CONTINUED INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER
To understand and sympathise with the feelings and action of the Rector
of Worsted Skeynes, one must consider his origin and the circumstances
of his life.
The second son of an old Suffolk family, he had followed the routine of
his house, and having passed at Oxford through certain examinations, had
been certificated at the age of twenty-four as a man fitted to impart
to persons of both sexes rules of life and conduct after which they had
been groping for twice or thrice that number of years. His character,
never at any time undecided, was by this fortunate circumstance
crystallised and rendered immune from the necessity for self-search
and spiritual struggle incidental to his neighbours. Since he was a
man neither below nor above the average, it did not occur to him to
criticise or place himself in opposition to a system which had gone on
so long and was about to do him so much good. Like all average men, he
was a believer in authority, and none the less because authority placed
a large portion of itself in his hands. It would, indeed, have been
unwarrantable to expect a man of his birth, breeding, and education to
question the machine of which he was himself a wheel.
He had dropped, therefore, at the age of twenty-six, insensibly, on the
death of an uncle, into the family living at Worsted Skeynes. He had
been there ever since. It was a constant and natural grief to him that
on his death the living would go neither to his eldest nor his second
son, but to the second son of his elder brother, the Squire. At the age
of twenty-seven he had married Miss Rose Twining, the fifth daughter of
a Huntingdonshire parson, and in less than eighteen years begotten ten
children, and was expecting the eleventh, all healthy and hearty like
himself. A family group hung over the fireplace in the study, under the
framed and illuminated text, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” which
he had chosen as his motto in the first year of his cure, and never seen
any reason to change. In that family group Mr. Barter sat in the centre
with his dog between his legs; his wife stood behind him, and on both
sides the children spread out like the wings of a fan or butterfly. The
bills of their schooling were beginning to weigh rather heavily, and he
complained a good deal; but in principle he still approved of the habit
into which he had got, and his wife never complained of anything.
The study was furnished with studious simplicity; many a boy had been,
not unkindly, caned there, and in one place the old Turkey carpet was
rotted away, but whether by their tears or by their knees, not even
Mr. Barter knew. In a cabinet on one side of the fire he kept all his
religious books, many of them well worn; in a cabinet on the other side
he kept his bats, to which he was constantly attending; a fishing-rod
and a gun-case stood modestly in a corner. The archway between the
drawers of his writing-table held a mat for his bulldog, a prize animal,
wont to lie there and guard his master's legs when he was writing his
sermons. Like those of his dog, the Rector's good points were the old
English virtues of obstinacy, courage, intolerance, and humour; his bad
points, owing to the circumstances of his life, had never been brought
to his notice.
When, therefore, he found himself alone with Gregory Vigil, he
approached him as one dog will approach another, and came at once to the
matter in hand.
“It's some time since I had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Vigil,”
he said. “Mrs. Pendyce has been giving me in confidence the news you've
brought down. I'm bound to tell you at once that I'm surprised.”
Gregory made a little movement of recoil, as though his delicacy had
received a shock.
“Indeed!” he said, with a sort of quivering coldness.
The Rector, quick to note opposition, repeated emphatically:
“More than surprised; in fact, I think there must be some mistake.”
“Indeed?” said Gregory again.
A change came over Mr. Barter's face. It had been grave, but was now
heavy and threatening.
“I have to say to you,” he said, “that somehow--somehow, this divorce
must be put a stop to.”
Gregory flushed painfully.
“On what grounds? I am not aware that my ward is a parishioner of yours,
Mr. Barter, or that if she were----”
The Rector closed in on him, his head thrust forward, his lower lip
projecting.
“If she were doing her duty,” he said, “she would be. I'm not
considering her--I'm considering her husband; he is a parishioner of
mine, and I say this divorce must be stopped.”
Gregory retreated no longer.
“On what grounds?” he said again, trembling all over.
“I've no wish to enter into particulars,” said Mr. Barter, “but if you
force me to, I shall not hesitate.”
“I regret that I must,” answered Gregory.
“Without mentioning names, then, I say that she is not a fit person to
bring a suit for divorce!”
“You say that?” said Gregory. “You----”
He could not go on.
“You will not move me, Mr. Vigil,” said the Rector, with a grim little
smile. “I have my duty to do.”
Gregory recovered possession of himself with an effort.
“You have said that which no one but a clergyman could say with
impunity,” he said freezingly. “Be so good as to explain yourself.”
“My explanation,” said Mr. Barter, “is what I have seen with my own
eyes.”
He raised those eyes to Gregory. Their pupils were contracted to
pin-points, the light-grey irises around had a sort of swimming glitter,
and round these again the whites were injected with blood.
“If you must know, with my own eyes I've seen her in that very
conservatory over there kissing a man.”
Gregory threw up his hand.
“How dare you!” he whispered.
Again Mr. Barter's humorous under-lip shot out.
“I dare a good deal more than that, Mr. Vigil,” he said, “as you will
find; and I say this to you--stop this divorce, or I'll stop it myself!”
Gregory turned to the window. When he came back he was outwardly calm.
“You have been guilty of indelicacy,” he said. “Continue in your
delusion, think what you like, do what you like. The matter will go on.
Good-evening, sir.”
And turning on his heel, he left the room.
Mr. Barter stepped forward. The words, “You have been guilty of
indelicacy,” whirled round his brain till every blood vessel in his face
and neck was swollen to bursting, and with a hoarse sound like that of
an animal in pain he pursued Gregory to the door. It was shut in his
face. And since on taking Orders he had abandoned for ever the use of
bad language, he was very near an apoplectic fit. Suddenly he became
aware that Mrs. Pendyce was looking at him from the conservatory door.
Her face was painfully white, her eyebrows lifted, and before that look
Mr. Barter recovered a measure of self-possession.
“Is anything the matter, Mr. Barter?”
The Rector smiled grimly.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “I must ask you to excuse me, that's all.
I've a parish matter to attend to.”
When he found himself in the drive, the feeling of vertigo and
suffocation passed, but left him unrelieved. He had, in fact, happened
on one of those psychological moments which enable a man's true nature
to show itself. Accustomed to say of himself bluffly, “Yes, yes; I've
a hot temper, soon over,” he had never, owing to the autocracy of
his position, had a chance of knowing the tenacity of his soul. So
accustomed and so able for many years to vent displeasure at once, he
did not himself know the wealth of his old English spirit, did not know
of what an ugly grip he was capable. He did not even know it at this
minute, conscious only of a sort of black wonder at this monstrous
conduct to a man in his position, doing his simple duty. The more he
reflected, the more intolerable did it seem that a woman like this Mrs.
Bellew should have the impudence to invoke the law of the land in her
favour a woman who was no better than a common baggage--a woman he had
seen kissing George Pendyce. To have suggested to Mr. Barter that there
was something pathetic in this black wonder of his, pathetic in the
spectacle of his little soul delivering its little judgments, stumbling
its little way along with such blind certainty under the huge heavens,
amongst millions of organisms as important as itself, would have
astounded him; and with every step he took the blacker became his
wonder, the more fixed his determination to permit no such abuse of
morality, no such disregard of Hussell Barter.
“You have been guilty of indelicacy!” This indictment had a wriggling
sting, and lost no venom from the fact that he could in no wise have
perceived where the indelicacy of his conduct lay. But he did not try to
perceive it. Against himself, clergyman and gentleman, the monstrosity
of the charge was clear. This was a point of morality. He felt no anger
against George; it was the woman that excited his just wrath. For so
long he had been absolute among women, with the power, as it were, over
them of life and death. This was flat immorality! He had never approved
of her leaving her husband; he had never approved of her at all! He
turned his steps towards the Firs.
From above the hedges the sleepy cows looked down; a yaffle laughed a
field or two away; in the sycamores, which had come out before their
time, the bees hummed. Under the smile of the spring the innumerable
life of the fields went carelessly on around that square black figure
ploughing along the lane with head bent down under a wide-brimmed hat.
George Pendyce, in a fly drawn by an old grey horse, the only vehicle
that frequented the station at Worsted Skeynes, passed him in the lane,
and leaned back to avoid observation. He had not forgotten the tone of
the Rector's voice in the smoking-room on the night of the dance. George
was a man who could remember as well as another. In the corner of the
old fly, that rattled and smelled of stables and stale tobacco, he fixed
his moody eyes on the driver's back and the ears of the old grey horse,
and never stirred till they set him down at the hall door.
He went at once to his room, sending word that he had come for the
night. His mother heard the news with feelings of joy and dread, and
she dressed quickly for dinner, that she might see him the sooner.
The Squire came into her room just as she was going down. He had been
engaged all day at Sessions, and was in one of the moods of apprehension
as to the future which but seldom came over him.
“Why didn't you keep Vigil to dinner?” he said. “I could have given him
things for the night. I wanted to talk to him about insuring my life;
he knows, about that. There'll be a lot of money wanted, to pay my
death-duties. And if the Radicals get in I shouldn't be surprised if
they put them up fifty per cent.”
“I wanted to keep him,” said Mrs. Pendyce, “but he went away without
saying good-bye.”
“He's an odd fellow!”
For some moments Mr. Pendyce made reflections on this breach of manners.
He had a nice standard of conduct in all social affairs.
“I'm having trouble with that man Peacock again. He's the most
pig-headed---- What are you in such a hurry for, Margery?”
“George is here!”
“George? Well, I suppose he can wait till dinner. I have a lot of things
I want to tell you about. We had a case of arson to-day. Old Quarryman
was away, and I was in the chair. It was that fellow Woodford that we
convicted for poaching--a very gross case. And this is what he does when
he comes out. They tried to prove insanity. It's the rankest case of
revenge that ever came before me. We committed him, of course. He'll get
a swinging sentence. Of all dreadful crimes, arson is the most----”
Mr. Pendyce could find no word to characterise his opinion of this
offence, and drawing his breath between his teeth, passed into his
dressing-room. Mrs. Pendyce hastened quietly out, and went to her son's
room. She found George in his shirtsleeves, inserting the links of his
cuffs.
“Let me do that for you, my dear boy! How dreadfully they starch your
cuffs! It is so nice to do something for you sometimes!”
George answered her:
“Well, Mother, and how have you been?”
Over Mrs. Pendyce's face came a look half sorrowful, half arch, but
wholly pathetic. 'What! is it beginning already? Oh, don't put me away
from you!' she seemed to say.
“Very well, thank you, dear. And you?”
George did not meet her eyes.
“So-so,” he said. “I took rather a nasty knock over the 'City' last
week.”
“Is that a race?” asked Mrs. Pendyce.
And by some secret process she knew that he had hurried out that piece
of bad news to divert her attention from another subject, for George had
never been a “crybaby.”
She sat down on the edge of the sofa, and though the gong was about to
sound, incited him to dawdle and stay with her.
“And have you any other news, dear? It seems such an age since we've
seen you. I think I've told you all our budget in my letters. You know
there's going to be another event at the Rectory?”
“Another? I passed Barter on the way up. I thought he looked a bit
blue.”
A look of pain shot into Mrs. Pendyce's eyes.
“Oh, I'm afraid that couldn't have been the reason, dear.” And she
stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again. “If I'd known
you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp. Vic has had such dear
little puppies. Would you like one? They've all got that nice black
smudge round the eye.”
She was watching him as only a mother can watch-stealthily, minutely,
longingly, every little movement, every little change of his face, and
more than all, that fixed something behind which showed the abiding
temper and condition of his heart.
'.omething is making him unhappy,' she thought. 'He is changed since I
saw him last, and I can't get at it. I seem to be so far from him--so
far!'
And somehow she knew he had come down this evening because he was lonely
and unhappy, and instinct had made him turn to her.
But she knew that trying to get nearer would only make him put her
farther off, and she could not bear this, so she asked him nothing, and
bent all her strength on hiding from him the pain she felt.
She went downstairs with her arm in his, and leaned very heavily on it,
as though again trying to get close to him, and forget the feeling she
had had all that winter--the feeling of being barred away, the feeling
of secrecy and restraint.
Mr. Pendyce and the two girls were in the drawing-room.
“Well, George,” said the Squire dryly, “I'm glad you've come. How you
can stick in London at this time of year! Now you're down you'd better
stay a couple of days. I want to take you round the estate; you know
nothing about anything. I might die at any moment, for all you can tell.
Just make up your mind to stay.”
George gave him a moody look.
“Sorry,” he said; “I've got an engagement in town.”
Mr. Pendyce rose and stood with his back to the fire.
“That's it,” he said: “I ask you to do a simple thing for your own
good--and--you've got an engagement. It's always like that, and your
mother backs you up. Bee, go and play me something.”
The Squire could not bear being played to, but it was the only command
likely to be obeyed that came into his head.
The absence of guests made little difference to a ceremony esteemed at
Worsted Skeynes the crowning blessing of the day. The courses, however,
were limited to seven, and champagne was not drunk. The Squire drank
a glass or so of claret, for, as he said, “My dear old father took his
bottle of port every night of his life, and it never gave him a twinge.
If I were to go on at that rate it would kill me in a year.”
His daughters drank water. Mrs. Pendyce, cherishing a secret preference
for champagne, drank sparingly of a Spanish burgundy, procured for her
by Mr. Pendyce at a very reasonable price, and corked between meals with
a special cork. She offered it to George.
“Try some of my burgundy, dear; it's so nice.”
But George refused and asked for whisky-and-soda, glancing at the
butler, who brought it in a very yellow state.
Under the influence of dinner the Squire recovered equanimity, though he
still dwelt somewhat sadly on the future.
“You young fellows,” he said, with a friendly look at George, “are such
individualists. You make a business of enjoying yourselves. With your
piquet and your racing and your billiards and what not, you'll be used
up before you're fifty. You don't let your imaginations work. A green
old age ought to be your ideal, instead of which it seems to be a green
youth. Ha!” Mr. Pendyce looked at his daughters till they said:
“Oh, Father, how can you!”
Norah, who had the more character of the two, added:
“Isn't Father rather dreadful, Mother?”
But Mrs. Pendyce was looking at her son. She had longed so many evenings
to see him sitting there.
“We'll have a game of piquet to-night, George.”
George looked up and nodded with a glum smile.
On the thick, soft carpet round the table the butler and second footman
moved. The light of the wax candles fell lustrous and subdued on the
silver and fruit and flowers, on the girls' white necks, on George's
well-coloured face and glossy shirt-front, gleamed in the jewels on his
mother's long white fingers, showed off the Squire's erect and still
spruce figure; the air was languorously sweet with the perfume of
azaleas and narcissus bloom. Bee, with soft eyes, was thinking of young
Tharp, who to-day had told her that he loved her, and wondering if
father would object. Her mother was thinking of George, stealing timid
glances at his moody face. There was no sound save the tinkle of forks
and the voices of Norah and the Squire, talking of little things.
Outside, through the long opened windows, was the still, wide country;
the full moon, tinted apricot and figured like a coin, hung above the
cedar-trees, and by her light the whispering stretches of the silent
fields lay half enchanted, half asleep, and all beyond that little ring
of moonshine, unfathomed and unknown, was darkness--a great darkness
wrapping from their eyes the restless world.