To understand and sympathise with the feelings and action of the Rector of Worsted Skeynes, one must consider his origin and the circumstances of his life.
The second son of an old Suffolk family, he had followed the routine of his house, and having passed at Oxford through certain examinations, had been certificated at the age of twenty-four as a man fitted to impart to persons of both sexes rules of life and conduct after which they had been groping for twice or thrice that number of years. His character, never at any time undecided, was by this fortunate circumstance crystallised and rendered immune from the necessity for self-search and spiritual struggle incidental to his neighbours. Since he was a man neither below nor above the average, it did not occur to him to criticise or place himself in opposition to a system which had gone on so long and was about to do him so much good. Like all average men, he was a believer in authority, and none the less because authority placed a large portion of itself in his hands. It would, indeed, have been unwarrantable to expect a man of his birth, breeding, and education to question the machine of which he was himself a wheel.
He had dropped, therefore, at the age of twenty-six, insensibly, on the death of an uncle, into the family living at Worsted Skeynes. He had been there ever since. It was a constant and natural grief to him that on his death the living would go neither to his eldest nor his second son, but to the second son of his elder brother, the Squire. At the age of twenty-seven he had married Miss Rose Twining, the fifth daughter of a Huntingdonshire parson, and in less than eighteen years begotten ten children, and was expecting the eleventh, all healthy and hearty like himself. A family group hung over the fireplace in the study, under the framed and illuminated text, “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” which he had chosen as his motto in the first year of his cure, and never seen any reason to change. In that family group Mr. Barter sat in the centre with his dog between his legs; his wife stood behind him, and on both sides the children spread out like the wings of a fan or butterfly. The bills of their schooling were beginning to weigh rather heavily, and he complained a good deal; but in principle he still approved of the habit into which he had got, and his wife never complained of anything.
The study was furnished with studious simplicity; many a boy had been, not unkindly, caned there, and in one place the old Turkey carpet was rotted away, but whether by their tears or by their knees, not even Mr. Barter knew. In a cabinet on one side of the fire he kept all his religious books, many of them well worn; in a cabinet on the other side he kept his bats, to which he was constantly attending; a fishing-rod and a gun-case stood modestly in a corner. The archway between the drawers of his writing-table held a mat for his bulldog, a prize animal, wont to lie there and guard his master's legs when he was writing his sermons. Like those of his dog, the Rector's good points were the old English virtues of obstinacy, courage, intolerance, and humour; his bad points, owing to the circumstances of his life, had never been brought to his notice.
When, therefore, he found himself alone with Gregory Vigil, he approached him as one dog will approach another, and came at once to the matter in hand.
“It's some time since I had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Vigil,” he said. “Mrs. Pendyce has been giving me in confidence the news you've brought down. I'm bound to tell you at once that I'm surprised.”
Gregory made a little movement of recoil, as though his delicacy had received a shock.
“Indeed!” he said, with a sort of quivering coldness.
The Rector, quick to note opposition, repeated emphatically:
“More than surprised; in fact, I think there must be some mistake.”
“Indeed?” said Gregory again.
A change came over Mr. Barter's face. It had been grave, but was now heavy and threatening.
“I have to say to you,” he said, “that somehow—somehow, this divorce must be put a stop to.”
Gregory flushed painfully.
“On what grounds? I am not aware that my ward is a parishioner of yours, Mr. Barter, or that if she were——”
The Rector closed in on him, his head thrust forward, his lower lip projecting.
“If she were doing her duty,” he said, “she would be. I'm not considering her— I'm considering her husband; he is a parishioner of mine, and I say this divorce must be stopped.”
Gregory retreated no longer.
“On what grounds?” he said again, trembling all over.
“I've no wish to enter into particulars,” said Mr. Barter, “but if you force me to, I shall not hesitate.”
“I regret that I must,” answered Gregory.
“Without mentioning names, then, I say that she is not a fit person to bring a suit for divorce!”
“You say that?” said Gregory. “You——”
He could not go on.
“You will not move me, Mr. Vigil,” said the Rector, with a grim little smile. “I have my duty to do.”
Gregory recovered possession of himself with an effort.
“You have said that which no one but a clergyman could say with impunity,” he said freezingly. “Be so good as to explain yourself.”
“My explanation,” said Mr. Barter, “is what I have seen with my own eyes.”
He raised those eyes to Gregory. Their pupils were contracted to pin-points, the light-grey irises around had a sort of swimming glitter, and round these again the whites were injected with blood.
“If you must know, with my own eyes I've seen her in that very conservatory over there kissing a man.”
Gregory threw up his hand.
“How dare you!” he whispered.
Again Mr. Barter's humorous under-lip shot out.
“I dare a good deal more than that, Mr. Vigil,” he said, “as you will find; and I say this to you—stop this divorce, or I'll stop it myself!”
Gregory turned to the window. When he came back he was outwardly calm.
“You have been guilty of indelicacy,” he said. “Continue in your delusion, think what you like, do what you like. The matter will go on. Good-evening, sir.”
And turning on his heel, he left the room.
Mr. Barter stepped forward. The words, “You have been guilty of indelicacy,” whirled round his brain till every blood vessel in his face and neck was swollen to bursting, and with a hoarse sound like that of an animal in pain he pursued Gregory to the door. It was shut in his face. And since on taking Orders he had abandoned for ever the use of bad language, he was very near an apoplectic fit. Suddenly he became aware that Mrs. Pendyce was looking at him from the conservatory door. Her face was painfully white, her eyebrows lifted, and before that look Mr. Barter recovered a measure of self-possession.
“Is anything the matter, Mr. Barter?”
The Rector smiled grimly.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “I must ask you to excuse me, that's all. I've a parish matter to attend to.”
When he found himself in the drive, the feeling of vertigo and suffocation passed, but left him unrelieved. He had, in fact, happened on one of those psychological moments which enable a man's true nature to show itself. Accustomed to say of himself bluffly, “Yes, yes; I've a hot temper, soon over,” he had never, owing to the autocracy of his position, had a chance of knowing the tenacity of his soul. So accustomed and so able for many years to vent displeasure at once, he did not himself know the wealth of his old English spirit, did not know of what an ugly grip he was capable. He did not even know it at this minute, conscious only of a sort of black wonder at this monstrous conduct to a man in his position, doing his simple duty. The more he reflected, the more intolerable did it seem that a woman like this Mrs. Bellew should have the impudence to invoke the law of the land in her favour a woman who was no better than a common baggage—a woman he had seen kissing George Pendyce. To have suggested to Mr. Barter that there was something pathetic in this black wonder of his, pathetic in the spectacle of his little soul delivering its little judgments, stumbling its little way along with such blind certainty under the huge heavens, amongst millions of organisms as important as itself, would have astounded him; and with every step he took the blacker became his wonder, the more fixed his determination to permit no such abuse of morality, no such disregard of Hussell Barter.
“You have been guilty of indelicacy!” This indictment had a wriggling sting, and lost no venom from the fact that he could in no wise have perceived where the indelicacy of his conduct lay. But he did not try to perceive it. Against himself, clergyman and gentleman, the monstrosity of the charge was clear. This was a point of morality. He felt no anger against George; it was the woman that excited his just wrath. For so long he had been absolute among women, with the power, as it were, over them of life and death. This was flat immorality! He had never approved of her leaving her husband; he had never approved of her at all! He turned his steps towards the Firs.
From above the hedges the sleepy cows looked down; a yaffle laughed a field or two away; in the sycamores, which had come out before their time, the bees hummed. Under the smile of the spring the innumerable life of the fields went carelessly on around that square black figure ploughing along the lane with head bent down under a wide-brimmed hat.
George Pendyce, in a fly drawn by an old grey horse, the only vehicle that frequented the station at Worsted Skeynes, passed him in the lane, and leaned back to avoid observation. He had not forgotten the tone of the Rector's voice in the smoking-room on the night of the dance. George was a man who could remember as well as another. In the corner of the old fly, that rattled and smelled of stables and stale tobacco, he fixed his moody eyes on the driver's back and the ears of the old grey horse, and never stirred till they set him down at the hall door.
He went at once to his room, sending word that he had come for the night. His mother heard the news with feelings of joy and dread, and she dressed quickly for dinner, that she might see him the sooner. The Squire came into her room just as she was going down. He had been engaged all day at Sessions, and was in one of the moods of apprehension as to the future which but seldom came over him.
“Why didn't you keep Vigil to dinner?” he said. “I could have given him things for the night. I wanted to talk to him about insuring my life; he knows, about that. There'll be a lot of money wanted, to pay my death-duties. And if the Radicals get in I shouldn't be surprised if they put them up fifty per cent.”
“I wanted to keep him,” said Mrs. Pendyce, “but he went away without saying good-bye.”
“He's an odd fellow!”
For some moments Mr. Pendyce made reflections on this breach of manners. He had a nice standard of conduct in all social affairs.
“I'm having trouble with that man Peacock again. He's the most pig-headed—— What are you in such a hurry for, Margery?”
“George is here!”
“George? Well, I suppose he can wait till dinner. I have a lot of things I want to tell you about. We had a case of arson to-day. Old Quarryman was away, and I was in the chair. It was that fellow Woodford that we convicted for poaching—a very gross case. And this is what he does when he comes out. They tried to prove insanity. It's the rankest case of revenge that ever came before me. We committed him, of course. He'll get a swinging sentence. Of all dreadful crimes, arson is the most——”
Mr. Pendyce could find no word to characterise his opinion of this offence, and drawing his breath between his teeth, passed into his dressing-room. Mrs. Pendyce hastened quietly out, and went to her son's room. She found George in his shirtsleeves, inserting the links of his cuffs.
“Let me do that for you, my dear boy! How dreadfully they starch your cuffs! It is so nice to do something for you sometimes!”
George answered her:
“Well, Mother, and how have you been?”
Over Mrs. Pendyce's face came a look half sorrowful, half arch, but wholly pathetic. 'What! is it beginning already? Oh, don't put me away from you!' she seemed to say.
“Very well, thank you, dear. And you?”
George did not meet her eyes.
“So-so,” he said. “I took rather a nasty knock over the 'City' last week.”
“Is that a race?” asked Mrs. Pendyce.
And by some secret process she knew that he had hurried out that piece of bad news to divert her attention from another subject, for George had never been a “crybaby.”
She sat down on the edge of the sofa, and though the gong was about to sound, incited him to dawdle and stay with her.
“And have you any other news, dear? It seems such an age since we've seen you. I think I've told you all our budget in my letters. You know there's going to be another event at the Rectory?”
“Another? I passed Barter on the way up. I thought he looked a bit blue.”
A look of pain shot into Mrs. Pendyce's eyes.
“Oh, I'm afraid that couldn't have been the reason, dear.” And she stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again. “If I'd known you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp. Vic has had such dear little puppies. Would you like one? They've all got that nice black smudge round the eye.”
She was watching him as only a mother can watch-stealthily, minutely, longingly, every little movement, every little change of his face, and more than all, that fixed something behind which showed the abiding temper and condition of his heart.
'Something is making him unhappy,' she thought. 'He is changed since I saw him last, and I can't get at it. I seem to be so far from him—so far!'
And somehow she knew he had come down this evening because he was lonely and unhappy, and instinct had made him turn to her.
But she knew that trying to get nearer would only make him put her farther off, and she could not bear this, so she asked him nothing, and bent all her strength on hiding from him the pain she felt.
She went downstairs with her arm in his, and leaned very heavily on it, as though again trying to get close to him, and forget the feeling she had had all that winter—the feeling of being barred away, the feeling of secrecy and restraint.
Mr. Pendyce and the two girls were in the drawing-room.
“Well, George,” said the Squire dryly, “I'm glad you've come. How you can stick in London at this time of year! Now you're down you'd better stay a couple of days. I want to take you round the estate; you know nothing about anything. I might die at any moment, for all you can tell. Just make up your mind to stay.”
George gave him a moody look.
“Sorry,” he said; “I've got an engagement in town.”
Mr. Pendyce rose and stood with his back to the fire.
“That's it,” he said: “I ask you to do a simple thing for your own good—and—you've got an engagement. It's always like that, and your mother backs you up. Bee, go and play me something.”
The Squire could not bear being played to, but it was the only command likely to be obeyed that came into his head.
The absence of guests made little difference to a ceremony esteemed at Worsted Skeynes the crowning blessing of the day. The courses, however, were limited to seven, and champagne was not drunk. The Squire drank a glass or so of claret, for, as he said, “My dear old father took his bottle of port every night of his life, and it never gave him a twinge. If I were to go on at that rate it would kill me in a year.”
His daughters drank water. Mrs. Pendyce, cherishing a secret preference for champagne, drank sparingly of a Spanish burgundy, procured for her by Mr. Pendyce at a very reasonable price, and corked between meals with a special cork. She offered it to George.
“Try some of my burgundy, dear; it's so nice.”
But George refused and asked for whisky-and-soda, glancing at the butler, who brought it in a very yellow state.
Under the influence of dinner the Squire recovered equanimity, though he still dwelt somewhat sadly on the future.
“You young fellows,” he said, with a friendly look at George, “are such individualists. You make a business of enjoying yourselves. With your piquet and your racing and your billiards and what not, you'll be used up before you're fifty. You don't let your imaginations work. A green old age ought to be your ideal, instead of which it seems to be a green youth. Ha!” Mr. Pendyce looked at his daughters till they said:
“Oh, Father, how can you!”
Norah, who had the more character of the two, added:
“Isn't Father rather dreadful, Mother?”
But Mrs. Pendyce was looking at her son. She had longed so many evenings to see him sitting there.
“We'll have a game of piquet to-night, George.”
George looked up and nodded with a glum smile.
On the thick, soft carpet round the table the butler and second footman moved. The light of the wax candles fell lustrous and subdued on the silver and fruit and flowers, on the girls' white necks, on George's well-coloured face and glossy shirt-front, gleamed in the jewels on his mother's long white fingers, showed off the Squire's erect and still spruce figure; the air was languorously sweet with the perfume of azaleas and narcissus bloom. Bee, with soft eyes, was thinking of young Tharp, who to-day had told her that he loved her, and wondering if father would object. Her mother was thinking of George, stealing timid glances at his moody face. There was no sound save the tinkle of forks and the voices of Norah and the Squire, talking of little things. Outside, through the long opened windows, was the still, wide country; the full moon, tinted apricot and figured like a coin, hung above the cedar-trees, and by her light the whispering stretches of the silent fields lay half enchanted, half asleep, and all beyond that little ring of moonshine, unfathomed and unknown, was darkness—a great darkness wrapping from their eyes the restless world.
On the day of the big race at Kempton Park, in which the Ambler, starting favourite, was left at the post, George Pendyce had just put his latch-key in the door of the room he had taken near Mrs. Bellew, when a man, stepping quickly from behind, said:
“Mr. George Pendyce, I believe.”
George turned.
“Yes; what do you want?”
The man put into George's hand a long envelope.
“From Messrs. Frost and Tuckett.”
George opened it, and read from the top of a slip of paper:
“'ADMIRALTY, PROBATE, AND DIVORCE. The humble petition of Jaspar Bellew——'”
He lifted his eyes, and his look, uncannily impassive, unresenting, unangered, dogged, caused the messenger to drop his gaze as though he had hit a man who was down.
“Thanks. Good-night!”
He shut the door, and read the document through. It contained some precise details, and ended in a claim for damages, and George smiled.
Had he received this document three months ago, he would not have taken it thus. Three months ago he would have felt with rage that he was caught. His thoughts would have run thus 'I have got her into a mess; I have got myself into a mess. I never thought this would happen. This is the devil! I must see someone— I must stop it. There must be a way out.' Having but little imagination, his thoughts would have beaten their wings against this cage, and at once he would have tried to act. But this was not three months ago, and now——
He lit a cigarette and sat down on the sofa, and the chief feeling in his heart was a strange hope, a sort of funereal gladness. He would have to go and see her at once, that very night; an excuse—no need to wait in here—to wait—wait on the chance of her coming.
He got up and drank some whisky, then went back to the sofa and sat down again.
'If she is not here by eight,' he thought, 'I will go round.'
Opposite was a full-length mirror, and he turned to the wall to avoid it. There was fixed on his face a look of gloomy determination, as though he were thinking, 'I'll show them all that I'm not beaten yet.'
At the click of a latch-key he scrambled off the sofa, and his face resumed its mask. She came in as usual, dropped her opera cloak, and stood before him with bare shoulders. Looking in her face, he wondered if she knew.
“I thought I'd better come,” she said. “I suppose you've had the same charming present?”
George nodded. There was a minute's silence.
“It's really rather funny. I'm sorry for you, George.”
George laughed too, but his laugh was different.
“I will do all I can,” he said.
Mrs. Bellew came close to him.
“I've seen about the Kempton race. What shocking luck! I suppose you've lost a lot. Poor boy! It never rains but it pours.”
George looked down.
“That's all right; nothing matters when I have you.”
He felt her arms fasten behind his neck, but they were cool as marble; he met her eyes, and they were mocking and compassionate.
Their cab, wheeling into the main thoroughfare, joined in the race of cabs flying as for life toward the East—past the Park, where the trees, new-leafed, were swinging their skirts like ballet-dancers in the wind; past the Stoics' and the other clubs, rattling, jingling, jostling for the lead, shooting past omnibuses that looked cosy in the half-light with their lamps and rows of figures solemnly opposed.
At Blafard's the tall dark young waiter took her cloak with reverential fingers; the little wine-waiter smiled below the suffering in his eyes. The same red-shaded lights fell on her arms and shoulders, the same flowers of green and yellow grew bravely in the same blue vases. On the menu were written the same dishes. The same idle eye peered through the chink at the corner of the red blinds with its stare of apathetic wonder.
Often during that dinner George looked at her face by stealth, and its expression baffled him, so careless was it. And, unlike her mood of late, that had been glum and cold, she was in the wildest spirits.
People looked round from the other little tables, all full now that the season had begun, her laugh was so infectious; and George felt a sort of disgust. What was it in this woman that made her laugh, when his own heart was heavy? But he said nothing; he dared not even look at her, for fear his eyes should show his feeling.
'We ought to be squaring our accounts,' he thought—'looking things in the face. Something must be done; and here she is laughing and making everyone stare!' Done! But what could be done, when it was all like quicksand?
The other little tables emptied one by one.
“George,” she said, “take me somewhere where we can dance!”
George stared at her.
“My dear girl, how can I? There is no such place!”
“Take me to your Bohemians!”
“You can't possibly go to a place like that.”
“Why not? Who cares where we go, or what we do?”
“I care!”
“Ah, my dear George, you and your sort are only half alive!”
Sullenly George answered:
“What do you take me for? A cad?”
But there was fear, not anger, in his heart.
“Well, then, let's drive into the East End. For goodness' sake, let's do something not quite proper!”
They took a hansom and drove East. It was the first time either had ever been in that unknown land.
“Close your cloak, dear; it looks odd down here.”
Mrs. Bellew laughed.
“You'll be just like your father when you're sixty, George.”
And she opened her cloak the wider. Round a barrel-organ at the corner of a street were girls in bright colours dancing.
She called to the cabman to stop.
“Let's watch those children!”
“You'll only make a show of us.”
Mrs. Bellew put her hands on the cab door.
“I've a good mind to get out and dance with them!”
“You're mad to-night,” said George. “Sit still!”
He stretched out his arm and barred her way. The passers-by looked curiously at the little scene. A crowd began to collect.
“Go on!” cried George.
There was a cheer from the crowd; the driver whipped his horse; they darted East again.
It was striking twelve when the cab put them down at last near the old church on Chelsea Embankment, and they had hardly spoken for an hour.
And all that hour George was feeling:
'This is the woman for whom I've given it all up. This is the woman to whom I shall be tied. This is the woman I cannot tear myself away from. If I could, I would never see her again. But I can't live without her. I must go on suffering when she's with me, suffering when she's away from me. And God knows how it's all to end!'
He took her hand in the darkness; it was cold and unresponsive as a stone. He tried to see her face, but could read nothing in those greenish eyes staring before them, like a cat's, into the darkness.
When the cab was gone they stood looking at each other by the light of a street lamp. And George thought:
'So I must leave her like this, and what then?'
She put her latch-key in the door, and turned round to him. In the silent, empty street, where the wind was rustling and scraping round the corners of tall houses, and the lamplight flickered, her face and figure were so strange, motionless, Sphinx-like. Only her eyes seemed alive, fastened on his own.
“Good-night!” he muttered.
She beckoned.
“Take what you can of me, George!” she said.
Mr. Pendyce's head, seen from behind at his library bureau, where it was his practice to spend most mornings from half-past nine to eleven or even twelve, was observed to be of a shape to throw no small light upon his class and character. Its contour was almost national. Bulging at the back, and sloping rapidly to a thin and wiry neck, narrow between the ears and across the brow, prominent in the jaw, the length of a line drawn from the back headland to the promontory at the chin would have been extreme. Upon the observer there was impressed the conviction that here was a skull denoting, by surplusage of length, great precision of character and disposition to action, and, by deficiency of breadth, a narrow tenacity which might at times amount to wrong-headedness. The thin cantankerous neck, on which little hairs grew low, and the intelligent ears, confirmed this impression; and when his face, with its clipped hair, dry rosiness, into which the east wind had driven a shade of yellow and the sun a shade of brown, and grey, rather discontented eyes, came into view, the observer had no longer any hesitation in saying that he was in the presence of an Englishman, a landed proprietor, and, but for Mr. Pendyce's rooted belief to the contrary, an individualist. His head, indeed, was like nothing so much as the Admiralty Pier at Dover—that strange long narrow thing, with a slight twist or bend at the end, which first disturbs the comfort of foreigners arriving on these shores, and strikes them with a sense of wonder and dismay.
He sat very motionless at his bureau, leaning a little over his papers like a man to whom things do not come too easily; and every now and then he stopped to refer to the calendar at his left hand, or to a paper in one of the many pigeonholes. Open, and almost out of reach, was a back volume of Punch, of which periodical, as a landed proprietor, he had an almost professional knowledge. In leisure moments it was one of his chief recreations to peruse lovingly those aged pictures, and at the image of John Bull he never failed to think: 'Fancy making an Englishman out a fat fellow like that!'
It was as though the artist had offered an insult to himself, passing him over as the type, and conferring that distinction on someone fast going out of fashion. The Rector, whenever he heard Mr. Pendyce say this, strenuously opposed him, for he was himself of a square, stout build, and getting stouter.
With all their aspirations to the character of typical Englishmen, Mr. Pendyce and Mr. Barter thought themselves far from the old beef and beer, port and pigskin types of the Georgian and early Victorian era. They were men of the world, abreast of the times, who by virtue of a public school and 'Varsity training had acquired a manner, a knowledge of men and affairs, a standard of thought on which it had really never been needful to improve. Both of them, but especially Mr. Pendyce, kept up with all that was going forward by visiting the Metropolis six or seven or even eight times a year. On these occasions they rarely took their wives, having almost always important business in hand—old College, Church, or Conservative dinners, cricket-matches, Church Congress, the Gaiety Theatre, and for Mr. Barter the Lyceum. Both, too, belonged to clubs—the Rector to a comfortable, old-fashioned place where he could get a rubber without gambling, and Mr. Pendyce to the Temple of things as they had been, as became a man who, having turned all social problems over in his mind, had decided that there was no real safety but in the past.
They always went up to London grumbling, but this was necessary, and indeed salutary, because of their wives; and they always came back grumbling, because of their livers, which a good country rest always fortunately reduced in time for the next visit. In this way they kept themselves free from the taint of provincialism.
In the silence of his master's study the spaniel John, whose head, too, was long and narrow, had placed it over his paw, as though suffering from that silence, and when his master cleared his throat he guttered his tail and turned up an eye with a little moon of white, without stirring his chin.
The clock ticked at the end of the long, narrow room; the sunlight through the long, narrow windows fell on the long, narrow backs of books in the glassed book-case that took up the whole of one wall; and this room, with its slightly leathery smell, seemed a fitting place for some long, narrow ideal to be worked out to its long and narrow ending.
But Mr. Pendyce would have scouted the notion of an ending to ideals having their basis in the hereditary principle.
“Let me do my duty and carry on the estate as my dear old father did, and hand it down to my son enlarged if possible,” was sometimes his saying, very, very often his thought, not seldom his prayer. “I want to do no more than that.”
The times were bad and dangerous. There was every chance of a Radical Government being returned, and the country going to the dogs. It was but natural and human that he should pray for the survival of the form of things which he believed in and knew, the form of things bequeathed to him, and embodied in the salutary words “Horace Pendyce.” It was not his habit to welcome new ideas. A new idea invading the country of the Squire's mind was at once met with a rising of the whole population, and either prevented from landing, or if already on shore instantly taken prisoner. In course of time the unhappy creature, causing its squeaks and groans to penetrate the prison walls, would be released from sheer humaneness and love of a quiet life, and even allowed certain privileges, remaining, however, “that poor, queer devil of a foreigner.” One day, in an inattentive moment, the natives would suffer it to marry, or find that in some disgraceful way it had caused the birth of children unrecognised by law; and their respect for the accomplished fact, for something that already lay in the past, would then prevent their trying to unmarry it, or restoring the children to an unborn state, and very gradually they would tolerate this intrusive brood. Such was the process of Mr. Pendyce's mind. Indeed, like the spaniel John, a dog of conservative instincts, at the approach of any strange thing he placed himself in the way, barking and showing his teeth; and sometimes truly he suffered at the thought that one day Horace Pendyce would no longer be there to bark. But not often, for he had not much imagination.
All the morning he had been working at that old vexed subject of Common Rights on Worsted Scotton, which his father had fenced in and taught him once for all to believe was part integral of Worsted Skeynes. The matter was almost beyond doubt, for the cottagers—in a poor way at the time of the fencing, owing to the price of bread—had looked on apathetically till the very last year required by law to give the old Squire squatter's rights, when all of a sudden that man, Peacock's father, had made a gap in the fence and driven in beasts, which had reopened the whole unfortunate question. This had been in '65, and ever since there had been continual friction bordering on a law suit. Mr. Pendyce never for a moment allowed it to escape his mind that the man Peacock was at the bottom of it all; for it was his way to discredit all principles as ground of action, and to refer everything to facts and persons; except, indeed, when he acted himself, when he would somewhat proudly admit that it was on principle. He never thought or spoke on an abstract question; partly because his father had avoided them before him, partly because he had been discouraged from doing so at school, but mainly because he temperamentally took no interest in such unpractical things.
It was, therefore, a source of wonder to him that tenants of his own should be ungrateful. He did his duty by them, as the Rector, in whose keeping were their souls, would have been the first to affirm; the books of his estate showed this, recording year by year an average gross profit of some sixteen hundred pounds, and (deducting raw material incidental to the upkeep of Worsted Skeynes) a net loss of three.
In less earthly matters, too, such as non-attendance at church, a predisposition to poaching, or any inclination to moral laxity, he could say with a clear conscience that the Rector was sure of his support. A striking instance had occurred within the last month, when, discovering that his under-keeper, an excellent man at his work, had got into a scrape with the postman's wife, he had given the young fellow notice, and cancelled the lease of his cottage.
He rose and went to the plan of the estate fastened to the wall, which he unrolled by pulling a green silk cord, and stood there scrutinising it carefully and placing his finger here and there. His spaniel rose too, and settled himself unobtrusively on his master's foot. Mr. Pendyce moved and trod on him. The spaniel yelped.
“D—n the dog! Oh, poor fellow, John!” said Mr. Pendyce. He went back to his seat, but since he had identified the wrong spot he was obliged in a minute to return again to the plan. The spaniel John, cherishing the hope that he had been justly treated, approached in a half circle, fluttering his tail; he had scarcely reached Mr. Pendyce's foot when the door was opened, and the first footman brought in a letter on a silver salver.
Mr. Pendyce took the note, read it, turned to his bureau, and said: “No answer.”
He sat staring at this document in the silent room, and over his face in turn passed anger, alarm, distrust, bewilderment. He had not the power of making very clear his thought, except by speaking aloud, and he muttered to himself. The spaniel John, who still nurtured a belief that he had sinned, came and lay down very close against his leg.
Mr. Pendyce, never having reflected profoundly on the working morality of his times, had the less difficulty in accepting it. Of violating it he had practically no opportunity, and this rendered his position stronger. It was from habit and tradition rather than from principle and conviction that he was a man of good moral character.
And as he sat reading this note over and over, he suffered from a sense of nausea.
It was couched in these terms:
“THE FIRS,
“May 20.
“DEAR SIR,
“You may or may not have heard that I have made your son, Mr. George Pendyce, correspondent in a divorce suit against my wife. Neither for your sake nor your son's, but for the sake of Mrs. Pendyce, who is the only woman in these parts that I respect, I will withdraw the suit if your son will give his word not to see my wife again.
“Please send me an early answer.
“I am,
“Your obedient servant,
“JASPAR BELLEW.”
The acceptance of tradition (and to accept it was suitable to the Squire's temperament) is occasionally marred by the impingement of tradition on private life and comfort. It was legendary in his class that young men's peccadilloes must be accepted with a certain indulgence. They would, he said, be young men. They must, he would remark, sow their wild oats. Such was his theory. The only difficulty he now had was in applying it to his own particular case, a difficulty felt by others in times past, and to be felt again in times to come. But, since he was not a philosopher, he did not perceive the inconsistency between his theory and his dismay. He saw his universe reeling before that note, and he was not a man to suffer tamely; he felt that others ought to suffer too. It was monstrous that a fellow like this Bellew, a loose fish, a drunkard, a man who had nearly run over him, should have it in his power to trouble the serenity of Worsted Skeynes. It was like his impudence to bring such a charge against his son. It was like his d——d impudence! And going abruptly to the bell, he trod on his spaniel's ear.
“D—n the dog! Oh, poor fellow, John!” But the spaniel John, convinced at last that he had sinned, hid himself in a far corner whence he could see nothing, and pressed his chin closely to the ground.
“Ask your mistress to come here.”
Standing by the hearth, waiting for his wife, the Squire displayed to greater advantage than ever the shape of his long and narrow head; his neck had grown conspicuously redder; his eyes, like those of an offended swan, stabbed, as it were, at everything they saw.
It was not seldom that Mrs. Pendyce was summoned to the study to hear him say: “I want to ask your advice. So-and-so has done such and such.... I have made up my mind.”
She came, therefore, in a few minutes. In compliance with his “Look at that, Margery,” she read the note, and gazed at him with distress in her eyes, and he looked back at her with wrath in his. For this was tragedy.
Not to everyone is it given to take a wide view of things—to look over the far, pale streams, the purple heather, and moonlit pools of the wild marches, where reeds stand black against the sundown, and from long distance comes the cry of a curlew—nor to everyone to gaze from steep cliffs over the wine-dark, shadowy sea—or from high mountainsides to see crowned chaos, smoking with mist, or gold-bright in the sun.
To most it is given to watch assiduously a row of houses, a back-yard, or, like Mrs. and Mr. Pendyce, the green fields, trim coverts, and Scotch garden of Worsted Skeynes. And on that horizon the citation of their eldest son to appear in the Divorce Court loomed like a cloud, heavy with destruction.
So far as such an event could be realised imagination at Worsted Skeynes was not too vivid—it spelled ruin to an harmonious edifice of ideas and prejudice and aspiration. It would be no use to say of that event, “What does it matter? Let people think what they like, talk as they like.” At Worsted Skeynes (and Worsted Skeynes was every country house) there was but one set of people, one church, one pack of hounds, one everything. The importance of a clear escutcheon was too great. And they who had lived together for thirty-four years looked at each other with a new expression in their eyes; their feelings were for once the same. But since it is always the man who has the nicer sense of honour, their thoughts were not the same, for Mr. Pendyce was thinking: 'I won't believe it—disgracing us all!' and Mrs. Pendyce was thinking: 'My boy!'
It was she who spoke first.
“Oh, Horace!”
The sound of her voice restored the Squire's fortitude.
“There you go, Margery! D'you mean to say you believe what this fellow says? He ought to be horsewhipped. He knows my opinion of him.
“It's a piece of his confounded impudence! He nearly ran over me, and now——”
Mrs. Pendyce broke in:
“But, Horace, I'm afraid it's true! Ellen Malden——”
“Ellen Malden?” said Mr. Pendyce. “What business has she——” He was silent, staring gloomily at the plan of Worsted Skeynes, still unrolled, like an emblem of all there was at stake. “If George has really,” he burst out, “he's a greater fool than I took him for! A fool? He's a knave!”
Again he was silent.
Mrs. Pendyce flushed at that word, and bit her lips.
“George could never be a knave!” she said.
Mr. Pendyce answered heavily:
“Disgracing his name!”
Mrs. Pendyce bit deeper into her lips.
“Whatever he has done,” she said, “George is sure to have behaved like a gentleman!”
An angry smile twisted the Squire's mouth.
“Just like a woman!” he said.
But the smile died away, and on both their faces came a helpless look. Like people who have lived together without real sympathy—though, indeed, they had long ceased to be conscious of that—now that something had occurred in which their interests were actually at one, they were filled with a sort of surprise. It was no good to differ. Differing, even silent differing, would not help their son.
“I shall write to George,” said Mr. Pendyce at last. “I shall believe nothing till I've heard from him. He'll tell us the truth, I suppose.”
There was a quaver in his voice.
Mrs. Pendyce answered quickly:
“Oh, Horace, be careful what you say! I'm sure he is suffering!”
Her gentle soul, disposed to pleasure, was suffering, too, and the tears stole up in her eyes. Mr. Pendyce's sight was too long to see them. The infirmity had been growing on him ever since his marriage.
“I shall say what I think right,” he said. “I shall take time to consider what I shall say; I won't be hurried by this ruffian.”
Mrs. Pendyce wiped her lips with her lace-edged handkerchief.
“I hope you will show me the letter,” she said.
The Squire looked at her, and he realised that she was trembling and very white, and, though this irritated him, he answered almost kindly:
“It's not a matter for you, my dear.”
Mrs. Pendyce took a step towards him; her gentle face expressed a strange determination.
“He is my son, Horace, as well as yours.”
Mr. Pendyce turned round uneasily.
“It's no use your getting nervous, Margery. I shall do what's best. You women lose your heads. That d——d fellow's lying! If he isn't——”
At these words the spaniel John rose from his corner and advanced to the middle of the floor. He stood there curved in a half-circle, and looked darkly at his master.
“Confound it!” said Mr. Pendyce. “It's—it's damnable!”
And as if answering for all that depended on Worsted Skeynes, the spaniel John deeply wagged that which had been left him of his tail.
Mrs. Pendyce came nearer still.
“If George refuses to give you that promise, what will you do, Horace?”
Mr. Pendyce stared.
“Promise? What promise?”
Mrs. Pendyce thrust forward the note.
“This promise not to see her again.”
Mr. Pendyce motioned it aside.
“I'll not be dictated to by that fellow Bellew,” he said. Then, by an afterthought: “It won't do to give him a chance. George must promise me that in any case.”
Mrs. Pendyce pressed her lips together.
“But do you think he will?”
“Think—think who will? Think he will what? Why can't you express yourself, Margery? If George has really got us into this mess he must get us out again.”
Mrs. Pendyce flushed.
“He would never leave her in the lurch!”
The Squire said angrily:
“Lurch! Who said anything about lurch? He owes it to her. Not that she deserves any consideration, if she's been—— You don't mean to say you think he'll refuse? He'd never be such a donkey?”
Mrs. Pendyce raised her hands and made what for her was a passionate gesture.
“Oh, Horace!” she said, “you don't understand. He's in love with her!”
Mr. Pendyce's lower lip trembled, a sign with him of excitement or emotion. All the conservative strength of his nature, all the immense dumb force of belief in established things, all that stubborn hatred and dread of change, that incalculable power of imagining nothing, which, since the beginning of time, had made Horace Pendyce the arbiter of his land, rose up within his sorely tried soul.
“What on earth's that to do with it?” he cried in a rage. “You women! You've no sense of anything! Romantic, idiotic, immoral— I don't know what you're at. For God's sake don't go putting ideas into his head!”
At this outburst Mrs. Pendyce's face became rigid; only the flicker of her eyelids betrayed how her nerves were quivering. Suddenly she threw her hands up to her ears.
“Horace!” she cried, “do—— Oh, poor John!”
The Squire had stepped hastily and heavily on to his dog's paw. The creature gave a grievous howl. Mr. Pendyce went down on his knees and raised the limb.
“Damn the dog!” he stuttered. “Oh, poor fellow, John!”
And the two long and narrow heads for a moment were close together.