It was Wednesday, the day after the concert.
Mr. Cartaret was standing before the fire in his study. He had just
rung the bell and now he waited in an attitude of wisdom and of
patience. It was only ten o'clock in the morning and wisdom and
patience should not be required of any man at such an hour. But the
Vicar had a disagreeable duty to perform.
Whenever the Vicar had a disagreeable duty to perform he performed
it as early as possible in the morning, so that none of its
disagreeableness was lost. The whole day was poisoned by it.
He waited a little longer. And as he waited his patience began to
suffer imperceptibly, though his wisdom remained intact.
He rang again. The bell sounded through the quiet house, angry and
terrifying.
In another moment Essy came in. She had on a clean apron.
She stood by the roll-top desk. It offered her a certain cover and
support. Her brown eyes, liquid and gentle, gazed at him. But for all
her gentleness there was a touch of defiance in her bearing.
"Did you not hear me ring?" said the Vicar.
"Naw, sir."
Nothing more clear and pure than the candor of Essy's eyes. They
disconcerted him.
"I have nothing to say to you, Essy. You know why I sent for you."
"Naw, sir." She thought it was a question.
He underlined it.
"You--know--why."
"Naw. I doan' knaw, sir."
"Then, if you don't know, you must find out. You will go down to the
surgery this afternoon and see Dr. Rowcliffe, and he will report on
your case."
She started and the red blood rose in her face.
"I s'all not goa and see him, Mr. Cartaret."
She was very quiet.
"Very good. Then I shall pay you a month's wages and you will go on
Saturday."
It was then that her mouth trembled so that her eyes shone large
through her tears.
"I wasn't gawn to staay, sir--to be a trooble. I sud a gien yo'
nawtice in anoother moonth."
She paused. There was a spasm in her throat as if she swallowed with
difficulty her bitter pride. Her voice came thick and hoarse.
"Woan't yo' kape me till th' and o' t' moonth, sir?" Her voice cleared
suddenly. "Than I can see yo' trow Christmas."
The Vicar opened his mouth to speak; but instead of speaking he
stared. His open mouth stared with a supreme astonishment. Up till
now, in his wisdom and his patience, he had borne with Essy, the Essy
who had come before him one evening in September, dejected and afraid.
He hated Essy and he hated her sin, but he had borne with her then
because of her sorrow and her shame.
And here was Essy with not a sign of sorrow or of shame about her,
offering (in the teeth of her deserved dismissal), actually offering
as a favor to stay over Christmas and to see them through. The naked
impudence of it was what staggered him.
"I have no intention of keeping you over Christmas. You will take your
notice and your wages from to-day, and you will go on Saturday."
"Yes, sir."
In her going Essy turned.
"Will yo' taake me back, sir, when it's all over?"
"No. No. I shouldn't think of taking you back."
The Vicar hid his hands in his pockets and leaned forward, thrusting
his face toward Essy as he spoke.
"I'm afraid, my girl, it never will be all over, as long as you regard
your sin as lightly as you do."
Essy did not see the Vicar's face thrust toward her. She was sidling
to the door. She had her hand on the doorknob.
"Come back," said the Vicar. "I have something else to say to you."
Essy came no nearer. She remained standing by the door.
"Who is the man, Essy?"
At that Essy's face began to shake piteously. Standing by the door,
she cried quietly, with soft sobs, neither hiding her face nor drying
her tears as they came.
"You had better tell me," said the Vicar.
"I s'all nat tall yo'," said Essy, with passionate determination,
between the sobs.
"You must."
"I s'all nat--I s'all nat."
"Hiding it won't help you," said the Vicar.
Essy raised her head.
"I doan' keer. I doan' keer what 'appens to mae. What wae did--what
wae did--lies between him and mae."
"Did he tell you he'd marry you, Essy?"
Essy sobbed for answer.
"He didn't? Is he going to marry you?"
"'Tisn' likely 'e'll marry mae. An' I'll not force him."
"You think, perhaps, it doesn't matter?"
She shook her head in utter helplessness.
"Come, make a clean breast of it."
Then the storm burst. She turned her tormented face to him.
"A clane breast, yo' call it? I s'all mak' naw clane breasts, Mr.
Cartaret, to yo' or anybody. I'll 'ave nawbody meddlin' between him
an' mae!"
"Then," said the Vicar, "I wash my hands of you."
But he said it to an empty room. Essy had left him.
* * * * *
In the outer room the three sisters sat silent and motionless. Their
faces were turned toward the closed door of the study. They were
listening to the sounds that went on behind it. The burden of Essy
hung heavy over them.
The study door opened and shut. Then the kitchen door.
"Poor Essy," said Gwenda.
"Poor Essy," said Alice. She was sorry for Essy now. She could afford
to be sorry for her.
Mary said nothing, and from her silence you could not tell what she
was thinking.
The long day dragged on to prayer time.
The burden of Essy hung heavy over the whole house.
* * * * *
That night, at a quarter to ten, fifteen minutes before prayer time,
Gwenda came to her father in his study.
"Papa," she said, "is it true that you've sacked Essy at three days'
notice?"
"I have dismissed Essy," said the Vicar, "for a sufficient reason."
"There's no reason to turn her out before Christmas."
"There is," said the Vicar, "a very grave reason. We needn't go into
it."
He knew that his daughter knew his reason. But he ignored her
knowledge as he ignored all things that were unpleasant to him.
"We must go into it," said Gwenda. "It's a sin to turn her out at
three days' notice."
"I know what I'm doing, Gwenda, and why I'm doing it."
"So do I. We all do. None of us want her to go--yet. You could easily
have kept her another two months. She'd have given notice herself."
"I am not going to discuss it with you."
The Vicar put his head under the roll top of his desk and pretended to
be looking for papers. Gwenda seated herself familiarly on the arm of
the chair he had left.
"You'll have to, I'm afraid," she said. "Please take your head out of
the desk, Papa. There's no use behaving like an ostrich. I can see you
all the time. The trouble is, you know, that you won't _think_. And
you _must_ think. How's Essy going to do without those two months'
wages she might have had? She'll want every shilling she can lay her
hands on for the baby."
"She should have thought of that before."
The Vicar was answering himself. He did not acknowledge his daughter's
right to discuss Essy.
"She'll think of it presently," said Gwenda in her unblushing calm.
"Look here, Papa, while you're trying how you can make this awful
thing more awful for her, what do you think poor Essy's bothering
about? She's not bothering about her sin, nor about her baby. She's
bothering about how she's landed _us_."
The Vicar closed his eyes. His patience was exhausted. So was his
wisdom.
"I am not arguing with you, Gwenda."
"You can't. You know perfectly well what a beastly shame it is."
That roused him.
"You seem to think no more of Essy's sin than Essy does."
"How do you know what Essy thinks? How do I know? It isn't any
business of ours what Essy thinks. It's what we do. I'd rather do what
Essy's done, any day, than do mean or cruel things. Wouldn't you?"
The Vicar raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. It was the gesture of
a man helpless before the unspeakable.
He took refuge in his pathos.
"I am very tired, Gwenda; and it's ten minutes to ten."
* * * * *
It may have been because the Vicar was tired that his mind wandered
somewhat that night during family prayers.
Foremost among the many things that the Vicar's mind refused to
consider was the question of the status, of the very existence, of
family prayers in his household.
But for Essy, though the Vicar did not know it, it was doubtful
whether family prayers would have survived what he called his
daughters' godlessness. Mary, to be sure, conformed outwardly. She was
not easily irritated, and, as she put it, she did not really _mind_
prayers. But to Alice and Gwendolen prayers were a weariness and
an exasperation. Alice would evade them under any pretext. By her
father's action in transporting her to Gardale, she considered that
she was absolved from her filial allegiance. But Gwendolen was loyal.
In the matter of prayers, which--she made it perfectly clear to Alice
and Mary--could not possibly annoy them more than they did her, she
was going to see Papa through. It would be beastly, she said, not to.
They couldn't give him away before Essy.
But of the clemency and generosity of Gwendolen's attitude Mr.
Cartaret was not aware. He believed that the custom of prayers was
maintained in his household by his inflexible authority and will. He
gloried in them as an expression of his power. They were a form of
coercion which it seemed he could apply quite successfully to his
womenkind, those creatures of his flesh and blood, yet so alien and
intractable. Family prayers gave him a keener spiritual satisfaction
than the church services in which, outwardly, he cut a far more
imposing figure. In a countryside peopled mainly by abominable
Wesleyans and impure Baptists (Mr. Cartaret spoke and thought of
Wesleyans and Baptists as if they were abominable and impure pure) he
had some difficulty in procuring a congregation. The few who came
to the parish church came because it was respectable and therefore
profitable, or because they had got into the habit and couldn't well
get out of it, or because they liked it, not at all because his
will and his authority compelled them. But to emerge from his
study inevitably at ten o'clock, an hour when the souls of Mary
and Gwendolen and Alice were most reluctant and most hostile to the
thought of prayers, and by sheer worrying to round up the fugitives,
whatever they happened to be doing and wherever they happened to be,
this (though he said it was no pleasure to him) was more agreeable to
Mr. Cartaret than he knew. The very fact that Essy was a Wesleyan
and so far an unwilling conformist gave a peculiar zest to the
performance.
It was always the same. It started with a look through his glasses,
leveled at each member of his household in turn, as if he desired to
satisfy himself as to the expression of their faces while at the same
time he defied them to protest. For the rest, his rule was that of his
father, the schoolmaster, before him. First, a chapter from the Bible,
the Old Testament in the morning, the New Testament in the evening,
working straight through from Genesis to Revelation (omitting
Leviticus as somewhat unsuitable for family reading). Then prayers
proper, beginning with what his daughter Gwendolen, seventeen years
ago, had called "fancy prayers," otherwise prayers not lifted from
the Liturgy, but compiled and composed in accordance with the freer
Evangelical taste in prayers. Then (for both Mr. Cartaret and the
schoolmaster, his father, held that the Church must not be ignored)
there followed last Sunday's Collect, the Collect for Grace, the
Benediction, and the Lord's Prayer.
Now, as his rule would have it, that evening of the fifth of December
brought him to the Eighth chapter of St. John, in the one concerning
the woman taken in adultery, which was the very last chapter which
Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always
considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as
a defense of laxity.
"'Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?'
"She said, 'No man, Lord.' And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I
condemn thee.'"
Mr. Cartaret lowered his voice and his eyes as he read, for he felt
Gwendolen's eyes upon him.
But he recovered himself on the final charge.
"'Go'"--now he came to think of it, that was what he had said to
Essy--"'and sin no more.'"
(After all, he was supported.)
Casting another and more decidedly uneasy glance at his family, he
knelt down. He felt better when they were all kneeling, for now he had
their backs toward him instead of their faces.
He then prayed. On behalf of himself and Essy and his family he prayed
to a God who (so he assumed his Godhead) was ever more ready to hear
than they to pray, a God whom he congratulated on His ability to
perform for them far more than they either desired or deserved; he
thanked him for having mercifully preserved them to the close of
another blessed day (as in the morning he would thank him for having
spared them to see the light of another blessed day); he besought him
to pardon anything which that day they had done amiss; to deliver them
from disobedience and self-will, from pride and waywardness (he had
inserted this clause ten years ago for Gwendolen's benefit) as well as
from the sins that did most easily beset them, for the temptations to
which they were especially prone. This clause covered all the things
he couldn't mention. It covered his wife, Robina's case; it covered
Essy's; he had dragged Alice's case as it were from under it; he had a
secret fear that one day it might cover Gwendolen's.
Gwendolen was the child who, he declared and believed, had always
given him most trouble. He recalled (perversely) a certain thing that
(at thirteen) she had said about this prayer.
"It oughtn't to be prayed," she had said. "You don't really think you
can fool God that way, Papa? If I had a servant who groveled to me
like that I'd tell him he must learn to keep his chin up or go."
She had said it before Robina who had laughed. And Mr. Cartaret's
answer to it had been to turn his back on both of them and leave the
room. At least he thought it was his answer. Gwendolen had thought
that in a flash of intellectual honesty he agreed with her, only that
he hadn't quite enough honesty to say so before Mummy.
All this he recalled, and the question she had pursued him with about
that time. "_What_ are the sins that do most easily beset us? _What_
are the temptations to which we are especially prone?" And his own
evasive answer. "Ask yourself, my child."
Another year and she had left off asking him questions. She drew back
into herself and became every day more self-willed, more solitary,
more inaccessible.
And now, if he could have seen things as they really were, Mr.
Cartaret would have perceived that he was afraid of Gwenda. As it was,
he thought he was only afraid of what Gwenda might do.
Alice was capable of some things; but Gwenda was capable of anything.
* * * * *
Suddenly, to Gwenda's surprise, her father sighed; a dislocating sigh.
It came between the Benediction and the Lord's Prayer.
For, even as he invoked the blessing Mr. Cartaret suddenly felt sorry
for himself again. His children were no good to him.
By which he meant that his third wife, Robina, was no good.
But he did not know that he visited his wife's shortcomings on their
heads, any more than he knew that he hated Essy and her sin because he
himself was an enforced, reluctant celibate.