cook.
After dinner we sat comfortably before the kitchen fire and discussed
the Mozarabic rite and why yellow was no longer a liturgical color for
confessors. At half past eleven my host suggested it was time to go to
bed. He showed me up-stairs to a very nice bedroom and said good night,
advising me to lock the door. I locked the door, undressed, said my
prayers, and got into bed. I was just dozing off when I heard a loud tap
at the door. I felt rather frightened. Rather frightened I felt. But I
went to the door and opened it. Outside in the passage was my host in
his nightgown with a candlestick.
"'Past twelve o'clock,' he shouted. 'Time to change beds!' and before I
knew where I was he had rushed past me and shut me out into the
passage."
"Did you change beds?"
"There wasn't another bed in the house. I had to sleep in one of the
rooms that might one day be a dining-room, and the next morning a rural
dean arrived, which drove me away."
Gradually from underneath what Philip called "a mass of affectation,"
but what Sylvia divined as an armor assumed against the unsympathetic
majority by a shy, sensitive, and lovable spirit, there emerged for her
the reality of Mr. Dorward. She began to comprehend his faith, which was
as simple as a little child's; she began to realize also that he was
impelled to guard what he held to be most holy against the jeers of
unbelievers by diverting toward his own eccentricity the world's
mockery. He was a man of the deepest humility who considered himself
incapable of proselytizing. Sylvia used to put before him sometimes the
point of view of the outside world and try to show how he could avoid
criticism and gain adherents. He used always to reply that if God had
intended him to be a missionary he would not have been placed in this
lowly parish, that here he was unable to do much harm, and that any who
found faith in his church must find it through the grace of God, since
it was impossible to suppose they would ever find it through his own
ministrations. He insisted that people who stayed away from church
because he read the service badly or burned too many candles or wore
vestments were only ostentatious worshipers who looked upon the church
as wax-works must regard Madame Tussaud's. He explained that he had been
driven to discourage the work of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart because he
had detected in himself a tendency toward spiritual pride in the growth
of a congregation that did not belong either to him or to God; if he had
tolerated Miss Horne's methods for a time it was because he feared to
oppose the Divine intention. However, as soon as he found that he was
thinking complacently of a congregation of twenty-four, nearly every one
of which was a pensioner of Miss Horne, he realized that they were
instruments of the devil, particularly when at lunch they began to
suggest....
"What?" Sylvia asked, when he paused.
"The only thing to do was to finish my lunch under the table," he
snapped; nor would he be persuaded to discuss the quarrel further.
Sylvia, who felt that the poor ladies had, after all, been treated in
rather a cavalier fashion and was reproaching herself for having
deserted them, went down to Oaktown shortly after this to call at Sunny
Bank. They received her with freezing coldness, particularly Miss
Hobart, whose eyes under lowering eyelids were sullen with hate. She
said much less than Miss Horne, who walked in and out of the shivery
furniture, fanning herself in her agitation and declaiming against Mr.
Dorward at the top of her voice.
"And your little friends?" Miss Hobart put in with a smile that was not
a smile. "We thought them just a little badly brought up."
"You liked them very much at first," Sylvia said.
"Yes, one often likes people at first."
And as Sylvia looked at her she realized that Miss Hobart was not nearly
so old as she had thought her, perhaps not yet fifty. Still, at fifty
one had no right to be jealous.
"In fact," said Sylvia, brutally, "you liked them very much till you
thought Mr. Dorward liked them too."
Miss Hobart's eyelids almost closed over her eyes and her thin lips
disappeared. Miss Horne stopped in her restless parade and, pointing
with her fan to the door, bade Sylvia be gone and never come to Sunny
Bank again.
"The old witch," thought Sylvia, when she was toiling up the hill to
Medworth in the midsummer heat. "I believe he's right and that she is
the devil."
She did not tell Philip about her quarrel, because she knew that he
would have reminded her one by one of every occasion he had taken to
warn Sylvia against being friendly with any inhabitant of Tintown. A
week or two later, Philip announced with an air of satisfaction that a
van of Treacherites had arrived in Newton Candover and might be expected
at Green Lanes next Sunday.
Sylvia asked what on earth Treacherites were, and he explained that they
were the followers of a certain Mr. John Treacher, who regarded himself
as chosen by God to purify the Church of England of popish abuses.
"A dreadful little cad, I believe," he added. "But it will be fun to see
what they make of Dorward. It's a pity the old ladies have been kept
away by the heat, or we might have a free fight."
Sylvia warned Mr. Dorward of the Treacherites' advent, and he seemed
rather worried by the news; she had a notion he was afraid of them,
which made her impatient, as she frankly told him.
"Not many of us. Not many of us," said Mr. Dorward. "Hope they won't try
to break up the church."
The Treacherites arrived on Saturday evening and addressed a meeting by
The Old Farm, which fetched Philip out into the road with threats of
having them put in jail for creating a disturbance.
"If you want to annoy people, go to church to-morrow and annoy the
vicar," he said, grimly.
Sylvia, who had heard Philip's last remark, turned on him in a rage:
"What a mean and cowardly thing to say when you know Mr. Dorward can't
defend himself as you can. Let them come to church to-morrow and annoy
the vicar. You see what they'll get."
"Come, come, Sylvia," Philip said, with an attempt at pacification and
evidently ashamed of himself. "Let these Christians fight it out among
themselves. It's nothing to do with us, as long as they don't...."
"Thank you, it's everything to do with me," she said. He looked at her
in surprise.
Next morning Sylvia took up her position in the front of the church and
threatened with her eye the larger congregation that had gathered in the
hope of a row as fiercely as Miss Horne and Miss Hobart might have done.
The Treacherites were two young men with pimply faces who swaggered into
church and talked to one another loudly before the service began,
commenting upon the ornaments with cockney facetiousness. Cassandra Batt
came over to Sylvia and whispered hoarsely in her ear that she was
afraid there would be trouble, because some of the village lads had
looked in for a bit of fun. The service was carried through with
constant interruptions, and Sylvia felt her heart beating faster and
faster with suppressed rage. When it was over, the congregation
dispersed into the churchyard, where the yokels hung about waiting for
the vicar to come out. As he appeared in the west door a loud booing was
set up, and one of the Treacherites shouted:
"Follow me, loyal members of the Protestant Established Church, and
destroy the idols of the Pope." Whereupon the iconoclast tried to push
past Mr. Dorward, who was fumbling in his vague way with the lock of the
door. He turned white with rage and, seizing the Treacherite by the
scruff of his neck, he flung him head over heels across two mounds. At
this the yokels began to boo more vehemently, but Mr. Dorward managed to
shut the door and lock it, after which he walked across to the
discomfited Treacherite and, holding out his hand, apologized for his
violence. The yokels, who mistook generosity for weakness, began to
throw stones at the vicar, one of which cut his face. Sylvia, who had
been standing motionless in a trance of fury, was roused by the blood to
action. With a bound she sprang at the first Treacherite and pushed him
into a half-dug grave; then turning swiftly, she advanced against his
companion with upraised stick.
The youth just had time to gasp a notification to the surrounding
witnesses that Sylvia assaulted him first, before he ran; but the
yokels, seeing that the squire's wife was on the side of the parson, and
fearing for the renewal of their leases and the repairs to their
cottages, turned round upon the Treacherites and dragged them off toward
the village pond.
"Come on, Cassandra," Sylvia cried. "Let's go and break up the van."
Cassandra seized her pickax and followed Sylvia, who with hair streaming
over her shoulders and elation in her aspect charged past The Old Farm
just when Philip was coming out of the gate.
"Come on, Philip!" she cried. "Come on and help me break up their damned
van."
By this time the attack had brought most of the village out of doors.
Dogs were barking; geese and ducks were flapping in all directions;
Sylvia kept turning round to urge the sexton, whose progress was
hampered by a petticoat's slipping down, not to bother about her
clothes, but to come on. A grandnephew of the old woman picked up the
crimson garment and, as he pursued his grandaunt to restore it to her,
waved it in the air like a standard. The yokels, who saw the squire
watching from his gate, assumed his complete approval of what was
passing (as a matter of fact he was petrified with dismay), and paid no
attention to the vicar's efforts to rescue the Treacherites from their
doom in the fast-nearing pond. The van of the iconoclasts was named
Ridley: "By God's grace we have to-day lit such a candle as will never
be put out" was printed on one side. On the other was inscribed, "John
Treacher's Poor Preachers. Supported by Voluntary Contributions." By the
time Sylvia, Cassandra, and the rest had finished with the van it was
neither legible without nor habitable within.
Naturally there was a violent quarrel between Sylvia and Philip over her
behavior, a quarrel that was not mended by her being summoned later on
by the outraged Treacherites, together with Mr. Dorward and several
yokels.
"You've made a fool of me from one end of the county to the other,"
Philip told her. "Understand once and for all that I don't intend to put
up with this sort of thing."
"It was your fault," she replied. "You began it by egging on these
brutes to attack Mr. Dorward. You could easily have averted any trouble
if you'd wanted to. It serves you jolly well right."
"There's no excuse for your conduct," Philip insisted. "A stranger
passing through the village would have thought a lunatic asylum had
broken loose."
"Oh, well, it's a jolly good thing to break loose sometimes--even for
lunatics," Sylvia retorted. "If you could break loose yourself sometimes
you'd be much easier to live with."
"The next time you feel repressed," he said, "all I ask is that you'll
choose a place where we're not quite so well known in which to give vent
to your feelings."
The argument went on endlessly, for neither Sylvia nor Philip would
yield an inch; it became, indeed, one of the eternal disputes that
reassert themselves at the least excuse. If Philip's egg were not cooked
long enough, the cause would finally be referred back to that Sunday
morning; if Sylvia were late for lunch, her unpunctuality would
ultimately be dated from the arrival of the Treacherites.
Luckily the vicar, with whom the events of that Sunday had grown into a
comic myth that was continually being added to, was able to give Sylvia
relief from Philip's exaggerated disapproval. Moreover, the Treacherites
had done him a service by advertising his church and bringing a certain
number of strangers there every Sunday out of curiosity; these pilgrims
inflated the natives of Green Lanes with a sense of their own
importance, and they now filled the church, taking pride and pleasure in
the ownership of an attraction and boasting to the natives of the
villages round about the size of the offertory. Mr. Dorward's popery and
ritualism were admired now as commercial smartness, and if he had chosen
to ride into church on Palm Sunday or any other Sunday on a donkey (a
legendary ceremony invariably attributed to High Church vicars), there
was not a man, woman, or child in the parish of Green Lanes that would
not have given a prod of encouragement to the sacred animal.
One hot September afternoon Sylvia was walking back from Medworth when
she was overtaken by Mr. Pluepott in his cart. They stopped to exchange
the usual country greetings, at which by now Sylvia was an adept. When
presently Mr. Pluepott invited her to take advantage of a lift home she
climbed up beside him. For a while they jogged along in silence;
suddenly Mr. Pluepott delivered himself of what was evidently much upon
his mind:
"Mrs. Iredale," he began, "you and me has known each other the best part
of two years, and your coming and having a cup of tea with Mrs. Pluepott
once or twice and Mrs. Pluepott having a big opinion of you makes me so
bold."
He paused and reined in his pony to a walk that would suit the gravity
of his communication.
"I'd like to give you a bit of a warning as from a friend and, with all
due respect, an admirer. Being a married man myself and you a young
lady, you won't go for to mistake my meaning when I says to you right
out that women is worse than the devil. Miss Horne! As I jokingly said
to Mrs. Pluepott, though, being a sacred subject, she wouldn't laugh,
'Miss Horne!' I said. 'Miss Horns! That's what she ought to be called.'
Mrs. Iredale," he went on, pulling up the pony to a dead, stop and
turning round with a very serious countenance to Sylvia--"Mrs. Iredale,
you've got a wicked, bad enemy in that old woman."
"I know," she agreed. "We quarreled over something."
"If you quarreled, and whether it was your fault or whether it was hers,
isn't nothing to do with me, but the lies she's spreading around about
you and the Reverend Dorward beat the band. I'm not speaking gossip. I'm
not going by hearsay. I've heard her myself, and Miss Hobart's as bad,
if not worse. There, now I've told you and I hope you'll pardon the
liberty, but I couldn't help it."
With which Mr. Pluepott whipped up his pony to a frantic gallop, and
very soon they reached the outskirts of Green Lanes, where Sylvia got
down.
"Thanks," she said, offering her hand. "I don't think I need bother
about Miss Horne, but it was very kind of you to tell me. Thanks very
much," and with a wave of her stick Sylvia walked pensively along into
the village. As she passed Mr. Dorward's cottage she rattled her stick
on his gate till he looked out from a window in the thatch, like a bird
disturbed on its nest.
"Hullo, old owl!" Sylvia cried. "Come down a minute. I want to say
something to you."
The vicar presently came blinking out into the sunlight of the garden.
"Look here," she said, "do you know that those two old villains in
Oaktown are spreading it about that you and I are having a love-affair?
Haven't you got a prescription for that sort of thing in your church
business? Can't you curse them with bell, book, and candle, or
something? I'll supply the bell, if you'll supply the rest of the
paraphernalia."
Dorward shook his head. "Can't be done. Cursing is the prerogative of
bishops. Not on the best terms with my bishop, I'm afraid. Last time he
sent for me I had to spend the night and I left a rosary under my
pillow. He was much pained, my spies at the Palace tell me."
"Well, if _you_ don't mind, I don't mind," she said. "All right. So
long."
Three days later, an anonymous post-card was sent to Sylvia, a vulgar
Temptation of St. Anthony; and a week afterward Philip suddenly flung a
letter down before her which he told her to read. It was an ill-spelled
ungrammatical screed, which purported to warn Philip of his wife's
behavior, enumerated the hours she had spent alone with Dorward either
in his cottage or in the church, and wound up with the old proverb of
there being none so blind as those who won't see. Sylvia blushed while
she read it, not for what it said about herself, but for the vile
impulse that launched this smudged and scrabbled impurity.
"That's a jolly thing to get at breakfast," Philip said.
"Beastly," she agreed. "And your showing it to me puts you on a level
with the sender."
"I thought it would be a good lesson for you," he said.
"A lesson?" she repeated.
"Yes, a lesson that one can't behave exactly as one likes, particularly
in the country among a lot of uneducated peasants."
"But I don't understand," Sylvia went on. "Did you show me this filthy
piece of paper with the idea of asking me to change my manner of life?"
"I showed it to you in order to impress upon you that people talk, and
that you owe it to me to keep their tongues quiet."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Something perfectly simple," Philip said. "I want you to give up
visiting Dorward in his cottage and, as you have no religious
inclinations, I should like you to avoid his church."
"And that's why you showed me this anonymous letter?"
He nodded.
"In fact you're going to give it your serious attention?" she continued.
"Not at all," he contradicted. "For a long time I've objected to your
friendship with Dorward, but, knowing you were too headstrong to listen
to my advice, I said nothing. This letter makes it impossible to keep
silent any longer about my wishes."
"But you don't really believe that Dorward and I are having an affair?"
she gasped.
Philip made an impatient gesture.
"What a foolish question! Do you suppose that if I had for one moment
thought such a thing I shouldn't have spoken before? No, no, my dear,
it's all very unpleasant, but you must see that as soon as I am made
aware, however crude the method of bringing it to my knowledge, that
people are talking about you and my vicar, I have no alternative but to
forbid you to do anything that will make these tongues go on wagging."
"To forbid me?" she repeated.
Philip bowed ironically, Sylvia thought; the gesture, infinitely slight
and unimportant as it was, cut the last knot.
"I shall have to tell Mr. Dorward about this letter and explain to him,"
she said.
Philip hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I think that would be the best
thing to do," he agreed.
Sylvia regarded him curiously.
"You don't mind his knowing that you showed it to me?" she asked.
"Not at all," said Philip.
She laughed, and he took alarm at the tone.
"I thought you were going to be sensible," he began, but she cut him
short.
"Oh, I am, my dear man. Don't worry."
Now that the unpleasant scene was over, he seemed anxious for her
sympathy.
"I'm sorry this miserable business has occurred, but you understand,
don't you, that it's been just as bad for me as for you?"
"Do you want me to apologize?" Sylvia demanded, in her brutal way.
"No, of course not. Only I thought perhaps you might have shown a little
more appreciation of my feelings."
"Ah, Philip, if you want that, you'll have to let me really go wrong
with Dorward."
"Personally I consider that last remark of yours in very bad taste; but
I know we have different standards of humor."
Sylvia found Dorward in the church, engaged in an argument with
Cassandra about the arrangement of the chrysanthemums for Michaelmas.
"I will not have them like this," he was saying.
"But we always putts them fan-shaped like that."
"Take them away," he shouted, and, since Cassandra still hesitated, he
flung the flowers all over the church.
The short conversation that followed always remained associated in
Sylvia's mind with Cassandra's grunts and her large base elevated above
the pews, while she browsed hither and thither, bending over to pick up
the scattered chrysanthemums.
"Mr. Dorward, I want to ask you something very serious."
He looked at her sharply, almost suspiciously.
"Does it make you very much happier to have faith?"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," he said, brushing petals from his cassock.
"But would it make me?"
"I expect so--I expect so," he said, still brushing and trying with that
shy curtness to avoid the contact of reality.
"Well, how can I get faith?"
"You must pray, dear lady, you must pray."
"You'll have to pray for me," Sylvia said.
"Always do. Always pray for you. Never less than three prayers every
day. Mass once a week."
Sylvia felt a lump in her throat; it seemed to her that this friend,
accounted mad by the world, had paid her the tenderest and most
exquisite courtesy she had ever known.
"Come along now, Cassandra," cried the vicar, clapping his hands
impatiently to cover his embarrassment. "Where are the flowers? Where
are the flowers, you miserable old woman?"
Cassandra came up to him, breathing heavily with exertion. "You know,
Mr. Dorward, you're enough to try the patience of an angel on a tomb;
you are indeed."
Sylvia left them arguing all over again about the chrysanthemums. That
afternoon she went away from Green Lanes to London.
Three months later, she obtained an engagement in a musical comedy
company on tour and sent back to Philip the last shred of clothing that
she had had through him, with a letter and ten pounds in bank-notes:
You _must_ divorce me now. I've not been able to earn enough to pay
you back more than this for your bad bargain. I don't think I've
given any more pleasure to the men who have paid less for me than
you did, if that's any consolation.
SYLVIA SCARLETT.