“You’d better let me finish, Lucy. The subject is legal, not
medical. Mary has behaved like a fool and run her head into Julian’s
trap. I don’t know how much there is in it, but from what she says I
doubt if he has much of a case. If she’ll defend it, she’ll probably
be able to clear herself, and what’s more I bet she could bring a
counter-petition.”
“That would be a nasty mess, wouldn’t it, Sir?” said Peter.
“Not such a nasty mess as my daughter being held up in all the
newspapers as an adulteress!”
“Oh, John!” cried Lady Alard—“what a dreadful thing to say before the
girls!”
“Doris is old enough to hear the word now if she’s never heard it
before, and Jenny—she’s Emancipated, and a great deal older than you and
me. I tell you I object to my daughter being placarded in the penny
papers as an adulteress, and I’d much rather she proved Julian an
adulterer.”
“Is that possible, sir?” asked Peter.
“Of course it is—the man’s been on the loose for a year.”
“If that’s all your evidence——”
“Well, I haven’t had him followed by detectives, but I can turn a few on
now, and——”
“Really, Sir, I do agree with Mary that it would be better to leave the
matter alone. An undefended case can be slipped through the papers with
very little fuss, while if you have a defence, to say nothing of a
cross-petition ... it isn’t as if she particularly wanted to keep Julian
as a husband—I expect she’s glad to have the chance of getting rid of
him so easily.”
“I daresay she is. I daresay she wants to marry that old ass Charles
Smith. But what about her reputation?—what about ours? I tell you I’m
not going to stand still and have filth thrown at me by the press. I’m
proud of my name if you aren’t.”
“It really seems to me that the matter rests with Mary—if she doesn’t
want to defend herself....”
“Mary must think of her family—it ought to come before her private
feelings.”
The words seemed an echo of a far-back argument—they reminded Peter
dimly of his own straits last year. The family must come first.... That
time it was money, now it was reputation. After all, why not? There was
no good holding to the one and letting the other go. But he was sorry
for Mary all the same.
“Well, I can’t stay any longer now. I must be getting back to dinner.
I’ll bring Vera up tomorrow morning.”
“Mary’s coming down in the afternoon.”
“Oh, is she?”
“Yes—I’ve wired for her. I insist on her listening to reason.”
So Mary would have to face Peter’s choice—family duty against personal
inclination.... Well, after all he hadn’t made such a bad thing of
it.... He thought of Vera waiting for him at Starvecrow, and in spite of
the fret of the last half-hour a smile of childlike satisfaction was on
his face as he went home.
§ 3
Peter was out early the next morning, when the first pale sunshine was
stealing up the valley of the Tillingham, flooding all the world in a
gleam of watery gold. He had awoken to the music of his farm, to the
crowing of his cocks, to the stamping of his cattle in their stalls, to
the clattering of his workmen’s feet on the cobbles of the yard.
Starvecrow was his home, his place for waking up and falling asleep, for
eating his food and warming himself at his fire, for finding his wife at
the end of the day, for the birth of his children.... He had, as he
stood that morning in the yard, a feeling both of proud ownership and
proud adoption.
The whole farm, house and buildings, looked tidy and prosperous. It had
lost that rather dilapidated, if homely, air it had worn before his
marriage. Though the Ashers might have neither enough capital nor
inclination to pay off the debts of their son-in-law’s family, they had
certainly been generous in the matter of their daughter’s home. But for
them the place could never have been what it was now—trimmings and
clippings, furnishings and restorings had been their willingly paid
price for Alard blood. The whole farm had been repaired, replanted and
restocked. Indeed Starvecrow was now not so much a farm as a little
manor, a rival to Conster up on the hill. Was this exactly what Peter
had intended for it?—he did not stop to probe. No doubt his imagination
had never held anything so solid and so trim, but that might have been
only because his imagination had planned strictly for the possible, and
all that had been possible up to his falling in love with Vera was just
the shelter of that big kindly roof, the simplicity of those common
farmhouse rooms, with the hope and labour of slow achievement and slow
restoration.
Still, he was proud of the place, and looked round him with satisfaction
as he walked down the bricked garden path, beside the well-raked
herbaceous border. He went into the yard where his men were at work—he
now employed two extra hands, and his staff consisted of a stockman, a
shepherd, a ploughman, and two odd men, as well as the shepherd’s wife,
who looked after the chickens and calves.
Going into the cowhouse he found Jim Lambard milking the last of the
long string of Sussex cows. He greeted his master with a grin and a
“good marnun, sur”—it was good to hear the slurry Sussex speech again.
Peter walked to the end of the shed where two straw-coloured Jerseys
were tethered—one of them, Flora, was due to calve shortly, and after
inspecting her, he went out to interview the stockman. John Elias had
held office not only in Greening’s time, but in the days before him when
Starvecrow was worked by a tenant farmer—he was an oldish man who
combined deep experience and real practical knowledge with certain
old-fashioned obstinacies. Peter sometimes found him irritating to an
intense degree, but clung to him, knowing that the old obstinacies are
better than the new where farm-work is concerned, and that the man who
insists on doing his work according to the rules of 1770 is really of
more practical value than the man who does it according to the rules of
the Agricultural Labourers’ Union. Elias had now been up a couple of
nights with the Jersey, and his keen blue eye was a trifle dim from
anxiety and want of sleep. Peter told him to get off to bed for a few
hours, promising to have him sent for if anything should happen.
He then sent for the ploughman, and discussed with him the advisability
of giving the Hammer field a second ploughing. There was also the wheat
to be dressed in the threshing machine before it was delivered to the
firm of corn-merchants who had bought last year’s harvest. A final talk
with his shepherd about the ewes and prospects for next month’s
lambing—and Peter turned back towards the house, sharp-set for breakfast
and comfortably proud of the day’s beginning. He liked to think of the
machinery of his farm, working efficiently under his direction, making
Starvecrow rich.... Conster might still shake on its foundations but
Starvecrow was settled and established—he had saved Starvecrow.
The breakfast-room faced east, and the sunshine poured through its long,
low window, falling upon the white cloth of the breakfast table, the
silver, the china and the flowers. The room was decorated in yellow,
which increased the effect of lightness—Peter was thrilled and dazzled,
and for a moment did not notice that breakfast had been laid only for
one. When he did, it gave him a faint shock.
“Where’s your mistress?” he asked the parlourmaid, who was bringing in
the coffee—“isn’t she coming down?”
“No, sir. She’s taking her breakfast upstairs.”
Peter felt blank. Then suddenly he realised—of course she was tired!
What a brute he was not to think of it—it was all very well for him to
feel vigorous after such a journey, and go traipsing round the farm; but
Vera—she was made of more delicate stuff.... He had a feeling as if he
must apologise to her for having even thought she was coming down; and
running upstairs he knocked at her door.
“Come in,” said Vera’s rather deep, sweet voice.
Her room was full of sunshine too, but the blind was down so that it did
not fall on the bed. She lay in the shadow, reading her letters and
smoking a cigarette. Peter had another shock of the incongruous.
“My darling, are you dreadfully tired?”
“No—I feel quite revived this morning,” and she lifted her long white
throat for him to kiss.
“Have you had your breakfast?”
“All I want. I’m not much of a breakfast eater, that’s one reason why I
prefer having it up here.”
“But—but aren’t you ever coming down?”
“Poor boy—do you feel lonely without me?”
“Yes, damnably,” said Peter.
“But, my dear, I’d be poor company for you at this hour. I’m much better
upstairs till ten or eleven—besides it makes the day so long if one’s
down for breakfast.”
Peter looked at her silently—her argument dispirited him: “the day so
long.”... For him the day was never long enough. He suddenly saw her as
infinitely older and tireder than himself.
“Run down and have yours, now,” she said to him, “and then you can come
up and sit with me for a bit before I dress.”
§ 4
The next day Mary Pembroke came to Conster, and that same evening was
confronted by her family. Sir John insisted on everyone being present,
except Gervase—whom he still considered a mere boy—and the
daughters-in-law. Vera was glad to be left out, for she had no wish to
sit in judgment on a fellow woman, in whose guilt she believed and with
whose lies she sympathised, but Rose was indignant, for she detected a
slight in the omission.
“Besides,” she said to her husband, “I’m the only one who considers the
problem chiefly from a moral point of view—the rest think only of the
family, whether it will be good or bad for their reputation if she
fights the case.”
“What about me?” asked her husband, perhaps justly aggrieved—“surely you
can trust me not to forget the moral side of things.”
“Well, I hope so I’m sure. But you must speak out and not be afraid of
your father.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“Indeed you are—you never can stand up to him. It’s he who manages this
parish, not you.”
“How can you say that?”
“What else can I say when you still let him read the lessons after he
created such a scandal by saying ‘damn’ when the pages stuck together.”
“Nobody heard him.”
“Indeed they did—all the three first rows, and the choir boys. It’s so
bad for them. If I’d been in your place he shouldn’t have read another
word.”
“My dear, I assure you it wasn’t such a scandal as you think—certainly
not enough to justify a breach with my father.”
“That’s just it—you’re afraid of him, and I want you to stand your
ground this time. It’s not right that we should be looked down upon the
way we are, but we always will be if you won’t stick up for yourself—and
I really fail to see why you should countenance immorality just to
please your father.”
Perhaps it was owing to this conversation with his wife that during most
of the conference George sat dumb. As a matter of fact, nobody talked
much, except Sir John and Mary. Mary had a queer, desperate volubility
about her—she who was so aloof had now become familiar, to defend her
aloofness. Her whole nature shrank from the exposure of the divorce
court.
“But what have you got to expose?” cried Sir John when she used this
expression, “you tell me you’ve done nothing.”
“I’ve loved Julian, and he’s killed my love for him—I don’t want that
shown up before everybody.”
“It won’t be—it doesn’t concern the case.”
“Oh, yes, it does—that sort of thing always comes out—‘the parties were
married in 1912 and lived happily together till 1919, when the
respondent left the petitioner without any explanation’—it’ll be all to
Julian’s interest to show that he made me an excellent husband and that
I loved him devotedly till Something—which means Somebody—came between
us.”
“He’ll do that if you don’t defend the case.”
“But it won’t be dwelt on—pored over—it won’t provide copy for the
newspapers. Oh, can’t anybody see that when a woman makes a mistake like
mine she doesn’t want it read about at the breakfast tables of thousands
of—of——”
“One would understand you much better,” said Doris, who for a few
moments had been swallowing violently as a preliminary to speech—“one
would understand you much better if what you objected to was thousands
of people reading that you’d been unfaithful to the husband you once
loved so much.”
“But it wouldn’t be true.”
“They’d believe it all the same—naturally, if the decree was given
against you.”
“I don’t care about that—it’s what’s true that I mind people knowing.”
“Don’t be a fool,” interrupted Sir John—“you’re not going to disgrace
your family for an idea like that.”
“I’ll disgrace it worse if I give the thing all the extra publicity of a
defended suit.”
“But, Mary dear,” said Lady Alard—“think how dreadful it will be for us
as well as for you if the decree is given against you. There’s Jenny,
now—it’s sure to interfere with her prospects—What did you say, Jenny?”
“Nothing, Mother,” said Jenny, who had laughed.
“But you don’t seem to consider,” persisted Mary, “that even if I defend
the case I may lose it—and then we’ll all be ever so much worse off than
if I’d let it go quietly through.”
“And Julian have his revenge without even the trouble of fighting for
it!” cried Sir John. “I tell you he’s got nothing of a case against you
if you choose to defend it.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Appearances are pretty bad.”
“Egad, you’re cool, Ma’am!—But I forgot—you don’t care tuppence what
people think as long as they don’t think what’s true. But, damn it all,
there’s your family to be considered as well as yourself.”
“Is it that you want to marry Charles Smith?” asked Peter. “If she does,
Sir, it’s hardly fair to make her risk....”
“Listen to me!” George had spoken at last—the voice of morality and
religion was lifted from the chesterfield. “You must realise that if the
decree is given against her, she will not be free in the eyes of the
Church to marry again. Whereas if she gets a decree against her husband,
she would find certain of the more moderate-minded clergy willing to
perform the ceremony for the innocent partner.”
“I don’t see that,” said Peter rudely—“she’d be just as innocent if she
lost the suit.”
“She wouldn’t be legally the innocent partner,” said George, “and no
clergyman in the land would perform the ceremony for her.”
“Which means that the Church takes the argument from law and not from
facts.”
“No—no. Not at all. In fact, the Church as a whole condemns,
indeed—er—forbids the re-marriage of divorced persons. But the Church of
England is noted for toleration, and there are certain clergy who would
willingly perform the ceremony for the innocent partner. There are
others—men like Luce, for instance—who are horrified at the idea of such
a thing. But I’ve always prided myself on——”
“Hold your tongue, George,” broke in his father, “I won’t have you and
Peter arguing about such rubbish.”
“I’m not arguing with him, Sir. I would scarcely argue with Peter on an
ecclesiastical subject. In the eyes of the Church——”
“Damn the eyes of the Church! Mary is perfectly free to re-marry if she
likes, innocent or guilty. If the Church won’t marry her, she can go to
the registrar’s. You think nothing can be done without a clergyman, but
I tell you any wretched little civil servant can do your job.”
“You all talk as if I wanted to marry again—” Mary’s voice shot up with
a certain shrill despair in it. “I tell you it’s the last thing in the
world I’d ever do—whatever you make me do I would never do that. Once is
enough.”
“It would certainly look better if Mary didn’t re-marry,” said Doris,
“then perhaps people would think she’d never cared for Commander Smith,
and there was nothing in it.”
“But why did you go about with him, dear?” asked Lady Alard—“if you
weren’t really fond of him?”
“I never said I wasn’t fond of him. I am fond of him—that’s one reason
why I don’t want to marry him. He’s been a good friend to me—and I was
alone ... and I thought I was free.... I saw other women going about
with men, and nobody criticising. I didn’t know Julian was having me
watched. I didn’t know I wasn’t free—and that now, thanks to you, I’ll
never be free.”
She began to cry—not quietly and tragically, as one would have expected
of her—but loudly, noisily, brokenly. She was broken.
§ 5
The next morning Sir John drove up to London to consult his solicitors.
The next day he was there again, taking Mary with him. After that came
endless arguments, letters and consultations. The solicitors’ advice was
to persuade Julian Pembroke to withdraw his petition, but this proved
impossible, for Julian, it now appeared, was anxious to marry again. He
had fallen in love with a young girl of nineteen, whose parents were
willing to accept him if Mary could be decorously got rid of.
This made Sir John all the more resolute that Mary should not be
decorously got rid of—if mud was slung there was always a chance of some
of it sticking to Julian and spoiling his appearance for the sweet young
thing who had won the doubtful prize of his affections. He would have
sacrificed a great deal to bring a counter-petition, but very slight
investigations proved that there was no ground for this. Julian knew
what he was doing, and had been discreet, whereas Mary had put herself
in the wrong all through. Sir John would have to content himself with
vindicating his daughter’s name and making it impossible for Julian to
marry his new choice.
Mary’s resistance had entirely broken down—the family had crushed her,
and she was merely limp and listless in their hands. Nothing seemed to
matter—her chance of a quiet retreat into freedom and obscurity was
over, and now seemed scarcely worth fighting for. What did it matter if
her life’s humiliation was exposed and gaped at?—if she had to stand up
and answer dirty questions to prove her cleanness?... She ought to have
been stronger, she knew—but it was difficult to be strong when one stood
alone, without weapon or counsellor.
Jenny and Gervase were on her side, it is true, but they were negligible
allies, whether from the point of view of impressing the family, or of
any confidence their advice and arguments could inspire in herself. Vera
Alard, though she did not share the family point of view, had been
alienated by her sister-in-law’s surrender—“I’ve no sympathy with a
woman who knows what she wants but hasn’t the courage to stand out for
it,” she said to Peter. In her heart she thought that Mary was
lying—that she had tried Charles Smith as a lover and found him wanting,
but would have gladly used him as a means to freedom, if her family
hadn’t butted in and made a scandal of it.
As for Peter, he no longer felt inclined to take his sister’s part. He
was angry with her for her forgetfulness of her dignity. She had been
careless of her honour, forgetting that it was not only hers but
Alard’s—she had risked the family’s disgrace, before the world and
before the man whose contempt of all the world’s would be hardest to
bear. Peter hated such carelessness and such risks—he would do nothing
more for Mary, especially as she had said she did not want to marry
Charles Smith. If she had wanted that he would have understood her
better, but she had said she did not want it, and thus had lost her only
claim to an undefended suit. For Peter now did not doubt any more than
his family that Julian would fail to prove his case.
Outside the family, Charles Smith did his best to help her. He came down
to see her and try to persuade her people to let the petition go through
undefended. But he was too like herself to be much use. He was as
powerless as she to stand against her family, which was entering the
divorce court in much the same spirit as its forefathers had gone to the
Crusades—fired by the glory of the name of Alard and hatred of the Turk.
“I’m disappointed in my first co-respondent,” said Gervase to Jenny
after he had left—“I’d expected something much more spirited—a blend of
Abelard, Don Juan and Cesare Borgia, with a dash of Shelley. Instead of
which I find a mild-mannered man with a pince-nez, who I know is simply
dying to take me apart and start a conversation on eighteenth-century
glass.”
“That’s because he isn’t a real co-respondent. You’ve only to look at
Charles Smith to be perfectly sure he never did anything wrong in his
life.”
“Well, let’s hope the Judge and jury will look at him, then.”
“I hope they won’t. I’m sure Mary wants to lose.”
“Not a defended case—she’d be simply too messed up after that.”
“She’ll be messed up anyhow, whether she wins or loses. There’ll be
columns and columns about her and everything she did—and didn’t do—and
might have done. Poor Mary ... I expect she’d rather lose, and then she
can creep quietly away.”
“Do you think she’ll marry Smith?”
“No, I don’t. He’d like to marry her, or he thinks he’d like to, but I’m
pretty sure she won’t have him.”
“Then she’d better win her case—or the family will make her have him.”
“George says she can’t marry again unless she’s the ‘innocent party.’”
“I don’t think what George says will make much difference. Anyhow, it’s
a silly idea. If the marriage is dissolved, both of ’em can marry
again—if the marriage isn’t dissolved, neither of ’em can, so I don’t
see where George’s innocent party comes in. That’s Stella’s idea—part of
her religion, you know—that marriage is a sacrament and can’t be
dissolved. I think it’s much more logical.”
“I think it’s damned hard.”
“Yes, so do I. But then I think religion ought to be damned hard.”
“I’ll remind you of that next time I see you lounging in front of the
fire when you ought to be in church. You know you hurt George’s feelings
by not going.”
“I’m not partial to George’s sort of religion.”
“I hope you’re not partial to Stella’s—that would be another blow for
this poor family.”
“Why?—it wouldn’t make any difference to them. Not that you need ever be
afraid of my getting religion ... but if I did I must say I hope it
would be a good stiff sort, that would give me the devil of a time.
George arranges a nice comfortable service for me at eleven, with a
family pew for me to sleep in. He preaches a nice comfortable sermon
that makes me feel good, and then we all go home together in the nice
comfortable car and eat roast beef and talk about who was there and how
much there was in the collection. That isn’t my idea of the violent
taking the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.”
“Are you trying to make me think that you’d be pious if only you were
allowed to wear sandals and a hair shirt?”
“Oh, no, Jenny dear. But at least I can admire that sort of religion
from a distance.”
“The distance being, I suppose, from here to Birmingham?”
“May I ask if you are what is vulgarly called getting at me?”
“Well, I’d like to know how long this correspondence between you and
Stella has been going on.”
“Almost ever since she left—but we’ve only just got on to religion.”
“Be careful—that’s all. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“How?—with Stella or with Stella’s ideas?”
“Both,” said Jenny darkly.
§ 6
Charles Smith was not allowed to come down again. The solicitors
declared it advisable that Mary should see nothing of him while
proceedings were pending. Indeed it was necessary to guard her
reputation like a shrine. She stayed at Conster while the weeks dragged
through the spring, and when in May Sir John and Lady Alard went for
their yearly visit to Bath, it was decided that she should go to the
Vicarage, so that a polish of sanctity and ecclesiastical patronage
might be given to her stainlessness.
So she packed her belongings—helped by Jenny instead of Gisèle, whose
wages had been beyond her means ever since her plunge for freedom—and
they were taken to where Leasan Parsonage stood hidden among May trees
and lilac bushes down Leasan lane.
Mary was not personally looking forward to the change, though the
atmosphere of Conster was eruptive, and though one felt the family
solidarity more strongly at the Manor than at the Parsonage, and was
also—in spite of luxury—more conscious of the family’s evil days. Her
feeling for Rose was almost fear—her bustle, her curiosity, her love of
rule, her touch of commonness provoked an antipathy which was less
dislike than alarm. She also shrank from the ugliness and discomforts of
the Vicarage life—Rose was supposed to have a gift for training Raw
Girls, and, as Gervase once said even when the girls ceased to be
actually raw, they were still remarkably underdone. Chatter, scoldings,
creaking footsteps, and the smell of bad cooking filled the house all
day—George, whom Mary was inclined to like in spite of his stupidity,
took the usual male refuge in flight, and spent most of his time shut up
in his study, which shared the sanctity of Leasan church and could be
invaded by no one but his wife.
There were also two rather colourless children, Lillian and Edna, whose
governess—a more cultured type of Raw Girl—made a sixth at luncheon. It
had always been a secret grief to Rose that she had never had a son; her
only comfort was that no other Alard had done so up till now. But this
comfort would probably be taken from her soon. Vera would be sure to
have a son—Jewesses always did.... Rose thought vaguely about
Abraham....
§ 7
The day started early at Leasan Parsonage—not that there was any
particular reason why it should, but eight o’clock breakfast was Rose’s
best protest against the sloppy ways of Conster, where you came down to
breakfast when you liked, or had it upstairs. Mary was addicted to the
latter vice, and on her first morning at Leasan came down heavy-eyed,
with that especial sense of irritation and inadequacy which springs from
a hurried toilet and a lukewarm bath.
“So you wear a tea-gown for breakfast,” said Rose, who wore a sports
coat and a tweed skirt.
“A breakfast gown.”
“It’s the same thing. In fact you might call it a dressing-gown with
those sleeves. Edna, don’t drink your tea with a spoon.”
“It’s too hot, Mother.”
“Well, leave it till it gets cooler. Don’t drink it with a spoon—you’ll
be pouring it into your saucer next. George, what are your letters about
today?”
“Income tax mostly—and there’s Mr. Green writing again about a Choral
Celebration.”
“Well, you must be firm with him and tell him we can’t possibly have
one. I told you what it would be, engaging an organist who’s used to
such things—they won’t give them up.”
“I thought it might be possible to arrange it once a month, at an hour
when it won’t interfere with Matins.”
“Nonsense, dear. The boys’ voices could never manage it and the men
would go on strike.”
“They’re becoming fairly general, you know, even in country churches.”
“Well, I think it’s a pity. I’ve always distrusted anything that tends
to make religion emotional.”
“I can’t understand anyone’s emotions—at least voluptuous emotions—being
stirred by anything our choir could do.”
“George!—‘voluptuous’”—a violent shake of the head—“pas devant les
enfants. Who’s your cheque from?”
“Dr. Mount. He’s very generously subscribing to the Maternity Fund. He
says ‘I feel I’ve got a duty to Leasan as well as Vinehall, as I have
patients in both parishes.’”
“I call that very good of him, for I know he never makes more than five
hundred a year out of the practice. By the way, have you heard that
Stella’s back?”
“No—since when?”
“I saw her driving through Vinehall yesterday. Edna and Lillian, you may
get down now for a great treat, and have a run in the garden before Miss
Cutfield comes.”
“May we go to meet Miss Cutfield?”
“If you don’t go further than the end of the lane. That’s right,
darlings—say your grace—‘for what we _have_ received,’ Edna, not ‘about
to’—now run away.”
“Why are you sending away the children?” asked George.
“Because I want to talk about Stella Mount.”
“But why is Stella unfit to discuss before the children?”
“Oh, George—you must know!—it was simply dreadful the way she ran after
Peter.”
“You don’t think she’s still running after him?”
“I think it’s a bad sign she’s come back.”
“Her father wanted her, I expect. That chauffeur-secretary he had was no
good. Besides, I expect she’s got over her feeling for Peter now.”
“I’m sure I hope she has, but you never know with a girl like Stella.
She has too many ways of getting out of things.”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“Oh, confession and all that. All she has to do is to go to a Priest and
he’ll let her off anything.”
“Come, come, my dear, that is hardly a fair summary of what the Prayer
Book calls ‘the benefit of absolution.’ My own position with regard to
confession has always been that it is at least tolerable and
occasionally helpful.”
“Not the way a girl like Stella would confess,” said Rose darkly—“Oh, I
don’t mean anything wrong—only the whole thing seems to me not quite
healthy. I dislike the sort of religion that gets into everything, even
people’s meals. I expect Stella would rather die than eat meat on
Friday.”
“But surely, dear,” said George who was rather dense—“that sort would
not encourage her to run after a married man.”
“Well, if you can’t use your eyes! ... she’s been perfectly open about
it.”
“But she hasn’t been here at all since he married.”
“I’m talking of before that—when she was always meeting him.”
“But if he wasn’t married you can hardly accuse her of running after a
married man.”
“He’s married now. Don’t be so stupid, dear.”
§ 8
Peter was a little annoyed to find that Stella had come back. It would
perhaps be difficult to say why—whether her return was most disturbing
to his memory or to his pride. He would have angrily denied that to see
her again was in any sense a resurrection—and he would just as angrily
have denied that her attitude of detached friendliness was disagreeable
to his vanity. Surely he had forgotten her ... surely he did not want to
think that she could ever forget him....
He did not press these questions closely—his nature shrank from
unpleasant probings, and after all Stella’s presence did not make
anything of that kind necessary. He saw very little of her. She came to
tea at Starvecrow, seemed delighted with the improvements, was
becomingly sweet to Vera—and after that all he had of her was an
occasional glimpse at Conster or on the road.
It could not be said, by any stretch of evidence, that she was running
after a married man. But Rose Alard soon had a fresh cause for alarm.
Stella was seeing a great deal too much of Gervase. She must somehow
have got into touch with the younger brother during her absence from
home, for now on her return there seemed to be a friendship already
established. They were occasionally seen out walking together in the
long summer evenings, and on Sundays he sometimes went with her to
church at Vinehall—which was a double crime, since it disparaged
George’s ministrations at Leasan.
“I should hate to say she was mercenary,” said Rose reflectively, “but I
must say appearances are against her—turning to the younger brother as
soon as she’s lost the elder.”
“I don’t see where the mercenariness comes it,” said Mary—“Gervase won’t
have a penny except what he earns, and there’s Peter and his probable
sons, as well as George, between him and the title.”
“But he’s an Alard—I expect Stella would like to marry into the family.”
“I fail to see the temptation.”
“Well, anyhow, I think it very bad taste of her to take him to church at
Vinehall—it’s always been difficult to get him to come here as it is,
and George says he has no influence over him whatever.”
Mary only sighed. She could not argue with Rose, yet she had a special
sympathy for a woman who having had love torn out of her heart tried to
fill the empty aching space as best she could. Of course it was
selfish—though not so selfish in Stella as it had been in herself, and
she hoped Stella would not have to suffer as she had suffered. After
all, it would do Gervase good to be licked into shape by a woman like
Stella—he probably enjoyed the hopelessness of his love—if indeed it was
hopeless ... and she could understand the relief that his ardent,
slightly erratic courtship must be after Peter’s long series of stolid
blunders.
But Stella was not quite in the position Mary fancied. She was not
letting Gervase court her, indeed he would never have thought of doing
so. She seemed definitely apart from any idea of love-making—she set up
intangible barriers round herself, which even his imagination could not
cross. Perhaps some day ... but even for “some day” his plans were not
so much of love as of thinking of love.
Meanwhile she fulfilled a definite need of his, just as he fulfilled a
need of hers. She gave him an outlet for the pent-up thoughts of his
daily drives, and the society of a mind which delighted him with its
warmth and quickness. Gervase too had a quick mind, and his and Stella’s
struck sparks off each other, creating a glow in which he sometimes
forgot that his heart went unwarmed. Their correspondence had been a
slower, less stimulating version of the same process. They had discussed
endless subjects through the post, and now Stella had come home in the
midst of the most interesting. It was the most interesting to him
because it was obviously the most interesting to her. She had bravely
taken her share in their other discussions, but he soon discovered that
she was too feminine to care about politics, too concrete to grasp
abstractions, and that in matters of art and literature her taste was
uncertain and often philistine. But in the matter of religion she showed
both a firmer standing and a wider grasp. Indeed he was to find that her
religion was the deepest, the most vital and most interesting part of
her—in it alone did the whole Stella come alive.
The topic had been started by the tragedy of Mary’s marriage, and at
first he had been repulsed by her attitude, which he thought strangely
unlike her in its rigidity. But as time went on he began to contrast it
favourably with George’s compromises—here was a faith which at least was
logical, and which was not afraid to demand the uttermost.... They
continued the discussion after she had come home, and he was surprised
to see what he had hitherto looked upon equally as a fad and a
convention, a collection of moral and intellectual lumber, show itself
almost shockingly as an adventure and a power. Not that Stella had felt
the full force of it yet—her life had always run pretty smoothly through
the simplicities of joy and sorrow, there had been no conflict, no
devastation. But strangely enough he, an outsider, seemed able to see
what she herself possibly did not realise—that she carried in her heart
a force which might one day both make and break it.
It had been his own suggestion that he should go with her to church,
though he did not know whether it was to satisfy a hope or dismiss a
fear. He had lost the detached attitude with which he had at first
approached the subject, much as he would have approached Wells’s new
novel or the Coalition Government. To his surprise he found himself at
ease in the surroundings of Vinehall’s Parish Mass. Its gaiety and
homeliness seemed the natural expression of instinctive needs. Vinehall
church was decorated in a style more suggestive of combined poverty and
enterprise than of artistic taste; the singing—accompanied rather
frivolously on a piano—was poor and sometimes painful; the sermon was
halting and trite. These things were better done by brother George at
Leasan. But the Mass seemed strangely independent of its outward
expression, and to hold its own solemn heart of worship under
circumstances which would have destroyed the devotions of Leasan. Here,
thought Gervase, was a faith which did not depend on the beauty of
externals for its appeal—a faith, moreover, which was not afraid to make
itself hard to men, which threw up round itself massive barriers of
hardship, and yet within these was warm and sweet and friendly—which was
furthermore a complete adventure, a taking of infinite risks, a gateway
on unknown dangers....
As he knelt beside Stella in a silence which was like a first kiss, so
old in experience did it seem, in spite of the shock of novelty, he
found that the half-forgotten romances of his childhood were beginning
to take back their colours and shine in a new light. Those figures of
the Mother and her Child, the suffering Son of Man, the warm-hearted,
thick-headed, glorious company of the apostles, which for so long had
lived for him only in the gilt frames of Renaissance pictures, now
seemed to wake again to life and friendliness. Once more he felt the
thrill of the Good Shepherd going out to see the lost sheep ... and all
the bells of heaven began to ring.
§ 9
George Alard could not help being a little vexed at Gervase’s new
tendencies. He told himself that he ought to be glad the boy was going
to church at all, for he had been negligent and erratic for a long time
past—he ought not to feel injured because another man had won him to
some sense of his duty. But he must say he was surprised that Luce had
succeeded where he himself had failed—Luce was a dry, dull fellow, and
hopelessly unenterprising; not a branch in his parish of the C.E.M.S. or
the A.C.S. or the S.P.G., no work-parties or parish teas, and no
excitement about the Enabling Act and the setting up of a Parochial
Church Council which was now occupying most of George’s time. Still, he
reflected, it was probably not so much Luce as Stella Mount who had done
it—she was a pretty girl and perhaps not too scrupulous, she had
persuaded Gervase. Then there had always been that curious streak in his
brother’s character which differentiated him from the other Alards.
George did not know how to describe it so well as by Ungentlemanliness.
That part of Gervase which had revolted from a Gentleman’s Education and
had gone into an engineering shop instead of to Oxford was now revolting
from a Gentleman’s Religion and going to Mass instead of Dearly Beloved
Brethren. There had always seemed to George something ungentlemanly
about Catholicism, though he prided himself on being broad-minded, and
would have introduced one or two changes on High Church lines into the
services at Leasan if his father and his wife had let him.
“Apart from every other consideration, I’m surprised he doesn’t realise
how bad it looks for him to go Sunday to Vinehall when his brother is
Vicar of Leasan.”
“He goes with Stella,” said Mary.
“I think that makes it worse,” said Rose.
“Why?” asked Peter.
He had come in to see George about his election to the Parochial Church
Council, which his brother was extremely anxious should take place, but
for which Peter had no wish to qualify himself. George had hoped that
the bait of a seat on the Council, with the likelihood of being elected
as the Parish’s representative at the Diocesan Conference, might induce
Peter to avail himself once more of the church privileges which he had
neglected for so long. It was uphill work, thought poor George, trying
to run a parish when neither of one’s brothers came to church, and one’s
father said ‘damn’ out loud when reading the lessons....
“Why?” asked Peter, a little resentful.