out for oneself, after all.”
“Oh!” Val was conscious of her own perpetual craving for approval from
everyone, for any course that she might adopt.
“Did you ever ask anyone’s advice, Lucilla?”
“I don’t think so. If I did, it would be because I meant to take it,
and I can’t imagine wanting to let anyone else decide things for me.
Just talking about one’s own affairs isn’t taking advice, though people
like to call it so.”
“I think it’s a very good thing you’re not married,” said Val crossly.
“You’re too superior.”
“Perhaps that’s why no one has ever asked me,” said Miss Morchard with
calm.
Valeria, in spite of her momentary elevation of spirits in resolving
never to grieve her father, prepared for the visit to Stear in a
discontented frame of mind.
At the last moment Adrian suddenly announced a wish to accompany them.
“My dear! But of course--” The Canon’s pleasure was very evident.
“Owen, you will welcome this lad of mine as part of our little
excursion, eh? Why not make one of the old-time family parties? Why not
let us all go and explore this future home of Owen’s? It’s not very
often that I have a free afternoon nowadays--and to have all my dear
ones to make holiday with me would be indeed a rare joy.”
He looked round him expectantly.
“The caretaker won’t be able to manage tea for so many,” said Lucilla,
looking at Quentillian.
“There speaks my practical housekeeper!
For though on pleasure she was bent,
She had a frugal mind.
“Eh, Lucilla? Could you not contrive a basket for us, my dear, picnic
fashion? Come, come, let’s have an impromptu picnic. What say you,
young people?”
They said what the Canon wanted them to say. No one, Val felt, could
have done otherwise, in the face of his eagerness. She was partly
disappointed, and partly relieved. There had been a certain romance in
going with Owen to see Owen’s home, with the barely acknowledged wonder
whether it might not one day also be hers.
But there was no hint of romance in the solidly packed basket presently
produced by Lucilla, and reluctantly carried by Adrian, nor in Flora’s
tardiness that nearly caused them to miss the train, nor in her
Father’s gentle, humourously worded rebuke to her.
(v)
If Valeria was slightly discomposed by the tribal nature of the
expedition to Stear, Quentillian was seriously annoyed by it. He had
figured to himself a grave and gentle readjustment of values, when he
should see the place that he had known since boyhood transformed into a
setting for the figure of Valeria.
He did not suppose himself to be tempestuously in love, but he had made
up his mind that he greatly wished to marry Valeria.
A wistful uncertainty possessed him as to whether Valeria would wish to
marry him.
Stear looked forlorn and uninhabited, and the repairs were even less
advanced than Quentillian had expected them to be.
He reflected that he ought to be upon the spot, and shuddered
involuntarily, and to his disgust, at the lonely prospect.
Since his shell-shock, he had very often been afraid of his own
company, and the knowledge was peculiarly galling to him.
“Your lines have fallen to you in pleasant places, Owen,” said the
Canon genially.
“You are optimistic, sir,” said Quentillian rather dryly. “It will be
months before these men are out of the place.”
“You should move in yourself,” Lucilla suggested.
“I believe I should.”
“Thoughtless Lucilla! Why should Owen leave his present quarters, if
he is happy with us, as I trust he is? Aye, dear Owen, you are very
welcome at St. Gwenllian whilst your own nest is being prepared for
you.”
The Canon’s ready hand sought Quentillian’s arm.
Owen glanced at Lucilla half apologetically, but her gaze, impervious
to subtleties, and mildly cheerful, met his very readily.
“Please stay on with us, if you should care to.”
“Thank you,” said Quentillian non-committally.
Later, at the Canon’s suggestion, he took them to visit the church.
“You will one day have the responsibility of finding a new shepherd for
the flock here, I understand, Owen.”
“I shall hope for some advice from you, sir.”
“Aye, indeed? It’s a very good living, is it not? Though that is very
far from being the first consideration--very far, indeed.”
“What’s it worth?” Adrian inquired.
“I believe it’s considered worth about £700 a year.”
“A job for a married man,” said Adrian casually.
An involuntary flash of amused comprehension passed between Quentillian
and Valeria. He understood it to be in reference to this when she said
to him in a low voice on leaving the church:
“I don’t think Olga Duffle would make a clergyman’s wife, do you?”
“I should doubt it.”
“But Adrian couldn’t really be thinking of it.”
“I thought he’d decided against the Church.”
“So he has. I think it was one of the greatest disappointments Father
has ever had.”
“Your father would only have wished it if Adrian had wished it.”
“Oh, yes,” said Val emphatically. “Naturally, he looks upon it as a
question of vocation. Father is the last person to ignore that.”
She hesitated, and then said: “Owen, do you believe that everyone has a
vocation?”
The question, to him so oddly reminiscent of the perplexities of a
bygone age, nearly made him laugh, but his amusement was wholly tender.
“I don’t believe in a special vocation straight from Heaven for each
one of us,” he admitted. “You know, I never can believe that Heaven
takes that acute personal interest in individuals that religious people
always emphasize when they’re talking about themselves. But, of course,
there are certain lines of development----”
“I think,” Val said seriously, “that I should like to feel I had
a definite job in life, that no one but myself could do. I feel
so--indefinite.”
“I believe I might enlighten you on that subject,” Owen replied in
measured accents.
“I don’t mean Sales of Work or a botanical collection, Owen.”
“I know you don’t. The sales of work and the collections were never a
means of self-expression, were they?”
“They did stand for something, though.”
“For your wish to please somebody else?”
“The wish is still there, Owen.”
“Val, you know I think self-abnegation is all wrong.”
He was half laughing, but the flushed face that she turned towards him
was altogether earnest.
“Don’t think me arrogant, Val, but I do so wish I could make you see
it as I do. Don’t you see that the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice
was only the swing of the pendulum, from the brutal old days when men
rejoiced in seeing their fellow-creatures tortured and killed? Feelings
had to be developed, and so the Sermon on the Mount was preached. The
pendulum has swung too far the other way now--charity has come to mean
self-advertisement or sentimentality.”
Quentillian, deeply interested in his own exposition of views that were
by no means new to him, was brought up short by a call from behind him.
“Hi, Owen! Are you walking for a wager? I want to ask you something.”
Quentillian, not at all disposed to welcome Adrian and his
interrogations, was obliged to slacken his steps as Valeria did hers.
Adrian was swishing at the long grasses on either side of the road with
a slender length of ash.
“Look here, old man, have you got anybody in your eye for that living?”
Adrian’s head was studiously turned towards his depredations with the
ash-stick.
“Because if you haven’t--not that it matters to me, particularly, you
understand, but I’ve got a friend, who might be the man you want.”
“Who is he?”
“I should have to sound him first,” Adrian explained. “I suppose you’d
want a youngish fellow and--and I suppose you’d rather he was married?”
“Not in the least.”
Adrian looked disturbed.
“I thought a parson’s wife was useful in a large, straggling sort of
place like this. Not that it matters to me.”
“Is your friend married, Adrian?” Val enquired.
Quentillian could not decide whether the simplicity of her manner was
ironical or no.
“He isn’t married at present. I think he’s engaged. You see, a living
like this would justify a man in getting married, wouldn’t it?”
“It would depend on the sort of person he wished to marry.”
“Supposing she had a little money of her own?”
“The sort of girls who marry clergymen never do have money of their
own,” said Quentillian, firmly.
On this discouraging pronouncement, they were rejoined by the rest of
the party.
Nevertheless Valeria contrived to enquire of Quentillian, in a
disturbed murmur:
“What _can_ Adrian be thinking of?”
It was not at all difficult to guess what Adrian could be thinking of,
and became still less so as the days slipped by and his infatuation for
Miss Olga Duffle led to her inclusion in innumerable games of tennis
and impromptu tea-parties at St. Gwenllian.
“What can he _see_ in her?” Valeria demanded, after the fashion of
sisters.
Quentillian was unable to provide any adequate explanation of the
phenomenon, but he was fully prepared to discuss it, and prolong
thereby the sense of intimacy with Valeria.
It seemed to Quentillian that a new, slight, tinge of gravity shadowed
Valeria’s frankness.
With all the logic and consistency of most persons so situated,
Quentillian alternately viewed this as being hopeful or unhopeful, in
the extreme, for the fulfilment of his wishes.
He was slightly amused at finding himself in the extremely conventional
position in which he had so often viewed, with dispassionate distaste,
the spectacle presented by other men, and this amusement was not
without its share in determining him to submit his proposal to Valeria
in writing.
A tendency, real, or fancied by Quentillian’s self-consciousness, on
the parts of Flora and Adrian at least, to vacate any room in which
he and Valeria might be, upon excuses of a shadow-like transparency,
finally brought Quentillian to the point of leaving St. Gwenllian,
under promise of an early return.
“You must come back, to us, dear Owen--you must come back,” the Canon
repeated. “I want many a talk with you yet, and Adrian here will miss
the evening confabulations in the smoking-room--eh, Adrian? Stear will
hardly be ready for you yet awhile, to our advantage be it spoken, so
you must make your home with us in the meanwhile. Come and go quite
freely, dear lad.”
“Thank you very much.”
Quentillian felt that he had already said these words all too often,
and conscientiously sought to vary the formula.
“It’s been a delightful time altogether, and I’m more than grateful.
It’s been wonderful to get such a kind welcome after these years
abroad.”
“Ah, dear fellow!”
The Canon’s fine face softened as he laid his arm across the younger
man’s shoulders.
“Never doubt your welcome here, Owen,” he said.
Owen suspected significance in the words, and then derided himself.
Whatever his certainties as regarded the Canon, it was with Valeria
that Quentillian was concerned, and he could augur nothing from her
frank and cordial regret at his departure.
“I shall write to you, Val.”
“Yes, do. And I’ll tell you what happens with Adrian and that Olga.”
“I hope nothing will happen.”
“Oh, no--but it’s amusing.”
She did not look amused. Something of her ripe-apricot bloom had
faded, and there were shadows beneath her brown eyes. Before he left
St. Gwenllian, Owen said rather earnestly to Lucilla that he thought
Valeria looked tired.
“So do I.”
“Is she ill?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I should hate to think of her being ill.”
“I don’t think she’s ill, Owen.”
Lucilla evidently accepted his solicitude as a natural thing.
“I’ve always thought that Val needed a greater outlet for her energies
than she gets here. She’s very strong, really, and she did splendidly
in France when she was working so hard at her Canteen. I wish she could
go away and work again.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you think so yourself?”
“Perhaps--if she wished it very much. There are other things besides
work, though,” said Owen Quentillian.
“Well--” Lucilla’s favourite monosyllable held, as usual, a sound of
concession.
“Couldn’t one do anything for her--take care of her, somehow?”
“I will order a cup of beef-tea for her at eleven o’clock,” said
Lucilla with seriousness, but with amusement lurking in her eyes.
They parted upon a mutual smile of excellent understanding.
Quentillian thought that he liked Lucilla, with her impersonal calm,
and her unquestioning acceptances.
He wrote to Valeria from London, letters that he felt to be
self-conscious, and received uneloquent replies. He had left St.
Gwenllian a fortnight when he finally composed an epistle that left him
a little--a very little--less than profoundly dissatisfied with his own
powers of composition. He received her reply by return of post.
“Owen, dear, I’ve got your letter. I can’t answer it in the way I
should like to, making you understand everything that I mean. But do
understand first of all that your thinking of me like that makes me
very proud, and I wish I was more worth it all.
“I’m glad you loved someone else before, and thank you for telling
me. The reason I’m glad is because I used to like someone very
much myself once, but it wasn’t like yours, it was only my own
foolishness, and never came to anything. But I think perhaps it’s
prevented my falling really in love, because, dear Owen, I am not in
love with you. If I married you, it would be because you are, as you
say, very lonely, and because I am very, very fond of you, and also
perhaps, a little, because it would make Father so happy. But none of
those reasons are _the_ real, true reason for marrying, are they?
“We have known one another so long, and understand one another. Can’t
we discuss it honestly together, before settling anything? Either
way, we are always friends, so I will sign myself your friend.
“VALERIA MORCHARD.”
Quentillian read the letter with a strange mingling of disappointment,
relief, and mortification.
Nevertheless it was in all sincerity that he wrote to Val of his
admiration for her candour.
“You and I are moderns, my dear. Let us, as you wish, discuss the
future impersonally, but let me first of all say that when--or if--ever
you should come to the decision which I want you to come to, then so
far as I am concerned, philosophical discussion will go for nothing.
I shall wait for your sign, Val, and if it comes, there shall be no
more pen and ink between us, but a meeting for which I long with all my
heart.”
“Academic,” said Owen’s inner monitor, relentless as ever.
He posted his letter in spite of it.
It was with relief, and yet with a happiness less defined than he had
expected it to be, that Quentillian found himself engaged to Valeria.
He regretted his own absence of ardour, and was all the time aware of a
faint, lurking gratification at having so early outlived the illusions
of passionate emotion.
He returned to St. Gwenllian.
This time it was Valeria who met him. Something in the simplicity with
which she accepted their new relationship touched him profoundly, and
rendered of no account his own temperamental subtleties.
It was with a deepening sense of sincerity that Quentillian said to her:
“You have made me very happy, dearest.”
“I’m glad, Owen. I’m happy too.”
Her hand lay trustfully in his.
“They want to see you so much, at home, Owen. I’ve told them. They’re
all so pleased.”
It evidently added to Valeria’s content, that it should be so.
“You know that Father has always really looked upon you as another son,
even in the days when you and I got into trouble for playing at Greek
sacrificial processions with the guinea pigs on silver salvers.”
They laughed together at the recollection.
The Canon had not been hard upon the classically-minded delinquents.
Quentillian believed himself to have realized fully the adjuncts,
necessary and fitting in the eyes of the Morchard family, but to
himself distasteful in the extreme, of his engagement to Valeria.
He was prepared for conventional congratulations, for the abhorrent
necessity of discussing his personal affairs, for an emotional absence
of reticence that would differ as widely from his own impersonal,
dissecting-room outspokenness as would the Canon’s effusive periods
from Quentillian’s cultivated terseness of expression.
Nevertheless, he was less well-armoured, or more severely tried, than
he had expected to be.
Canon Morchard seemed to shower welcome, blessings, congratulations
upon him. He said:
“Dear lad, you and I must have a long talk together, at no distant
date.”
They had many.
It seemed to Quentillian that he saw more of the Canon than of Valeria,
in the days that ensued.
“Val, when will you marry me? I’m quite selfish enough to want you
to myself,” Quentillian said to her with firmness after a week at St.
Gwenllian that seemed to him to have been mainly differentiated from
his last visit there by the increased number of one-sided talks with
the Canon to which he had been subjected.
Val said tentatively: “The end of January?”
“Why not before Christmas? Stear should be quite ready for us by then.”
It relieved him with a strange intensity to know that he would not,
after all, go alone to Stear.
Valeria looked at him, and although her voice when she spoke was
serious, a certain mischievous amusement lurked in her eyes.
“Before Christmas, it’s Advent,” she said.
“Advent?”
“I don’t think Father would like my wedding to be during Advent, at
all.”
“I see.”
“Oh, don’t be vexed, Owen. It’s only a month’s difference after all.”
“It isn’t that,” began Quentillian candidly, and then shared in her
slight, unoffended laughter at his lack of gallantry.
“I only mean, my dear, that I don’t like to see you bound by that sort
of convention. Do you really think it can make any difference if we’re
married on one particular date rather than another?”
“I’m thinking entirely of Father,” gently said Val, thus altogether
evading the real point at issue.
Quentillian was again and again made aware of this capacity in Val for
the avoidance of any discussion between them on the subject of religion.
It was as though the faint rebellion that he had discerned in her at
her own way of life had been extinguished by the mere prospect of its
coming to an end. Nor, when he finally forced an issue, did Val appear
to possess his own capacities for impartial, essentially impersonal,
discussion.
“Can’t we leave it alone, Owen? You told me what your views were--and
you know what mine are. We’ve been honest with one another--isn’t that
all that matters?”
“In a sense, of course it is. You don’t think that perhaps it’s a
pity to know there’s one subject we must tacitly avoid--that we can’t
discuss freely?”
He spoke without emphasis of any kind.
“It _is_ a pity, of course,” said Val literally. “But how can we help
it? I can hardly listen to you without disloyalty of the worst kind.
If you look at it from my point of view for a moment, you do see that,
don’t you, Owen?”
“Yes, I suppose I do see that,” he said heavily.
He felt strangely disappointed and disillusioned.
“Do you wish me to say anything to your father about that?”
Val blushed deeply, but spoke quite resolutely.
“No, I don’t. I’ve thought it over, and I can’t see that it concerns
anyone but you and me. Lucilla says so, too. I asked her what she
thought. It’s not as though I were eighteen, and it’s not as though I
didn’t trust you, absolutely, not to interfere with my beliefs, any
more than I with your--unbeliefs.”
Confronted with her grave trustfulness, no less than with the obvious
justice of her words, Quentillian could only agree with her.
His rather arrogant conviction of earlier days, that Val’s beliefs must
go, gave place to an unescapable certainty that they would not even
be modified. Rather would Valeria, enforced by tradition and by the
inherited faith that was in her, expect with the course of years to
influence her husband’s views.
Owen felt strongly the hopelessness of such expectation, and still more
strongly the inexpediency, not to say the impossibility, of urging that
hopelessness upon Valeria.
It was decided that the wedding should take place in January, and the
engagement be made public just before Christmas.
“You do not want to let the world in upon your joy too soon, young
people,” the Canon told them with a grave smile.
Val’s answering smile acquiesced in the assumption, as indeed the
smiles and silences, no less than the spoken words, of his entire
family were always apt to acquiesce in any assumption made by Canon
Morchard, whether the facts warranted such acquiescence or not.
The days slipped by, very much as they had slipped by before
Quentillian and Valeria had become engaged. If Quentillian had expected
a greater difference, a more profound element, he was destined to be
disappointed.
Val was charming and--he would not have to face loneliness at Stear.
Indeed at one moment, it almost appeared as though Valeria would not
be alone in accomplishing the destruction of the spirit of solitude at
Stear.
Adrian Morchard sought his prospective brother-in-law, and said, with
singularly ill-chosen colloquialism:
“Tell me, old thing, have you had any talk with the governor about that
living at Stear?”
“Not yet. The present incumbent hasn’t even resigned.”
“I suppose--ha-ha--you’ll laugh--in fact I shouldn’t be surprised if
you thought it dashed funny--it makes me smile myself, in a way--you’ll
_roar_ when I tell you what I’m thinking of.”
Quentillian felt as melancholy as do the majority of people thus
apostrophised, and was aware that his melancholy was reflected on his
face in a forbidding expression.
Adrian had turned rather pale.
“You know the old man’s always been desperately keen on my going into
the Church? Well--I say, you can laugh as much as you want to, I shan’t
be offended--I’m not at all sure I shan’t do it.”
Quentillian felt no inclination whatever to indulge in the prescribed
orgy of merriment.
“You coming into the family like this, with a good living going
begging, makes it a pretty obvious move in a way, doesn’t it--and then
it’d please the old man frightfully--and really there are precious few
openings for a man who hasn’t been brought up to anything special,
nowadays.”
“Yes. And what is the real reason?”
Adrian laughed uncomfortably.
“Sherlock Holmes! Well, between ourselves, I don’t mind telling you
that I want to see some prospect of being able to marry, and if I had a
definite thing in view, like Stear, I might be able to bring it off.”
“You can’t be ordained in five minutes. Don’t be absurd.”
“I’ve got to wait, anyhow,” said Adrian gloomily. “She won’t even be
engaged, yet. I thought I might as well fill in the time at Cambridge
or somewhere, if it’s going to lead to something. I’m quite willing to
wait if I must, and of course I shall never change.”
“It’s Miss Duffle, I suppose. I can’t say I should have thought she’d
enjoy the life of a country parson’s wife.”
“You haven’t the least idea of what she’s really like.”
“Perhaps not.” Owen’s voice implied the contrary. “What about yourself?
Do you really suppose you could stand it?”
“Of course I could, if it meant _her_. My dear fellow, my mind’s
_absolutely_ made up, I may tell you, and has been for--for days.
But, of course,” he added ingenuously, “it does depend a good deal on
whether you’ll promise me Stear or not at the end of it all.”
“What about your father?”
“Oh, he’ll jump at it, of course. It’s been the one wish of his heart,
all along,” said Adrian easily.
Quentillian wondered how it was possible that any youth, brought
up in the intellectual atmosphere of St. Gwenllian, could be so
entirely devoid of insight. To his own way of thinking, it was utterly
incredible that Canon Morchard, ardent Christian and idealist, should
contemplate with any degree of equanimity, his son’s proposed flippant
adoption of a vocation which he regarded as sacred.
Owen committed himself to no promises.
“I should like to talk it over with Val.”
“I suppose if you must you must,” said Adrian, grudgingly. “But don’t
let her tell anyone else.”
Valeria’s views were not far removed from Quentillian’s own.
It sometimes, indeed, seemed to Owen that the identity of their points
of view on every other subject only rendered more evident the deep gulf
dividing them on the topic that Valeria had decreed should be a barred
one--that of religion.
Spoken, their very difference might have brought them closer together.
Unspoken, it seemed to Owen to pervade all their intercourse since
their engagement as it had never done before.
(vi)
Valeria had been engaged for nearly a month when she wrote a letter.
“DEAR CAPTAIN CUSCADEN,
“I thought I would like to tell you myself that I am engaged to be
married. It is to Owen Quentillian, whom I have known all my life,
almost, and we hope to be married in January.
“I hope you will have very good luck in Canada, and that you will
sometimes let us know how you get on. We are expecting you on
Saturday, to come and say good-bye.
“Yours sincerely,
“VALERIA MORCHARD.”
Val spent a long while over the composition of her brief letter,
re-read it a great number of times, and finally tore it up very
carefully into small pieces.
“What’s the use?” she said.
Captain Cuscaden, however, did not seem to have been dependent upon
Valeria for news of Valeria’s engagement. He congratulated her formally
on the Saturday afternoon when he came to pay his farewell visit to St.
Gwenllian.
Olga Duffle was there, too, and Miss Admaston.
“No more tennis this year. It’s going to rain again,” said Flora.
“Here it comes,” Mr. Clover pointed out.
“It may clear up later--let’s have tea.”
After tea the rain was still falling heavily.
“How are all you young folks going to amuse yourselves?” genially
enquired the Canon. “Lucilla, can you not organize some of our old
_jeux d’esprit_, with pencil and paper?”
There was an inarticulate protest from the Captain, to which no one
paid any attention except Valeria, who heard it, and Olga, who replied
to it: “I’ll help you, Dzorze, if you’re very good.”
Mr. Clover was zealous in finding paper and pencils.
“I can’t resist this,” said the Canon boyishly. “I must give some of my
old favourites a turn before going to more serious affairs. Now what is
it to be?”
No one appeared to be very ready with suggestions. Captain Cuscaden
was gloomily gazing out of the window. Olga and Adrian were talking in
undertones, and Miss Admaston was telling Quentillian how very much
she dreaded and disliked any games that required the use of brains.
“Are we all ready?” said Mr. Clover joyously.
“I suppose we’re as ready as we ever shall be,” said Captain Cuscaden.
Thus encouraged, they began.
Canon Morchard, Lucilla, and Owen Quentillian outmatched the rest
of the players with ease. Each seemed to think with promptitude of
great men whose names started with A, battles that began with M, or
quotations--English--of which the initial letter was W.
They challenged one another’s references, and verified one another’s
dates. They capped quotations, and they provided original _bouts rimés_.
The entertainment gradually resolved itself into one animated trio,
with a faithful but halting chorus, in the persons of Mr. Clover and
Flora, and a rapid and low-toned aside between Adrian and Miss Duffle.
Captain Cuscaden played a listless game of noughts and crosses with
Miss Admaston, and Valeria leant back in her chair and ceased to
pretend that she was occupied.
She looked at the sapphire and diamond ring on her finger, and thought
about Owen’s cleverness. She remembered that Lucilla had said he would
be a difficult person to live with. She remembered her own secret
desires for a life of work, and her assurance to herself that such
ambitions were out of place. She reminded herself that her father
had been, in his own parlance, glad beyond words to welcome Owen
Quentillian as a son. And she looked at Owen himself, and saw him
intent, over his little slips of paper, and a sudden rush of tenderness
came over her. His absorption in the game seemed to make him younger,
and in more need of her. She could remember Owen as a flaxen-haired,
solemn, rather priggish little boy, and she suddenly felt that perhaps
he had not changed a very great deal since those days, after all.
Val felt happier, in a subdued and wistful way. She woke to the
realization that the games were ended.
The Canon had arisen.
“Look up that derivation, Clover, dear man, and let me have it. I
shall be curious.... Fare ye well, young people, I recommend Lucilla
here as a veritable dictionary of dates, if you wish to continue your
amusement.”
Nothing could have been more evident, the moment the Canon had left
the room, than that no one wished to pursue amusement on the lines
indicated.
Even Mr. Clover joined in the general movement that thankfully
relinquished paper and pencil, and sent everyone to the piano, flung
open by Olga Duffle.
“Do play something,” Adrian pleaded.
“Oh, not me. Make your sister play. She plays so much better than I do.”
It was indubitably true that Flora played a great deal better than did
Olga, yet nobody seemed to want Flora to play the piano, and Olga,
even as she protested, slipped on to the music stool and ran her small
fingers over the keys.
“I say, how well you do everything!” Adrian murmured ecstatically above
her.
She looked up at him and smiled, showing all her little pointed teeth.
They clustered round her.
“Do you know ‘Oh, Kiss Me and I’ll Never Tell,’ that comes in that
revue--I forget it’s name--the new one? It’s lovely.”
To the perceptions of Valeria Morchard, trained in the eclectic school
of the Canon’s taste, the musical inspiration in question was not
only undeserving of being called lovely, but was vulgar to the point
of blatancy, ringing through the St. Gwenllian drawing-room in Olga’s
little, high, soprano voice.
She was not at all surprised that Owen should look at her through his
_pince-nez_ with eyebrows expressively elevated, nor that Mr. Clover,
presumably in a futile endeavour to spare the Canon’s ears, should
unobtrusively go and shut the door.
Val looked at Lucilla.
There was something not at all unlike amusement on Miss Morchard’s
face, but Val did not think that it was caused by the humour of “Oh,
Kiss Me and I’ll Never Tell.” Rather it might have been born of a
gentle irony, embracing alike the puzzled distaste of Flora, the
obvious terror of the curate lest he should be supposed to be enjoying
the entertainment, the absorption with which Captain Cuscaden, Adrian,
and even Miss Admaston stood and listened, the supercilious detachment
of Owen Quentillian, the complacent unconsciousness of the small, pert
singer at the piano. No doubt Lucilla could have detected, had she
cared to do so, the unspecified emotions that Val suspected of being
written upon her own unsmiling face.
She felt suddenly impatient.
“We’re all intolerable. Lucilla is superior, and Flossie takes this
rubbish _au grand serieux_, like a crime, and Owen is thinking how
deplorable it is that idiotic words should be set to inferior music,
and put before the British public for its education.... I can hear
exactly what he’ll say about it afterwards.”
It struck her that the anticipation scarcely boded well for a life that
was in future to be spent in Quentillian’s company.
“My dusky gal is black as coal
“But she’s just the whitest, brightest soul.”
carolled Olga.
“I love the darky girls, don’t you?”
“Rather.”
“Why does the English youth of today seek artistic inspiration from
the uncivilized population of Central Africa, I wonder?” said Owen
Quentillian. He addressed himself to Lucilla, but his very distinct
utterance was perfectly audible to everybody else.
Captain Cuscaden laughed, and Olga looked round with perfect good
humour. It was Adrian who glared at Quentillian, and Mr. Clover who
observed reproachfully:
“I’m sure those old plantation songs are charming, _as_ Miss Olga
renders them.”
“You shouldn’t be so superior, Owen,” said Lucilla tranquilly.
It was what Val had been thinking, but she had found herself quite
unable to say it, from the very intensity of her feeling.
Lucilla placed an old album on the music stand, and they all began to
sing together “Comin’ through the Rye.”
The music affected Valeria almost intolerably.
All the Morchards had good voices, and both Flora and Lucilla sang
well. Their true, deep voices gradually dominated Olga’s high pipe,
and the four men sank to a mere murmur of accompaniment. Miss Admaston
had never done more than crane over everybody’s shoulder in turn in an
endeavour to see the page at close quarters, and murmur the last words
of a verse in an undertone when everyone else was singing the first
line of the refrain. She was now altogether silent.
“Sing the Russian songs, Flora,” said Quentillian.
Valeria pressed her hands closer together, and leant against the wall.
It was growing dark.
The air of the Russian song that Flora chose was wild and sweet.
“You are my darling, you are my soul
Light of my life, my sun, my goal ...
You are my being, my delight
Star of my darkest night.”
Direct, primitive worship of one man for one woman: Flora’s voice held
all the passion that was not in her, save at her music.
The ache at Val’s heart seemed to her physical in its intensity.
She knew what she wanted, now, and she knew that Owen Quentillian would
not give it her.
To her own horror, a rush of tears blinded her.
“But all is well for thou art with me
“The world is full of only thee.”
sang Flora.
“What is the matter?” said the low, troubled voice of Cuscaden beside
her.
Val started violently.
“Val, you _must_ tell me. What is it...?”
They looked at each other.
It suddenly became the thing that mattered most in the world that Val
Morchard and George Cuscaden should speak alone to one another.
Regardless of the rain pouring outside, Valeria gently opened the
French window behind her.
“Come outside. I must speak to you,” she said urgently.
She had no idea what she was going to say.
Outside, in the rapidly gathering darkness, the rain fell in torrents
and splashed up from the ground against the stone step of the low
veranda that ran round the house.
Cuscaden stepped out of the warm room and closed the window again
behind him. It was as though he had shut them out of the world of music
and companionship, into some colder, more virile atmosphere.
“But all is well for thou art with me
“The world is full of only thee.”
Flora’s song reached them as faintly as possible, and neither heeded
it.
They faced one another, and Val found that she was shivering from head
to foot.
“Why do I never get a chance of speaking to you nowadays?” said Captain
Cuscaden violently.
“You could have,” said Valeria, and her voice broke.
His arms went round her.
“Val, Val, I love you so.”
It was as though Quentillian had never existed.
“And you’re going to Canada,” she wailed.
“You’re coming with me.”
“I must,” Val said, and surrendered herself to his kisses.
“My daughter, how wet you are!” exclaimed the Canon.
His daughter, hastening to her own room, paused under the light of
a lamp, and inadvertently thereby gave the Canon an opportunity of
verifying his statement.
Val, beneath his astonished gaze, became acutely aware that her
rain-wet hair was disordered, her face flaming, and showing all the
marks of recent and violent weeping.
“What is all this?” the Canon enquired rather sternly.
Valeria felt utterly incapable of replying.
“Answer me, Valeria.”
“Captain Cuscaden is looking for you,” said Valeria almost inaudibly.
“Captain Cuscaden?”
“Yes.”
They gazed speechlessly at one another.
A weight had descended upon the Canon’s brow and the lines round his
mouth were set sternly.
“Valeria, has he insulted you?”
The intimate conviction overwhelmed her that the Canon’s opinion of
her recent interview with Captain Cuscaden would certainly demand
an emphatically affirmative reply to the enquiry. She felt a purely
hysterical desire to burst out laughing at the thought.
“How is Captain Cuscaden concerned with you? If it is as I think,
Valeria, you did well to refer him to me.”
“But it isn’t. He--I--we are both to blame, Father. I’m going to break
off my engagement to Owen. I love George.”
The words were said, and although Valeria broke into a flood of tears,
it was with a sense of relief. Telling Owen that she did not intend to
marry him after all, was, she honestly felt, nothing to telling the
Canon so.
She sank down on the stairs and hid her face in her hands, afraid
to face her father’s realization of the implication that her words
contained.
It did not tarry.
“Do you want me to understand that you are under a solemn engagement
to marry Owen Quentillian, and that you have at the same time been
allowing--encouraging--the clandestine attentions of this--this
_fellow_? You, my daughter, behaving like a wanton? I won’t believe
it--I can’t believe it--” the Canon’s voice rose violently. “Valeria,
for God’s sake tell me I’m mistaken--don’t crouch there like a guilty
creature--tell me I’m wrong, tell me you’re the pure, honest maiden
I’ve tried to make you and not--not--a creature without honour, without
decency----”
The rising note of anguish broke on a strangled sob.
Below, a door was shut sharply.
“Get up,” said the Canon with violence.
Valeria rose, and he pulled her to her feet and gazed searchingly into
her face.
“And this is my child!” said the Canon, and in his turn dropped his
face into his hands, groaning.
“I couldn’t help it,” she spoke between her sobs, like a child. “Owen
knew I wasn’t in love with him ... only I never realized, I didn’t know
George cared, too--it was always him....”
“Stop!” thundered the Canon. “Are you without shame, Valeria? Is that
fellow waiting for me downstairs, or has he crawled away as I should
expect, from one who has so repaid my hospitality?”
The words gave Valeria a needed impetus.
“He is ready to meet you, Father--he went to find you. And I love
him--I suppose I’ve been very dishonourable, but I--I believe Owen will
understand.”
She broke into tears again, and left him.
Overwhelmed with the sense of her own dishonour, regarding the Canon’s
wrath as might have a child, in the light of the greatest calamity that
life could present, she turned with absolute relief to the thought of
Owen’s dispassionate judgments, his studiously impersonal attitude
towards life. Owen would understand.
There came a knock at the door.
“Val, may I come in?”
“What is it?” said Valeria unwillingly.
Lucilla entered the room, unperturbed, but fully accepting the
disordered aspect of its occupant.
“I’m afraid, Val, that the drawing-room door was open, and it was
impossible to help hearing Father. I thought you’d rather know, in case
you wanted to speak to Owen.”
“Owen knows?” almost shrieked Valeria.
“I suppose he does. He must have drawn his own conclusions.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Val again. “I never meant anything like that
to happen--it’s George Cuscaden, Lucilla. It was always him, indeed it
was, only I didn’t know it, and it all seemed to happen in a minute--it
was stronger than either of us.”
“I daresay you did quite right. Why don’t you wash, Val?”
“Oh, Lucilla, how like you!”
Valeria laughed shakily, but she followed her sister’s advice.
Lucilla methodically produced Val’s brush and comb, and dry clothing.
“Maud Admaston and Miss Duffle have gone, and Adrian went with them.
Mr. Clover has gone, too, so it was only Owen and Flossie and I that
heard.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything. Shall I fasten you up, Val?”
“Lucilla--what am I to do?”
“Tell Owen you can’t marry him, and tell George you will marry him.”
“I wish it was as simple as that! You always take things so literally.”
“Well,” said Lucilla unmoved, “I don’t see any other way of taking
this. You can’t be engaged to two people at once. You know--Owen will
understand.”
“That’s what I feel,” said Val to her own surprise. “But Father--Father
will never, never understand.”
“Probably not. But after all, it’s you, and Owen, and George, isn’t it,
that are concerned? I shouldn’t let there be scenes and upsets about
it, Val, if I were you--really I shouldn’t. Why don’t you just see Owen
tonight, and tell him about it, and then you and he and George could
all talk it over quietly tomorrow morning?”
Val was conscious of profound astonishment and also of extreme relief.
“Do you think one could? But Father----”
“You needn’t go downstairs again. I quite understand that you don’t
want to see Father again tonight. Shall I tell Owen to come up here?”
“Here? How could he, in my bedroom?”
“Goodness me, child, you may just as well be hung for a sheep as a
lamb, surely. But if you think it’s so dreadful, I suppose you can come
out on the landing and speak to him.”
Impossible to disconcert Lucilla!
Val assented to the surprising propositions so matter-of-factly
delivered.
“Yes, tell Owen to come up. I’d better get it over. But
Lucilla--George----”
“Do you want me to see him, or give him a message?”
“I want to know what Father says to him,” Val said faintly.
“Very well. I’ll ask Father if George has gone.”
“And, oh, Lucilla! I know you can’t prevent it, really, but if only
you could make Father not come up to me tonight! I can’t bear any
more--indeed I can’t.”
“Well,” said Lucilla, “you’d better lock the door then.” She took the
key from the lock, put it on the inside of the door and tried it in a
practical manner. “That’s all right. You can lock it on the inside as
soon as Owen has gone.”
She went downstairs, but turned and came up again the next moment.
“I’ll have dinner sent up to you, shall I?”
“I don’t want any.”
“I should think you’d better have something, Val. I’ll send up soup and
chicken. The pudding is only ginger, and you know how badly she makes
ginger pudding.”
Lucilla departed in earnest, upon this prosaic pronouncement.
She was succeeded by Owen Quentillian, and Val went out upon the
landing to meet him.
“Will you forgive me, Owen? I can’t marry you.”
“What has happened?”
“I thought you knew,” she said piteously.
“I suppose I do. Is it Cuscaden?”
“Yes.”
“Then why,” Owen demanded in reasonable accents, “couldn’t he have
proposed to you himself without waiting for you to be engaged to me?”
“He thought he couldn’t ask me to go to Canada--and he’s badly off--and
then, when you came, he--he thought it was you I cared about.”
“I see,” said Quentillian dryly.
“I don’t think I knew, exactly, that I still cared for him, and I was
sure he hadn’t meant anything, and it--it was really all over--only
then--Flora’s music, somehow--and he asked me what it was--and I cried.
Owen, won’t you forgive me? Surely it’s better than if I’d tried to go
on with it?”
“Of course it is.”
They looked at one another rather helplessly.
“Val, if I can do anything to help you, of course I will. What are you
going to do?”
“I can’t think,” said Valeria faintly.
“When does Cuscaden sail?”
“Next week.”
“That’s bad luck,” said Owen impartially. “Look here, my dear, you must
be tired out. Won’t you go and sleep now, and in the morning we could
see what’s to be done?”
“Oh, how good you are!”
He frowned slightly.
“Surely the day of heroics is over. I haven’t the slightest desire to
exchange pistol-shots with Captain Cuscaden, I assure you. We are three
reasonable human beings, and we find ourselves in a difficulty from
which only clear thinking and absolute plain speaking can extricate
us. You may believe me when I tell you that I am perfectly prepared to
discuss the case upon its own merits.”
Valeria could believe him without difficulty. Even in the midst of
her distress, she could not altogether stifle a slight suspicion that
Owen was appreciating the opportunity afforded him of being thoroughly
modern and rational.
“Have you seen Father?”
“Not yet.”
Quentillian’s tone betrayed no great eagerness for the prospective
interview.
“He is very, very angry with me, and I know he has every right to be.
But indeed, Owen, I was coming straight to you, only I met him first,
and it somehow came out. George was going to tell him.”
“Your father has never liked Captain Cuscaden,” said Quentillian
meditatively. “I am afraid he will make things very difficult.”
“I deserve it.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Quentillian, with severity. “This is that
foolish idea of atonement and repentance--and all the other cheap
salves to the humiliation of having made a mistake. Don’t you see that
it’s all waste of time and energy, Val? You ought to be thinking of
what you’re going to do next, and how you can do it with least wear and
tear for us all. Life isn’t a series of sins and punishments or virtues
and rewards, as it is in one’s nursery story-books. There are actions
and their consequences--that’s all.”
She looked up at him, bewildered, and yet slightly relieved at
perceiving that he still possessed the power of sententiousness.
“Only say you forgive me, Owen.”
“If you wish it, my dear, of course. Please don’t cry any more.”
Valeria, however, crying more than ever, drew the sapphire and diamond
ring from her finger and mutely held it out to him.
Owen gazed at it for a moment through his _pince-nez_.
Then he put it gently back into her hand again, and closed her fingers
round it with his own.
“Please, Val.”
Still holding her hand, he bent forward and very softly kissed her wet
cheek.
“If we’re not engaged any more, we’ve got to go back to what we were
before--brother and sister, Val. Good-night--don’t cry any more.”
The smile with which he left her was in his eyes as well as on his
lips, and held nothing so much as very gentle amusement, and an
affectionate concern.
(vii)
The amusement was no longer to be seen in the eyes of Quentillian, and
the concern had no affinity with affectionateness, when he reached the
door of the Canon’s study.
He felt himself to be eleven years old once more, and in complete
uncertainty as to the manner in which he might be received, after the
discovery of some unwonted misdemeanour.
The thunderous voice that bade him come in did nothing to dispel the
unpleasing illusion.
The Canon was sitting at the writing-table, under the carved crucifix
that hung against the green velvet plaque. A blotting pad, deeply
scored with heavy black lines, lay beneath his hand, and a broken
lead pencil testified to the energy with which that hand had sought an
outlet for the feelings that presumably agitated its owner.
The Canon swung round in his chair as the door closed behind
Quentillian.
“Owen, Owen!” His voice broke. “My boy, how can I face you?”
The Canon answered his own question by rising impetuously and leaning
heavily upon Quentillian’s shoulder, one hand across his eyes.
“My dear, dear fellow!”
His voice, charged with emotion, broke horribly over each fresh
ejaculation.
“My son--Owen--you’ve been nothing less to me--and now--treated like
this--one of mine own household--what can I say, what can I say?”
Quentillian longed heartily to implore the Canon to say nothing at all.
“Won’t you sit down, sir? I thought I’d better come and talk to you, if
I may.”
“Anything, anything, dear lad. Have you seen my unhappy child?”
“Valeria and I have agreed that we are no longer engaged,” said Owen
carefully. “I don’t consider that I have been unfairly treated. She
discovered, rather before the eleventh hour, that she and Captain
Cuscaden were in love with one another, and it would have been quite as
unjust to me as to herself, if she had not acted upon the discovery.”
Canon Morchard gazed anxiously at the victim of this neatly-analysed
situation.
“For Heaven’s sake, Owen, don’t let yourself become bitter. It is so
easy--so fatally easy, when one is suffering. Take a stronger grip of
your faith than ever before, dear lad--remember that ‘_all_ things
work together for good.’ One learns to dwell upon those words, and the
meaning deepens into something so unspeakably precious....”
To Owen’s relief the Canon sank back into his chair again.
“I can offer you no atonement,” he said presently, with a deep
weariness in his voice.
“I am still unutterably bewildered. How I have failed, how I have
failed, with my motherless girl! And I thought I knew my child--my
merry Valeria, as I have called her from her babyhood--I thought I
knew her through and through! _She_ to be dishonourable, _she_ to be
heartless, _she_ to attach herself to a godless, brainless, mannerless
fellow--and when a man like yourself had received her troth! Owen, it
is as though mine own right hand had turned against me.”
The Canon held out a trembling right hand and gazed upon it.
“Where is Captain Cuscaden now, sir?” enquired Quentillian, almost
expecting to hear that the object of his solicitude had been bound and
cast into outer darkness.
“Where!” Canon Morchard struck the table with his clenched fist until
the blotting-paper and the broken pencil bounded again. “Where! I have
dismissed him, Owen. Does he think that I shall give my daughter to
one who comes like a thief in the night? There is such a thing as a
righteous anger, and such an anger was mine then.”
It seemed to be his still, Owen reflected, and boded ill for his own
wish to discuss the situation impartially.
“Valeria is very unhappy, sir.”
The Canon groaned.
“I can’t trust myself to see her, to speak to her. God knows that my
place is with my unhappy child, but my shameful lack of self-control
makes me tremble. I have been angry--I am angry still.”
He looked piteously at Owen.
“I have thought to get the better of my devil with prayer and fasting,
but the old Adam is strong--terribly strong. When I saw my child--my
little Valeria--her eyes wild, her person disordered, dashing upstairs
as might a shamed creature, to hide itself--when I realized the depths
of her dishonour--Owen, it was in me to have struck her. I could have
raised my hand against my own child!”
His head sank upon his breast.
Quentillian waited before making a further, strangely inadequate,
contribution to the conversation.
“Do you think, sir, perhaps you may be taking this too seriously?”
Canon Morchard stared at him. Then he smiled grimly.
“Generous--very generous, Owen. But I am to be deceived by no such
feint. I, who have had the care of souls these thirty years! Do
you think that, whatever front you may present to the world, my
eyes--_mine_--are to be blinded? Do you think that _I_ do not know
that the iron has entered into your soul?”
The Canon’s eyes were so extraordinarily piercing as they gazed into
Quentillian’s, that the object of his penetration sought in himself
almost hopefully for some of the searing emotions attributed to him.
He discovered none.
Wounded in his vanity, annoyed, disappointed even,--but nothing more.
Owen, quite aware of futility, inwardly formed phrases of complete
truthfulness, only to reject them.
“I assure you that I am not in the least unhappy at having been jilted
by your daughter ... it leaves me quite cold ... I don’t think I ever
really wanted to marry Val very much ... we were much better friends
before we tried to become engaged....”
Or, with a yet more devastating candour:
“I’ve been certain for days that I made a complete fool of myself by
ever proposing marriage to Valeria....”
This surprisingly agile form of mental gymnastics was tempestuously
interrupted by the Canon.
“For God’s sake, Owen, break down!” he groaned. “My boy, my boy, you’re
safe with me. Forget that I’m Valeria’s father--think of me only as
one who has known suffering--aye, and sin, too. Make a safety-valve
of me--let yourself go. But I can bear this sham cynicism of yours no
longer. It’s wrong, Owen, it’s wrong. True fortitude faces what lies
before it, finds its Gethsemane, and rises, purged of bitterness. Break
down--weep, nay, curse if you will, only cast open the floodgates.
Let loose whatever devils possess your soul, you, the victim of
treachery--let them loose, I say, and we will conquer them together.”
For an instant, all that Quentillian could do hardly sufficed to
prevent his letting loose a violent fit of laughter.
He drove his teeth into his lower lip. It was his increasing perception
of the Canon’s overwhelming misery that steadied him.
“Val has hurt me less than you think, sir,” he said gently at last. “I
have sometimes thought that she and I had made a mistake.”
The Canon gazed at him with a pathetic unbelief.
“My unhappy child does not know what she has lost.”
“I hope she is going to be happy in her own way,” said Quentillian.
The Canon’s brow instantly became thunderous again.
“Not one word, Owen, not one word on those lines,” he commanded
sternly. “I appreciate your generosity deeply, but there is such a
thing as carrying generosity too far.”
“I can see small generosity in relinquishing to someone else what is no
longer mine.”
The Canon swept on, unheeding.
“My faith in my child has received a rude shock. Valeria is unfit for
wifehood and motherhood. How can I let her undertake responsibility
when she has proved herself unworthy up to the hilt? No, Owen, let it
rest there. _I_ will deal with Valeria, and may God help us both!”
Quentillian felt inclined to echo the petition whole-heartedly.
He could not doubt that the Canon’s misery was utterly unfeigned. So,
also, was his wrath.
The incongruous sound of the dinner-gong vibrated violently through the
room.
The Canon did not stir.
His voice, when next he spoke, was almost a groan.
“I cannot see Valeria tonight. God forgive me, I am not master of
myself. Your calm shames me, Owen. But it is not natural, not natural.
You will, and must, suffer for it later on. Tell me, dear fellow--that
I should have to say it!--do you wish to leave us--do you wish to go?”
Owen wished for nothing so much as an immediate adjournment to the
dining-room, but he felt that it would indeed be impossible to say so.
“You would not wish me to send Valeria from home, I know. Nor do I know
where I could send her.”
“Let her marry Cuscaden,” said Quentillian boldly.
“Never, Owen. Give my child--my weak, untrustworthy child, to a man
who could behave as Cuscaden has behaved? Believe me, I appreciate the
generosity that prompts you, but you know not what you ask--you know
not what you ask.”
Quentillian, entirely unaccustomed to any such accusation, was silently
annoyed.
He was also hungry.
“I have sometimes thought,” said the Canon with a trembling voice,
“that my tendency has been to idolize my children. I lost their mother
so early! You know how it was with me, Owen. Lucilla was my eldest
born, my right hand. I have come to depend upon Lucilla, paradoxical
though it may sound, from a father towards his child. David, my eldest
son ...” the Canon paused a long while, and then murmured softly:
“‘Whilst he was yet a great way off’--David is in a far country, but he
will return to us yet, and though his Morning Prayer be our Evensong,
who shall say that there is separation between us? And I have kept my
other children by my side, Owen. Little Flora has never yet tried her
wings away from home. She is more like her mother than any of them--she
and the dear Adrian.”
A smile like an illumination came into the Canon’s eyes as he spoke
Adrian’s name. “The light of mine eyes, that dear lad has always been.
My Benjamin! There are no words for what I went through whilst Adrian
was fighting, Owen. One could only remember in Whose keeping he was,
and that all _must_ be well, in reality. But all one’s faith was
needed--it must be so, with poor human nature. The soul goes through
dark waters, Owen, as you are finding now.”
The protest which Owen almost automatically registered within himself
at this interpolated reference to the despair which he could not feel,
was necessarily a silent one.
“Valeria has been the brightest, the most lighthearted, of all my
children. She is naturally gifted with high spirits, and she and I
have made innocent fun together, have shared the humourous view of
life, a thousand times. Have I allowed that gaiety of hers to turn to
flippancy--that mirthful spirit to cloak a lack of principle? I ask
myself again and again wherein I have erred, for I cannot hold myself
blameless, Owen. I have thought over my motherless children, I have
prayed, and yet it has come to this--it has come to this!”
The Canon’s head dropped back into his hands once more, and Quentillian
felt as though this despairing round of anger, self-blame, self-pity,
and genuine misery, might go on forever.
He glanced at the clock. The dinner-gong having failed of its appeal,
it appeared as though nothing need ever interrupt them again.
“I will give him five minutes more, and then I shall stand up,”
Quentillian decided.
The Canon lifted a haggard face.
“Perhaps I had set my heart overmuch upon your marriage with my
child, Owen. It may be so--it may be so. I may have forgotten that we
poor mortals cannot, after all, see very far--that all plannings and
schemings are very vain, seen by the light of Immortal Wisdom. If so, I
am receiving my punishment now.”
The Canon groaned again.
“I am at a loss how to act. I can decide nothing. I must see Valeria,
but how can I do so until I can command myself?”
Even as he asked the question, the veins stood out upon the Canon’s
forehead, his nostrils quivered and his face became suffused.
“Three minutes more,” Quentillian reflected.
“Owen, one thing I must ask. Has she asked your pardon?”
“Yes, but indeed I don’t think----”
“No, Owen, no.” The Canon raised his hand in instant protest. “Each
generous plea from you, stabs me afresh. I ask myself if my unhappy
child even knows what she has lost. I thought I knew Valeria through
and through--that nothing in her nature was hidden from me, from her
father. I have been strangely mistaken, indeed.”
(“Another half minute.”)
“Am I harsh with her, am I harsh to my motherless girl? God knows that
I was angry when I met her this evening, distraught-looking, crouching
before me like a shamed and terrified creature. I cannot even now fully
understand what has occurred, but her own admission was that, engaged
to you, she believed herself to love another man--that she had allowed
him to make love to her.”
Owen stood up resolutely.
“Aye, Owen, I do not wonder at it, if you seek the relief of movement.
It is more natural so. I, too, in my day, have paced this room.”
Quentillian, however, had no desire to pace the room except for the
very few steps that would put him outside it.
He debated in vain within himself the most tactful method of making
this clear to Canon Morchard.
“I suppose I have been blind. This blow has come upon me with fearful
suddenness--I suspected nothing--nothing. How could I----”
The door opened.
Quentillian looked round thankfully at Lucilla. She did not go up to
her father, but spoke quietly from the door.
“Father, don’t you think Owen should come to dinner?”
A quick frown drew the Canon’s always formidable brows together.
“Since when do my children interrupt me in my own room, at my work,
Lucilla?” he enquired.
Her face did not change, but she looked at Quentillian.
“Thank you,” he said quickly. “I will come.”
The Canon rose. His hand went once more to the resting-place now
rapidly becoming habitual to it--Quentillian’s shoulder.
“Do not let my foolish child impose her trivial urgencies upon you.”
The Canon’s other hand went out towards his daughter.
“Did I speak over-sharply, my daughter? Perhaps Mary was nearer my mood
than Martha, just now--Martha, careful and troubled over many things.
Go, then, children. Lucilla, you will come to me later. Until then, I
do not wish to be disturbed again.”
With a heavy sigh, the Canon turned again to his writing-table.
Owen and Lucilla went out.
“He is terribly upset. Could he not be persuaded to come to dinner?”
“No, I knew he wouldn’t want that. But I shall take in a tray when I
go to him later. Sometimes, if he’s talking, he eats without thinking
about it. I was counting on that--and besides, he would have disliked
my suggesting that he should come in to dinner as usual.”
Lucilla’s voice and her face alike were entirely guiltless of irony.
Quentillian followed her into the dining-room:
“The others have finished,” Lucilla said. “Would you rather I stayed,
or that I went?”
“Stay, please.”
She sat down opposite to him at once.
“I wish your father were less angry with poor Val, although perhaps
it is not my place to say so. But in his--his generous sympathy for
me, I am afraid he has rather lost sight of what she must have been
suffering.”
“I don’t think suffering, in my father’s eyes, would ever condone what
he considers wrong-doing.”
The comment seemed to Owen to be rather an illuminating one.
“I suppose not. It may surprise you to hear that I do not, personally,
consider that Canon Morchard is entitled either to condemn or condone
whatever Valeria may have done.”
“I quite agree with you.”
Quentillian was less gratified than astonished at the assertion.
“Val herself would hardly agree to that.”
“No.”
“Well, but don’t you see, Lucilla, how difficult that’s going to make
things? To my mind, the only natural proceeding is for Valeria and
George Cuscaden to marry and go to Canada.”
Quentillian paused almost without meaning to, on a pronouncement that
would certainly have met with drastic and emphatic interruption from
Canon Morchard.
Lucilla, however, received it unmoved.
“Don’t you think so?” said Quentillian, slightly disappointed.
“Yes.”
“But will Valeria do it? Won’t her strange ideas of filial duty
interfere? I am absolutely convinced that one of the principal reasons
for her ever becoming engaged to me, was her wish to please her father.”
“I don’t think it was altogether that, Owen. But you did ask her to
marry you at a time when she was just beginning to realize that the
sort of life she led before the war wasn’t going to be enough for her.”
“Need it have taken a European war to make her see that?”
The smile that Lucilla turned upon his petulance was disarming.
“Don’t be so cross, Owen.”
She might have been talking to a little boy.
“I think,” said Quentillian with dignity, “that perhaps you forget
it was only a few hours ago that I learnt how completely cheated
and--fooled, I have been.”
He could not avoid a recollection that the Canon would not have needed
such a reminder.
“Indeed, I don’t forget at all,” said Lucilla earnestly. “It must be
very vexing for you, but--Owen, do forgive me for saying that I can’t
really feel as if you minded dreadfully. You’re much too understanding,
really, not to know that poor Val didn’t wilfully cheat you, any more
than she cheated herself. And I think you, too, perhaps, in another
way, were beginning to feel that you’d made a mistake in promising to
marry one another.”
Lucilla, Quentillian realized half ruefully and half with amusement,
had beaten him at his own game. Her unvarnished appraisement of the
situation brought to it no more and no less than the facts warranted.
His answering gaze was as straight as her own.
“You’re right,” he said abruptly.
She held out her hand with a laden plate in it.
“Pudding?” she enquired, prosaically.
“Thanks.”
He made an excellent dinner.
“But what will happen to us now, Lucilla?”
“Well, George Cuscaden will be here again, and that’ll make Val feel
better. And you’ll help, won’t you?”
“Certainly.”
And, on the strange assurance, they separated.
It was much later that Owen, from his own room, heard the door of the
study immediately below him, open once more, and then shut.
Barely audible, but still unmistakable, he heard a steady stream of
sound, rising and falling, easily to be identified as the Canon’s voice.
“Good God, what more _can_ he have to say about it?” reflected
Quentillian. He was destined to ask himself the question again, for the
sounds, punctuated by the briefest of pauses, doubtless consecrated to
the delivery of laconic replies from Lucilla, continued far into the
small hours of the morning.
Finally, after Quentillian had fallen asleep, he was roused by a
gentle, reiterated knocking at the door.
Only too well aware whose hand was responsible for those considerately
modified taps, he rose and went to open the door, omitting the usual
invitation to enter.
As he expected, the Canon, unutterably pale and weary-looking, stood
without.
“Dear fellow, I knew that I should find you awake. Owen, I could not
but come to tell you that all is well with me now. I have forgiven,
even as I myself hope--and need--to be forgiven. I will see Valeria
tomorrow, and tell her that she has my full and free pardon. Together
we will consider what is the best thing that we can make of this most
unhappy business.”
“And Cuscaden, sir?”
Quentillian intended to suggest the inclusion of Captain Cuscaden in
the proposed conference, which might reasonably be supposed to concern
him closely, but the Canon misunderstood the elliptical reference.
“Aye, Owen, I have no bitterness left in my heart, even for him. ‘Unto
seventy times seven.’ Those words have been ringing in my ears until I
could almost bring myself to believe that I heard them uttered aloud. I
need not ask if all is well with you, dear boy? Your self-command and
generosity have shamed me all along.”
The absolute sincerity of the utterance caused Quentillian, with
considerably more reason than the Canon, to feel ashamed in his turn.
“I am very far from being what you think me, sir,” he said, earnestly,
and with complete truth. “I am afraid you are very tired.”
The Canon, indeed, looked utterly exhausted.
“If so, it is in my Master’s service,” said Canon Morchard gently.
“And you remember, Owen--‘there remaineth a rest.’ May it be mine, and
yours, too--all in His own good time! Good-night to you, my dear.”
For the first time since Owen’s childish days, the Canon placed his
hand upon his head and murmured a word of blessing.
Then, with a smile as wistful as it was tender, he turned and went away
upstairs.
(viii)
The following day was one of singular discomfort, and of private
interviews that were held to be of the greatest necessity, in spite of
the fact that the participants always emerged from them in worse plight
than they went in.
The Canon saw Valeria in his study, and she came out crying.
Valeria sought Flora, and both wept.
Quentillian deliberately demanded an interview from Captain Cuscaden,
but was baffled in his design of a rational discussion of the
three-cornered situation by Cuscaden’s honest bewilderment at the mere
suggestion of disinterested counsel.
It seemed, indeed, that Captain Cuscaden would have understood Owen
better, and certainly have thought more highly of him, had the
traditional horsewhip, abhorred of all Owen’s most deeply-rooted
prejudices, held a place in their conversation, at least as threat, if
not as actual fact.
Failing the horsewhip, Cuscaden was inclined to follow in the wake of
the Canon and attribute to Valeria’s discarded _fiancé_ a spirit of
generous heroism that was even less to Quentillian’s liking.
“Captain Cuscaden takes primitive views,” Quentillian observed to
Lucilla, whom alone he suspected of summing up the whole situation very
much at its true value.
“Yes, that will suit Val very well.”
“You think she takes primitive views, too?”
“Yes, don’t you?”
Owen realized that, although he had never thought Valeria subtle,
he had at least supposed her to be capable of appreciating his own
subtlety. But subtleties had not, apparently, really weighed with Val
at all.
The sight of her tear-mottled face annoyed Owen’s æsthetic sense so
much, and he felt so sincerely ashamed of his annoyance, that it
constrained him to absent himself from the house all the afternoon. He
would gladly have left St. Gwenllian altogether and felt sure that the
Canon expected nothing less of him, but Flora brought him a piteous
little message from Val to beg that he would remain until “something
was settled.”
In the forlorn hope that this had been achieved, Quentillian returned.
An eager grasp met him almost upon the threshold.
“Owen, dear lad! Where have you been? I have been uneasy--most uneasy,
at your prolonged absence.”
“I’m very sorry, sir.”
“Nay, so long as all is well with you! I should have had more faith.”
The Canon smiled gravely, and relief was latent in the smile.
Quentillian suddenly realized that Canon Morchard had not improbably
known the sub-conscious fear of his guest and _protégé_ having sought
some drastic means of ending an existence in the course of which he had
been played so ill a turn.
His sense of his own inadequacy increased every moment.
“May I know how things stand?” he enquired abruptly.
“_May_ you? Who has a better right than yourself, dear Owen? Come you
out with me, and let us have a few words together.”
Owen followed his host.
“It has been a trying day--a sad and trying one. But I need not tell
you _that_--you, whose grief is so much greater than mine own, even.
Though you, at least, Owen, have nothing to reproach yourself with,
whereas I am responsible for the weakness in my poor child which
has led to this unhappy state of affairs. But at least she is fully
sensible of error--she knows what she has done.”
It would be strange indeed if she did not, Owen reflected, in
the universal _bouleversement_ that had characterized Valeria’s
surroundings ever since her sudden departure from the conventions.
“To my surprise, Lucilla, upon whose judgment I place a certain
reliance, although it may sound somewhat odd to hear of a father
seeking counsel of his child--Lucilla advocates my sanctioning her
sister’s marriage. My first instinct was of course to cut her short at
the mention of anything so premature--so--so lacking in all taste or
feeling. But--I hardly know----”
“There is nothing against Captain Cuscaden, is there?”
Quentillian made the observation in the simple hope of expediting the
Canon’s decision, but he immediately perceived that it led him open
once more to the imputation of high-minded generosity.
“I mean to say, he can afford to marry?” he amended hastily.
“He has satisfied me upon that score,” Canon Morchard admitted. “I have
never desired wealth for my dear ones, nor have they been brought up to
it. Valeria is not unfitted to become the wife of a poor man. Nay, had
she but acted an honourable and high-minded part throughout, I should
gladly send her forth into the New World. Valeria has something of the
pioneer spirit, I have always felt.”
He sighed heavily.
“In short, Owen, if, as Lucilla tells me, you share her own view, then
I shall not withhold my consent to this marriage. The haste is strange
and unseemly, but Captain Cuscaden cannot postpone his departure, in
view of the position awaiting him, and my unhappy child, left here,
would be in a difficult and awkward situation, nor have I any security,
alas, that she has sufficient discretion to face such a situation.”
“It might be difficult for her,” Quentillian admitted. “Lucilla is
looking for us, I think, sir.”
Lucilla was indeed advancing towards them.
The Canon frowned slightly.
“Am I wanted, my child?”
“It was Owen that I wanted, father.”
“My dear, Owen is engaged with me.”
“I know,” Lucilla seemed slightly perplexed, but quite unruffled. “I
know, but the post is just going, and I thought Owen ought to see this
before I send it to the papers.”
She handed him a sheet of notepaper, upon which he read a brief and
conventionally-worded announcement to the effect that the marriage
arranged between himself and Valeria Morchard would not take place.
He passed it to the Canon, who groaned.
“Must this be?” he enquired, with some superfluity.
The superfluity seemed to strike himself, for he added almost at once:
“‘If ’t’were done, ’t’were well ’t’were done quickly’, no doubt.”
“There is the other announcement to be thought of,” said Lucilla with
merciless common-sense. “If Val is married at the end of this week, we
shall have to put that in the papers.”
The Canon gave Owen a quick, anxious glance.
“Come into the house, my daughter,” he said to Lucilla. “We can speak
of such matters there.”
Owen understood that Canon Morchard was thinking of him.
On a sudden impulse he went to seek Valeria.
“Look here, my dear, I’d do anything to help you, but do you really
want me to stay on here any longer? It’s more than I can stand.”
“Oh, Owen! I thought you’d forgiven me--I thought you didn’t mind, so
very much, after all,” she cried in dismay.
“I don’t mind in the least,” Quentillian told her desperately. “But
it’s a false position altogether, and I want to be out of it.”
“Of course you do, it was very selfish of me to want to keep you.
Only somehow Father is less--dreadful--when you’re there, Owen. But
he’s forgiven me,” her tears came falling fast, “and I’m going out
with George when he sails, at the beginning of next week. We shall be
married very, very quietly, on Saturday.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. Indeed I am, Val. I’m sure he’s a good
fellow, and I hope he’ll make you very happy.”
She was crying too much to speak, as he went away from her.
And Quentillian, definitely, could tell himself that he had no regrets
in relinquishing Valeria.
Her warm emotionalism had not been without its appeal, but he had no
liking for tears at a crisis, nor indeed for a crisis at all. His
mind reverted to Lucilla’s matter-of-fact fashion of dealing with the
crucial instances of life at St. Gwenllian, and theoretically, he met
her attitude with applause. But he also remembered that he had not
found her sympathetic, upon the preceding evening.
Impartially, he acknowledged with a rueful smile, his own exactingness.
He must go, and decided that it should be to London. As for Stear, he
would face it later. The thought of Stear, and the loneliness there,
brought the realest sense of loss to him that he had yet experienced
over the defection of Valeria.
He had thought to hear her laughter there, to see the apricot bloom on
her lovely face, her children growing up there.
With a long sigh, Owen let the vision go. The warm, human things of
life had come very near to him, but he had not known how to hold them.
Some subtle, inner sense warned him that Valeria had done well to
betake herself and the rich gifts of her ardent nature, to the simple
and primitive life of the colonies, and the man who was offering that
life to her.
He went away to make his preparations for leaving St. Gwenllian.
* * * * *
Valeria’s wedding, not unnaturally, provided no occasion for festivity.
The bride herself remarked in private to her sisters:
“I feel exactly as though I was one of those unfortunate girls who come
to Father for him to marry them so as to ‘make honest women of them’
at the eleventh hour. You know the way that sort of wedding is hurried
through, in a hole-and-corner style....”
“It’s lucky for you you’ve got a good deal of your trousseau made
already,” was Lucilla’s practical reply.
“Yes, and ‘V. Q.’ embroidered on more than half of it!” cried Val
hysterically.
“You can’t possibly use it,” Flora declared austerely. “Unless I can
alter it for you in time.”
“Of course she can use it,” said Lucilla.
Valeria left them both. In the overstrained condition of her nerves,
Lucilla’s crudely-worded common-sense and Flora’s fastidiousness were
equally little to her taste. Her father’s sorrowful gravity struck her
with despair, and Owen Quentillian’s magnanimous detachment puzzled her
sincerely, and made her doubly remorseful.
It was only when George Cuscaden was actually with her that she knew
with real certainty that she had done right at the last moment.
On the night before her wedding, Canon Morchard called Valeria, gave
her his blessing and forgiveness, and handed to her some of her dead
mother’s jewelry.
“God bless and help you in the way that you have chosen, and may He
bring all things together for good, as He alone can do.”
“Forgive me, Father.”
“My child, I have nothing to forgive. It was not I whom you wronged,
but yourself,--and one other. His pardon is yours, fully and freely, as
you know well. And now, my Valeria, you owe it to your husband to put
the past behind you. You will enter into your new life purified by that
very sense of past error, humbled by repentance.”
The Canon’s voice was very gentle.
It was long after midnight when Valeria heard him go upstairs.
George Cuscaden and Valeria were married by Mr. Clover, immediately
after Matins next day, and Canon Morchard, throughout the ceremony,
knelt with his face hidden by his hand.
The sense of irrevocability that comes to most brides assailed Valeria
irresistibly for a moment as she walked, alone with her husband, the
short distance from the church back to St. Gwenllian.
She glanced up at him, and in the look that met hers she found all the
reassurance that she was ever to need.
“A new life, and a new world, my Val. We’re going to face things
together, now.”
She was no longer afraid or doubtful, but felt the strangest rush of
pure exhilaration.
It was her justification for the past.
“A new life, and a new world,” she repeated. “We’re going to be very
happy, in spite of everything that’s happened.”
“We _are_ very happy,” said George Cuscaden firmly, her hand held fast
in his.
“I think they’ll forgive me, at home, in time. Father was very kind
last night, and Flossie and Lucilla have been so good.”
“Val, my darling,” said the young man very seriously, “there’s one
thing I do want to say, and you mustn’t mind. You’ve got to leave the
past behind you, now. Isn’t there something or other in the Bible about
forgetting thy father’s house and thine own people?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I don’t really mean forgetting them, you know. But you’ve got
your own life now, and it isn’t going to run on the old lines any more.
It seems to me there’s been such a lot of talking and thinking in your
life up to now, that there’s been no room for doing anything. You and
I are going to change all that.”
“Yes, George,” said Valeria.
She had, mysteriously, become absolutely happy and absolutely secure.
Nothing mattered any more at all except the fact that George and she
had found one another in time.
And she was able to surmise, not without a smile, that she had that
moment heard almost the only Scriptural quotation from her husband of
which he was ever likely to deliver himself.
Quotations, collections, barren discussions, abstract ideals, all lay
behind her. In future her preoccupations would concern the health and
welfare of her husband and perhaps his children, food and clothing and
warmth, pots and pans, and the work of her own hands.
And from the depths of her heart, Valeria was glad.