CANON ALINGTON had just returned from a ten days’ holiday, which he had spent in yachting in the calm and pleasant waters of the Solent. He had been in extreme health and vigour before he started, but when he came back a week after Hugh and Edith had come down to Mannington again, he felt it had quite set him up. His wife had written to him every day during his absence, giving news of Ambrose and Perpetua, and the sweet peas and had mentioned the arrival of the Graingers. This wasà proposof the Literific, as it was now quite generally called by the members of the Society, and Mrs. Grainger, who with her husband had been unanimously elected in the course of the last winter, had promised to read them a paper at their June meeting, to which the members looked forward very much, since it was, of course, widely known that she was the author of “Gambits,” and something very advanced might be expected.
The Canon had arrived late on Saturday evening, and he and his wife had had a great deal to talk about. His life on the sea had made quite a sailor of him, and when they sat in his study after dinner, he had been distinctly nautical. The double herbaceous bed, lying on each side of the path, for instance, had been under discussion, and when Canon Alington asked whether the delphiniums on the left of the path were getting on well, he alluded to the left as the port side. He corrected her, too, about the position of a purple clematis whose health had been indifferent when he went away.There were several climbing up the trellis work behind the bower, but the starboard clematis was the one he was anxious about. “Just close to the gate,” he said—“forward on the starboard. I shall have a lot of leeway to make up next week. And is everything a-low and aloft drawing well?”
Agnes moved from the sofa where she sat to a chair close at his elbow.
“Ah! that’s more ship-shape, dear,” said Canon Alington. “Now, do you know, though it all looks so smooth, hasn’t the glass fallen with you, somehow, Agnes, since I went away? But your skipper is ready, dear; give him his orders.”
“I am rather troubled,” said she.
“I knew it. Now, what about?”
“About Edith. She was going to read a paper, you know, next week at the Literific.”
“And can’t she?” asked Dick, searching in his mind for a subject on which he might be able to “knock them up something” to take the place of Edith’s paper. He found, even before Agnes answered, that the Literific need have no anxiety as to a postponed meeting, for he had enjoyed many hours of fruitful meditation on the yacht.
“Yes, she can. That is just it,” said Agnes. “She has told me what the subject of the paper is to be. Oh, Dick——”
Canon Alington held up his hand to stop her. It was a rule of the Literific that the subject of the paper should not be public property until the notice of the meeting was sent out by the secretary, who was Mrs. Alington. Consequently until the Canon received his card (headed by a facsimile of an Athenian coin with the owl of Pallas lithographed on it), bearing in his wife’s neat handwriting the date of the meeting, the name of the lecturer, and the subject of the lecture, he had no business to know what it was to be. So he held up his hand.
“You have not sent out the cards yet?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then I don’t think you must tell me what the subject is.”
Mrs. Alington looked more troubled, and more like Ambrose. “But I do not think I agree,” she said. “What was your phrase two Sundays ago about the final test of what we should do in difficulties, how we should put it to the lodestone of conscience.”
“No, dear, touchstone.”
“Touchstone, yes. Well, I have put it to the touchstone of conscience, and my conscience tells me that I ought to consult you about it. I don’t think it is possible for the Literific to assemble and hear Mrs. Grainger’s paper.”
Canon Alington looked up in surprise, and his wife instantly, and correctly, interpreted the look.
“Yes, I can’t call her Edith on this point,” she said. “Personally, I should not think of going to hear it, nor, I am sure, would you. Now, the notices must go out on Monday, and if once they go out I don’t see where it will all end. They mustn’t go out—all Mannington mustn’t know the subject on which Mrs. Grainger proposes to read to us. Besides, no discussion could be possible on the subject, and discussion is one of the main objects of our meetings, is it not?”
Canon Alington rose, and in silence lit a pipe of half-awakened bird’s-eye.
“This is very serious,” he said. “I take it for granted you are not overestimating the unseaworthiness of this paper. For such a thing has never happened before,that we should find a member of our Literific proposing to read on a subject of which we should not like our wives and daughters to listen to.”
“Nor would your wife like her husband to listen to it,” said Agnes with sudden energy.
Canon Alington did not reply for a moment, for he was putting the case to the touchstone of conscience. The secretary’s position in the society, he knew, was a confidential one; yet if Agnes, with her scrupulous sense of honour, still wished to tell him, might he not be choosing the greater of two evils if he refused to hear? He knew also that she was as broad-minded as himself—it was not in the least likely that she should feel like this if there was no adequate cause.
He came and sat down by her again.
“I have made up my mind,” he said. “I think it is my duty, both as your husband and as the guardian of the spiritual—Yet I don’t know. It is very difficult.”
“It comes to this, then,” said his wife, “that I must resign the secretaryship. Because I will not send these notices out. I will not sign them—that would imply my approval.”
Canon Alington again paused.
“Tell me, then,” he said at length. “I take all responsibility.”
Mrs. Alington looked straight in front of her, and spoke calmly.
“The lately discovered letters of Lord Nelson,” she said. “They are addressed chiefly to Lady Hamilton.”
Though he heard quite clearly, Canon Alington said “What?” sharply. It was the incredulousness of the mind that spoke.
“You did right to tell me,” he said, after a moment; “you had to. Now what are we to do? We must bevery careful, very tactful, very broad-minded, but we must be firm. Of course the paper cannot be read.”
“Oh, Laddie, you must manage it!” said Agnes. “That is just all that you can be. You are a priest too—she will recognise your authority.”
Canon Alington leaned his head on his hand thinking heavily. He did not feel quite certain in his own mind that Edith would recognise his authority, but he felt even in the first moments of thought, that there would not be any need that she should. Agnes seemed to imagine that she would insist on reading her paper to the horrified Literific unless he absolutely forbade her.
“There will be no need for that,” he said; “a little tact, above all, perfect simplicity and directness will, I feel sure, be all that is needed. But I was wondering, dear, whether my speaking to her direct would be the best plan. I can’t tell you how grieved and disappointed I am. I feel almost as if my first impression about ‘Gambits,’ before I had seen it, was right after all. It seems to be more of a piece with this. In Mannington, too! That this should happen in Mannington!”
This was a little obscure; it seemed to imply that it did not matter what was read to Literifics in other places. But no such thought really entered his head, nor did his wife put such an interpretation on it.
“Or would you speak to Hugh about it?” she asked, “or should I? I think he will see.”
Canon Alington shook his head.
“I don’t wish to say, or, indeed, to think, anything unkind or hard,” he said, “and so neither in thought nor word do I go further than confess that I don’t understand Hugh. And I have, therefore, no confidence that he will see our point of view. You remember Tristan?”
Mrs. Alington sighed: she did remember Tristan.
“I was filled with forebodings ever since I read the libretto,” he said, “and I did not see how the impression which the opera itself would produce could be other than painful and shocking. Still, since my impression on reading ‘Gambits,’ at least the review of ‘Gambits,’ was reversed when I saw it on the stage, I felt bound to see the other also. We left Covent Garden, you remember, before the end of the second act, in spite of the inconvenience of finding our way out in the dark. No, I do not think it certain that Hugh will take our view. Still, one might try. I think—I am not sure—but I think that Hugh felt something of what I said then.”
Canon Alington had sat down again by his wife’s chair, and she took his hand.
“What do women do who have no Galahad?” she said. “I felt so puzzled, so distressed about it all, and you have comforted me. You see so clearly, dear. But people are so strange and unexpected. To think that my brother should have acted Tristan before all London. And to think that Mrs. Owen, who is so nice, and who is so musical, and has such deep feeling, should have stopped to the end, and said she enjoyed it so. Apart from all else, there did not seem to me to be a single tune in the whole opera.”
“Ah! Mrs. Owen,” said Canon Alington suddenly. “She lunches with us to-morrow, does she not?”
“Yes, dear. What then?”
Canon Alington attacked the subject again with renewed briskness.
“We might do worse than consult her,” he said, “before we take any step at all. We cannot expect that everyone should take exactly the same line as we do, and it is possible—I say it is possible—that she maythink that a certain historical interest that attaches to operas like ‘Tristan,’ or even these letters of Nelson, may over-ride everything else. We do not, of course, agree with that view, but if she holds it, it will perhaps enable us to understand that for others it is tenable. On the other hand, if she agrees with us, that will much strengthen our hands in dealing with the situation. Edith can hardly fail to have a great respect for her opinion. And then we might sound Hugh and if he takes our view also, I fancy we shall find our way smooth, without having seemed to apply any pressure, or having aroused any sense of antagonism.”
They had talked long over this one subject, and what with all the leeway that had to be made up on other topics owing to the Canon’s absence, time went so fast that it seemed almost incredible to them both that eight bells should break in on their talk. Further discussion, therefore, on secular subjects was adjourned, since it was the habit of the house to spend Sunday, of which the first hour had just chimed, with the mind as well as the deeds dissociated from the affairs of the week. Mrs. Alington, therefore, hastily gathered up the Patience cards which had been set out earlier in the evening, and her husband knocked the remains of his latest pipe of half-awakened bird’s-eye into the grate. But with his scrupulous sense of honesty, he had just one more question to ask.
“You think Edith understands about—about Lord Nelson and her,” he asked.
Mrs. Alington shook her head and pursed her lips.
“I think we may take it for granted,” she said.
Canon Alington lit two bedroom candles, drank a glass of water, and put out the lamp.
“Habeo!” he said. “The Bishop is holding a confirmation to-morrow, and I could see him in the afternoon if Mrs. Owen disagrees with us, and refer the whole matter to him.”
But his wife, though usually they were so much of a mind, did not welcome the suggestion.
“One does not want to tell more people about it than is absolutely necessary,” she said, “because one of our chief objects is to let nobody know. Let us see, anyhow, what Mrs. Owen thinks first.”
Mrs. Owen accordingly came to lunch after service next day, for though Canon Alington and his wife made it a rule not to go out to any meal on Sunday, it did not cause a breach of Sunday observance that other people should take a meal with them. For this entailed no extra work for the household, since on Sunday Ambrose and Perpetua did the work of the parlour-maid at table, and handed everybody their rations and took away their plates when they had consumed them. The possible view, too, that this was only a shifting of extra work on to the shoulders of the children had no more than a superficial semblance of truth about it, with no foundation in real fact, since to perform those little services for their parents and Mrs. Owen was not love’s labour lost, but love’s pleasure found.
It was the custom for Ambrose and Perpetua to sing hymns after lunch on Sunday, each choosing one in turn, to their mother’s accompaniment, until they were so hoarse that they could sing no more or it was tea-time. But to-day they had been privately instructed that they ask Mrs. Owen to sing once to them, and that they must then take themselves off to sing in the nursery if they chose or to go for a walk, since their parents desired some private talk with her. She, no more than anybodyelse in busy Mannington, had not been idle this last year, and in addition to nearly six weeks spent in town since Easter, as well as a memorable visit to Venice in April had written two more Galahad songs, and contemplated a whole Galahad cycle. Indeed it was “Galahad’s Good-morning” that she sang this afternoon, which was to be the first of the Galahad cycle, which would when finished be a whole day in Galahad’s life, from the time he said good-morning to the time he said good-night. In these Galahad songs there was, of course, no meeting in orchards, although the middle verse was full of temptation and foes, which he routed without the slightest difficulty, and instantly returned to the three-two as good as new. And to-day as Mrs. Owen sang Agnes could not help her eyes growing a little moist as she looked across to her Galahad who was gently beating time (while Ambrose and Perpetua vied with each other in turning over), and thought how pleasant a little coincidence it was that on the very day when he had to charge and rout the fell Lady Hamilton, Mrs. Owen, with her sweet face and voice so full of expression, should be singing “Galahad’s Good-morning” to them. Once her eyes met those of her husband, and she felt sure he understood what was in her mind. She was quite right; he did. At the end Ambrose and Perpetua both gave a great gasp.
“I think it’s the loveliest song I ever heard,” said Perpetua. “Do you know, Mrs. Owen, mamma calls papa Galahad? I can see why now.”
Perpetua was a great happiness to both her parents, but at moments the happiness was almost embarrassing.
“Now, children,” said her father. “Ordered aloft, weren’t you?”
They kissed Mrs. Owen loudly and went out hand-in-hand.
Mrs. Owen, it was universally agreed, had great tact and perception. She closed the piano and left the music-stool.
“Dear Agnes,” she said, “and dear Canon, I see you have got something to say to me. Oh, those darling children!”
But their parents’ tribute had to be added to hers.
“That is a sweet song,” said Agnes. “So full of morning, is it not, and of feeling? I thought the place where the church-bells came in was quite, quite perfect. An early service, I suppose.”
Mrs. Owen looked rather timid for a moment, but was brave again.
“Yes, that is themotiffor the next song,” she said. “I am planning (is it not audacious?) a whole cycle. The next will be ‘Galahad’s Mass.’ Oh, Canon Alington, that is not Romish of me, is it? They were called masses in England, were they not, until the Reformation?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Canon Alington. “You can give no offence except to the narrow-minded by using the word. And then?”
Mrs. Owen gave a long-gasping sigh.
“Ah! what a relief,” she said. “I felt bound to consult you, and I was afraid you might think it rather risky to call it by that name. Well, after that, there is going to be ‘Galahad’s Adventure,’ which was foreshadowed in the second verse of the ‘Good-morning’! Then there will be ‘Galahad’s Matins,’ and another adventure, and then his dreams. I thought,” and the composer (words and music) laughed gently, “I thought after two adventures he might sleep a little in the afternoon.”
“Very beautiful, very poetical!” said Canon Alington.
“And then—oh, I wonder if you will say it is borrowed from ‘Siegfried?’—there will be a little intermezzo for the piano and perhaps a violin, describing his thoughts when he wakes and muses all by himself in the forest. Really, really it is quite different from the ‘Waldweben.’ And then comes his even-song, which is just a little hymn I composed, and then at the end ‘Galahad’s Good-night,’ which I think I sang to you a year ago. And—oh, Agnes and Canon Alington, I have a bone to pick with you; Mr. Hugh was there that night, and you—yes, you did—you encouraged me to sing before him. How could you? How cruel! I never knew that he sang at all then. I should never have dared.”
“Agnes and I do not think you need fear his rivalry,” said Canon Alington.
This was quite completely true. Hugh had not the faintest idea of rivalling her.
“Ah, but what an artist!” she said. “Yes, I remember about Tristan; but then let us agree to differ. Wagner, after all, you know! One has to make allowances for a great man. Think of Napoleon, of Nelson.”
There could not have been anything more apt. It seemed almost like an omen. Yet the idea of making allowances for great men was not promising. But as the plunge had to be made, Canon Alington felt that from here the header-board, so to speak, was not very high. He could slide, with tact, into the subject, without danger from abrupt transition.
“We have been thinking, both Agnes and I, a good deal about Nelson,” he said.
Mrs. Owen sank down with an air of indescribable interest, into the chair next him, touching her lower lip with the little finger of her left hand.
“Yes?” she said.
“It is best told in fewest words,” he said. “Mrs. Grainger, you may know, has promised—very kindly—to read us a paper at the June meeting of our Literific at the end of this week.”
Mrs. Owen took her little finger away from her mouth, and clasped with it the other fingers in her right hand. She put them all between her knees.
“And I am so looking forward to it,” she said.
Canon Alington’s face was adamant.
“So were we all,” he said. “But she told Agnes the subject she proposed to read us, and Agnes, of course, felt it her duty to tell me. The subject is the lately-discovered letters of Lord Nelson. They are written—I needn’t say to whom they are written.”
There was a dead silence while the portentous news soaked into Mrs. Owen’s mind. She absorbed it; she survived it. Then she sat upright in her chair again—she had sunk down in it before—and spoke.
“Dear Canon Alington and Agnes,” she said, “perhaps I am going to shock you very much. But if this paper is read——”
“It shall not be read while I am secretary,” said Agnes.
“No, I understand that. But if it is read, I shall go to hear it. There! I have said it.”
Like Galahad, Canon Alington heard the sound of hymns from the nursery.
“I do not follow you,” he said, feeling that he would have to go to the Bishop.
“Ah, please be patient with me!” said Mrs. Owen. “As I said, I should go to hear it; but I know the lecture will never be heard. Nor should it. But—well, I think that one cannot expect that everybody should agree with everybody else. I feel sure that dear Mrs. Graingersees no impropriety in her subject. She, no doubt, thinks of—of these dreadful letters—I make no doubt they are dreadful—as being only of historical interest. And one must judge of people’s actions by their motives.”
She paused, and put her hands up toward Canon Alington as if she was praying.
“And in the first lessons in church do we not read and hear of things which we should not allude to in private life?” she asked.
The formidable upper lip grew immense.
“That is sacred history,” he said. “Also we do not discuss them. One of the great objects of the Literific is discussion.”
Mrs. Owen sank back again in her chair.
“Discussion?” she said. “I never thought of that. Oh, impossible!”
The thought of the Bishop retreated toward the horizon again.
“Then you agree with us?” said Agnes.
“On the question of the expediency of having the paper read and discussed here in Mannington,” she said, “I do agree. I should not know which way to look, far less what to say.”
“A discussion without Mrs. Owen!” said Canon Alington, as if flinging a challenge to the universe to imagine such a thing possible. “‘Hamlet’ without the Prince of Denmark?”
Mrs. Owen cast her eyes down at this very handsome estimate of her value as a debater, as she did when the chorus of thanks rose at the end of one of her songs.
“I gather then—am I wrong?—that you are trying to think of the best way out of the difficulty. Of course, if I—poor little me—could be of any assistance, however slight, I need hardly say——”
This was exactly what Canon Alington wanted. For in spite of the immense tact that Agnes often assured him that he possessed, he felt that Mrs. Owen had more. Besides, she saw and felt Mrs. Grainger’s point of view, which he did not. Indeed, he was rather afraid that if he conducted the interview there might be considerable danger of his moral indignation “carrying him away.”
“You can do everything, my dear lady,” he said. “You are the very person to talk to Mrs. Grainger about it, if you will be so kind, and tell her what you feel about it, what we all feel about it. You have tact; you are a woman of the world, broadminded, cosmopolitan——”
Mrs. Owen laughingly stopped her ears with her tapering finger-tips and gave a little melodious laugh. Her laugh was supposed to be like a peal of bells—fairy-bells, some said.
“Please, please!” she cried. “I am ready to sink into the earth!”
“And tell her, too,” continued Canon Alington, unable, now that the burden of diplomacy had been removed from him, to refrain from dictating the diplomacy of others, “tell her that you would eagerly go to hear the paper read, that you would be historically interested in it. How true! I myself am historically interested in it; so is Agnes, I am sure. Perhaps, however, you need not dwell on that. But to discuss it—poor Nelson!” he added, in a sudden flood of broadmindedness.
After this the mere adjustment of the movements of what Canon Alington called “our squadron” was easy, and it was soon settled that he and Mrs. Owen should call at Chalkpits this very afternoon, and that while Mrs. Owen was tactful to Edith, Canon Alington should put his view of the matter rather more forcibly beforeHugh, in order to range him also on the side of the squadron. And though he was almost passionately fond of directing the affairs of others, it is but just to him to say that he had no great relish for this mission. However, as both the ladies agreed that he was clearly the right person to do it, he could not refuse; but he felt a little doubtful to what extent Hugh would recognise his authority.
Mrs. Owen, on the other hand, was thoroughly pleased with the task she had so readily undertaken, for though Edith’s relations with her had always been quite cordial, they had also been quite slight, and she felt that she had not made at Chalkpits the impression that she was accustomed to make in Mannington. Two women of the world—these were her most secret thoughts, and she hardly admitted them to herself, even when she was alone—ought to gravitate to each other in Mannington, where everybody almost was so very provincial. Even the dear Alingtons, though they appreciated her songs so much, she felt, especially when she had just returned from her month in London, were not quite of the calibre that was on an equality with the “set” she had lately been with—among whom was a viscount. She could not help feeling when she came back to Mannington that she was being a little thrown away here. But now a fresh prospect opened; this delicate mission, which she was confident she could manage tactfully and successfully, could hardly fail to bring her at once into closer relations with Edith and her husband, and it should indeed not be her fault (from omission or remissness, that is to say) if it did not ripen into intimacy. Then, indeed, life at Mannington would be a thing that even the “set” might envy; for none could be blind to the advantages of being hand-and-glove with the authorof “Gambits” or of the dropping in to hear Hugh Grainger, who was already on the gramophone, sing some scene out of “Tristan” or “Lohengrin.” The wonderful Lady Rye, too, who swam in a firmament high above even the set, and was known to them only through fashionable intelligence in the daily papers or charity bazaars, was Edith’s sister. It was only natural that a further friendship would follow.
Both the Canon and she were somewhat occupied in their own thoughts as they walked across the meadows from St. Olaf to the Chalkpits, and Mrs. Owen’s daydreams grew brighter and more lifelike every moment. The most extreme possibilities rapidly assumed the guise of the probable. What if theMorning Postannounced before long that Lady Rye was spending the Saturday till Monday with Mrs. Owen at Mannington! Things more unlikely had occurred. Or if Mrs. Owen was seen (looking charming) at the opera in Lady Rye’s box, when her brother-in-law sang Siegfried with such huge success! Or what if Mr. Hugh Grainger at some autumn concert sang the Galahad cycle (words and music by Gladys Owen) to an enraptured Queen’s Hall? But she would never, she was determined, however high was the ladder she might soon be climbing, drop the dear kind Alingtons. Indeed it would be through them really that she was brought into this prospective intimacy with the Graingers. She would always remember that, and continue singing Galahad to them just as before.
The “squadron” started the campaign itself at a slight disadvantage, for the day was very hot, and the walk up to Chalkpits had been hot also. And though high moral purpose was their motive power and should have put them at once in an unassailable position, it isa fact that people who are obviously hot are at a disadvantage in dealing with those who sit under trees or lie in hammocks and are cool. No amount of moral purpose alone will cancel the handicap of a perspiring forehead.
Tea was just going out to the lawn when they arrived, and the butler saying that Mrs. Grainger was out there led them through the house and across the lawn. Edith was sitting with her back to them in a large basket chair, and did not hear them approach, while by her lay Hugh in a hammock reading aloud the mad tea party from “Alice in Wonderland.” Edith heard them first and got up; Hugh’s voice still went on:
“‘But they were in the well,’ said Alice.”
“‘Of course they were,’ said the Dormouse. ‘Well in.’”
Hugh gave a great crack of laughter.
“Oh, dear, how nice! It doesn’t mean anything at all. No idea of any kind creeps in. Oh! Hullo, Dick! How are you, Mrs. Owen?”
Edith was, as always, perfectly natural and cordial, and delighted to see them, but Mrs. Owen felt that her entry, which was to have been so winning, was a little spoiled by the heat. Five minutes, however, were sufficient to restore her, and she set to work then without delay to make the impression she should have made on arrival.
“Yes, I always tell everybody that you have a perfect house, and a perfect garden, Mrs. Grainger,” she said. “I am afraid I always break the Tenth Commandment whenever I come here.”
It was some consolation to Edith, since she must be held partly responsible for her house and garden, that Mrs. Owen had only broken the Tenth Commandmentonce before, and then only with regard to an imperfect view of the front hall, for she had been out when Mrs. Owen called, and her visitor had only left cards. But she replied that she did think it was a pleasant situation, and Mrs. Owen continued.
“Yes, I tell all my set so,” she said. “Like you, I am just back from town, and how delicious the country is, is it not, after the whirl and rush of London. Sometimes I wonder why I ever go to town at all, and yet I suppose one would get a little rusty and old-fashioned if one didn’t bring oneself up to date occasionally. Perhaps it is even a duty. They always tell me I bury myself too much in the country, as it is, and scold me dreadfully about it.”
Edith looked at her with her pleasant direct gaze.
“I wonder if environment has much to do with one’s getting rusty or old-fashioned?” she said. “I really think the rust and the old-fashionedness begin from within.”
Mrs. Owen clasped her hands together.
“Oh, but how responsible you make me feel,” she said. “I know how rusty and old-fashioned I often get, and you think it is my fault.”
Canon Alington rose at this with a sort of clerical gallantry.
“Well, well, we learn something new every day!” he ejaculated. “I have learned, from her own lips, too, that Mrs. Owen is rusty!”
Mrs. Owen nearly said “Naughty man!” but rejected this natural impulse, as not being quite in tune with the impression she wished to make.
“Ah, but it is true!” she said. “One’s own consciousness is the only judge in these matters. If I accuse myself of being rusty I am rusty. The intellect is itsown tribunal. I forget who said that, but you know, I am sure, Mrs. Grainger.”
Mrs. Grainger had not the slightest idea; she felt, too, that she had very little notion what Mrs. Owen was talking about. It was as if she desired to shine, but could not quite manage to light a match. She struck, and rubbed, and struck, but it did not flame. The other part of the squadron, however, tea being over, began manœuvring, and Canon Alington, with a horrified glance at his watch, saw he must be getting back for evening service. He was, with a view to manœuvre, going to suggest to Hugh, that he should accompany him, when Hugh made the suggestion himself, saying he wanted a walk. Then, of course, it remained for Mrs. Owen to be unable to tear herself away just yet, and, behold, they were in fighting line.
Canon Alington and Hugh set off briskly, and the former opened fire at once.
“I am glad to have this opportunity of talking to you, Hugh,” he said, “because I have something to say to you. I want—Agnes and I both want, and indeed Mrs. Owen also wants—your coöperation and help.”
Insensibly the upper lip lengthened itself a little, and Hugh vaguely wondered if it was going to be suggested that he should beg the Opera Syndicate not to present “Tristan” again, or any little trifle of that sort.
“The key of the situation, a painful one, is in your hands,” continued Dick. “At least, in your capacity as Edith’s husband, it should be.”
Clearly it was not “Tristan.”
“Pray go on,” said Hugh.
“You perhaps guess?” asked Dick.
“I haven’t the vaguest notion.”
“Ah, perhaps you have not been told! Very proper,quite in accordance with the rules of the Literific, though perhaps the spirit of that rule did not seek to ordain that a member should not tell even his wife or husband—or rather she her husband—the subject of a forthcoming paper.”
“Oh, Edith’s paper about the Lady Hamilton letters?” said Hugh guilelessly. “I did know that. In fact, she has read me her paper. But it didn’t occur to me in connection with any possible painful situation. She was rather behindhand with it, but it is quite finished now, if you mean that.”
Even Canon Alington found a momentary difficulty in getting on, for he did not mean that. He quite wished that Mrs. Owen had been left to manage the business alone. But there was still a charitable solution possible.
“Ah, then, I am sure it is as I thought!” he said. “Neither Edith nor you can know the stories that are current, which there is unhappily only too much reason to suppose are true, about poor Nelson and that lady.”
Hugh had a momentary impulse to shout with laughter, but checked it for subtle methods. In spite of the desire to laugh, too, he was beginning to feel, understanding as he now did, the probable though scarcely credible purpose of this conversation, rather angry.
“Dick, I don’t think it is right, especially for a person in your position, to rake up old scandals,” he said gravely.
“Then you do know Edith knows?” asked Dick.
“It is taught in the elementary schools,” said Hugh.
The upper lip lengthened further.
“Then to come to the point. Do you think it is right to read, here in Mannington, a paper dealing with that situation, and to discuss it—discuss it afterward?”
They had come to the stile leading into the field bythe Rectory, and Hugh sat down on it. His amusement had died away.
“Go on,” he said quietly.
“I have no desire to preach to you,” said Dick, instantly beginning to do so, “and my last question was one that one scarcely wants answered, because the answer is foregone. I am willing to believe that both you and Edith overlooked the real, the moral facts of the case, in your attention to a certain historical interest which must always attach to the lives of great men, for, of course, Nelson, considered as a sailor, and indeed as one of the makers of England, was a great man. But, my dear fellow, that does not excuse our dwelling, as in these private letters we must dwell, on the darker side of his character. And now for a practical suggestion: couldn’t she, without much trouble, extract from her paper some little essay about Trafalgar, and the disposal of the fleet, instead of these letters, which, I believe, deal with other things? We may think with pride of Trafalgar, but for the rest? It is the rest of which these private letters, I make no doubt, deal.”
“Oh, you haven’t read them then?” asked Hugh. “It’s ‘Gambits’ over again, is it? You know the subject from some review and can pronounce on it all right?”
“Ah, it is not my unsupported judgment this time!” said Dick, sublimely ignoring the point of Hugh’s question. “Agnes agrees with me; Mrs. Owen agrees with me.”
“Stop a moment,” said Hugh. “I thought the rules of the Literific sought to ordain, wasn’t it, that the subject of the paper should be secret till the notices were sent out. How did you and Mrs. Owen know? Did Agnes tell you, and you tell Mrs. Owen?”
“Agnes felt it her duty to tell me,” said Dick, lookingrather white and stern. “I agreed with her when she told me. I take all responsibility.”
“That’s all right then,” said Hugh. “I can have it out with you, as you are responsible. And I suppose you felt it your duty to tell Mrs. Owen, and Tom and Harry, and the butcher and baker. And am I to understand that you and Agnes and that woman have been talking over the propriety of my wife’s writing this paper for your tin-pot Literific, and the impossibility of having it read, because of its dreadful, improper and disgusting subject? Have you?”
“We have discussed the matter. We had to. Please let me pass, Hugh, I see it is no use talking it over, as I hoped I could, quietly and in a friendly manner with you.”
Hugh did not move.
“I’m blessed if I let you pass,” he said. “You’ve been spending your happy, holy Sunday afternoon—oh, I can imagine the tone so well—about her, and you have chosen to speak of the subject to me, and so I’m going to answer you.”
“There is no need. I see I made a mistake in speaking to you at all,” said Dick.
Hugh had completely lost his usually imperturbable temper, and lost it in the violent, blazing manner with which good-tempered people do on the rare occasions when they lose it at all. As if Edith could write, or wish to write, anything that might not be read or discussed in the Courts of Heaven! And that his sister and this prig, and that woman should have talked over the question together! He easily imagined, too, their mental attitude toward her, the thoughts that prompted and were prompted by what they said. The thought of it all was perfectly intolerable.
“Yes, you made a mistake,” he said, “and you make another in thinking I am not going to answer you. Because I am. You’re too much accustomed to go jawing away in your pulpit to people who can’t answer you. And from not being answered you get to think that you are always quite right. You aren’t, and I’m telling you so. What the deuce do you mean by supposing that my wife could write, if she tried, anything that wasn’t fit to be read and discussed? Why, it’s you who aren’t fit to read and discuss it, any more than you are fit to go and see ‘Tristan.’ That’s by the way; I don’t care what you think or say about me for singing in it, or what you say about the opera. I just laugh. But it’s a different matter when you come to think and say things about Edith. I don’t laugh then—I’m not laughing now. How dare you do it?”
Canon Alington had never, in all the course of his useful life, been spoken to like this, and he was astonished into silence. It seemed incredible that this could happen, and yet it was happening. And Hugh had not finished yet.
“You asked me just now,” he went on, “whether I thought it right for my wife to read this paper of hers in Mannington, and you may be surprised to hear that I agree with you; I think it most undesirable that she should. But my reason will probably surprise you just as much, and it’s because if we are to judge of Mannington or the members of the Literific by you, the people here must have the most disgusting minds. I never heard of anything so narrow and Puritanical and—and prurient. You were just the same about ‘Tristan’; you couldn’t see the beauty of it because you couldn’t keep your mind off the moral question. I tell you that Edith and I haven’t horrid minds like that; we don’t even needto make an effort not to think about that. We don’t want to; it doesn’t occur to us. Another thing, too—I bet you that you and that woman came to call this afternoon in order that you should talk to me about it, and she should talk to Edith. That’s not a very nice thing to do. You should have told me to have told Edith. Instead, you trapped me into walking with you, in order that that woman should talk to my wife. Besides, I thought you didn’t approve of going out on Sundays?”
Hugh paused a moment.
“So don’t be under any misapprehension,” he said. “I am entirely on your side, you see, about the reading of this paper, though for rather different reasons, and I shall do my best to induce Edith not to read it or any other ever. I don’t know if I shall succeed, because she has got the soul and mind of an angel, and is perfectly incapable, I honestly believe, of doing anything that would be unpleasant for anybody. Good Lord! how I shall enjoy telling Peggy about it. She will roar, if I can make her believe it’s true. By-the-way, also, you said up at the house that you must go because it was church time. You looked at your watch, too, and must have known it wasn’t, because there are the bells just beginning. That’s all I’ve got to say, I think.”
Hugh stepped down from the stile and held out his hand.
“There,” he said, “I’ll apologise for anything I have said that isn’t true. I’ve got more to forgive than you, you know, Dick, because I’ve said everything straight to you, whereas you talked us over with Mrs. Owen and Agnes, and you attributed to Edith the nastiness of your own mind. That’s what it comes to. Now I propose that we ‘make up,’ as boys say.”
Canon Alington looked at him icily.
“I never bear malice against anyone,” he said; “but as to ‘making up,’ in the sense in which I understand the word, namely, to resume cordial relations with you, I will do so when you express regret for every word you have said.”
Hugh stared at him for a moment.
“I will express it when I feel it,” he said, and walked straight back toward Chalkpits.
HUGH’S hustle of indignation against his brother-in-law carried him in one burst (like a motor-car on its top-speed) to the level of the hill where Chalkpits stood, and he rattled and hooted his way into the garden. There he found Mrs. Owen still talking to his wife, and he noticed that the subject, whatever it was, was broken off very short when he appeared on the lawn, and Mrs. Owen began with an eager finger to appreciate the beauties of the herbaceous border.
“And those beautiful pink roses over there,” she said—“what are they? I am so short-sighted.”
“They are mallows,” said Hugh.
“Yes, so they are. Don’t you adore mallows, Mr. Grainger? And did the dear Canon say anything which showed that he thought I ought to have gone to evening-service? I am afraid I am very naughty about evening-service. If he preaches, I go; if he doesn’t, I exercise free-will, or free-won’t, as he said.”
“I thought he always preached,” said Hugh, with an internal cackle of malicious delight at what he implied.
“Ah, no! I wish he did. Such wonderful eloquence!”
“He was very eloquent on the way down,” said Hugh.
Edith was watching Hugh’s movements with some anxiety, seeing, as was perfectly clear, that he was what Mrs. Owen would call “rather upset,” and easily conjecturing the cause.
“And those brilliant yellow flowers,” continued Mrs.Owen—“what are they? Like sunlight on the bed, are they not? Surely they are little sunflowers!”
“Coreopsis,” said Hugh smartly. “Cigarette, Edith?”
“Perhaps Mrs. Owen will,” said she.
Mrs. Owen looked round, as if she was afraid that the Literific were all concealed in the trees and were watching her. She occasionally smoked when she was surrounded by “the set”—but, then, London was so different.
“Well, if you will never, never tell,” she said. “I do smoke sometimes, though I can’t feel sure that I ought. I had a cigarette, I remember, after I came back from Tristan—your Tristan, Mr. Grainger. Oh, how I enjoyed it! and what a wreck I was next day.”
This sounded rather as if the cigarette was the wrecker, but she took one, blacked it all down one side with the smoke from the match, and leant back in her chair with a sense that she was doing exactly the right thing. Edith took one also, and here they all were, as Mrs. Owen gleefully thought, the author of “Gambits,” the new Tristan, and she, all smoking together. She felt that intimacy was, indeed, on the wing, and if she thought of the Alingtons at all she thought of them as the “poor Alingtons.”
Then Edith turned to her husband.
“Sit down, Hughie,” she said. “With Mrs. Owen’s leave I want to tell you what we have been talking about.”
Mrs. Owen put up deprecating hands in the attitude of prayer, palm to palm and fingers outstretched.
“Promise he shan’t scold me!” she said.
This was very winsome and called from Hugh, who was sitting a little behind her, and out of sight, a glare of concentrated hate. But Edith noticed neither the hate nor the winsomeness.
“Why, of course not!” she said. “I think you did a very friendly thing in telling me. I am most grateful to you. But I think we three had better talk it over.”
Mrs. Owen released her hands from the prayerful attitude, and shook them impatiently in the air.
“Oh! how I, my Ego, myself, disagree with what I believe to be the wisest course,” she said. “Moral geography, was it not a delicious expression of your wife’s, Mr. Grainger? We must remember we are in Mannington. How narrow and stupid it all seems to me now while I sit quietly smoking here with you.”
At this moment a huge ember of burning matter dropped from Mrs. Owen’s cigarette on to her dress, and the quiet smoke was interrupted for a moment. The contrast between Edith, the woman of the world, and all her quiet simplicity, with the woman who only succeeded in being worldly, was wonderfully marked. One was quiet and kind, the other was fussy and full of monkey-plans. Between them sat Hugh, angry and young.
“Oh, I have been having a talk about the same subject!” he said. “Do you think this storm in—in a scullery is worth discussion. I have already said exactly what I thought about it.”
Edith frowned, then laughed.
“Dear Hugh,” she said, “you must remember that we are in the scullery ourselves, and that I am the kitchen-maid who has prepared a dish which isn’t fit to be eaten. I see that now; I should have seen it all along.”
Again Mrs. Owen waved her slim, long-fingered hands in protest.
“Ah, Mrs. Grainger, how naughty you are!” she cried. “It is not the dish that is not fit, it is the diners who are not fit. That is my view.”
Again Edith’s simplicity shone out.
“In plain words, Hugh,” she said, “the paper of mine about the Nelson letters clearly won’t do. Your sister has a feeling against it, so has Canon Alington, and Mrs. Owen agrees as regards the inexpediency of reading it to the Literific.”
“Under protest—oh, such protest!” she cried.
“Yes. And now that it is so kindly pointed out to us by Mrs. Owen, we have to consider what to do next.”
“Oh, I have pronounced on that!” said Hugh. “You and I are clearly not up to the mark of the Literific, and we must retire. But we must tell Peggy.”
Mrs. Owen clapped her hands.
“How I should love to see Lady Rye’s face when she is told!” she said, in a little ecstatic aside. “What a laugh we should all have!”
Hugh, in the midst of his irritation, let the eyelid of the eye away from Mrs. Owen just quiver, as if it said, “No, you don’t!”
“Oh, Hugh, be serious!” said his wife. “As if we could do that, like huffy children. Now we are keeping Mrs. Owen——”
Mrs. Owen made so vigorous a gesture of dissent, that the flowers in her hat swayed as if a squall had passed over them. Hugh got up.
“But the matter is settled,” he said. “I have sent in our resignation; at least, I’ve practically done so.”
Mrs. Owen was absorbed. The inner life of these distinguished persons was being turned inside out before her eyes. She was as fascinated in it as a child is in the internal mechanism of a watch. And though she looked on, she, too, was of it; she was concerned in their wheels and cogs.
“Yes, but we’ve got to think of something else,” shesaid quietly. “I have promised to read a paper, and the one I have written clearly won’t do, so I must do my best before Friday to write another.”
Then she turned to Mrs. Owen.
“You are so kind,” she said, “that I am sure I may ask you to tell either Canon Alington or his wife that I quite see their point of view, and I will anyhow read them something. If that is not giving you too much trouble, it would be most good of you to undertake it. I don’t want to see him myself about it, because it would be much better to avoid any possibility of discussion between us, whereas he has already consulted you. And since my husband does not entirely feel with me on the subject, it is best that he should not be the intermediary. And will you say also that by to-morrow night I will send him the subject of it, so that the notices can go out early next day. My sister, Lady Rye, comes down to-morrow, and if we can’t think of anything to-night, I am sure she will be able to. And I need hardly say that I don’t want the whole thing to go any further. It would be tiresome to know that Mannington was talking about it all.”
The words were quite courteous and sincere, but they had the note of finality about them, as Edith had intended, and produced the effect of making Mrs. Owen get up, for Edith did not propose, since Hugh was so clearly “on edge,” to sit and discuss it any further.
“It will be a pleasure,” said Mrs. Owen with perfect truth, “and I will catch him after church. And may I take your paper with me, as you so kindly let me read it? Is it typewritten or in manuscript? I hope manuscript—I am so psychical, and manuscript would convey so much more to me.”
Edith turned to Hugh.
“Hugh, would you please get it for Mrs. Owen?” she asked. “It is on my table. I am afraid it is typewritten.”
Hugh could not resist one more shot at his brother-in-law.
“And you might tell Canon Alington that he must avoid the next number of theNineteenth Centurylike poison,” he said, “because my wife’s paper appears in it. He might give a few words of warning in church!”
Mrs. Owen wrinkled up her eyes with her bewitching smile, and clapped her hands.
“Oh, how naughty of you!” she cried. “But how delicious!”
Hugh sped the parting guest to the door and came back again, rather lingering on his way, into the garden because he felt slightly guilty, and slightly ashamed of himself. And though, when he thought of Canon Alington’s exasperating upper-lip, he steeled himself again into anger, he felt sure that somehow or other there was a process of climbing down, and perhaps an expression of regret in front of him. For there was Edith again, as he had said once before, shining above him, and he had to get there. He would have to give up his anger before he could join her. And join her he must. Even in what he had called the storm in the scullery they must be together.
Edith welcomed him back with her serene and quiet smile.
“Sit down, Hughie,” she said, “because we have got to have quite a talk. Oh! but one thing, dear, before I begin. Do you know, you were rather rude to Mrs. Owen, and it is a dreadful pity to be rude to people. She was our guest, you see, and though perhaps neither of us like her very much, you must be polite. Yourather snapped at her. You snapped ‘hollyhocks’ when she admired roses, and you snapped ‘coreopsis’ when she asked if they were sunflowers.”
“But what a fool!” cried Hugh. “And she called me naughty again at the door. Naughty!” he shouted. “And she asked herself to come and meet Peggy. I forgive her that, though, as it was so unsuccessful.”
Then he sat down by his wife’s chair.
“Yes, I was rude,” he said suddenly. “I am sorry. But I was so angry when I came in. Oh, Lord, didn’t I give it him!”
Hugh flared up again at the thought.
“And if it’s that you want to talk about,” he said, “I don’t see that it’s any use. I feel I was perfectly right. It was only ludicrous when he came and told me that ‘Tristan’ was not a fit opera to put on the stage, and that I was devoting my voice—a God-sent gift, he called it, in his horrid, canting way, because my toenails are just as God sent—to evil ends; but his telling me that your paper wasn’t fit to be read and discussed at their holy and sacred Literific was not ludicrous. It didn’t amuse me. And I didn’t amuse him.”
Hugh’s voice rose shrilly.
“And he hadn’t even read it, not even a review of it this time!” he said. “What does the man mean? Does he think that because he wears an all-round collar he has the gift of divination, so that he can pronounce on things he has never set eyes on?”
“Did you say all this?” asked Edith. “Did you quarrel with him?”
“Yes, but of course when I’d finished I asked him to shake hands. I didn’t say a word that wasn’t true. And he refused. He said he would shake hands when I expressed regret for all I had said. He couldn’t answerme back; there was nothing to say. That’s what he couldn’t forgive.”
“Tell me exactly what happened, all you said to him,” said Edith gravely.
Hugh was so worked up again by now that it is to be feared he recounted the interview with gusto, and the completeness with which he seemed to have expressed himself rather appalled his wife.
“And if you ask me if I’m sorry,” he concluded, “I’m not. He has a nasty mind and it has been my privilege to tell him so. Agnes has got a nasty mind, too. She used not to have; she used to have quite a nice one, like mine, but he has corrupted her. Bother! I wish I’d told him that. I thought of it, but I forgot again. I shall send him a postcard about it.”
Edith could not help laughing at this.
“Ah! do write it Hugh,” she said, “and then tear it up. That is such an excellent plan. If I feel very angry with anyone I do that. I don’t know that it’s a particularly Christian thing to do, but it is such a relief. You gravely write down all the nasty things you can think of, and state them in the most cutting manner. Won’t you try it?”
Hugh shook his head.
“It wouldn’t do,” he said, “because I should certainly send it. I will with pleasure if you like.”
Edith was silent a moment.
“But what are we to do?” she said. “You see you have said that you will do your utmost to make me leave the Literific, while I have sent a grovelling message by Mrs. Owen to say that I will read them a paper. The situation is impossible. As it stands, too, you are dead cuts with your brother-in-law. That’s impossible, too.”
“So is he,” remarked Hugh.
Edith pulled Hugh’s hair gently.
“Hugh, I’m going to talk for quite a long time without stopping,” she said. “In fact, you mustn’t consider I have stopped till I tell you so. Now, first of all, I just love you for having said all those things to Canon Alington, because your first reason was that you were sticking up for me. Thank you most awfully, dear.
“But then, do you know, Hughie, another reason came in. You lost your temper because you thought he was insulting me, but you continued to let it be lost because he has, times without number, got on your nerves. Though you told him you laughed at what he said about ‘Tristan,’ you told him that in order to vex him, to hurt him.”
“This is what we used to call a pi jaw at school,” remarked Hugh.
“Yes, and you can call it one now, if you like. You were really irritated by his attitude about ‘Tristan’ and about ‘Gambits,’ and though perhaps you laughed at the time, this afternoon you were not laughing at it at all. You told him that Peggy would roar about it for the same reason, in order to vex him, and you sent that message by Mrs. Owen about theNineteenth Centuryfor the same reason. I didn’t ask you not to then, because it would have looked to her as if you and I were at discord. But I wish you hadn’t; she is quite—quite tactless enough to give it him.
“Now, my darling, you mustn’t do things to vex people. It isn’t you when you do that. It wasn’t you this afternoon; it was your anger on my account that left the door open, and the devil got in. It is so cheap, and easy, and vulgar to be angry, and to try to vex people. And, believe me, it never does any good at all. Anger is one of the two absolutely indefensible anduseless emotions, and the other is fear. Oh, Hughie, what dreadful twins!”
Hugh moved impatiently, with a shrug of his shoulders. He had shifted his seat on the grass, so that he sat sideways to her and could look at her, and he saw that her mouth was trembling a little.
“Anger frightens me,” she said, “and makes me afraid; that is why it and fear seem to me like twins. The atmosphere of it is so dreadful; it is heavy and close as before a thunderstorm. I can’t breathe in it, and whether you are angry with me or with him or with anyone else, it is only a question of degree. There is poison about. It is such a waste of time, too. One enjoys nothing when one is angry; the hours just shrivel up and die, instead of putting out flowers. I can’t help being proud of and loving the first motive that put anger into your heart, dear, but that is quite inconsistent and quite wrong of me. But for the rest——”
“Oh, but you are wrong,” said Hugh. “I enjoyed being angry this afternoon. It put out some beautiful flowers.”
“But what part of you enjoyed it?” she asked. “Not the part I love and am so proud of.”
She leaned forward to him and spoke more gently.
“Oh, Hugh, let us be kind,” she said. “Don’t let us try to improve people, or tell them that they are wrong, and narrow, and bigoted, and Puritanical. Let them be all that if they wish; it really is their business and not ours. But do let us be kind, for that beyond any doubt is our business, and leave it to others to be good for them. It is so frightfully easy to be good for other people and to speak sharply to them when we think they are behaving absurdly, but generally our motives for doing that are a little mixed; we do it because we aresour and angry ourselves, and rather enjoy spoiling their pleasure.”
The spell was beginning to work. Hugh had ceased fidgeting, and looked at her with the quiver of a smile on his mouth.
“Besides, it is such fun being kind and not bitter,” she said, “and being big and not small. Yes, small, for angry people are always small and narrow, and for an angry man to call another one narrow is for the pot to call the kettle black.”
Hugh had a slight relapse for a moment, and groaned.
“But think what a state of holy exultation he will be in,” he said, “if you meekly say you will write another paper and I, well—I suppose you mean me to express regret for what I said. Edith, I don’t think I can bear the thought of it. He will feel that he is being an instrument for good, and that his efforts and his bravery and his determination to speak out at whatever personal cost are being blessed. They aren’t, they aren’t, they are not! Are they!”
Hugh rolled over on the ground in a sort of agony at the thought.
“Agnes will call him Galahad more than ever,” he went on, “and Mrs. Owen will dedicate the Galahad cycle to him, and Ambrose will feel that the early Christian martyrs couldn’t hold a candle to his blessed father—I wish they had—and they will all sit in a row with seraphic smiles and know how noble, and holy, and happy they all are, and especially that ass. He is an ass and a prig! And, oh, dear me, Edith, how dreadfully funny it all is! But I must, I absolutely must, tell Peggy about it. Supposing she happened to find out, how dreadfully unkind she would think me for not having told her.”
Edith had the highest opinion of the value of a sense of humour, and often, so it appeared to her, it would solve a situation, and restore a cheerful equanimity or even more to the sufferer from that situation, whereas an appeal to higher motives for tolerance might have been made in vain. And whether it was her words or Hugh’s own innate sense of the ludicrous that had thus restored him, she did not care at all. Something, anyhow, she or it or himself, had dissipated his anger, and given him back the genial, though amused, outlook that a little while ago had been shrouded from him. His laughter, his rolling on the grass were kindly again, and kindliness, as she had said, she reckoned as a master-key to conduct. He might laugh at Canon Alington as much as he liked; he might laugh (and probably would) at her and her “pi jaw,” provided only he laughed not bitterly. His desire, too, to tell Peggy, as expressed just now, was whole worlds away from what his desire had been when he suggested the same thing to Mrs. Owen. He was kind again, and Edith felt as if some blot or stain had been taken off her own character.
But though kind again, Hugh immediately got grave again. After his agonised roll on the grass he sat up, and clasping his knees with his hands, leaned his chin on them, and looked at her with that kindled eye.
“Are you David?” he said—“are you David reincarnated that you expel evil spirits?”
Then Edith knew that it did matter whether it was she or Hugh’s own sense of humour that had restored him. She had told herself it did not; nor indeed in the abstract did it, but it mattered so much to her.
“Oh, Hugh, did I help?” she asked. “I am so glad!”
“Go on,” said he, “the evil spirit is only half-exorcised yet.”
“Ah, I have said it all!” she protested, “and I am afraid I was very lengthy about it. But I think it was all true, Hughie. Oh, I know it was!”
He smiled at her, waiting, entreating.
“Ah, there you are, shining, shining,” he said. “And I can’t reach you. Tell me what you feel like inside that makes you what you are. I want to get at it, and I can’t. It isn’t that you keep it back—oh, I know that—but I am not tall enough!”
For one moment she tried to laugh it off.
“I see you want to make me talk like Ambrose,” she said.
“Yes, darling; you do it so naturally,” said Hugh. “So go on.”
Again she leaned forward toward his radiant face.
“There is no impulse I can teach you, dear,” she said, “and you can only teach yourself, or let years teach you all the rest, which is practice. I have had so much more practice than you, simply because I am so much older. It is only that, for one requires the same situation to be presented to one hundreds and thousands of times before one really draws the moral. And I have so often seen my own anger making misery not only for others but for myself, that at last I began really to connect the two. One is like a puppy for so many years, and it takes one a lot of beating and being tied up to realise that it is not a good plan to gnaw other people’s shoes or to snap at other people’s hands. And slowly—oh, my Hugh, so slowly—I have learned a sort of patience, a sort of toleration for other people’s opinions. I have actually begun to believe that there are other people in the world beside myself, and that they have just as good a right to their opinion as I have to mine, and that when I happen to disagree with themit may be just possible, as Oliver Cromwell said, that I may be mistaken. Sometimes, as about this unfortunate paper of mine, my reasonable self tells me that I am right and they are wrong. Yes, I will concede that now. But what then? I may be mistaken. At any rate, at that point the law of kindness comes in. They don’t want this paper; in fact, your sister said she would resign—now be kind—rather than send out the notices. But why, why because I disagree should I make a fuss and cause unpleasantness? Do let us all be as happy and pleasant as we can. I know perfectly well that all of them are acting up to their best motives; they really think that the subject I chose was not a fit one. So I should be acting on the very worst motive if I tried to embarrass or vex them. You and I lose none of our happiness or pleasure if I write something else; and even if we did, perhaps it wouldn’t matter very much. We have got plenty left, haven’t we?”
She sat upright again for a moment, and let her eyes wander over the lawn, the quiet trees, the gray back of the down, the green water-meadow below. Then they came back to Hugh.
“It is silly to talk about the paper,” she said, “for the whole thing is so infinitesimal. But it did happen to be the text when you bade me discourse. And, after all, either nothing is infinitesimal, or else everything is. Oh, my dear, if we think of the thousand generations that came before us, and will come after, who laugh and love and hate and are angry, what do you and I matter? But we matter to God. He has chosen to put the infinite within us. Because we are human, we have to make finite things of it, but let us make them as big as we can.”
She rose with shining eyes, and stretched out her two hands to him.
“It is getting damp,” she said. “Let me pull you up.”
“You have,” said he.
In the gathering dusk they walked for a while without speech. Something had come home to Hugh; there was a fresh inmate at his secret hearth. Words, mere words, which are falsely supposed to be so ineffectual had brought it there, but the words had been winged with sincerity. Tiny though now the whole scullery-storm appeared, he saw how big was the woman who had made it appear tiny. She moved naturally on that wonderful level, and it was just because she was so big that she had treated this little thing like that. She had brought all the fineness of her nature to bear on it; she had not disproved it with indulgent impatience merely, saying that since these ridiculous people had such ridiculous feelings, she would humour them, rather than cause unpleasantness, but she had turned on to the situation all the kindliness and wisdom that she possessed. Small though the occasion was, it had been to her part of life itself, in which every detail is piece of the design. He waited further instructions about these details.