THE VISITORS GO.
Next morning Eileen got a letter. She read it before breakfast, turned
rather paler, and looked up at Eddy as if she was trying to bring her
mind back from a great distance. In her eyes was fear, and that look of
brooding, soft pity that he had learnt to associate with one only of
Eileen’s friends.
She said, “Hugh’s ill,” frowning at him absently, and added, “I must go
to him, this morning. He’s alone,” and Eddy remembered a paragraph he
had seen in the _Morning Post_ about Lady Dorothy Datcherd and the
Riviera. Lady Dorothy never stayed with Datcherd when he was ill.
Periodically his lungs got much worse, and he had to lie up, and he
hated that.
“Does he write himself?” Arnold asked. He was fond of Hugh Datcherd.
“Yes--oh, he doesn’t say he’s ill, he never will, but I know it by his
writing--I must go by the next train, I’m afraid”; she remembered to
turn to Mrs. Oliver and speak apologetically. “I’m very sorry to be so
sudden.”
“We are so sorry for the cause,” said Mrs. Oliver, courteously. “Is it
your brother?” (Surely it wouldn’t be her husband, in the
circumstances?)
“It is not,” said Eileen, still abstracted. “It’s a friend. He’s alone,
and consumptive, and if he’s not looked after he destroys himself doing
quite mad things. His wife’s gone away.”
Mrs. Oliver became a shade less sympathetic. It was a pity it was not a
brother, which would have been more natural. However, Mrs. Le Moine was,
of course, a married woman, though under curious circumstances. She
began to discuss trains, and the pony-carriage, and sandwiches.
Eddy explained afterwards while Eileen was upstairs.
“It’s Hugh Datcherd, a great friend of hers; poor chap, his lungs are
frightfully gone, I’m afraid. He’s an extraordinarily interesting and
capable man; runs an enormous settlement in North-East London, and has
any number of different social schemes all over the place. He edits
_Further_--do you ever see it, father?”
“_Further?_ Yes, it’s been brought to my notice once or twice. It goes a
good way ‘further’ than even our poor heretical deans, doesn’t it?”
It went in a quite different direction, Eddy thought. Our heretical
deans do not always go very far along the road which leads to social
betterment and slum-destroying; they are often too busy improving
theology to have much time to improve houses.
“An able man, I daresay,” said the Dean. “Like all the Datcherds. Most
of them have been Parliamentary, of course. Two Datcherds were at
Cambridge with me--Roger and Stephen; this man’s uncles, I suppose; his
father would be before my time. They were both very brilliant fellows,
and fine speakers at the Union, and have become capable Parliamentary
speakers now. A family of hereditary Whigs; but this man’s the only out
and out Radical, I should say. A pity he’s so bitter against
Christianity.”
“He’s not bitter,” said Eddy. “He’s very gentle. Only he disbelieves in
it as a means of progress.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Oliver, “he married one of Lord Ulverstone’s
daughters--Dorothy, wasn’t it.” (Lord Ulverstone and Mrs. Oliver’s
family were both of Westmorland, where there is strong clannish
feeling.)
“He and Dorothy don’t seem to be hitting it off, do they,” put in
Daphne, and her mother said, “Daphne, dear,” and changed the subject.
Daphne ought not, by good rights, to have heard that about Hugh Datcherd
being ill and alone, and Mrs. Le Moine going to him.
“She’s a trying woman, I fancy,” said Eddy, who did not mean to be
tactless, but had been absorbed in his own thoughts and had got left
behind when his mother started a new subject. “Hard, and selfish, and
extravagant, and thinks of nothing but amusing herself, and doesn’t care
a hang for any of Datcherd’s schemes, or for Datcherd himself, for that
matter. She just goes off and leaves him to be ill by himself. He nearly
died last year; he was awfully cut up, too, about their little girl
dying--she was the only child, and Datcherd was absolutely devoted to
her, and I believe her mother neglected her when she was ill, just as
she does Datcherd.”
“These stories get exaggerated, of course,” said Mrs. Oliver, because
Lady Dorothy was one of the Westmorland Ulverstones, because Daphne was
listening, and because she suspected the source of the stories to be
Eileen Le Moine.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt there’s her side of it, too, if one knew it,”
admitted Eddy, ready, as usual, to see everyone’s point of view. “It
would be a frightful bore being married to a man who was interested in
all the things you hated most, and gave his whole time and money and
energy to them. But anyhow, you see why his friends, and particularly
Eileen, who’s his greatest friend, feel responsible for him.”
“A very sad state of things,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Anyhow,” said Daphne, “here’s the pony-trap.”
Eileen came downstairs, hand-in-hand with Jane, and said goodbye to the
Dean, and Mrs. Oliver, and Daphne, and “Thank you so much for having
me,” and drove off with Eddy and Jane, still with that look of troubled
wistfulness in her face.
She smiled faintly at Eddy from the train.
“I’m sorry, Eddy. It’s a shame I have to go,” but her thoughts were not
for him, as he knew.
Outside the station they met Arnold, and he and Jane walked off together
to see something in the Cathedral, while Eddy drove home.
Jane gave a little pitiful sigh. “Poor dears,” she murmured.
“H’m?” questioned Arnold, who was interested in the streets.
“Poor Eileen,” Jane amplified; “poor Hugh.”
“Oh, quite,” Arnold nodded. But, feeling more interested in ideas than
in people, he talked about Welchester.
“The stuffiness of the place!” he commented, with energy of abuse. “The
stodginess. The canons and their wives. The--the enlightened culture of
the Deanery. The propriety. The correctness. The intelligence. The
cathedralism. The good breeding. How can Eddy bear it, Jane? Why doesn’t
he kick someone or something over and run?”
“Eddy likes it,” said Jane. “He’s very fond of it. After all, it is
rather exquisite; look----”
They had stopped at the end of Church Street, and looked along its
narrow length to the square that opened out before the splendid West
Front. Arnold screwed up his eyes at it, appreciatively.
“_That’s_ all right. It’s the people I’m thinking of.”
“But you know, Arnold, Eddy’s not exclusive like most people, like you
and me, and--and Mrs. Oliver, and those nice Bellairs’. He likes
everyone and everything. Things are delightful to him merely because
they exist.”
Arnold groaned. “Whitman said that before you, the brute. If I thought
Eddy had anything in common with Walt, our friendship would end
forthwith.”
“He has nothing whatever,” Jane reassured him, placidly. “Whitman hated
all sorts of things. Whitman’s more like you; he’d have hated
Welchester.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s true. The cleanliness, the cant, the smug faces
of men and women in the street, the worshippers in cathedrals, the
keepers of Sabbaths, the respectable and the well-to-do, the Sunday hats
and black coats of the men, the panaches and tight skirts of the women,
the tea-fights, the well-read deans and their lady-like wives--what have
I to do with these or these with me? All, all of them I loathe; away
with them, I will not have them near me any more. _Allons, camerado_, I
will take to the open road beneath the stars.... What a pity he would
have said that; but I can’t alter my opinion, even for him.... How at
home dear old Phil Underwood would be here, wouldn’t he. How he must
enjoy his visits to the Deanery, where he’s a _persona grata_. And how
he must bore the young sister. _She’s_ all right, you know, Jane. I
rather like her. And she hates me. She’s quite genuine, and free from
cant; just as worldly as they make ’em, and never pretends to be
anything else. Besides, she’s all alive; rather like a young wild
animal. It’s queer she and Eddy being brother and sister, she so decided
and fixed in all her opinions and rejections, and he so impressionable.
Oh, another thing--I have an unhappy feeling that Eddy is going,
eventually, to marry that little yellow-eyed girl--Miss Bellairs.
Somehow I feel it.”
Jane said, “Nonsense,” and laughed. “She’s not a bit the sort.”
“Of course she’s not. But to Eddy, as you observed, all sorts are
acceptable. She’s one sort, you’ll admit. And one he’s attached to--wind
and weather and jolly adventures and old companionship, she stands for
to him. Not a subtle appeal, but still, an appeal. They’re fond of each
other, and it will turn to that, you’ll see. Eddy never says, “That’s
not the sort of thing, or the sort of person, for me.” Because they all
are. Look at the way he swallowed those parsons down in his slum.
Swallowed them--why, he loves them. Look at the way he accepts
Welchester, stodginess and all, and likes it. He was the same at
Cambridge; nothing was outside the range for him; he never drew the
line. I’m really not particular”--Jane laughed at him again--“but I tell
you he consorted sometimes with the most utterly utter, and didn’t seem
to mind. Kept very bad company indeed on occasion; company the Dean
wouldn’t at all have approved of, I’m sure. Many times I’ve had to step
in and try in vain to haul him by force out of some select set. Nuts,
smugs, pious men, betting _roués_, beefy hulks--all were grist to his
mill. And still it’s the same. Miss Bellairs, no doubt, is a very nice
girl, quite genuine and natural, and rather like a jolly kitten, which
is always attractive. But she’s rigid within; she won’t mix with the
people Eddy will want to mix with. She’s not comprehensive. She wouldn’t
like us much, for instance; she’d think us rather queer and shady
beings, not what she’s used to or understands. We should worry and
puzzle her. She’s gay and sweet and unselfish, and good, sweet maid, and
lets who will be clever. Lets them, but doesn’t want to have much to do
with them. She’ll shut us all out, and try to shut Eddy in with her. She
won’t succeed, because he’ll go on wanting a little bit of all there is,
and so they’ll both be miserable. Her share of the world, you see--all
the share she asks for--is homogeneous; his is heterogeneous, a sort of
gypsy stew with everything in it. You may say that he’s greedy for mixed
fare, while she has a simple and fastidious appetite. There are the
materials for another unhappy marriage ready provided.”
Jane was looking at the Prior’s Door with her head on one side. She
smiled at it peacefully.
“Really, Arnold----”
“Oh, I know. You’re going to say, what reason have I for supposing that
Eddy has ever thought of this young girl in that way, as they say in
fiction. I don’t say he has yet. But he will. Propinquity will do it,
and common tastes, and old affection. You’ll see, Jane. I’m not often
wrong about these unfortunate affairs. I dislike them so much that it
gives me an instinct.”
Jane shook her head. “I think Welchester is affecting you for bad,
Arnold. That, you know, is what the people who annoy you so much here
would do, I expect--look at all affection and friendship like that.”
“That’s true.” Arnold looked at her in surprise. “But I shouldn’t have
expected you to know it. You are improving in perspicacity, Jane; it’s
the first time I have known you aware of the vulgarity about you.”
Jane looked a little proud of herself, as she only did when she had
displayed a piece of worldly knowledge. She did not say that she had
obtained her knowledge from Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, who, watching Eddy
and Eileen, had too obviously done so with troubled eyes, so that she
longed to comfort them with explanations they would never understand.
It was certain that they were relieved that Eileen had gone, though the
reason of her going had placed her in a more dubious light. Also, she
forgot, unfortunately, to write her bread and butter letter. “I suppose
she can’t spare the time from Hugh,” said Daphne. But she wrote to Jane,
telling her that Hugh was laid up with hemorrhage, and had been ordered
to go away directly he was fit. “They say Davos, but he won’t. I don’t
know where it will be.” Jane, whose worldly shrewdness after all had
narrow limits, repeated this to Eddy in his mother’s presence.
“Has his wife got back yet?” Mrs. Oliver inquired gravely, and Jane
shook her head. “Oh no. She won’t. She’s spending the winter on the
Riviera.”
“I should think Mr. Datcherd too had better spend the winter on the
Riviera,” suggested Mrs. Oliver.
“Isn’t it rather bad for consumption?” said Eddy, shirking issues other
than hygienic.
“I believe,” said Jane, not shirking them, “his wife isn’t coming back
to him at all again. She’s tired of him, I’m afraid. I daresay it’s a
good thing; she is very irritating and difficult.”
Mrs. Oliver changed the subject. These seemed to her what women in her
district would have called strange goings on. She commented on them to
the Dean, who, more tolerant, said, “One must allow some licence to
genius, I suppose.” Perhaps: but the question was, how much. Genius
might alter manners--(for the worse, Mrs. Oliver thought)--but it
shouldn’t be allowed to alter morals.
“Anyhow,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I am rather troubled that Eddy should be so
intimate with these people.”
“Eddy is a steady-headed boy,” said the Dean. “He knows where to draw
the line.” Which is what parents often think of their children, with how
little warrant! Drawing the line was precisely the art which, Arnold
complained, Eddy had not learnt at all.
Jane and Arnold stayed three days more at the Deanery. Jane drew details
of the Cathedral and studies of Daphne. The Dean thought, as he had
often thought before, that artists were interesting, child-like, but
rather baffling people, incredibly innocent, or else incredibly apt to
accept moral evil with indifference; also that, though, he feared, quite
outside the Church, and what he considered to be pagan in outlook, she
displayed, like poor Wilson Gavin, a very delicate appreciation of
ecclesiastical architecture and religious art.
Mrs. Oliver thought her more unconventional and lacking in knowledge of
the world than any girl had a right to be.
Daphne and the Bellairs family thought her a harmless crank, who took
off her hat in the road.
The Bellairs’ supposed she must Want a Vote, till she announced her
indifference on that subject, which disgusted Daphne, an ardent and
potentially militant suffragist, and disappointed her mother, a calm but
earnest member of the National Union for Women’s Suffrage, who went to
meetings Daphne was not allowed at. Jane--perhaps it was because of the
queer sexlessness which was part of her charm, perhaps because of being
an artist, and other-worldly--seemed to care little for women’s rights
or women’s wrongs. Mrs. Oliver noted that her social conscience was
unawakened, and thought her selfish. Artists were perhaps like
that--wrapped up in their own joy of the lovely world, so that they
never turned and looked into the shadows. Eddy, a keen suffragist
himself, said it was because Jane had never lived among the very poor.
“She should use her power of vision,” said the Dean. “She’s got plenty.”
“She’s one-windowed,” Eddy explained. “She only looks out on to the
beautiful things; she has a blank wall between her and the ugly.”
“In plain words, a selfish young woman,” said Mrs. Oliver, but to
herself.
So much for Jane. Arnold was more severely condemned. The more they all
saw of him, the less they liked him, and the more supercilious he grew.
Even at times he stopped remembering it was a Deanery, though he really
tried to do this. But the atmosphere did annoy him.
“Mr. Denison has really very unfortunate ways of expressing himself at
times,” said Mrs. Oliver, who had too, Arnold thought.
“Oh, he means well,” said Eddy apologetic. “You mustn’t mind him. He’s
got corns, and if anyone steps on them he turns nasty. He’s always like
that.”
“In fact, a conceited pig,” said Daphne, not to herself.
Personally Daphne thought the best of the three was Mrs. Le Moine, who
anyhow dressed well and could dance, though her habits might be queer.
Better queer habits than queer clothes, any day, thought Daphne,
innately a pagan, with the artist’s eye and the materialist’s soul.
Anyhow, Jane and Arnold departed on Monday. From the point of view of
Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, it might have been better had it been
Saturday, as their ideas of how to spend Sunday had been revealed as
unfitting a Deanery. The Olivers were not in the least sabbatarian, they
were much too wide-minded for that, but they thought their visitors
should go to church once during the day. Perhaps Jane had been
discouraged by her experiences with the Prayer Book on New Year’s Eve.
Perhaps it never occurred to her to go. Anyhow in the morning she stayed
at home and drew, and in the evening wandered into the Cathedral during
the collects, stayed for the anthem, and wandered out, peaceful and
content, with no suspicion of having done the wrong or unusual thing.
Arnold lay in the hall all the morning and smoked and read _The New
Machiavelli_, which was one of the books not liked at the Deanery.
(Arnold, by the way, didn’t like it much either, but dipped in and out
of it, grunting when bored.) In consequence (not in consequence of _The
New Machiavelli_, which she would have found dull, but of being obliged
herself to go to church), Daphne was cross and envious, the Dean and his
wife slightly disapproving, and Eddy sorry about the misunderstanding.
On the whole, the visit had not been the success Eddy had wished for. He
felt that. In spite of some honest endeavour on both sides, the hosts
and guests had not fitted into each other.
Coming back into Welchester from a walk, and seeing its streets full of
peace and blue winter twilight and starred with yellow lamps, Eddy
thought it queer that there should be disharmonies in such a place. It
had peace, and a wistful, ordered beauty, and dignity, and grace....
They were singing in the Cathedral, and lights glowed redly through the
stained windows. Strangely the place transcended all factions, all
barriers, proving them illusions in the still light of the Real. Eddy,
beneath all his ineffectualities, his futilities of life and thought,
had a very keen sense of unity, of the coherence of all beauty and good;
in a sense he did really transcend the barriers recognised by less
shallow people. With a welcoming leap his heart went out to embrace all
beauty, all truth. Surely one could afford to miss no aspect of it
through blindness. Open-eyed he looked into the blue night of lamps and
shadows and men and women, and beyond it to the stars and the sickle of
the moon, and all of it crowded into his vision, and he caught his
breath a little and smiled, because it was so good and so much.
When he got home he saw his mother sitting in the hall, reading the
_Times_. Moved by love and liking, he put his arm round her shoulders
and bent over her and kissed her. The grace, the breeding, the
culture--she was surely part of it all, and should make, like the
Cathedral, for harmony. Arnold had found Mrs. Oliver commonplace. Eddy
found her admirable. Jane had not found her at all. There was the
difference between them. Undoubtedly Eddy’s, whether the most truthful
way or not, was the least wasteful.