The hours of Jimmy's stay with the Marlows dragged by slowly. The
children, four boys, proved uninteresting in the extreme, whilst between
himself and Laura Marlow, May's sister-in-law, there was little in
common. Two other guests, an elderly aunt and uncle of Henry's, arrived
in time for dinner on the second night, and Jimmy retired more and more
into the background, or, rather, he found himself in the background by a
kind of natural sequence. No one wanted to put him there; in fact, both
his brother-in-law and his sister were kindness itself; but he was the
outsider in the party, sharing none of the interests of the others.
He had been invited for a week, at least, longer if possible; yet at the
end of three days he was longing for an excuse to get back to town,
where he intended to take rooms; but no excuse presented itself, and so
he stayed on, spending most of his time in the billiard-room, a part of
the house seldom used in the daytime, writing, or trying to write, some
of the articles which Douglas Kelly had suggested. He had sent his copy
in to the _Record_, and each morning, immediately after breakfast, he
strolled down to the little news agent's shop to buy a copy of the
paper--Mr. Marlow took no halfpenny journals--but when Sunday came round
it had not appeared.
The Marlows were regular church-goers, at least Mrs. Marlow was, and her
husband always accompanied her when he was not away at the seaside,
golfing. May took her religion as part of her settled order of
existence. She had been bred up in it, and she would have resented any
attack on it as fiercely as she would have resented the abolition of
class distinctions. She believed in it, and, in a sense, she loved it;
but, with the one exception of her father's tragic death, her way
through life had been so smooth that she had never felt the need of its
consolations, and, consequently, had never analysed it in any way. Doubt
had never entered into her mind, because her creed seemed to suit her
circumstances so admirably. The well-dressed congregation, the
well-trained choir, the cushioned seats and reserved pews, the suave,
optimistic rector, and deferential curates--these were all part of a
nicely balanced state of society which kept motor-cars, or at least
broughams, and paid its tradesmen's bills by cheque on the first of the
month.
Henry Marlow seldom, if ever, gave the matter a thought; but he
subscribed generously when asked by the rector, and he kept the Ten
Commandments scrupulously, so far as his home life was concerned. He
respected the Church, as something which stood for solidity and the
security of property, like Consols and the Mansion House, and he
regarded Dissenters in much the same light as he did outside brokers, as
persons who should be watched by the police. He did not try to worship
both God and Mammon simultaneously; but, wholly unconsciously, he
divided his life into two parts, that which he spent in the City, and
that which he spent outside the Square Mile, and so avoided the
difficulty.
Jimmy, on the other hand, had heard very few services during the last
ten years, and of those the majority had been read by a layman, and had
begun with the words "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the
Lord." Lack of opportunity had kept him from attending in the first
case, and, after a while, having lost the habit of his boyhood, he had
ceased to think of taking such opportunities as did offer.
"I think it must be five years at least since I went to anything but a
funeral service," he remarked to May, as they walked towards the big
red-brick church.
Mrs. Marlow threw a swift glance over her shoulder, fearing her other
guests, who were following, might have heard. "Hush, Jimmy," she said.
"It sounds so bad. Never say that again, especially before the servants.
The rector's housemaid is sister to my parlour-maid, and it would be
sure to get round to him. Of course, I know you have been in wild places
where there were no churches, and we understand, but others might not.
And all our friends are Church-people."
Jimmy dropped the subject, and a few minutes later he was following her
rustling skirts up the broad centre aisle to the pew four rows back from
the pulpit. He wished it had not been so far forward, because the
worshippers interested him, if only by reason of their sameness of type.
You could see they were all people of position, with regular incomes and
hereditary political convictions, solid people of that slow-moving,
tenacious class which is the real backbone of the country, holding, as
it does, the greater part of the wealth, and producing, often by a kind
of apparent accident, the greater part of the intellect.
Jimmy belonged to them by birth, and yet, as he sat amongst them,
listening to the lisping voice of the senior curate, he found it hard to
realise the fact. He tried his best to follow the service, to keep his
mind on it, but, somehow, the whole atmosphere seemed wrong. The church
was a modern one, the work of a famous architect, and, therefore,
grossly inartistic, lacking every feature which makes for solemnity and
beauty. The detail was coarse and roughly finished, the red-brick walls,
as always, an offence to the eye; big texts seemed to squirm, like
semi-paralysed eels, over the chancel arch and round the East window.
The latter, off which Jimmy could hardly take his eyes, was a veritable
triumph of the Victorian tradition. Its colouring was gruesome, its
design grotesque; and yet it was a source of great pride to the
congregation as a whole, having been put in to the memory of a banker
who had left nearly a million. They no more dreamed of doubting its
artistic merits than they did of questioning the religion it was
supposed in some vague way to typify.
The singing was good, the sermon grammatical and well delivered, and yet
Jimmy left the church with a feeling of dissatisfaction. He had expected
that this, his first service in England after ten years, would have
carried him back to the days when he knew nothing of the Tree of
Knowledge; but, instead of that, it had made no appeal to him. Its
poetry was destroyed by the hideousness of the surroundings; whilst even
the glorious words of the Benediction seemed but a perfunctory
dismissal, giving the congregation leave to hasten away to the heavy
dinners which were awaiting it at home.
He was very silent on his way back, thinking of the past, and he was
only recalled to the present when May, seeing him producing his
cigarette case, thought it time to speak.
"Jimmy," she said, rather severely, "it is hardly correct to smoke on
your way home from church. People notice that sort of thing so much."
Her brother coloured, and thrust the case back into his pocket. A minute
later, he heard his sister's name spoken, and a tall, well-dressed woman
hurried up from behind.
"I have been trying to overtake you for the last five minutes, May," she
said. "Only you have been walking as if you were very, very hungry,"
then, disregarding Mrs. Marlow's little snort of annoyance, she turned
to Jimmy, "Don't you remember me, Jimmy--Mr. Grierson I suppose I ought
to say--I'm Ethel Grimmer, Ethel Jardine that was."
Jimmy laughed and took the outstretched hand.
"Of course I remember you now; but when I saw you in church where I
could only catch your profile obliquely, I was not quite sure who you
were. I didn't know you lived down here."
Mrs. Grimmer laughed too, but mentally she registered another grievance
against May. So this Jimmy Grierson, who dressed quite decently after
all, and had a distinctly interesting face, was to be kept in the
background.
"I suppose you and May have found so much to talk about," she said. "I'm
sure you must, after being apart all these years, and you have such a
lot to tell." She was a handsome woman with fine eyes, and she knew how
to use them. "When May has done with you, or rather when she can spare
you for an hour or two, you must come and see us--Jimmy." She blushed a
little. "When will you let him come, May? How would dinner on Tuesday
do? I know you and Henry are going to the Foulgers' that night, and this
poor boy will be alone."
May bit her lip to repress an exclamation of annoyance. She did not want
Jimmy to go to the Grimmers', but it was impossible to deny the
engagement with the Foulgers, and equally impossible to say that Jimmy
was going there with her--Ethel Grimmer knew how many people the Foulger
dining table would seat; so she gave in, and Jimmy arranged to go,
showing rather more eagerness over his acceptance than May considered
necessary. Indeed, she remarked so much to her husband whilst she was
taking off her hat; then a sudden thought struck her, and she paused,
with her fingers still grasping a half-withdrawn hatpin.
"Henry, do you remember what a silly fuss Ethel used to make over Jimmy,
just before he went abroad, how they used to go cycling together. Of
course, she's years older than he is, but still----"
Marlow nodded solemnly; he had never really liked the Grimmers, and he
knew that, several times lately, Ethel had gone out of her way to annoy
his wife, whilst Grimmer himself had behaved like a fool over the Gold
Dredging Company, actually hinting that, because they knew each other
socially, he ought to have been warned when the thing was going wrong.
As if sentiment of that sort could be allowed to intrude on business.
Billy Grimmer had been in the City over twenty years, and it was quite
time he knew its ways.
"Ethel is a vain, flighty woman," Marlow said, in reply to his wife's
remark. "She likes to have young men like Jimmy trailing after her; and
Grimmer only laughs. I suppose it's what they call being 'smart.' Pity
he doesn't put a little more smartness into his business affairs." He
chuckled slightly at the recollection of the dredging shares, which had
been some of those he, himself, had received as vendor. "Still, Jimmy
is old enough to take care of himself now," he went on, "and, after
all, he will be going back to town a day or two later."
But May shook her head. "I must warn him not to talk too much--he seems
terribly indiscreet--and I think I shall give him a plain hint about
falling in love, and so on. From what Ethel said the other day, she is
quite capable of getting some silly girls with money to meet him."
Meanwhile, Jimmy was staring out of the window of the billiard-room, and
smiling a little grimly at the memories which his meeting with Mrs.
Grimmer had reawakened. They had been very great friends in his
Sandhurst days, although she was several years his senior; and, for a
month or two after his departure from England, he had slept with her
photo under his pillow, and tried to imagine her warm farewell kisses on
his lips; and then, somehow, the photo had got mislaid, and the other
recollections had begun to lose their actuality, and when, a year later,
he had received the news of her engagement, he had written her a hearty,
and perfectly sincere, letter of congratulation. It would be distinctly
amusing to meet her under the new conditions, and see how much she was
disposed to remember.