VALERIA AND OWEN QUENTILLIAN

(i)

The ship swung slowly away from the side of the wharf. Several people

on board then said, “Well, we’re off at last!” to several other people

who had only been thinking of saying it.

Owen Quentillian remembered another, longer, sea-voyage taken by

himself at an early age. Far more clearly he remembered his arrival at

St. Gwenllian.

It was that which he wanted to recall, aware as he was of the necessity

for resuming a connection that had almost insensibly lapsed for several

years.

He deliberately let his mind travel backwards, visualizing himself, a

disconsolate, shivering morsel, being taken away from Papa and Mamma

at the very station itself, and put into an open pony-cart beside Miss

Lucilla Morchard.

The conversation between them, as far as he could recollect it, had run

upon strangely categorical lines.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Canon Morchard’s daughter. You can call me Lucilla.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m fifteen, but you shouldn’t ask grown-up persons their age.”

“Oh, are you a grown-up person?”

“Of course I am. My mother is dead, and I look after the house and the

children, and now I’m going to look after you as well.”

Lucilla had smiled very nicely as she said this.

“How many children are there?”

“Three, at home. My eldest brother is at school.”

“What are the names of the other ones?”

“Valeria and Flora and Adrian. Valeria and Flora are sometimes called

Val and Flossie.”

He had discovered afterwards that they were seldom called anything

else, except by their father.

“Why don’t Papa and Mamma come in this little carriage too?”

“Because there wouldn’t have been room. They will come in the brougham,

later on.”

“They won’t go back to India without saying good-bye first, will they?”

he asked wistfully.

He had known for a long time that Papa and Mamma were going back to

India and leaving him at St. Gwenllian.

“No, I promise you they won’t do that,” had said Lucilla seriously.

Owen had felt entirely that her word was one to be relied upon. Very

few grown-up persons gave him that feeling.

He remembered extraordinarily little about the house at St. Gwenllian.

It was large, and cold, and there were a good many pictures on the

walls, but the only two rooms of which he retained a mental photograph

were the schoolroom, and the Canon’s library.

He saw the latter room first.

Lucilla had taken him there at once.

He remembered the books against the wall--numbers and numbers of

books--and the big black writing table, with a small bowl of violets

next to a pile of papers, and above the writing-table a finely-carved

ivory figure, crucified upon a wooden cross, set in a long plaque of

pale-green velvet.

Lucilla had seemed to be disappointed because her father was out.

“He said he did so want to be here to welcome you himself, but he is

always very busy. Some one sent for him, I think.”

The youthful Owen Quentillian had cared less than nothing for the

non-appearance of his future host and tutor. The prospect of the

schoolroom tea had touched him more nearly.

But the schoolroom tea had turned out to be a sort of nightmare.

Even now, he could hardly smile at the recollection of that dreadful

meal.

Eventually Val and Flossie had resolved themselves into good-natured,

cheerful little girls, and Adrian into a slightly spoilt and rather

precocious little boy, addicted to remarks of the type hailed as

“wonderful” in the drawing-room and “affected humbug” in the schoolroom.

But on that first evening, Val and Flossie had been two monsters with

enormous eyes that stared disapprovingly, all the time, straight

at Owen Quentillian and nobody else. Adrian had been an utterly

incomprehensible, rather malignant little creature, who had asked

questions.

“Can you see colours for each day of the week?”

Quentillian wondered whether he had looked as much alarmed as he had

felt, in his utter bewilderment.

“_I_ think Monday is blue, and Tuesday light green, and Wednesday dark

green,” Adrian had then proclaimed, triumphantly, and casting his big

brown eyes about as though to make sure that his three sisters had

heard the enunciation of his strange creed.

“Adrian is not a bit like other little boys,” one of them had then

said, with calm pride.

Owen Quentillian, unconscious of irony, had ardently hoped that she

spoke truly.

Adrian had pinched him surreptitiously during tea, and had laughed in

a way that made Owen flush when they had asked him what India was like

and he had answered “I don’t know.”

He had thought the thick bread-and-butter nasty, and wondered if there

was never any cake. A vista of past teas, with sugared cakes from the

drawing-room, especially selected by himself, and brought to his own

little table on the back veranda by the Ayah, made him choke.

There had been a dreadful moment when he had snatched at the horrid mug

they had given him and held it before his face for a long, long time,

desperately pretending to drink, and not daring to show his face.

Lucilla, seated at the head of the table, had offered the others more

tea, but she had said nothing to the little strange boy, and he still

felt grateful to her.

The miserable, chaotic jumble that was all that his mind retained, of

interminable slices of bread-and-butter that tasted like sawdust, of

thick, ugly white china, of hostile or mocking gazes, of jokes and

allusions in which he had no share, all came to a sudden end when he

had given up any hope of ever being happy again so long as he lived.

Canon Morchard had come into the room.

And, magically, Val and Flossie had turned into quiet, insignificant

little girls, looking gently and trustfully at their father, and no

longer staring curiously at Owen Quentillian, and Adrian had become a

wide-eyed, guileless baby, and the thick bread-and-butter and the ugly

china no longer existed at all.

Only Lucilla had undergone no transformation.

She said “This is Owen Quentillian, Father,” in a matter-of-fact tone

of voice.

“I know, my child, I know.”

His hand, large and protecting, had grasped the boy’s hand, and after a

moment he stooped and put his lips gently to Owen’s forehead.

Quentillian remembered a presence of general benignity, a strangely

sweet smile that came, however, very rarely, a deep voice, and an

effect of commanding height and size.

Memory could not recapture any set form of words, but Quentillian

endeavoured, whimsically, to recast certain speeches which he felt to

be permeated with the spirit of the Canon.

“My dear little boy, I hope you may come to feel this as home. We

shall all of us endeavour to make it so. Lucilla here is my little

housekeeper--ask her for anything that you want. Valeria--my tomboy.

She and you will have some grand romps together. Flora is younger;

nearer your own age, perhaps. Flora plays the piano, and we hope that

she may show great feeling for Art, by and bye. Little Adrian, I am

sure, has already made friends with you. I call him the Little Friend

of all the World. There are some very quaint fancies under this brown

mop, but we shall make something out of them one of these days--one of

these days.”

Some such introduction there had certainly been. The Canon had been

nothing if not categorical, and Quentillian could fancifully surmise in

him a bewilderment not untinged with resentment had his Valeria one day

tired of being a tomboy, and elected to patronize the piano, or Flora

suddenly become imbued with a romping spirit, to the detriment of her

artistic propensities.

But the Canon’s children had always refrained from any _volte-face_

calculated to disconcert their parent. Quentillian was almost sure that

all of them, except Lucilla, had been afraid of him--even Adrian, on

whom his father had lavished a peculiar cherishing tenderness.

Quentillian could remember certain sharp, stern rebukes, called forth

by Valeria’s tendency to untimely giggles, or Flora’s infantile tears,

or his own occasional sulks and obstinacy under the new _régime_. But

he could only once remember Adrian in disgrace, and so abysmal had been

the catastrophe, that imagination was unneeded for recalling it clearly.

Adrian had told a lie.

Quentillian re-lived the terrible episode.

“Which of you children took a message for me from Radly yesterday? Not

you, Lucilla?”

“No, father.”

“Mrs. Radly died last night.” The Canon’s face was suffused. “She

asked for me all yesterday, and Radly actually left her in order to

find some way of sending me a message. I hear now that he met ‘one of

the St. Gwenllian children’ and sent an urgent summons which was never

delivered. _Which was never delivered!_ Good Heavens, children, think

of it! I was here, in our own home-circle, enjoying a pleasant evening

reading aloud, when that woman was dying there in the farm, craving

for the help and comfort that I, her shepherd and pastor, could and

_should_ have given her.”

He covered his face with his hand and groaned aloud.

“In all the years of my ministry,” he said slowly, “I have never had a

more bitter blow. And dealt me by one of my own household! Children,”

his voice boomed suddenly terrible, “which of you received Radly’s

message yesterday?”

Quentillian, in the retrospect, felt no surprise at the absence of any

competition in laying claim to the implied responsibility.

At last Lucilla said tentatively:

“Val? Flora?”

“I never saw Radly at all, yesterday, nor any other day,” said Val, her

brown eyes wide open and fixed straight upon her father.

Flora’s little, pretty face was pale and scared.

“It wasn’t me. No one ever gave me any message.”

Her voice trembled as though she feared to be disbelieved.

“Owen?” said the Canon sternly.

“No, sir.”

“Adrian?” his voice softened.

“No, father.”

The Canon hardly appeared to listen to Adrian’s answer. His hand was

on the little boy’s brown curls, in the fond, half-absent, gesture

habitual to him.

He faced the children, and his eye rested upon Owen Quentillian.

“If any one of you,” he said sternly and slowly, “has been betrayed

into telling me a lie, understand that it is not yet too late for full

confession. Selfish heedlessness cannot be judged by its terrible

consequences, and if I spoke too strongly just now, it was out of the

depths of my own grief and shame. The forgetfulness was bad--very

bad--but that I can forgive. A lie, I can _not_ forgive. It is not too

late.”

His face was white and terrible as he gazed with strained eyes at the

children.

Little Flora began to cry, and Lucilla put her arm round her.

“Understand me, children, denial is perfectly useless. I _know_ that

message was given to one of you, and that it was not delivered, and it

is simply a question of hours before I see Radly and obtain from him

the name of the child to whom the message was given. I accuse no one

of you, but I implore the culprit to speak out. Otherwise,” he hit the

table with his clenched fist, and it seemed as though lightning shot

from his blazing eyes, “otherwise I shall know that there dwells under

my roof a liar and a coward.”

Quentillian could hear still the scorn that rang in that deep, vibrant

voice, terrifying the children.

Not one of them spoke.

And the Canon had gone out of the room with anguish in his eyes.

The nursery court-martial that followed was held by Lucilla.

“Flossie, it couldn’t have been you, because you stayed in all

yesterday with your cold. Owen and Val were out in the afternoon?”

“We went to see the woman with the new twins,” said Val, indignantly.

“We never met anyone the whole way, did we, Owen?”

“No.”

Owen Quentillian had known all the time what was coming. He knew, with

the terrible, intimate knowledge of the nursery, that Adrian was the

only one of the Canon’s children who did not always speak the truth.

Apparently Lucilla, also, knew.

She said “Oh, Adrian,” in a troubled, imploring voice.

“I didn’t,” said Adrian, and burst into tears.

“I knew it was Adrian,” said little Flora. “I saw Radly coming up the

lane very fast, I saw him out of the night-nursery window, and I saw

Adrian, too. I knew it was Adrian, all the time.”

None of the children was surprised.

Adrian, confronted with their take-it-for-granted attitude, ceased his

mechanical denials.

The preoccupation of them all, was Canon Morchard.

“It’ll be less bad if you tell him yourself than if Radly does,” Owen

Quentillian pointed out.

“Of course, it makes it much worse having told him a lie,” Val said

crudely, “but perhaps he didn’t much notice what you said. I’m sure he

thought it was Owen, all the time.”

How much better if it had been Owen, if it had been any one of them,

save the Canon’s best-loved child, his youngest son!

“You must come and tell him at once,” Lucilla decreed--but not

hopefully.

“I can’t. You know what he said about a liar and a coward under his

roof.”

Adrian cried and shivered.

“He wasn’t angry the time I broke the clock,” said Flora. “He took me

on his knee and only just talked to me. I didn’t mind a bit.”

“But you hadn’t told a story,” said the inexorable Val.

They all knew that there lay the crux of the matter.

Quentillian could see the circle of scared, perplexed faces

still--Lucilla, troubled, but unastonished, keeping a vigilant hold

on Adrian all the time, Val, frankly horrified and full of outspoken

predictions of the direst description, Flossie in tears, stroking

and fondling Adrian’s hand with the tenderest compassion. He even

visualized the pale, squarely built, little flaxen-haired boy that had

been himself.

They could not persuade Adrian to confess.

At last Lucilla said: “If you don’t tell him, Adrian, then I shall.”

And so it had been, because Canon Morchard, re-entering the schoolroom,

had, with a penetration to which his children were accustomed,

instantly perceived the tears and the terror on Adrian’s face.

“What is it, little lad? Have you hurt yourself?”

The kind, unsuspicious concern in his voice, as he held out his hand!

Quentillian was certain that a pause had followed the enquiry--Adrian’s

opportunity, conceded by Lucilla, even while she knew, as they all did,

that he would take no advantage of it.

Then Lucilla had told.

Quentillian’s thoughts went off at a tangent, dwelling for the first

time, with a certain surprised admiration, upon Lucilla’s resolute,

almost matter-of-fact performance of her painful and alarming task.

Canon Morchard had been incredulous at first, and Lucilla had steadily

repeated, and reiterated again and again, the dreadful truth.

A black time had followed.

It assumed the proportions of a twelve-month, in the retrospect. Could

it have extended over a week? Strangely enough, Quentillian could not

recall the exact fate of Adrian, but he knew that the Canon first

fulminated words of wrath and scorn, and at last had actually broken

down, tears streaming down his furrowed face, and that the sight of

this unrestrained display of suffering had caused the boy Owen to creep

from the room, with the strange, sick feeling of one who had witnessed

an indecency.

All the children except Lucilla, who indeed scarcely counted as one of

them, had avoided Canon Morchard in the ensuing days. They had crept

about the house silently, and at meals no one spoke until the Canon had

left the room. Owen Quentillian, playing with a ball in the passage

and inadvertently bouncing it against the closed study door, had been

suddenly confronted by the Canon, and the look of grief and horror

fixed upon that handsome face had rendered any spoken rebuke for levity

unnecessary.

After all, they had left an impression, those Morchards, all of them,

Quentillian reflected.

Lucilla had been calm, matter-of-fact, competent--perhaps a little

inhuman. Val, impetuous, noisy, inclined to defiance, yet frankly

terrified of her father. Flossie--impossible to think of her as Flora,

unless the name was uttered in the Canon’s full, deep tones--surely

the prettiest of the three, gentler than Val, less self-assured than

Lucilla, timid only with her father. Adrian, of course, did not speak

the truth. His contemporaries had known it, although Canon Morchard had

not realized the little boy’s habitual weakness. But then he had never

realized that the children were afraid of him.

Why had they all been afraid of him?

Quentillian decided that it must have been because of his own

phenomenal rectitude, his high standard of honour, and above all and

especially, his deep, fundamental sense of religion.

Canon Morchard, undoubtedly, lived “in the presence of God.” Even the

little boy Owen had known that, and, thinking backwards, Quentillian

was convinced of it still.

He felt curious to see the Canon again. David Morchard had said to him

in Mesopotamia: “Go and see him. They’ve none of them forgotten you,

and they’ll be glad of first-hand news. I’ve only been home once in

five years.”

The shrug of his shoulders had seemed to Quentillian expressive.

But evidently David had judged his family correctly. The Canon had

written and invited his old pupil to stay with him.

“It will not only be joy untold to receive news of our dear lad,

David, but a real pleasure to us all to welcome you amongst us

once more. I have not forgotten my pupil of long-ago days, nor my

daughters their erstwhile playfellow. You will find all at home,

including Adrian. Dear fellow, I had hoped it was to be the Church

for him, but he has been so open, so anxious to decide the whole

important question _rightly_, that one can only leave the decision

to him in all confidence. I would not hurry him in any way, but his

brief Army days are over, thank God, and we have the untold pleasure

of having him with us now, so full of fun and high spirits, dear boy.

You, with your pre-war experience of Oxford, will perhaps be able to

talk things over with him and help him to a right and wise decision.

“You will remember my eldest daughter, Lucilla. She is still my right

hand, mothering the younger ones, and yet finding time for all sorts

of wider interests than those afforded by her secretarial work for

me. I think that you will agree with me that Lucilla’s intellectual

abilities, had she been less of a home-bird, must have made their

mark in the world.

“Valeria is still something of the madcap that perhaps you remember.

Her energy and enthusiasm keep us all in the best of spirits, even

though we are sometimes a little startled at the new ideas sprung

upon us. Both she and Flora worked valiantly during the terrible

war years, though I could spare neither of my darlings to leave home

for very long at a time. Valeria, however, was six months in France

at a Canteen, and I believe rendered really valuable service. Little

Flora, as I still call her, gives pleasure to us all with her music,

and our men in hospital were sharers in her gift as far as we could

manage it.”

Quentillian took up yet another sheet of notepaper covered with small,

legible writing. It came back to him with a sense of familiarity, that

the Canon had always been an expansive and prolific writer of letters.

“Make us a long visit, my dear boy. There are no near ones to claim

you, alas, and I should like you to remember that it was to us that

your dear father and mother first confided you when they left you

for what we then hoped was to be only a short term of years. God

saw otherwise, my dear lad, and called them unto Himself. _How_

incomprehensible are His ways, and how, through it all, one must feel

that mysterious certainty ‘_all_ things work together for good, to

those that love Him!’ Those words have been more present to me than

I can well tell you, during the years of storm and stress. David’s

long, weary time in Mesopotamia tried one high, but when Adrian, my

Benjamin, buckled on his armour and went forth, my heart _must_ have

failed me, but for that wonderful strength that seems to bear one up

in the day of tribulation. How often have I not said to myself: ‘He

hath given His angels charge over thee ... in their hands they shall

bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone!’

“Perhaps you will smile at this rambling letter of an almost-old

man, but I fancy that as one grows older, the need to bear testimony

becomes ever a stronger and more personal thing. His ways _are_ so

wonderful! It seems to me, for instance, a direct gift from His hand

that the Owen Quentillian to whom I gave his first Latin prose should

be returning to us once more, a distinguished young writer. I wonder

if we shall recognize you? I have so vivid a recollection of the

white hair and eyelashes that made the village boys call out, ‘Go it,

Snowball!’ as they watched your prowess on the football field!

“Well, dear fellow, I must close this. You have only to let us know

the day and hour of your arrival, and the warmest of welcomes awaits

you.

“I _must_ sign myself, in memory of old happy times,

“Yours ever affectionately,

“FENWICK MORCHARD.”

Quentillian, with great precision, folded the sheets together again.

“So Lucilla is a home-bird, Valeria is still something of a madcap,

Flora is still ‘little Flora,’ and Adrian is a dear lad who is anxious

to decide rightly about his future career.”

He wondered doubtfully whether he himself would come to endorse the

Canon’s opinion of the Canon’s progeny.

And what was the Canon himself, if labels were to be thus distributed?

The sensation of doubt in Quentillian’s mind was accentuated, but he

concluded his reflections by reminding himself, half tolerantly, and

half with a certain grimness, that the Canon was at least, according to

himself, Quentillian’s ever affectionate Fenwick Morchard.

(ii)

“This is like old times,” said Quentillian.

Lucilla Morchard smiled, shook hands with him, and made no answer, and

Quentillian immediately, and with annoyance, became conscious that the

occasion was not in the least like old times.

Apparently Miss Morchard did not accept _clichés_ uncritically.

Her face, indeed, expressed a spirit both critical and perceptive.

Quentillian could still trace the schoolgirl Lucilla in the

clearly-cut, unbeautiful oval, with the jaw slightly underhung, grey,

short-sighted eyes, and straight black brows. Her dark hair was folded

plainly beneath her purple straw hat, but he could discern that there

was all the old abundance of it. Her figure was tall and youthful, but

her face made her look fully her age. He surmised that Lucilla must be

thirty-five, now.

“This time, my father _is_ here to welcome you.”

She turned round, and Quentillian saw the Canon.

“Ah, dear fellow! Welcome--welcome you be, indeed!”

A hand grasped Quentillian’s hand, an arm was laid across his

shoulders, and the Canon’s full, hearty voice, very deep and musical,

rang in his ears.

Quentillian felt inadequate.

With all the acute self-consciousness of the modern, he was

perfectly aware that Canon Morchard’s warmth of feeling and ardour

of demonstration awoke in himself nothing but a slight, distinctly

unpleasant, sensation of gratitude, and a feeble fear of appearing as

unresponsive as he felt.

“I think it’s the same Owen Quentillian, isn’t it?”

The steady pressure of the Canon’s arm compelled his unwilling returned

prodigal to remain still, facing him, and submit to a scrutiny from

kind, narrowed eyes.

“Just the same. All is well--well, indeed.”

The Canon’s hand smote Quentillian gently between the shoulders, as

they walked down the platform.

“The trap is waiting, dear boy. They are eager for your arrival, at

home. I have my whole goodly company awaiting you, thank God--Lucilla

here, and my merry Valeria, and little Flora with her incurably shy

ways, and my Benjamin--the youngest of the flock--Adrian. You and

Adrian must have many talks, dear lad. I want just such a friend for

him as yourself--full of youth, and fun, and merriment, as he is

himself, and yet able to help him when it comes to facing the deeper

issues--the deeper issues. You young people must have many wise, deep

talks, together, such as youth loves. I remember my University days so

well and how ‘we tired the sun with talking’--aye, Owen, your father

and I were famous philosophers, once upon a time! How does that strike

you, eh?”

It struck Quentillian principally that his father’s contemporary

reminded him oddly of a book of late Victorian memoirs, but he did not

voice the impression aloud.

Instead, it was a relief to him to be able to make an obvious, and

yet perfectly sincere, comment upon the unchanged aspect of the old

red-brick house, standing well away from the small town.

“Valeria is our gardener,” said Canon Morchard. “You will be consulted

about various borders and the like, no doubt. But we have all of us an

interest in botany. You must remember that from the old days, eh? There

was a collecting craze, if I remember rightly, that led to a great deal

of friendly rivalry amongst you children.”

Quentillian’s recollection of the collecting craze differed so

drastically from that of the Canon, that he glanced involuntarily

at Lucilla. She met his eye calmly, but he fancied a little latent

hostility in her unconsciousness.

It rather served to confirm his impression of the extreme lack of

spontaneity that had characterized those bygone excursions into the

realms of Nature. They had been undertaken, at least by himself and

his ally and contemporary, Valeria, with one eye, as it were, upon the

Canon’s study window. Even Adrian, if Quentillian remembered rightly,

had relaxed the normal enthusiasm of boyhood in the pursuit of bird’s

eggs, after the wondrous eye for detail of the bird’s Creator had been

sufficiently often pointed out to him.

“Welcome home,” said the Canon happily. “You remember the old

garden? I seem to recollect some capital fun going on amongst the

old rhododendron bushes at hide-and-seek, eh? We play lawn-tennis,

nowadays. I see a sett is going on now. Who is here this afternoon,

Lucilla?”

“Captain Cuscaden is playing with Flora, and I suppose it’s Mr. Clover

in the far court.”

“To be sure. Clover is my excellent curate, who has been one of

ourselves for several years now. Sit ye down, young people, sit ye

down. Tea will be out here directly, and the players will no doubt come

for refreshment.”

The Canon settled himself with the deliberation of a heavily-built man,

and leant back in his wicker chair, with finger-tips joined together,

the breeze stirring the thick grey hair upon his temples.

It was a cameo-like head, with something of the ivory colouring of

a cameo, but the cameo’s blank orbs were replaced by deeply-set,

brilliant hazel eyes of which the flashing, ardent outlook recalled at

once the child and the fanatic. Innumerable fine lines were crossed and

recrossed at the corners of either socket, but the broad forehead was

singularly open and unlined.

Quentillian noted the feminine sweetness of the closed mouth,

contrasting with the masculine jut of the strong, prominent jaw. His

mind registered simultaneously the recollection of the Canon’s violent

and terrifying outbursts of anger, and his astonishing capabilities of

tenderness.

The latter expression was altogether predominant, as the tennis players

came to join the group under the cedars.

“Valeria--Flora--you need no introductions here, dear lad. Clover,

let me present my old pupil--one of whom you have very often heard

us speak--Owen Quentillian. This is my very good friend and helper.

And.... Ah, Captain Cuscaden--Mr. Quentillian.”

Quentillian fancied less enthusiasm in this last introduction, and it

seemed to him significant that no descriptive phrase followed the name.

Either Captain Cuscaden was not worth classifying, or he could not

satisfactorily be relegated into any class, and Quentillian suspected

that Canon Morchard would resent the latter state of affairs more than

the former.

At all events, Cuscaden was good-looking, of bold allure and sunburnt

face, revealing the most perfect of teeth in a pleasant smile.

Mr. Clover was sandy and pale and seemed to be talkative.

“I believe I should have known you anywhere,” Valeria Morchard told

Quentillian, frankly gazing at him. He was not sorry to have the

opportunity of gazing back as frankly at her.

As children, the handsome or unhandsome looks of Val, his inseparable

playmate, had naturally interested him not at all. He had vaguely

acquiesced in the universal nursery dictum that Flora, with her fair

curls and wide, innocent eyes, was pretty, but he now found her blond

slenderness insignificant in the extreme compared to Valeria, with

her tall and perfectly balanced figure, ripe-apricot bloom, and brown

laughing eyes. No longer a very young girl, she somehow combined the

poise of her twenty-seven years with a shy, semi-abruptness of diction

reminiscent of seventeen.

Quentillian thought her charming.

So, apparently, did the other men.

“And who bore off the palm of victory?”

Canon Morchard indicated the tennis court.

“We won, at five games all. A very good sett,” Clover replied. “My

partner’s service is almost invincible.”

Canon Morchard smiled.

“We think Valeria’s service is her strong point,” he explained to

Quentillian. “She was coached by our dear David, and David is no mean

player, I assure you. Little Flora needs to stand up to the ball

better--stand up to the ball better. Flora has the feminine tendency to

hit out too soon--eh, Flora? Our champion is Adrian, however. You and

he will have some great contests, I foresee.”

The more the Canon foresaw, the more did Quentillian’s own aspirations

turn in search of contrary directions. The only diversion of those

predicted by his host, of which he felt able to tolerate the thought,

was that of being consulted by Valeria upon the herbaceous borders.

“Clover, there, has a particularly good stroke on to the back line,

but you’ll get to know it. Have you played at all since you left the

’Varsity?”

“I got a good deal of tennis when I was home on leave in

nineteen-sixteen, but nothing after that, when I was in Mesopotamia.”

“Were you not in Flanders, dear boy?”

“In ’fifteen and ’sixteen,” said Quentillian briefly.

He wished to remember neither his two years on the Western front, nor

his many months in Hospital with shell-shock.

“Where did you and David meet, in Mesopotamia?” inquired Lucilla.

Quentillian had forgotten her presence, if not her existence, but he

felt grateful to her for sparing him the tentative category of his

soldiering capabilities which he suspected the Canon of having in

readiness.

He was not, however, given time to answer Lucilla’s question.

The Canon’s hand was uplifted.

“Ah, Lucilla my dear--please! My little talk with Owen there, is to

come later. There is so much that I want to hear about our David--much,

indeed. And you shall have your share of news about your brother, my

child, but wait--at least wait--until we have had our little private

talk together.”

Lucilla bent her head a little under the rebuke either in acquiescence

or to conceal some slight confusion; but Valeria blushed hotly and

unmistakably, and everyone looked constrained except the Canon, who

looked rather severe, rather grieved, and at the same time perfectly

serene. When he spoke again, it was with marked suavity.

“Tell us something of your literary work, dear fellow,” he requested

Quentillian. “I am ashamed to say that I have read nothing of yours, as

yet. My time is so little my own. Lucilla here is our literary critic.”

He placed his thin, beautiful hand, for a fleeting moment upon his

eldest daughter’s hand.

“Lucilla tells me that she knows your work. Critical essays, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Quentillian gravely acknowledged the truth of the assertion. His

self-consciousness rather enhanced than diminished in him a keen

appraisement, perhaps rather less detached than he would have liked it

to be, of his own literary value.

“I published a small volume of essays before the war, but since then

I have only been a very occasional contributor to one or two of the

reviews.”

“Ah, yes. You must let me see what you have done, some day. This is the

era of youth. Indeed, some of the things I see in print today strike

me as not only crude and immature, but absolutely mischievous--false,

foolish, shallow teaching from those who have never submitted to

be taught themselves. I am not afraid of that in your case, Owen.

But remember this, all you young people: Nothing can be of real

or lasting value that is not founded upon the broad principles of

Christianity--charity, self-sacrifice, humility, loving-kindness. One

feels that, more than ever, nowadays, when cynicism is so much in

fashion.”

The Canon leant back in his chair again with his eyes closed, as though

momentarily exhausted by the extraordinary passion with which he had

spoken.

So profoundly did Owen Quentillian disagree with his host, that he

remained absolutely silent. He reminded himself that since his majority

he had sought, voluntarily, only the companionship of those whose

views were at least as progressive as his own. He had almost forgotten

that those other, older, views existed, were held with a passion

of sincerity contrasting oddly with the cool, detached, carefully

impersonal logic that was the only attitude contemplated by himself

and his kind for the consideration of all problems of ethics, morals,

or of Life itself.

No doubt the Canon did not admit the normal evolution of the art of

self-sacrifice to be self-advertisement, and held the officious pelican

to be the best of birds.

Quentillian, horribly aware of his own priggishness, wanted to reform

the whole of the Canon’s philosophy at once.

Nevertheless he retained enough humour to hope that the preposterous

desire had not been apparent in his silence.

His eyes met those of Valeria Morchard, and read there amusement, and

something not unlike protest.

Lucilla, in her level voice, offered him tea.

“The cup that cheers,” said Mr. Clover in a nervous way.

The ineptitude roused in Quentillian a disproportionate sense of

irritation and renewed his old conviction that his nerves were not even

yet under his complete control.

As though the Canon, too, were mildly averse from such trivialities, he

began to speak again.

“What one feels in the cleverness of the day is the note of ugliness

that prevails. Do you not feel that? The sordid, the grotesque, the

painful--all, all sought out and dwelt upon. That, we are told, is the

new realism. We know, indeed, that there is a sad side to life, but is

it realism to dwell only upon one side of the picture? Surely, surely,

a sane optimism were the better outlook--the truer realism.”

“You don’t think, then, that the optimism of England is responsible for

her present plight, sir?”

Quentillian’s tone was one of respectful suggestion, but he was aware

that Val, beside him, had suddenly caught her breath as though at an

audacity, and that Flora and Mr. Clover were both gazing anxiously at

the Canon.

A flash of lightning shot from those ardent eyes straight into the

passionless irony of the younger man’s.

“But for England’s optimism, there would be no England today. It was

the spirit of optimism that won the war, Owen.”

A sick recollection of men, armed and disciplined, taking steady aim at

other men, standing against a wall to be shot for cowardice or treason,

of grey-faced commanders leading those who followed them into certain

death, all surged into Quentillian’s rebellious mind. They, the men who

had been there, had known better than to prate of optimism.

They had faced facts, had anticipated disaster, had envisaged the worst

possibilities, and their pessimism had won the war.

“Are you, too, bitten with the folly of the day?”

The Canon’s voice was gentle again, his arm once more laid across

Quentillian’s shoulders.

“Did I not hear something about shell-shock, dear fellow? We must have

no talk of the war here. Thank God for that He hath brought it to an

end. Tell me, dear lad, will you play tennis?”

Bewildered, almost affronted, Quentillian yet agreed to play tennis,

feeling himself more like a forward boy, being treated with

forbearance, than like a modern intellect illuminating the way of

thought for the older generation.

He played with Valeria as his partner, and found the Canon’s eulogy of

her service to be entirely justified.

He found an opportunity at the end of the game of expressing his

admiration for her play, and she replied, conventionally enough, that

she had a great deal of practice.

“There isn’t much else to do,” she added, with a slight grimace.

Under pretext of looking for a distant ball, they continued the

conversation.

“If you remember this place at all,” Val said, “you know how dull it

is. Just tennis in the summer, and horrible bazaars and jumble sales,

and never a new person or a new idea from year’s end to year’s end.”

“It sounds appalling. But, after all, you’re not bound, in the old,

antiquated way. You can go away.”

“No I can’t,” she said bluntly. “I did get to France, for six months,

during the war, but it was only _because_ it was the war. And even

then--oh, well, the sort of letters I got were enough to make me feel

that Father really hated my being there.”

Quentillian was genuinely aghast.

“But I thought that sort of attitude had gone out with all the other

Victorian traditions. I thought women did what they liked--were as free

as men.”

“That’s what it says in the books I read, and what some of the

girls I met in France told me. But it isn’t like that here. And

one _can’t_ hurt Father. You know what he’s like--so good, and so

sensitive, and--and so noble, somehow. He makes modern things seem

trivial--vulgar, even.”

“Your father is a reactionary,” said Quentillian kindly, rather as one

might say: “Your father is a Hottentot.”

“You mustn’t think that he just wants us to stay at home and arrange

the flowers,” Val said. “You know how he always wanted us to have

intellectual interests. Oh, Owen, don’t you remember the collections?”

She broke off, and blushed and laughed.

“It seems so very natural--I’ve so often thought of you as Owen.”

“That was very nice of you, Val,” said Quentillian calmly.

He had every intention of retaining his early privileges, where Val was

concerned.

“I should like to read some of the things you’ve written,” she said

abruptly. “Lucilla reads your articles, and has always admired them.”

It seemed to Quentillian so extremely natural that anybody who read

his articles should admire them, that he was conscious of receiving a

slight shock when Valeria added:

“I gather that Father wouldn’t like them at all. Lucilla always kept

them out of his way.”

“She is devoted to him, I can see that.”

“Yes, of course.”

Something in her voice made him look at her, and she exclaimed, half

laughing and half petulant: “We’re all devoted to him, Lucilla and

Flossie and I! I didn’t mean the least shadow of a criticism of _him_.

Only that it’s a little difficult, sometimes, to keep up to his level.”

It seemed to Quentillian so monstrous a state of affairs that the

Canon’s three daughters should have no worthier aim in life than the

one implied, that something of his feeling was reflected in his face,

and Valeria on the instant applied herself to looking for the missing

ball, found it, and returned to the tea-table and the group there.

The Canon was again speaking, this time to young Cuscaden.

“If it is to be Canada, I believe I could give you one or two

introductions that might be of service to you. The Government people,

for instance.... I have one or two very good friends amongst them. You

are really anxious to leave the Army and try colonization?”

“Quite determined to, sir.”

“Ah, you young fellows, you young fellows! It seems to me that there is

none of the spirit of stability that existed in our day! But perhaps

the wish to see further afield is a natural one. Certainly, my own

greatest regret is that I have had so little time for travelling.”

He turned to Lucilla.

“Your dearest mother and I had planned a visit to Italy the very year

that she was taken from us. Well, well! It was not to be. I shall never

see the Eternal City now, I imagine, except with the eyes of the mind.

Clover, you are amongst those who have seen Rome. Think of it! Seen

Rome, where Peter healed and Paul preached the Gospel, where Laurence

and Agnes and Cyprian and countless others were martyred! Tell us

something of the Coliseum.”

Mr. Clover did not give the effect of being an eloquent person, but he

had evidently been called upon before by the Canon, and he gave a not

unilluminating little description, punctuated, and indeed supplemented,

by Canon Morchard’s exhaustive comments.

Quentillian listened in a sort of amazement, not at all untinged by a

rather uncertain wonder as to how he should ever sustain his own part

in these ingenuous conversations....

The others, he saw, listened, with the possible exception of Lucilla,

whose eyes were fixed upon a distant flower-bed.

Captain Cuscaden kept his gaze upon Valeria, but he put in an

occasional question, generally upon a subject of architecture. Flora

played with a leaf and said nothing at all, and Val, unconsciously,

Quentillian felt sure, repeated everything her father said in more

colloquial English.

“It amazes me to realize that with a lack of all our modern appliances,

such veritable giants of architecture should yet have been raised,”

mused the Canon.

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful to think they had none of our machines and

things, and yet made those enormous statues and gates and things?” said

Val.

“Well for us, indeed, that they did so, my child. Every fresh

excavation proves to be a new link with the past.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Clover.

“Yes, all the new things they dig up seem to make a fresh link with

those old Roman days,” echoed Val faithfully.

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Clover.

“If any of you young people followed the accounts of the recent

Egyptian excavations--Valeria, I think you are our keenest

antiquarian--were you not struck by the extraordinary confirmation of

Scripture narrative afforded by each fresh discovery?”

This time Mr. Clover only said “Indeed?” and Valeria repeated:

“Yes, it all carried out the things one reads in the Bible, didn’t it?”

“We required no such confirmation, certainly, but it comes to one as a

fresh joy, and brings these things home with full force.”

And Mr. Clover, with what Quentillian perversely chose to regard as

misplaced ingenuity, once more found a variation of his formula, and

remarked, “Indeed, yes.”

On these lines they talked about Egypt.

Then they talked about Rome again.

Then they went back to Egypt.

Quentillian looked at the rebellious profile beneath Val’s shady hat,

and came to the conclusion that, whether she fully realized it or not,

she was as profoundly bored as himself.

It was Captain Cuscaden who released them from the strain, by rising to

take his leave.

“I’m sorry you have not seen Adrian. He will be disappointed to have

missed you,” Canon Morchard said courteously. “Another day, when Adrian

is at home, you must come over again. He is spending the afternoon

with friends at a distance, and will hardly be home before dinner-time.

You must come over again.”

“Thank you, sir. I should like to very much.”

Something in the Captain’s prompt reply convinced Quentillian that his

acceptance was not merely a conventional one.

“Your motor-bicycle is round by the hall door,” said Valeria, and she

and Captain Cuscaden left the garden together.

“And now, dear lad, you and I must have some talk together.”

Rather to Quentillian’s dismay, the firm and genial pronouncement of

his host seemed to have been anticipated. Lucilla could be discerned

bending over the distant flower-bed which had been the object of her

solicitation during the talk about Rome, and Flora had disappeared. Mr.

Clover now turned and hastened towards the house.

“You and I have had our heart-to-heart talks before now, Owen,” said

the Canon affectionately. “We must have many more of them, dear

fellow--many more.”

(iii)

The natural instinct of Quentillian, as of everybody else, was to

suppose that a heart-to-heart talk must necessarily be upon the subject

of himself.

He was therefore slightly disconcerted, though also undoubtedly

relieved, when he perceived that the Canon’s thoughts were only

preoccupied with his own two sons.

They disposed of David with a rapidity that was partly due to

Quentillian’s own determined uncommunicativeness, and partly to the

Canon’s evident anxiety to get on to the topic of Adrian.

“I wish David had been able to come home before returning to India,

but no doubt these things are ordered for us. He writes fondly and

affectionately, dear boy--fondly and affectionately. Not as often as I

could wish, perhaps, but the young are thoughtless. It costs so little

to send one line to those who are anxiously waiting and watching at

home! Well, well--it has been a great joy to hear that the dear fellow

is his own bright self. And his faith, Owen? Is all well there? Did he

say anything to you of that?”

“No, sir.”

The Canon sighed.

“Perhaps it was not to be expected. You of the present generation do

not discuss these things as we did. Even at Oxford, I am told, the men

no longer preoccupy themselves with such questions in the same way.”

“Some do, sir,” said Quentillian, beginning to feel rather sorry for

the Canon.

The Canon, however, received Quentillian’s consolatory effort very much

at its true worth.

“Some do, perhaps, as you say, but they are not those from whom any

very valuable contribution to the problems of the times is to be

expected. The tone of Oxford is not what it was, Owen--not what it was.

It lessens my disappointment at not sending Adrian there, to find an

Alma Mater indeed, as his father before him. One had always thought of

the Church for him, dear boy, but these things cannot be forced. His

soldiering seems to have put an end to any leanings that way. Adrian is

one reason, amongst many others, why I am glad to welcome you amongst

us, Owen. He may find it easier to discuss things with a contemporary,”

said the Canon wistfully. “Your own destiny, I imagine, is sealed?”

Quentillian assented, although he had thought of the very small

property recently inherited by himself in no such grandiloquent terms.

“When do you take possession of your kingdom?”

“In a few months, sir. The place was let during my uncle’s lifetime,

and there are repairs to be done before I go there. I intend to live

there, and try my hand at farming.”

He purposely omitted any mention of his writing.

“Good--good--excellent indeed. And we shall not be very distant

neighbours, eh?”

“Just the other side of the county, sir. I should like to go over there

from here, if you’re kind enough to put up with me for two or three

days.”

“By all means, of course--but let there be no talk of two or three

days, Owen, between you and me. Make this your headquarters; come and

go quite freely, as one of ourselves. We have always thought of you as

one of ourselves,” said the Canon warmly. “I think you have no very

close ties, this side of the Great Division?”

“Thank you very much indeed,” said Quentillian, feeling unable to

accept the Great Division even by implication, but sincerely grateful

for the Canon’s most genuine and spontaneous kindness.

“It’s more than good of you to receive me so kindly, and I shall be

only too glad to take you at your word.”

He wished that his self-consciousness had allowed him to make this

speech without a perfectly clear realization that he only did so

because the normal economy of expression habitual to him would have

left the elder man dissatisfied.

As it was, the Canon’s arm was, for the second time that day,

affectionately laid across Quentillian’s shoulders, and thus they paced

the garden and eventually entered the house, to the extreme relief of

the Canon’s unresponsive prop.

“Your room, dear Owen. Lucilla is my housekeeper. Ask her for anything

you want,” said the Canon, carrying Quentillian back to his ninth year,

and almost making him expect to hear next that Valeria was the Canon’s

tomboy.

No such inapposite piece of information followed, and Quentillian

expressed his pleasure at the very charming room in which he found

himself.

“Make it your own, dear lad, for as long as you will,” and, as though

irrepressibly, the Canon added as he closed the door: “Bless you.”

At dinner, Quentillian saw Adrian Morchard. He thought him very like

his sister Val, and also very like the little boy who had rehearsed

aloud colours for each day of the week.

Adrian spoke of Quentillian’s writings, said that he had read some of

them, and was instantly and silently disbelieved by the author. The

subject was not pursued.

In the drawing-room, later on in the evening, Flora played the piano,

and although Quentillian was no musician, he had sufficient knowledge

to understand that Flora was one. She played Bach, at the Canon’s

request, and Debussy at Adrian’s. The Canon admitted, with a slight,

grave smile, that he did not admire Debussy.

Valeria occupied herself with needlework, but Lucilla sat with her

hands folded until her father said gently:

“Are we to see none of your great tomes tonight, my dear?”

Lucilla rose, and her father explained to the guest:

“There are certain references for a small compilation that I may one

day attempt, which Lucilla is kindly looking out for me. You remember

her as a very scholarly little girl, no doubt.”

The nearest thing Quentillian could compass to this was a very distinct

remembrance of having listened to several of the novels of Sir Walter

Scott, read aloud by Lucilla, and the Canon looked very much pleased at

the reminiscence.

“We are not without our literary evenings now,” he declared. “There

have been some very pleasant readings and discussions round the lamp

on winter evenings. Lucilla provides me with some absorbing book, and

Valeria has her strip of embroidery there, and Flora is busy with her

pencil. I enjoy a pleasant evening of reading aloud.”

The present occasion was not, however, one of reading aloud;

nevertheless, Quentillian had none of the talk with Valeria that he had

half-hoped to have.

The Canon’s attitude towards his family circle was patriarchal. He sat

in an armchair and talked a great deal to Quentillian, and his eyes

rested with grave satisfaction upon his children, grouped round him.

They remained there until half-past nine, when the Canon read prayers

to the assembled household.

“We break up early,” he said afterwards to Quentillian. “Lucilla and

I have work to do--she is always my right hand. Valeria and Flora, I

believe, discuss mysterious questions of _chiffons_ upstairs. Don’t

prolong the conference too late, though, my dears. I heard voices last

night as I came upstairs, which was not as it should be--not as it

should be. Owen, dear boy, Adrian will look after you. Good-night to

you all.”

The Canon kissed Val and Flora each on the forehead and laid his hand

for an instant upon either head with a murmur that was evidently an

habitual nightly blessing.

Then he went into his study with Lucilla, and Adrian and Quentillian

sat in the smoking-room making desultory conversation that bore not

the slightest resemblance to the wise, deep talks of the Canon’s

forecastings.

The forecastings of the Canon, in fact, like those of many other

dominating personalities, were scrupulously carried out in his

presence, and thankfully allowed to lapse in his absence.

As of old, it was only Lucilla who was completely at ease in her

father’s company, and Quentillian presently came to the conclusion that

her silence, her unemotional acquiescences, denoted a mind that was

merely a reflection of his.

Flora, remote, gentle, preoccupied with her music, gave him the odd

illusion of being slightly withdrawn from them all.

Only in Valeria were to be discerned suppressed, but unmistakable,

flashes of rebellion, and with Valeria, Quentillian, as usual

scrutinizing his own impressions under a microscope, presently

suspected himself of falling quietly in love.

In common with most young men of his day, Quentillian considered

himself to have outlived passion. In effect, the absorbing episode of

his young manhood was in fact over, and Val, ingenuous and beautiful,

was provocative of the normal reaction.

One night she joined Adrian and Quentillian in the smoking-room, after

the Canon’s usual disappearance into his study.

With a look half-frightened and half-mischievous, she lit a cigarette.

Adrian laughed.

“Don’t look so guilty, Val. It isn’t a crime, and besides, no one will

know.”

Val coloured in a childish way, and said to Quentillian:

“My father knows that I smoke--at least, I think he knows, in a sort of

way. He doesn’t like it, and that’s why I don’t do it in front of him,”

she concluded naïvely.

“You’re wrong, Val,” said Adrian. “You and Flossie ought to assert

yourselves more. It would make it much easier for me, if you did.

Father’s ideas about women are so old-fashioned, one can’t introduce

him to any of one’s friends.”

Quentillian exchanged a glance with Valeria. It required small acumen

to translate the plurality of Adrian’s “friends” into the singular, and

the feminine singular at that.

“Father is very broad-minded,” said Valeria conscientiously. “He never

says that smoking is wrong; only that it’s unfeminine.”

“It isn’t anything of the sort,” Adrian declared with the most

astonishing violence. “Some people--girls--require it for their nerves.

It soothes them. It doesn’t make them in the least unfeminine. I met a

girl the other day--you’d have liked her awfully, Val--and she simply

smoked _perfectly_ naturally, the whole time, just like a man.”

“Who was she?” inquired Val smoothly.

“Let me see--what was her name now?”

This time Quentillian avoided Valeria’s eyes, positively abashed by the

extreme hollowness of Adrian’s pretence at forgetfulness.

“Oh, yes--Olga Duffle--Miss Olga Duffle. She is staying with the

Admastons--the people I was with the day you arrived, Owen. Don’t you

think you girls might ask them all over to tennis, one of these days?”

“I suppose so--yes, of course we will. Would Father like Miss Duffle?

He doesn’t much care for the Admastons, does he?”

“Absolute prejudice, my dear girl. You’ve got into a rut, all you

people down here--that’s what you’ve done. You’d like Olga most

awfully--everybody does. She’s the most popular girl in London, and not

a bit spoilt, although she’s an only child and her people adore her.

Mrs. Duffle told me herself that Olga was just like a ray of sunshine

at home.”

“What an original woman Mrs. Duffle must be,” murmured Val.

“I always think there must be something remarkable about any girl,

if her own nearest relations speak well of her,” Quentillian said in

detached accents.

Adrian looked suspiciously at his audience.

“You’d like Olga awfully,” he repeated rather pathetically. “And I can

tell you this, Val, she’d give you and Flossie no end of hints about

clothes and things. She dresses better than any girl I’ve ever seen.”

Valeria was roused to no display of enthusiasm by this culminating

claim of Miss Duffle on her regard.

“What sort of age is she?”

“She looks about eighteen, but I believe she’s twenty-four and a bit,”

said Adrian with some precision. “She plays tennis, too, rippingly.

You’d better ask the Admastons to bring her over, I can tell you. It

isn’t everyone who gets the chance of playing with a girl like that.”

“We might have a tennis party next week,” Val considered. “I shall only

ask one Admaston girl; we’ve too many girls as it is. One Admaston, and

this Olga person, and Lucilla and I--Flossie won’t play if anybody very

good is there. That’s four, and then you and Owen and Mr. Clover--and

we could have Captain Cuscaden. I’ll talk to Lucilla about it, if you

like, Adrian.”

“Oh, I don’t care about it. It’s for your own sake, really, that I

suggested it,” Adrian explained.

His forefinger carefully traced out the pattern stamped upon the

leather arm of his chair, and he contemplated it earnestly with his

head upon one side, even murmuring a sub-audible--“One--two--three--and

a corner”--before clearing his throat.

“H’m. No, my dear Val, don’t run away with the idea that I’m wildly

keen on this tennis stunt for my own amusement. In fact, I may say I’ve

been a bit off tennis lately, simply from seeing how extraordinarily

good some amateurs can be. It discourages one, in a way. But I thought

you girls might like to know Olga, I must say. She’d be an awfully nice

friend for you to have, you know.”

There was a pleading note discernible in the tone of Adrian’s

philanthropic suggestions that might have been partly accountable for

the tolerance with which his sister received them.

Nevertheless, she said to Quentillian next day, with a certain hint of

apology:

“We’ve spoilt Adrian, I’m afraid. You remember what a dear little boy

he was?”

Quentillian remembered better still what a tiresome little boy Adrian

had been, but this recollection, as so many others connected with the

house of Morchard, he did not insist upon.

“I suppose he must have his Olga if he wants to, but I hope she’s a

nice girl. You know how very particular Father is, and I think he’s

especially sensitive where Adrian is concerned.”

“It struck me that perhaps he was almost inclined to take Adrian’s

affairs too seriously,” Quentillian suggested, with great moderation.

“Adrian, after all, is very young, isn’t he, both in years and in

character, in spite of his soldiering?”

“I suppose he is. He’s very susceptible, too. I sometimes think that

Father doesn’t altogether make allowance for that.”

Even the very negative criticism implied was so contrary to the

spirit of the house that it gave Quentillian the agreeable illusion

of partnering Valeria in a mild domestic conspiracy, and pleased him

inordinately.

The sense of conspiracy was deepened on the day of the tennis party,

when a Miss Admaston, gawky and unimpressive, duly escorted Miss Olga

Duffle to St. Gwenllian.

She was less pretty, and possessed of more personality, than

Quentillian had expected. Very small and slight, her face was of the

squirrel type, her eyes very large and dark, her black _crêpe_ hair

brushed childishly away from her little round forehead, her nose

unmistakably _retroussé_. Two very white front teeth were just visible,

resting upon an habitually indrawn under-lip.

Quentillian, quite irrationally, immediately felt certain that she

spoke with a lisp. She did not, but she certainly pronounced the name

of Captain George Cuscaden, with whom she appeared to be upon intimate

terms, as though it were spelt “Dzorze.”

She also called Adrian by his first name, but gave no other startling

signs of modernity. Indeed, a very pretty, and most unmodern, deference

marked her manner towards Canon Morchard.

“Father likes her,” Valeria murmured to Quentillian, who was more

concerned with her charming air of imparting to him a secret than with

Miss Duffle’s conquest of the Canon.

It was only at tea-time that the Canon joined the tennis party.

Immediately afterwards he made courteous apologies and returned to the

house.

It was undeniable that the absence of the Canon caused the

conversation, which had circled uneasily round cathedral subjects, to

lapse into triviality. The super-critical Quentillian could not decide

which form of social intercourse he found least to his taste.

“Jam?” said Adrian.

The Canon had said, a few minutes earlier:

“You must try some of our strawberry jam, Miss Duffle. My daughter

Flora is responsible for it, I believe. Lucilla there is our

housekeeper, but I am given to understand that her younger sisters are

allowed to try experiments. I will not quote: _Fiat experimentum._”

“Jam?” repeated Adrian.

“Oh, there’s a wasp in the jam! Oh, save me!”

Olga laughed as she uttered little cries of alarm, and her laughter

really suggested the adjective “merry.”

“Save the women and children!”

There was much ineffectual slapping of teaspoons against the air, the

tablecloth, the jam pot, and many exclamations.

“Yonder he goes! Passed to you for necessary action, Miss Admaston!”

“Be a man, Cuscaden; he’s right under your nose.”

“Dzorze, do be careful--you’ll get stung!” Olga cried across the table.

Captain Cuscaden neatly captured the wasp beneath an empty plate.

“That’s got him. He’ll never lift up his head again.”

“Oh, then may I have my jam?”

Olga, with her head on one side, might have been imitating a little

girl, but Quentillian could not decide whether or no the imitation was

an unconscious one.

“The wasp has eaten all the jam,” Adrian rejoined in the same tone as

Olga’s.

“Oh! he hasn’t eaten all of it.”

“No, he hasn’t eaten it all.”

“Oh! the wasp didn’t eat all the jam, did he?”

“Not quite all.”

“There are still a few spoonfuls left that the wasp didn’t eat, Miss

Duffle.”

Neither Olga, Adrian, Captain Cuscaden, Flora nor Miss Admaston

appeared to regard themselves as being amongst the extremest examples

of brainless fatuity produced by a fatuous century. Yet thus it was

that Owen Quentillian was regarding them, whilst at the same time

another section of his brain passionlessly registered the conviction

that his nerves were still on edge and his tendency to irrational

irritability passing almost beyond his own control.

After tea he remained idly in a long chair beside Valeria, while they

watched Olga’s little nimble figure on the tennis court, where Adrian

was her partner. Lucilla played against them with George Cuscaden, and

Olga several times called out gaily: “Dzorze, I hate you!”

When Lucilla sent an unplayable stroke across the net, she only cried:

“Oh, well played!”

“I don’t like her voice, do you?” Val murmured confidentially.

“Hideous,” said Quentillian, briefly and candidly.

“I wonder if Adrian thinks he’s in earnest. Of course, I don’t suppose

she’d look at him. And of course he couldn’t think of marrying anybody

for ages. He’s too young, and he’d have to get a job.”

“He’ll have to do that anyway, won’t he? He says he doesn’t dislike the

idea of business, and I could give him an introduction to a man who

might be useful.”

“It’s very kind of you. I know Father wants to get him settled. Dear

Father, he was so disappointed that Adrian isn’t going into the Church

after all, and he’s taken it so beautifully.”

Quentillian regarded the Canon’s disappointment with so much more

astonishment than sympathy that he wished only to avoid a discussion on

the beauty of its manifestation.

“Curiously enough, I have a living in my gift, belonging to my very

small property at Stear. The old man there wishes to retire, and I want

to consult your father as to a new appointment. No one could be less

fitted than myself,” said Quentillian with an emphasis not altogether

devoid of satisfaction, “to nominate a candidate for that sort of

thing.”

Val looked at him with all her peculiar directness of gaze.

“Sometimes you talk as though you rather despised the Church,” she said

bluntly.

There was a pause.

“If I have given you such an impression, I must apologize. It was most

discourteous of me,” said Quentillian stiffly.

He was fully prepared to acknowledge and to defend his own purely

rationalistic views, but the implication of a lack of taste in his

behaviour as guest in an orthodox household offended him.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Val, calmly and gravely. “I know that a

great many very clever people are not believers in the sense that my

father is one, for instance; but they do respect the Christian ideal,

all the same. I only wondered whether you were one of them. Do you mind

my talking like this?”

The relentless voice of Quentillian’s inner monitor assured him that

he was, on the contrary, ready to welcome any intimate discussion of

himself and his views, on whatever subject.

Val looked at him expectantly.

“Where I differ from, for instance, your father, is in separating

Christian morality from what might be called the miraculous element of

Christianity. Frankly, I can’t accept the latter.”

“You don’t believe in the divinity of Christ?”

Her voice was a very much shocked one, and Quentillian replied only by

a gesture. Val kept silence, and presently he glanced at her face and

saw that tears stood in her eyes.

He was half touched and half impatient.

“Surely that point of view isn’t altogether a new one to you. You

must know that the trend of modern thought is all very much in that

direction.”

“I suppose I knew it, certainly. But it has never come very near me

before. Father has sheltered us from everything, in the most beautiful

way.”

She spoke very simply and sincerely.

The time-honoured _cliché_ as to never wishing to deprive anyone of his

or her faith--Valeria least of all--hung unspoken on his lips.

If the spiritual intimacy of which Owen Quentillian was beginning

to dream should come to pass between them, he was quite clearly and

definitely convinced that Valeria’s early beliefs must go.

“Have you really never felt any doubt at all--any inclination to

question?”

Valeria looked troubled.

“I suppose I’ve never thought it out very clearly. One doesn’t, you

know, brought up as we were.”

Her eyes were full of thought.

“Tell me,” said Quentillian gently, after a silence.

“I was hoping,” said Val, with innocent eyes turned full upon him,

“that Father would never know about you. It would make him so unhappy.”

(iv)

Val, in accordance with time-honoured tradition, nightly brushed out

her long brown hair in her sister Flora’s bedroom.

They talked desultorily.

“Choir practice tomorrow. I wish we could have Plain Chant instead of

those things....”

“Father doesn’t care for Plain Chant.”

“I know.”

“Give me a piece of ribbon, Flossie. I’ve lost all mine.”

“Val--here, will blue do?--Val, do you think Owen is falling in love

with you?”

“I don’t know. Well, to be honest, I think he is.”

“So do I.”

“That’s Lucilla going up to bed. How early they are tonight.”

They heard the Canon’s voice upon the stairs outside.

“Good-night to you, my dear daughter. May God have you in His keeping!”

Then came a gentle tap upon the bedroom door.

“Not _too_ prolonged a conference, little girls! I have sent Lucilla to

seek her bed.”

“Good-night, father,” they chorused.

“Good-night to you, my dear children. Good-night, and may God bless

you.”

“Father would be pleased.”

Flora reverted, unmistakably, to the topic of Owen Quentillian.

“I suppose so,” said Val doubtfully.

“But you know he would! He is delighted with Owen, and it would be so

close to us--only an hour’s journey. I think it would be very nice,

Val,” said Flora wistfully, “and it’s time one of us got married.

Lucilla won’t, now, and nobody ever asks me, so it had better be you.”

They both laughed.

“Nobody has ever asked _me_, except that curate we had before Mr.

Clover, and I always thought he was more or less weak-minded,” Valeria

remarked candidly.

“They may not have asked you, but they’ve wanted to,” said Flora

shrewdly. “Don’t answer if you’d rather not, but didn’t Captain

Cuscaden ever...?”

Val crimsoned suddenly.

“No. That was all nonsense. I believe he’s in love with that Olga girl.”

“After you? Oh, Val!”

“I don’t suppose it was ever me at all,” said Val with averted head.

“I can’t think why we’ve ever imagined such nonsense. Anyway, it’s all

over now, and I--I think I rather hate him, now.”

“Oh!” Flora’s tone was both highly dissatisfied and rather incredulous.

“One can’t hate a person and--and like them, at one and the same time,”

Valeria exclaimed, with all the vehemence of those who affirm that of

which they are not convinced.

“I suppose not. See if you can untie me, Val--I’ve got into a knot.”

There was silence, and then Valeria, without looking at her sister,

suddenly said:

“Sometimes I wish we’d been brought up more like other people, Flossie.

I know Father’s care for us has been beautiful--dear Father!--but

somehow the girls I was with in France seemed more alive, in a way.

They knew about things....”

“Isn’t that rather like Eve wanting the knowledge of good and

evil? Father always says that one should only seek the beautiful

side--‘whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are holy,’ like

St. Paul says.”

“Owen wouldn’t agree to that. He believes that one ought to know

everything, good and bad alike.”

“Perhaps it’s different for a man.”

“Perhaps. We don’t know much about men, after all, do we, Flossie?”

Flossie raised her eyebrows with an indescribable effect of fastidious

distaste, and closed her lips.

“I don’t think I want to, particularly. Father is the most wonderful

man that anyone could ever want to know, I should imagine.”

“Oh, yes,” said Valeria.

She was perfectly conscious of speaking anything but whole-heartedly.

She did indeed think her father wonderful, but she could not, like

Flora, feel herself to be forever satisfied by the contemplation of

parental wonderfulness.

“You’re different since you came back from France, Val. I think you’d

better marry Owen,” said Flora calmly.

“He hasn’t asked me, yet.”

There was a sound from the floor below.

“That was Father! He hates us to sit up late. I’d better go before he

comes up again. Good-night, Flossie.”

“Good-night.”

Flora looked at her sister, and once more murmured: “Father would like

it, you know,” half pleadingly and half as though in rebuke.

“Father doesn’t know everything about Owen. He has been very much

affected by the tone of the day, as Father calls it. His faith....”

“Oh, Val! Isn’t that one reason the more? You might do so much to help

him.”

Flora spoke with humourless and absolute earnestness.

“Valeria!”

The Canon’s voice, subdued but distinct, came to them from without.

“My dear, go to your room. This is not right. You are acting in

defiance of my known wishes, although, no doubt, thoughtlessly. Bid

your sister good-night and go.”

Val did not even wait to carry out the first half of the Canon’s

injunction. She caught up her brush and comb and left the room.

“Are my wishes so little to you, Valeria?” said her father, standing on

the stairs. “It costs so small an act of self-sacrifice to be faithful

in that which is least!”

“I’m sorry, Father. We both forgot the time.”

“Thoughtless Valeria! Are you always to be my madcap daughter?”

His tone was very fond, and he kissed her and blessed her once more.

Valeria went to her own room.

She sat upon the side of her bed and cried a little.

Everything seemed to be vaguely disappointing and unsatisfactory. What

if Owen Quentillian was in love with her? He was very clever, and Val

was tired of cleverness. Father was clever--even Flora, in her austere,

musical way, was clever. Val supposed grimly that she herself must be

clever, if imposed intellectual interests, a wide range of reading, a

habit of abstract discussion, could make her so. Nevertheless she was

guiltily conscious of desires within herself other than purely academic

ones.

Flora was right. Those six months in France had made her different.

She had worked in a canteen, where the preoccupation of everyone had

been the procuring and dispensing of primitive things--food, and drink,

and warmth. Women had worked with their hands for men who had been

fighting, and were going to fight again.

Valeria had been the quickest worker there, one of the most efficient.

The manual work, the close contact with material things, had satisfied

some craving within herself of which she had not before been actively

conscious.

She had learnt to cook and had become proficient with astonishing ease.

Scrambled eggs interested her more than herbaceous borders, more than

choir practises, more, to her own surprise and shame, than evening

readings-aloud at home.

The canteen jokes, elementary, beer-and-tobacco-flavoured, had amused

her whole-heartedly. She had laughed, foolishly and mirthfully, for

sheer enjoyment, knowing all the time that, judged by the criterion of

St. Gwenllian, the jests were pointless, the wit undeserving of the

name.

Very soon she had ceased to dwell upon any remembrance of the criterion

of St. Gwenllian. She had let herself go.

There had been brief, giggling intimacies with girls and young women

whom Valeria could certainly not visualize as intimates in her own

home, allusions and catchwords shared with the men or the orderlies,

childish, undignified escapades which she was aware that the Canon

would have regarded and apostrophised as vulgar. Those days now seemed

like a dream.

Even the girl with whom she had shared a room for six months no longer

wrote to her.

She, the bobbed-haired, twenty-two-year-old Pollie Gordon, had had

love-affairs. Valeria remembered certain confidences made by Pollie,

and still blushed. Pollie had been strangely outspoken, to Miss

Morchard’s way of thinking, but she had been interesting--revealing

even.

Valeria ruefully realized perfectly that Pollie Gordon, whether one’s

taste approved of her or not, had lived every moment of her short life

to the full. She was acutely aware of contrast.

“And I’m twenty-seven!” thought Val. “I’d better go and be a cook

somewhere. If only I could! Or marry Owen--supposing he asks me.

Anyway, one might have children.”

A humourous wonder crossed her mind as to her ability to cope with the

intelligent, eclectically-minded children that Owen Quentillian might

be expected to father.

“It’s a pity he isn’t poor. I believe I should be better as a poor

man’s wife, having to do everything for him, and for the babies, if

there were babies.... The Colonies, for instance....”

Although she was alone, Val coloured again and tears stood in her eyes.

“What a fool I am!”

It was this painfully sincere conviction that sent her to seek the

oblivion of sleep, rather than any recollection of the fidelity in

that which is least, enjoined upon her by her father.

For the next few days Valeria was zealous in gardening and tennis

playing. She also, on two occasions, fetched volumes of Lamartine and

asked her father to read aloud after dinner.

Her physical exertions sent her to bed tired out, and made her sleep

soundly.

It surprised her very much when Lucilla, who never made personal

remarks, said to her:

“Why don’t you go away for a time, Val? You don’t look well.”

“I’m perfectly all right. I only wish I had rather more to do,

sometimes.”

Valeria looked at her elder sister. She was less intimate with her

than with Flora. No one, in fact, was intimate with Lucilla. She spoke

seldom, and almost always impersonally. At least, one knew that she was

discreet....

Val, on impulse, spoke.

“Do you suppose--don’t be horrified, Lucilla--do you suppose Father

would ever think of letting me go away and work?”

Lucilla gave no sign of being horrified.

She appeared to weigh her answer before she replied.

“I don’t think it would occur to him, of his own accord.”

“Oh, no. But if one asked him? Would it make him dreadfully unhappy?”

“Yes,” said Lucilla matter-of-factly.

Valeria, disappointed and rather angry, shrugged her shoulders.

“Then, of course, that puts an end to the whole thing.”

Lucilla finished stamping a small pile of the Canon’s letters, laid

them on the table, and placed a paper-weight upon the heap before

turning round to face her sister.

“But why, Val?”

“Why what?”

“Why need it put an end to the whole thing? You know as well as I do

that it would make Father unhappy for any one of us to suggest leaving

home. But if you really mean to do it, you must make up your mind to

his being unhappy about it.”

“Lucilla!”

Lucilla did not elaborate her astounding theses, but her gaze,

sustained and level, met Valeria’s astonished eyes calmly.

“You don’t suppose I’m as hideously selfish as that, do you?”

“I don’t know what you are. But you’ve a right to your own life.”

“Not at anyone else’s expense.”

Lucilla began to stamp postcards.

“Lucilla, you didn’t mean that, did you?”

“Of course I did, Val.”

“That I should hurt _Father_, and go away just to satisfy my own

restlessness, knowing that he disapproved and was unhappy? I should

never know a moment’s peace again.”

“Well, if you feel like that, I suppose you won’t do it.”

“Wouldn’t you feel like that, in my place?”

“No, I shouldn’t; but that’s neither here nor there. It’s for you to

decide whether a practical consideration or a sentimental one weighs

most in your own particular case.”

“Sentimental?”

Val’s indignant tone gave the word its least agreeable meaning.

“It is a question of sentiment, isn’t it? Father likes to have you at

home, but he’s not dependent upon you in any way.”

“But wouldn’t he say that my place was at home--that it was only

restlessness and love of independence...?” Valeria stammered.

She suddenly felt very young beneath the remote, passionless gaze of

her sister. For the first time in her life she saw Lucilla as a human

being and not as an elder sister, and she was struck with Lucilla’s

strange effect of spiritual aloofness. It would be very easy to speak

freely to anyone so impersonal as Lucilla.

“It’s ever since I got back from France,” said Val suddenly. “I

don’t know what’s the matter with me, exactly, but I’ve ... wanted

things. I’ve wanted to work quite hard, at things like cooking, or

sweeping--and I’ve been sick of books, and music, and botany. I don’t

feel any of it is one scrap worth while. And, oh, Lucilla, it’s such

nonsense, because no one wants me to cook or sweep, so I’m just

‘seeking vocations to which I am not called,’ as Father always says.

Perhaps it’s just that I want change.”

Lucilla was silent.

“Do say what you think,” Val besought her with some impatience.

“I will if you like, but it isn’t really what I think, or what Father

thinks, that matters. It’s what you think yourself.”

Valeria stamped her foot.

“I don’t _know_ what I think.”

“Better go away,” Lucilla then said briefly.

“Work?”

“Yes, if that’s what you feel like. Of course, marriage would be

better.”

“Lucilla.”

“You asked me to say what I thought,” her sister pointed out.

“I suppose you mean Owen Quentillian,” Val said at last. “But even

if I did that--and he hasn’t asked me to, so far--it would only

mean just the same sort of thing, only in another house. There’d be

servants to do the real work, and a gardener to do the garden, and a

nurse for the babies, if there were babies. Owen talks about farming

Stear, but he’d do it all out of books, I feel certain. We should be

frightfully--frightfully civilized.”

“Owen _is_ frightfully civilized.”

“Well, I don’t think I am,” said Val contentiously.

“Lucilla, do you like Owen?”

“Yes. I’m very sorry for him, too.”

“Why?” Valeria could not believe that Owen would be in the least

grateful for Lucilla’s sorrow. It might even be difficult to induce him

to believe that anyone could be sufficiently officious to indulge in

such an emotion on his behalf.

“I think his shell-shock has affected him much more than he realizes,”

Lucilla said. “I think his nerves are on edge, very often. He’d be a

difficult person to live with, Val.”

Valeria remained thoughtful.

She knew that Lucilla’s judgments, if rarely put into words, were

extraordinarily clear-cut and definite, and as such they carried

conviction to her own intuitive, emotional impulses of like and dislike.

“Father likes Owen so much. Wouldn’t he be pleased if one ever did?”

Val said elliptically.

“Very pleased, I should think.”

“Of course, that isn’t really a reason for doing it.”

Lucilla apparently found the wisdom of her sister’s observation too

obvious for reply.

“Not the only reason, anyway.”

Lucilla’s silence was again an assent.

“Gossiping in the morning, my daughters?”

The Canon’s deep, pleasant voice preceded him as he paused outside the

open window.

“Is that as it should be? Lucilla, my dear love, at your desk again?

You look pale--you should be in the open air. Is not the day a glorious

one? When this world about us is so unutterably fair, does it not make

one think of ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered

into the heart of man to conceive, what things He hath prepared for

them that love him’?”

The Canon’s uplifted gaze was as joyful as it was earnest.

“Heaven seems very near, on such a day,” he said softly.

Val, always outspoken, and struggling with the unease of her own

discontent, joined him at the window and said wistfully:

“I can’t feel it like you do, Father. I wish I could.”

“Little Valeria! It will come, my dear; it will all come. These things

become more real and vivid to us as life goes on. So many of those I

love have gone to swell the ranks of the Church Triumphant, now--such

a goodly company of friends! How can I feel it to be a strange or

far-away country, when your mother awaits me there, and my own dear

father and mother, and such a host of friends? What a meeting that will

be, with no shadow of parting any more!”

Valeria was conscious of foolish, utterly unexplained tears, rising to

her throat at the tender, trustful voice in which her father spoke.

How she loved him! Never could she do anything that would hurt

or disappoint him. The resolution, impulsive and emotional, gave

her a certain sense of stability, welcome after all her chaotic

self-questionings and contradictory determinations.

“Will you give Owen and myself the pleasure of your company this

afternoon, Valeria? We meditate an expedition to Stear--an expedition

to Stear.”

She said that she would go with them.

None of the Canon’s children had ever refused an invitation to go out

with the Canon since the days when the Sunday afternoons of their

childhood had been marked by the recurrent honour of a walk with

Father. An honour and a pleasure, even if rather a breathless one,

and one that moreover was occasionally liable to end in shattering

disaster, as when Flora had been sent home in disgrace by herself for

the misguided sense of humour that had led her, aged five, to put out

her tongue at the curate. Or that other unforgettable episode when Val

herself, teased by the boys, had vigorously boxed Adrian’s ears.

She smiled as she recollected it, and wondered if Owen remembered too,

and yet there was a sort of disloyalty in recalling the affair too

closely.

The Canon had been so _very_ angry! His anger, as intense as it was

memorable, had been succeeded by such a prolonged period of the

blackest depression!

Val realized thankfully that it was a long time since any of them had

seen the Canon angry.

She turned aimlessly down the garden.

The Canon had already gone indoors. He was never other than occupied,

and Valeria had never seen him impatient of an interruption.

“The man who wants me is the man I want,” the Canon sometimes quoted,

with his wonderfully attractive smile.

“Father _is_ wonderful. _Never_ could I disappoint or grieve him,”

thought Val vehemently.

She suddenly wheeled round and returned to the open window, determined

that Lucilla, the astonishing Lucilla, should know of her resolution.

“You know what we were talking about just now?” she demanded abruptly.

Lucilla looked up.

“I’ve quite made up my mind that your advice was wrong,” said Val

firmly. “I know you said what you thought was best, and it’s nice of

you to want me to be independent, but, after all, one’s duty comes

first. I don’t believe it’s my duty to dash away from home and make

Father unhappy.”

Lucilla looked down again.

“Of course, if anything happened _of itself_ to make me leave home, it

would be quite different. If I married, or anything like that. But just

to go away for a purely selfish whim----”

She paused expressively.

“I couldn’t do it, you know.”

“Well--” Lucilla’s tone conceded, apparently, that Val had every right

to judge for herself. Further than that, it did not go.

“Lucilla, if you really think like that, about living one’s own life,

and I suppose from the aggravating way in which you won’t say anything,

that you do--why don’t you do it yourself?”

“But I haven’t any wish to,” said Lucilla, looking surprised.

“Haven’t you ever had any wish to?”

“Oh, yes, once. But not now.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Val pursued desperately. She felt as though she

was coming really to know her sister for the first time.

“I suppose because I thought, like you, that it wouldn’t do to leave

Father.”

“But you don’t think that any more?”

“No.”

“Did anyone advise you?”