SUNDAYwas the last day but one of October. They all met at Waterloo in a horrid fog, and missed the nine-thirty because Cecil Le Moine was late. He sauntered up at 9.45, tranquil and at ease, the MS. of his newest play under his arm (he obviously thought to read it to them in the course of the day—“which must be prevented,” Arnold remarked). So they caught a leisured train at 9.53, and got out of it at a little white station about 10.20, and the fog was left behind, and a pure blue October sky arched over a golden and purple earth, and the air was like iced wine, thin and cool and thrilling, and tasting of heather and pinewoods. They went first to the village inn, on the edge of the woods, where they had ordered breakfast for eight. Their main object at breakfast was to ply Cecil with food, lest in a leisure moment he should say, “What if I begin my new play to you while you eat?”
“Good taste and modesty,” Arnold remarked, à propos of nothing, “are so very important. We have all achieved our little successes (if we prefer to regard them in that light, rather than to takethe consensus of the unintelligent opinion of our less enlightened critics). Jane has some very well-spoken of drawings even now on view in Grafton Street, and doubtless many more in Pleasance Court. Have you brought them, or any of them, with you, Jane? No? I thought as much. Eileen last night played a violin to a crowded and breathless audience. Where is the violin to-day? She has left it at home; she does not wish to force the fact of her undoubted musical talent down our throats. Bridget has earned deserved recognition as an entertainer of the great; she has a socialcachetthat we may admire without emulation. Look at her now; her dress is simplicity itself, and she deigns to play in a wood with the humble poor. Even the pince-nez is in abeyance. Billy had a selection from his works read aloud only last week to the élite of our metropolitan poetry-lovers by a famous expert, who alluded in the most flattering terms to his youthful promise. Has he his last volume in his breast-pocket? I think not. Eddy has made a name in proficiency in vigorous sports with youths; he has taught them to box and play billiards; does he come armed with gloves and a cue? I have written an essay of some merit that I have every hope will find itself in next month’sEnglish Review. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have not brought it with me. When the well-bred come out for a day of well-earned recreation, they leave behind them the insignia of their several professions. For the time beingthey are merely individuals, without fame and without occupation, whose one object is to enjoy what is set before them by the gods. Have some more bacon, Cecil.”
Cecil started. “Have you been talking, Arnold? I’m so sorry—I missed it all. I expect it was good, wasn’t it?”
“No one is deceived,” Arnold said, severely. “Your ingenuous air, my young friend, is overdone.”
Cecil was looking at him earnestly. Eileen said, “He’s wondering was it you that reviewed ‘Squibs’ inPoetry and Drama, Arnold. He always looks like that when he’s thinking about reviews.”
“The same phrases,” Cecil murmured—“(meant to be witty, you know)—that Arnold used when commenting on ‘Squibs’ in private life to me. Either he used them again afterwards, feeling proud of them, to the reviewer (possibly Billy?) or the reviewer had just used them to him before he met me, and he cribbed them, or.... But I won’t ask. I mustn’t know. I prefer not to know. I will preserve our friendship intact.”
“What does the conceited child expect?” exclaimed Miss Hogan. “The review said he was more alive than Barker, and wittier than Wilde. The grossest flattery I ever read!”
“A bright piece,” Cecil remarked. “He said it was a bright piece. He did, I tell you.A bright piece.”
“Well, lots of the papers didn’t,” said Sally,consoling him. “TheDaily Commentsaid it was long-winded, incoherent, and dull.”
“Thank you, Sally. That is certainly a cheering memory. To be found bright by theDaily Commentwould indeed be the last stage of degradation.... I wonder what idiocy they will find to say of my next.... I wonder——”
“Have we all finished eating?” Arnold hastily intercepted. “Then let us pay, and go out for a country stroll, to get an appetite for lunch, which will very shortly be upon us.”
“My dear Arnold, one doesn’t stroll immediately after breakfast; how crude you are. One smokes a cigarette first.”
“Well, catch us up when you’ve smoked it. We came out for a day in the country, and we must have it. We’re going to walk several miles now without a stop, to get warm.” Arnold was occasionally seized with a fierce attack of energy, and would walk all through a day, or more probably a night, to get rid of it, and return cured for the time being.
The sandy road led first through a wood that sang in a fresh wind. The cool air was sweet with pines and bracken and damp earth. It was a glorious morning of odours and joy, and the hilarity of the last days of October, when the end seems near and the present poignantly gay, and life a bright piece nearly played out. Arnold and Bridget Hogan walked on together ahead, both talking at once, probably competing as to which could get inmost remarks in the shortest time. After them came Billy Raymond and Cecil Le Moine, and with them Jane and Sally hand-in-hand. Eddy found himself walking in the rear side by side with Eileen Le Moine.
Eileen, who was capable, ignoring all polite conventions, of walking a mile with a slight acquaintance without uttering a word, because she was feeling lazy, or thinking of something interesting, or because her companion bored her, was just now in a conversational mood. She rather liked Eddy; also she saw in him an avenue for an idea she had in mind. She told him so.
“You work in the Borough, don’t you? I wish you’d let me come and play folk-music to your clubs sometimes. It’s a thing I’m rather keen on—getting the old folk melodies into the streets, do you see, the way errand boys will whistle them. Do you know Hugh Datcherd? He has musical evenings in his Lea-side settlement; I go there a good deal. He has morris dancing twice a week and folk-music once.”
Eddy had heard much of Hugh Datcherd’s Lea-side settlement. According to St. Gregory’s, it was run on very regrettable lines. Hillier said, “They teach rank atheism there.” However, it was something that they also taught morris dancing and folk-music.
“It would be splendid if you’d come sometimes,” he said, gratefully. “Just exactly what we should most like. We’ve had a little morris dancing, ofcourse—who hasn’t?—but none of the other thing.”
“Which evening will I come?” she asked. A direct young person; she liked to settle things quickly.
Eddy, consulting his little book, said, “To-morrow, can you?”
She said, “No, I can’t; but I will,” having apparently a high-handed method of dealing with previous engagements.
“It’s the C.L.B. club night,” said Eddy. “Hillier—one of the curates—is taking it to-morrow, and I’m helping. I’ll speak to him, but I’m sure it will be all right. It will be a delightful change from billiards and boxing. Thanks so much.”
“And Mr. Datcherd may come with me, mayn’t he? He’s interested in other people’s clubs. Do you readFurther? And do you like his books?”
“Yes, rather,” Eddy comprehensively answered all three questions. All the same he was smitten with a faint doubt as to Mr. Datcherd’s coming. Probably Hillier’s answer to the three questions would have been “Certainly not.” But after all, St. Gregory’s didn’t belong to Hillier but to the vicar, and the vicar was a man of sense. And anyhow anyone who saw Mrs. Le Moine must be glad to have a visit from her, and anyone who heard her play must thank the gods for it.
“I do like his books,” Eddy amplified; “only they’re so awfully sad, and so at odds with life.”
A faint shadow seemed to cloud her face.
“Heisawfully sad,” she said, after a moment.“And he is at odds with life. He feels it hideous, and he minds. He spends all his time trying and trying can he change it for people. And the more he tries and fails, the more he minds.” She stopped abruptly, as if she had gone too far in explaining Hugh Datcherd to him. Eddy had a knack of drawing confidences; probably it was his look of intelligent sympathy and his habit of listening.
He wondered for a moment whether Hugh Datcherd’s sadness was all altruistic, or did he find his own life hideous too? From what Eddy had heard of Lady Dorothy, his wife, that might easily be so, he thought, for they didn’t sound compatible.
Instinctively, anyhow, he turned away his eyes from the queer, soft look of brooding pity that momentarily shadowed Hugh Datcherd’s friend.
From in front, snatches of talk floated back to them through the clear, thin air. Miss Hogan’s voice, with its slight stutter, seemed to be concluding an interesting anecdote.
“And so they both committed suicide from the library window. And his wife was paralysed from the waist up—is still, in fact.Mostunwholesome, it all was. And now it’s so on Charles Harker’s mind that he writes novels about nothing else, poor creature. Very natural, if you think what he went through. I hear he’s another just coming out now, on the same.”
“He sent it to us,” said Arnold, “but Uncle Wilfred and I weren’t sure it was proper. I amengaged in trying to broaden Uncle Wilfred’s mind. Not that I want him to take Harker’s books, now or at any time.... You know, I want Eddy in our business. We want a new reader, and it would be so much better for his mind and moral nature than messing about as he’s doing now.”
Cecil was saying to Billy and Jane, “He wants me to put Lesbia behind the window-curtain, and make her overhear it all. Behind the window-curtain, you know! He really does. Could you have suspected even our Musgrave of being so banal, Billy? He’s not even Edwardian—he’s late-Victorian....”
Arnold said over his shoulder, “Can’t somebody stop him? Do try, Jane. He’s spoiling our day with his egotistic babbling. Bridget and I are talking exclusively about others, their domestic tragedies, their literary productions, and their unsuitable careers; never a word about ourselves. I’m sure Eileen and Eddy are doing the same; and sandwiched between us, Cecil flows on fluently about his private grievances and his highly unsuitable plays. You’d think he might remember what day it is, to say the least of it. I wonder how he was brought up, don’t you, Bridget?”
“I don’t wonder; I know,” said Bridget. “His parents not only wrote for the Yellow Book, but gave it him to read in the nursery, and it corrupted him for life. He would, of course, faint if one suggested that he carried the taint of anything so antiquated, but infant impressions are hard to eradicate.I know of old that the only way to stop him is to feed him, so let’s have lunch, however unsuitable the hour and the place may be.”
Sally said, “Hurrah, let’s. In this sand-pit.” So they got into the sand-pit and produced seven packets of food, which is to say that they each produced one except Cecil, who had omitted to bring his, and undemurringly accepted a little bit of everyone else’s. They then played hide and seek, dumb crambo, and other vigorous games, because as Arnold said, “A moment’s pause, and we are undone,” until for weariness the pause came upon them, and then Cecil promptly seized the moment and produced the play, and they had to listen. Arnold succumbed, vanquished, and stretched himself on the heather.
“You have won; I give in. Only leave out the parts that are least suitable for Sally to hear.”
So, like other days in the country, the day wore through, and they caught the 5.10 back to Waterloo.
At supper that evening Eddy told the vicar about Mrs. Le Moine’s proposal.
“So she’s coming to-morrow night, with Datcherd.”
Hillier looked up sharply.
“Datcherd! That man!” He caught himself up from a scornful epithet.
“Why not?” said the vicar tolerantly. “He’s very keen on social work, you know.”
Peters and Hillier both looked cross.
“I know personally,” said Hillier, “of cases where his influence has been ruinous.”
Peters said, “What does he want down here?”
Eddy said, “He won’t have much influence during one evening. I suppose he wants to watch how they take the music, and, generally, to see what our clubs are like. Besides, he and Mrs. Le Moine are great friends, and she naturally likes to have someone to come with.”
“Datcherd’s a tremendously interesting person,” said Traherne. “I’ve met him once or twice; I should like to see more of him.”
“A very able man,” said the vicar, and said grace.
DATCHERDlooked ill; that was the predominant impression Eddy got of him. An untidy, pale, sad-eyed person of thirty-five, with a bad temper and an extraordinarily ardent fire of energy, at once determined and rather hopeless. The evils of the world loomed, it seemed, even larger in his eyes than their possible remedies; but both loomed large. He was a pessimist and a reformer, an untiring fighter against overwhelming odds. He was allied both by birth and marriage (the marriage had been a by-gone mistake of the emotions, for which he was dearly paying) with a class which, without intermission, and by the mere fact of its existence, incurred his vindictive wrath. (SeeFurther, month by month.) He had tried and failed to get into Parliament; he had now given up hopes of that field of energy, and was devoting himself to philanthropic social schemes and literary work. He was not an attractive person, exactly; he lacked the light touch, and the ordinary human amenities; but there was a drawing-power in the impetuous ardour of his convictions and purposes,in his acute and brilliant intelligence, in his immense, quixotic generosity, and, to some natures, in his unhappiness and his ill-health. And his smile, which came seldom, would have softened any heart.
Perhaps he did not smile at Hillier on Monday evening; anyhow Hillier’s heart remained hard towards him, and his towards Hillier. He was one of the generation who left the universities fifteen years ago; they are often pronounced and thoughtful agnostics, who have thoroughly gone into the subject of Christianity as taught by the Churches, and decided against it. They have not the modern way of rejection, which is to let it alone as an irrelevant thing, a thing known (and perhaps cared) too little about to pronounce upon; or the modern way of acceptance, which is to embark upon it as an inspiring and desirable adventure. They of that old generation think that religion should be squared with science, and, if it can’t be, rejected finally. Anyhow Datcherd thought so; he had rejected it finally as a Cambridge undergraduate, and had not changed his mind since. He believed freedom of thought to be of immense importance, and, a dogmatic person himself, was anxious to free the world from the fetters of dogma. Hillier (also a dogmatic person; there are so many) preached a sermon the Sunday after he had met Datcherd about those who would find themselves fools at the Judgment Day. Further, Hillier agreed with James Peters that the relations of Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine were unfitting, consideringthat everyone knew that Datcherd didn’t get on with his wife nor Mrs. Le Moine live with her husband. People in either of those unfortunate positions cannot be too careful of appearances.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Le Moine’s fiddling held the club spell-bound. She played English folk-melodies and Hungarian dances, and the boys’ feet shuffled in tune. Londoners are musical people, on the whole; no one can say that, though they like bad music, they don’t like good music, too; they are catholic in taste. Eddy Oliver, who liked anything he heard, from a barrel-organ to a Beethoven Symphony, was a typical specimen. His foot, too, tapped in tune; his blood danced in him to the lilt of laughter and passion and gay living that the quick bow tore from the strings. He knew enough, technically, about music, to know that this was wonderful playing; and he remembered what he had heard before, that this brilliant, perverse, childlike-looking person, with her great brooding eyes and half-sullen brows, and the fiddle tucked away under her round chin, was a genius. He believed he had heard that she had some Hungarian blood in her, besides the Irish strain. Certainly the passion and the fire in her, that was setting everyone’s blood stirring so, could hardly be merely English.
At the end of a wild dance tune, and during riotous applause, Eddy turned to Datcherd, who stood close to him, and laughed.
“My word!” was all he said.
Datcherd smiled a little at him, and Eddy liked him more than ever.
“They like it, don’t they?” said Datcherd. “Look how they like it. They like this; and then we go and give them husks; vulgarities from the comic operas.”
“Oh, but they like those, too,” said Eddy.
Datcherd said impatiently, “They’d stop liking them if they could always get anything decent.”
“But surely,” said Eddy, “the more things they like the better.”
Datcherd, looking round at him to see if he meant it, said, “Good heavens!” and was frowningly silent.
An intolerant man, and ill-tempered at that, Eddy decided, but liked him very much all the same.
Mrs. Le Moine was playing again, quite differently; all the passion and the wildness were gone now; she was playing a sixteenth century tune, curiously naïf and tender and engaging, and objective, like a child’s singing, or Jane Dawn’s drawings. The detachment of it, the utter self-obliteration, pleased Eddy even more than the passion of the dance; here was genius at its highest. It seemed to him very wonderful that she should be giving of her best so lavishly to a roomful of ignorant Borough lads; very wonderful, and at the same time very characteristic of her wayward, quixotic, self-pleasing generosity, that he fancied was neither based on any principle, nor restrained by anyconsiderations of prudence. She would always, he imagined, give just what she felt inclined, and when she felt inclined, whatever the gifts she dealt in. Anyhow she had become immensely popular in the club-room. The admiration roused by her music was increased by the queer charm she carried with her. She stood about among the boys for a little, talking. She told them about the tunes, what they were and whence they came; she whistled a bar here and there, and they took it up from her; she had asked which they had liked, and why.
“In my Settlement up by the Lea,” said Datcherd to Eddy, “she’s got some of the tunes out into the streets already. You hear them being whistled as the men go to work.”
Eddy looked at Hillier, to see if he hadn’t been softened by this wonderful evening. Hillier, of course, had liked the music; anyone would. But his moral sense had a fine power of holding itself severely aloof from conversion by any but moral suasions. He was genially chatting with the boys, as usual—Hillier was delightful with boys and girls, and immensely popular—but Eddy suspected him unchanged in his attitude towards the visitors. Eddy, for music like that, would have loved a Mrs. Pendennis (had she been capable of producing it) let alone anyone so likeable as Eileen Le Moine. Hillier, less susceptible to influence, still sat in judgment.
Flushed and bright-eyed, Eddy made his way to Mrs. Le Moine.
“I say, thanks most awfully,” he said. “I knew it was going to be wonderful, but I didn’t know how wonderful. I shall come to all your concerts now.”
Hillier overheard that, and his brows rose a little. He didn’t see how Eddy was going to make the time to attend all Mrs. Le Moine’s concerts; it would mean missing club nights, and whole afternoons. In his opinion, Eddy, for a parish worker, went too much out of the parish already.
Mrs. Le Moine said, with her usual lack of circumlocution, “I’ll come again next Monday. Shall I? I would like to get the music thoroughly into their heads; they’re keen enough to make it worth while.”
Eddy said promptly, “Oh, will you really? How splendid.”
Hillier, coming up to them, said courteously, “This has been extremely good of you, Mrs. Le Moine. We have all had a great treat. But you really mustn’t waste more of your valuable time on our uncultivated ears. We’re not worth it, I’m afraid.”
Eileen looked at him with a glint of amusement in the gloomy blue shadowiness of her eyes.
“I won’t come,” she said, “unless you want me to, of course.”
Hillier protested. “It’s delightful for us, naturally—far more than we deserve. It was your time I was thinking of.”
“That will be all right. I’ll come, then, forhalf an hour, next Monday.” She turned to Eddy. “Will you come to lunch with us—Miss Hogan and me, you know—next Sunday? Arnold Denison’s coming, and Karl Lovinski, the violinist, and two or three other people. 3, Campden Hill Road, at 1.30.”
“Thanks; I should like to.”
Datcherd came up from the back of the room where he had been talking to Traherne, who had come in lately. They said goodbye, and the club took to billiards.
“Is Mr. Datcherd coming, too, next Monday?” Hillier inquired gloomily of Eddy.
“Oh, I expect so. I suppose it’s less of a bore for Mrs. Le Moine not to have to come all that way alone. Besides, he’s awfully interested in it all.”
“A first-class man,” said Traherne, who was an enthusiast, and had found in Datcherd another Socialist, though not a Church one.
Eddy and the curates walked back together later in the evening. Eddy felt vaguely jarred by Hillier to-night; probably because Hillier was, in his mind, opposing something, and that was the one thing that annoyed Eddy. Hillier was, he felt, opposing these delightful people who had provided the club with such a glorious evening, and were going to do so again next Monday; these brilliant people, who spilt their genius so lavishly before the poor and ignorant; these charming, friendly people, who had asked Eddy to lunch next Sunday.
What Hillier said was, “Shall you get Wilkes to take your class again on Sunday afternoon, Oliver?”
“Yes, I suppose so. He doesn’t mind, does he? I believe he really takes it a lot better than I do.”
Hillier believed so, too, and made no comment. Traherne laughed. “Wilkes! Oh, he means well, no doubt. But I wouldn’t turn up on Sunday afternoon if I was going to be taught by Wilkes. What an ass you are, Oliver, going to lunch parties on Sundays.”
With Traherne, work came first, and everything else, especially anything social, an immense number of lengths behind. With Eddy a number of things ran neck to neck all the time. He wouldn’t, Traherne thought, a trifle contemptuously, ever accomplish much in any sphere of life at that rate.
He said to the vicar that night, “Oliver’s being caught in the toils of Society, I fear. For such a keen person, he’s oddly slack about sticking to his job when anything else turns up.”
But Hillier said, at a separate time, “Oliver’s being dragged into a frightfully unwholesome set, vicar. I hate those people; that man Datcherd is an aggressive unbeliever, you know; he does more harm, I believe, than anyone quite realises. And one hears things said, you know, about him and Mrs. Le Moine—oh, no harm, I daresay, but one has to think of the effect on the weaker brethren. And Oliver’s bringing them into the parish, and I wouldn’t care to answer for the effects.... It made me a little sick, I don’t mind saying to you,to see Datcherd talking to the lads to-night; a word dropped here, a sneer there, and the seed is sown from which untold evil may spring. Of course, Mrs. Le Moine is a wonderful player, but that makes her influence all the more dangerous, to my mind. The lads were fascinated this evening; one saw them hanging on her words.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the vicar, “that she, or Datcherd either, would say anything to hurt them.”
Hillier caught him up sharply.
“You approve, then? You won’t discourage Oliver’s intimacy with them, or his bringing them into the parish?”
“Most certainly I shall, if it gets beyond a certain point. There’s a mean in all things.... But it’s their effect on Oliver rather than on the parish that I should be afraid of. He’s got to realise that a man can’t profitably have too many irons in the fire at once. If he’s going perpetually to run about London seeing friends, he’ll do no good as a worker. Also, it’s not good for his soul to be continually with people who are unsympathetic with the Church. He’s not strong enough or grown-up enough to stand it.”
But Eddy had a delightful lunch on Sunday, and Wilkes took his class.
Other Sundays followed, and other week-days, and more delightful lunches, and many concerts and theatres, and expeditions into the country, and rambles about the town, and musical evenings in St. Gregory’s parish, and, in general, a jolly life.Eddy loved the whole of life, including his work in St. Gregory’s, which he was quite as much interested in as if it had been his exclusive occupation. Ingenuously, he would try to draw his friends into pleasures which they were by temperament and training little fitted to enjoy. For instance, he said to Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine one day, “We’ve got a mission on now in the parish. There’s an eight o’clock service on Monday night, so there’ll be no club. I wish you’d come to the service instead; it’s really good, the mission. Father Dempsey, of St. Austin’s, is taking it. Have you ever heard him?”
Datcherd, in his grave, melancholy way, shook his head. Eileen smiled at Eddy, and patted his arm in the motherly manner she had for him.
“Now what do you think? No, we never have. Would we understand him if we did? I expect not, do you know. Tell us when the mission (is that what you call it? But I thought they were for blacks and Jews) is over, and I’ll come again and play to the clubs. Till then, oughtn’t you to be going to services every night, and I wonder ought you to be dining and theatreing with us on Thursday?”
“Oh, I can fit it in easily,” said Eddy, cheerfully. “But, seriously, I do wish you’d come one night. You’d like Father Dempsey. He’s an extraordinarily alive and stimulating person. Hillier thinks him flippant; but that’s rubbish. He’s the best man in the Church.”
All the same, they didn’t come. How difficult it is to make people do what they are not used to! How good it would be for them if they would; if Hillier would but sometimes spend an evening at Datcherd’s settlement; if James Peters would but come, at Eddy’s request, to shop at the Poetry Bookshop; if Datcherd would but sit under Father Dempsey, the best man in the Church! It sometimes seemed to Eddy that it was he alone, in a strange, uneclectic world, who did all these things with impartial assiduity and fervour.
And he found, which was sad and bewildering, that those with less impartiality of taste got annoyed with him. The vicar thought, not unnaturally, that during the mission he ought to have given up other engagements, and devoted himself exclusively to the parish, getting them to come. All the curates thought so too. Meanwhile Arnold Denison thought that he ought to have stayed to the end of the debate on Impressionism in Poetry at the Wednesday Club that met in Billy Raymond’s rooms, instead of going away in the middle to be in time for the late service at St. Gregory’s. Arnold thought so particularly because he hadn’t yet spoken himself, and it would obviously have been more becoming in Eddy to wait and hear him. Eddy grew to have an uncomfortable feeling of being a little wrong with everyone; he felt aggrieved under it.
At last, a fortnight before Christmas, the vicarspoke to him. It was on a Sunday evening. Eddy had had supper with Cecil Le Moine, as it was Cecil’s turn to have the Sunday Games Club, a childish institution that flourished just then among them, meet at his house. Eddy returned to St. Gregory’s late.
The vicar said, at bedtime, “I want to speak to you, Oliver, if you can spare a minute or two,” and they went into his study. Eddy felt rather like a schoolboy awaiting a jawing. He watched the vicar’s square, sensible, kind face, through a cloud of smoke, and saw his point of view precisely. He wanted certain work done. He didn’t think the work was so well done if a hundred other things were done also. He believed in certain things. He didn’t think belief in those things could be quite thorough if those who held it had constant and unnecessary traffic with those who quite definitely didn’t. Well, it was of course a point of view; Eddy realised that.
The vicar said, “I don’t want to be interfering, Oliver. But, frankly, are you as keen on this job as you were two months ago?”
“Yes, rather,” said Eddy. “Keener, I think. One gets into it, you see.”
The vicar nodded, patient and a little cynical.
“Quite. Well, it’s a full man’s job, you know; one can’t take it easy. One’s got to put every bit of oneself into it, and even so there isn’t near enough of most of us to get upsides with it.... Oh, I don’t mean don’t take on times, or don’t have outside interests and plenty of friends; of course I don’t. But one’s got not to fritter and squander one’s energies. And one’s got to have one’s whole heart in the work, or it doesn’t get done as it should. It’s a job for the keen; for the enthusiasts; for the single-minded. Do you think, Oliver, that it’s quite the job for you?”
“Yes,” said Eddy, readily, though crest-fallen. “I’m keen. I’m an enthusiast. I’m——” He couldn’t say single-minded, so he broke off.
“Really,” he added, “I’m awfully sorry if I’ve scamped the work lately, and been out of the parish too much. I’ve tried not to, honestly—I mean I’ve tried to fit it all in and not scamp things.”
“Fit it all in!” The vicar took him up. “Precisely. There you are. Why do you try to fit in so much more than you’ve properly room for? Life’s limited, you see. One’s got to select one thing or another.”
“Oh,” Eddy murmured, “what an awful thought! I want to select lots and lots of things!”
“It’s greedy,” said the vicar. “What’s more, it’s silly. You’ll end by getting nothing.... And now there’s another thing. Of course you choose your own friends; it’s no business of mine. But you bring them a good deal into the parish, and that’s my business, of course. Now, I don’t want to say anything against friends of yours; still less to repeat the comments of ignorant and prejudiced people; but I expect you know the sort of things such people would say about Mr. Datcherd and Mrs.Le Moine. After all, they’re both married to someone else. You’ll admit that they are very reckless of public opinion, and that that’s a pity.” He spoke cautiously, saying less than he felt, in order not to be annoying. But Eddy flushed, and for the first time looked cross.
“Surely, if people are low-minded enough——” he began.
“That,” said the vicar, “is part of one’s work, to consider low minds. Besides—my dear Oliver, I don’t want to be censorious—but why doesn’t Mrs. Le Moine live with her husband? And why isn’t Datcherd ever to be seen with his wife? And why are those two perpetually together?”
Eddy grew hotter. His hand shook a little as he took out his pipe.
“The Le Moines live apart because they prefer it. Why not? Datcherd, I presume, doesn’t go about with his wife because they are hopelessly unsuited to each other in every way, and bore each other horribly. I’ve seen Lady Dorothy Datcherd. The thought of her and Datcherd as companions is absurd. She disapproves of all he is and does. She’s a worldly, selfish woman. She goes her way and he his. Surely it’s best. As for Datcherd and Mrs. Le Moine—theyaren’tperpetually together. They come down here together because they’re both interested; but they’re in quite different sets, really. His friends are mostly social workers, and politicians, and writers of leading articles, and contributors to the quarterliesand the political press—what are called able men you know; his own family, of course, are all that sort. Her friends are artists and actors and musicians, and poets and novelists and journalists, and casual, irresponsible people who play round and have a good time and do clever work—I mean, her set and his haven’t very much to do with one another really.” Eddy spoke rather eagerly, as if he was anxious to impress this on the vicar and himself.
The vicar heard him out patiently, then said, “I never said anything about sets. It’s him and her I’m talking about. You won’t deny they’re great friends. Well, no man and woman are ‘great friends’ in the eyes of poor people; they’re something quite different. And that’s not wholesome. It starts talk. And your being hand and glove with them does no good to your influence in the parish. For one thing, Datcherd’s known to be an atheist. These constant Sunday outings of yours—you’re always missing church, you see, and that’s a poor example. I’ve been spoken to about it more than once by the parents of your class-boys. They think it strange that you should be close friends with people like that.”
Eddy started up. “People like that? People like Hugh Datcherd and Eileen Le Moine? Good heavens! I’m not fit to black their boots, and nor are the idiots who talk about them like that. Vulgar-mouthed lunatics!”
This was unlike Eddy; he never called peoplevulgar, nor despised them; that was partly why he made a good church worker. The vicar looked at him over his pipe, a little irritated in his turn. He had not reckoned on the boy being so hot about these friends of his.
“It’s a clear choice,” said the vicar, rather sharply. “Either you give up seeing so much of these people, and certainly give up bringing them into the parish; or—I’m very sorry, because I don’t want to lose you—you must give up St. Gregory’s.”
Eddy stood looking on the floor, angry, unhappy, uncertain.
“It’s no choice at all,” he said at last. “You know I can’t give them up. Why can’t I have them and St. Gregory’s, too? What’s the inconsistency? I don’t understand.”
The vicar looked at him impatiently. His faculty of sympathy, usually so kind, humorous, and shrewd, had run up against one of those limiting walls that very few people who are supremely in earnest over one thing are quite without. He occasionally (really not often) said a stupid thing; he did so now.
“You don’t understand? Surely it’s extremely simple. You can’t serve God and Mammon; that’s the long and the short of it. You’ve got to choose which.”
That, of course, was final. Eddy said, “Naturally, if it’s like that, I’ll leave St. Gregory’s at once. That is, directly it’s convenient for you that Ishould,” he added, considerate by instinct, though angry.
The vicar turned to face him. He was bitterly disappointed.
“You mean that, Oliver? You won’t give it another trial, on the lines I advise? Mind, I don’t mean I want you to have no friends, no outside interests.... Look at Traherne, now; he’s full of them.... I only want, for your own sake and our people’s, that your heart should be in your job.”
“I had better go,” said Eddy, knowing it for certain. He added, “Please don’t think I’m going off in a stupid huff or anything. It’s not that. Of course, you’ve every right to speak to me as you did; but it’s made my position quite clear to me. I see this isn’t really my job at all. I must find another.”
The vicar said, holding out his hand, “I’m very sorry, Oliver. I don’t want to lose you. Think it over for a week, will you, and tell me then what you have decided. Don’t be hasty over it. Remember, we’ve all grown fond of you here; you’ll be throwing away a good deal of valuable opportunity if you leave us. I think you may be missing the best in life. But I mustn’t take back what I said. It is a definite choice between two ways of life. They won’t mix.”
“They will, they will,” said Eddy to himself, and went to bed. If the vicar thought they wouldn’t, the vicar’s way of life could not be his.He had no need to think it over for a week. He was going home for Christmas, and he would not come back after that. This job was not for him. And he could not, he knew now, be a clergyman. They drew lines; they objected to people and things; they failed to accept. The vicar, when he had mentioned Datcherd, had looked as Datcherd had looked when Eddy had mentioned Father Dempsey and the mission; Eddy was getting to know that critical, disapproving look too well. Everywhere it met him. He hated it. It seemed to him even stranger in clergymen than in others, because clergymen are Christians, and, to Eddy’s view, there were no negations in that vivid and intensely positive creed. Its commands were always, surely, to go and do, not to abstain and reject. And look, too, at the sort of people who were of old accepted in that generous, all-embracing circle....
EDDYwas met at the station by his sister Daphne, driving the dog-cart. Daphne was twenty; a small, neat person in tailor-made tweeds, bright-haired, with an attractive brown-tanned face, and alert blue eyes, and a decisively-cut mouth, and long, straight chin. Daphne was off-hand, quick-witted, intensely practical, spoilt, rather selfish, very sure of herself, and with an unveiled youthful contempt for manners and people that failed to meet with her approval. Either people were “all right,” and “pretty decent,” or they were cursorily dismissed as “queer,” “messy,” or “stodgy.” She was very good at all games requiring activity, speed, and dexterity of hand, and more at home out of doors than in. She had quite enough sense of humour, a sharp tongue, some cleverness, and very little imagination indeed. A confident young person, determined to get and keep the best out of life. With none of Eddy’s knack of seeing a number of things at once, she saw a few things very clearly, and went straight towards them.
“Hullo, young Daffy,” Eddy called out to her, as he came out of the station.
She waved her whip at him.
“Hullo. I’ve brought the new pony along. Come and try him. He shies at cats and small children, so look out through the streets. How are you, Tedders? Pretty fit?”
“Yes, rather. How’s everyone?”
“Going strong, as usual. Father talks Prayer Book revision every night at dinner till I drop asleep. He’s got it fearfully hot and strong just now; meetings about it twice a week, and letters to theGuardianin between. I wish they’d hurry up and get it revised and have done. Oh, by the way, he says you’ll want to fight him about that now—because you’ll be too High to want it touched, or something.Areyou High?”
“Oh, I think so. But I should like the Prayer Book to be revised, too.”
Daphne sighed. “It’s a bore if you’re High. Father’ll want to argue at meals. I do hope you don’t want to keep the Athanasian Creed, anyhow.”
“Yes, rather. I like it, except the bits slanging other people.”
“Oh, well,” Daphne looked relieved. “As long as you don’t like those bits, I daresay it’ll be all right. Canon Jackson came to lunch yesterday, and he liked it, slanging and all, and oh, my word, how tired I got of him and father! What can it matter whether one has it or not? It’s only a few times a year, anyhow. Oh, and father’s keenon a new translation of the Bible, too. I daresay you’ve seen about it; he keeps writing articles in theSpectatorabout it.... And the Bellairs have got a new car, a Panhard; Molly’s learning to drive it. Nevill let me the other day; it was ripping. I do wish father’d keep a car. I should think he might now. It would be awfully useful for him for touring round to committee meetings. Mind that corner; Timothy always funks it a bit.”
They turned into the drive. It may or may not have hitherto been mentioned that Eddy’s home was a Deanery, because his father was a Dean. The Cathedral under his care was in a midland county, in fine, rolling, high-hedged country, suitable for hunting, and set with hard-working squires. The midlands may not be picturesque or romantic, but they are wonderfully healthy, and produce quite a number of sane, level-headed, intelligent people.
Eddy’s father and mother were in the hall.
“You look a little tired, dear,” said his mother, after the greetings that may be imagined. “I expect it will be good for you to get a rest at home.”
“Trust Finch to keep his workers on the run,” said the Dean, who had been at Cambridge with Finch, and hadn’t liked him particularly. Finch had been too High Church for his taste even then; he himself had always been Broad, which was, no doubt, why he was now a dean.
“Christmas is a busy time,” said Eddy, tritely.
The Dean shook his head. “They overdo it, you know, those people. Too many services, and meetings, and guilds, and I don’t know what. They spoil their own work by it.”
He was, naturally, anxious about Eddy. He didn’t want him to get involved with the ritualist set and become that sort of parson; he thought it foolish, obscurantist, childish, and unintelligent, not to say a little unmanly.
They went into lunch. The Dean was rather vexed because Eddy, forgetting where he was, crossed himself at grace. Eddy perceived this, and registered a note not to do it again.
“And when have you to be back, dear?” said his mother. She, like many deans’ wives, was a dignified, intelligent, and courteous lady, with many social claims punctually and graciously fulfilled, and a great love of breeding, nice manners, and suitable attire. She had many anxieties, finely restrained. She was anxious lest the Dean should overwork himself and get a bad throat; lest Daphne should get a tooth knocked out at mixed hockey, or a leg broken in the hunting-field; lest Eddy should choose an unsuitable career or an unsuitable wife, or very unsuitable ideas. These were her negative anxieties. Her positive ones were that the Dean should be recognised according to his merits; that Daphne should marry the right man; that Eddy should be a success, and also please his father; that the Prayer Book might be revised very soon.
One of her ambitions for Eddy was satisfied forthwith, for he pleased his father.
“I’m not going back to St. Gregory’s at all.”
The Dean looked up quickly.
“Oh, you’ve given that up, have you? Well, it couldn’t go on always, of course.” He wanted to ask, “What have you decided about Orders?” but, as fathers go, he was fairly tactful. Besides, he knew Daphne would.
“Are you going into the Church, Tedders?”
Her mother, as always when she put it like that, corrected her. “You know father hates you to say that, Daphne. Take Orders.”
“Well, take Orders, then. Are you, Tedders?”
“I think not,” said Eddy, good-tempered as brothers go. “At present I’ve been offered a small reviewing job on theDaily Post. I was rather lucky, because it’s awfully hard to get on thePost, and, of course, I’ve had no experience except at Cambridge; but I know Maine, the literary editor. I used to review a good deal for theCambridge Weeklywhen his brother ran it. I think it will be rather fun. You get such lots of nice books to keep for your own if you review.”
“Nice and otherwise, no doubt,” said the Dean. “You’ll want to get rid of most of them, I expect. Well, reviewing is an interesting side of journalism, of course, if you are going to try journalism. You genuinely feel you want to do this, do you?”
He still had hopes that Eddy, once free of the ritualistic set, would become a Broad Churchclergyman in time. But clergymen are the broader, he believed, for knocking about the world a little first.
Eddy said he did genuinely feel he wanted to do it.
“I’m rather keen to do a little writing of my own as well,” he added, “and it will leave me some time for that, as well as time for other work. I want to go sometimes to work in the settlement of a man I know, too.”
“What shall you write?” Daphne wanted to know.
“Oh, much what every one else writes, I suppose. I leave it to your imagination.”
“H’m. Perhaps it will stay there,” Daphne speculated, which was superfluously unkind, considering that Eddy used to write quite a lot at Cambridge, in theReview, theMagazine, theGranta, theBasileon, and even theTripod.
“An able journalist,” said the Dean, “has a great power in his hands. He can do more than the politicians to mould public opinion. It’s a great responsibility. Look at theGuardian, now; and theTimes.”
Eddy looked at them, where they lay on the table by the window. He looked also at theSpectator,Punch, theMorning Post, theSaturday Westminster, theQuarterly, theChurch Quarterly, theHibbert, theCornhill, theCommonwealth, theCommon Cause, andCountry Life. These were among the periodicals taken in at the Deanery. Among those not takenin were theClarion, theEye-Witness(as it was called in those bygone days) theChurch Times,Poetry and Drama, theBlue Review, theEnglish Review, theSuffragette,Further, and all the halfpenny dailies. All the same, it was a well-read home, and broad-minded, too, and liked to hear two sides (but not more) of a question, as will be inferred from the above list of its periodical literature.
They had coffee in the hall after lunch. Grace, ease, spaciousness, a quiet, well-bred luxury, characterised the Deanery. It was a well-marked change to Eddy, both from the asceticism of St. Gregory’s, and the bohemianism (to use an idiotic, inevitable word) of many of his other London friends. This was a true gentleman’s home, one of the stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand.
Daphne proposed that they should visit another that afternoon. She had to call at the Bellairs’ for a puppy. Colonel Bellairs was a land-owner and J.P., whose home was two miles out of the town. His children and the Dean’s children had been intimate friends since the Dean came to Welchester from Ely, where he had been a Canon, five years ago. Molly Bellairs was Daphne Oliver’s greatest friend. There were also several boys, who flourished respectively in Parliament, the Army, Oxford, Eton, and Dartmouth. They were fond of Eddy, but did not know why he did not enter one of the Government services, which seems the obvious thing to do.
Before starting on this expedition, Daphne and Eddy went round the premises, as they always did on Eddy’s first day at home. They played a round of bumble-puppy on the small lawn, inspected the new tennis court that had just been laid, and was in danger of not lying quite flat, and visited the kennels and the stables, where Eddy fed his horse with a carrot and examined his legs, and discussed with the groom the prospects of hunting weather next week, and Daphne petted the nervous Timothy, who shied at children and cats.
These pleasing duties done, they set out briskly for the Hall, along the field path. It was just not freezing. The air blew round them crisp and cool and stinging, and sang in the bare beech woods that their path skirted. Above them white clouds sailed about a blue sky. The brown earth was full of a repressed yet vigorous joy. Eddy and Daphne swung along quickly through fields and lanes. Eddy felt the exuberance of the crisp weather and the splendid earth tingle through him. It was one of the many things he loved, and felt utterly at home with, this motion across open country, on foot or on horse-back. Daphne, too, felt and looked at home, with her firm, light step, and her neat, useful stick, and her fair hair blowing in strands under her tweed hat, and all the competent, wholesome young grace of her. Daphne was rather charming, there was no doubt about that. It sometimes occurred to Eddy when he met her afteran absence. There was a sort of a drawing-power about her that was quite apart from beauty, and that made her a popular and sought-after person, in spite of her casual manners and her frequent selfishnesses. The young men of the neighbourhood all liked Daphne, and consequently she had a very good time, and was decidedly spoilt, and, in a cool, not unattractive way, rather conceited. She seldom had any tumbles mortifying to her self-confidence, partly because she was in general clever and competent at the things that came in her way to do, and partly because she did not try to do those she would have been less good at, not from any fear of failure, but simply because she was bored by them. But a clergyman’s daughter, even a dean’s, has, unfortunately, to do a few things that bore her. One is bazaars. Another is leaving things at cottages. Mrs. Oliver had given them a brown paper parcel to leave at a house in the lane. They left it, and Eddy stayed for a moment to talk with the lady of the house. Master Eddy was generally beloved in Welchester, because he always had plenty of attention to bestow even on the poorest and dullest. Miss Daphne was beloved, too, and admired, but was usually more in a hurry. She was in a hurry to-day, and wouldn’t let Eddy stay long.
“If you let Mrs. Tom Clark start on Tom’s abscess, we should never get to the Hall to-day,” she said, as they left the cottage. “Besides, I hate abscesses.”
“But I like Tom and his wife,” said Eddy.
“Oh, they’re all right. The cottage is awfully stuffy, and always in a mess. I should think she might keep it cleaner, with a little perseverance and carbolic soap. Perhaps she doesn’t because Miss Harris is always jawing to her about it. I wouldn’t tidy up, I must say, if Miss Harris was on to me about my room. What do you think, she’s gone and made mother promise I shall take the doll stall at the Assistant Curates’ Bazaar. It’s too bad. I’d have dressed any number of dolls, but I do bar selling them. It’s a hunting day, too. It’s an awful fate to be a parson’s daughter. It’s all right for you; parsons’ sons don’t have to sell dolls.”
“Look here,” said Eddy, “are we having people to stay after Christmas?”
“Don’t think so. Only casual droppers-in here and there; Aunt Maimie and so on. Why?”
“Because, if we’ve room, I want to ask some people; friends of mine in London. Denison’s one.”
Daphne, who knew Denison slightly, and did not like him, received this without joy. They had met last year at Cambridge, and he had annoyed her in several ways. One was his clothes; Daphne liked men to be neat. Another was, that at the dance given by the college which he and Eddy adorned, he had not asked her to dance, though introduced for that purpose, but had stood at her side while she sat partnerless through her favouritewaltz, apparently under the delusion that what was required of him was interesting conversation. Even that had failed before long, as Daphne had neither found it interesting nor pretended to do so, and they remained in silence together, she indignant and he unperturbed, watching the festivities with an indulgent, if cynical, eye. A disagreeable, useless, superfluous person, Daphne considered him. He gathered this; it required no great subtlety to gather things from Daphne; and accommodated himself to her idea of him, laying himself out to provoke and tease. He was one of the few people who could sting Daphne to real temper.
So she said, “Oh.”
“The others,” went on Eddy, hastily, “are two girls I know; they’ve been over-working rather and are run down, and I thought it might be rather good for them to come here. Besides, they’re great friends of mine, and of Denison’s—(one of them’s his cousin)—and awfully nice. I’ve written about them sometimes, I expect—Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine. Jane draws extraordinarily nice things in pen and ink, and is altogether rather a refreshing person. Eileen plays the violin—you must have heard her name—Mrs. Le Moine. Everyone’s going to hear her just now; she’s wonderful.”
“She’d better play at the bazaar, I should think,” suggested Daphne, who didn’t see why parsons’ daughters should be the only ones involved in thisbazaar business. She wasn’t very fond of artists and musicians and literary people, for the most part; so often their conversation was about things that bored one.
“Are they pretty?” she inquired, wanting to know if Eddy was at all in love with either of them. It might be amusing if he was.
Eddy considered. “I don’t know that you’d call Jane pretty, exactly. Very nice to look at. Sweet-looking, and extraordinarily innocent.”
“I don’t like sweet innocent girls,” said Daphne. “They’re so inept, as a rule.”
“Well, Jane’s very ept. She’s tremendously clever at her own things, you know; in fact, clever all round, only clever’s not a bit the word as a matter of fact. She’s a genius, I suppose—a sort of inspired child, very simple about everything, and delightful to talk to. Not the least conventional.”
“No; I didn’t suppose she’d be that. And what’s Mrs.—the other one like?”
“Mrs. Le Moine. Oh, well—she’s—she’s very nice, too.”
“Pretty?”
“Rather beautiful, she is. Irish, and a little Hungarian, I believe. She plays marvellously.”
“Yes, you said that.”
Daphne’s thoughts on Mrs. Le Moine produced the question, “Is she married, or a widow?”
“Married. She’s quite friends with her husband.”
“Well, I suppose she would be. Ought to be,anyhow. Can we have her without him, by the way?”
“Oh, they don’t live together. That’s why they’re friends. They weren’t till they parted. Everyone asks them about separately of course. She lives with a Miss Hogan, an awfully charming person. I’d love to ask her, too, but there wouldn’t be room. I wonder if mother’ll mind my asking those three?”
“You’d better find out,” advised Daphne. “They won’t rub father the wrong way, I suppose, will they? He doesn’t like being surprised, remember. You’d better warn Mr. Denison not to talk against religion or anything.”
“Oh, Denison will be all right. He knows it’s a Deanery.”
“Will the others know it’s a Deanery, too?”
Eddy, to say the truth, had a shade of doubt as to that. They were both so innocent. Arnold had learnt a little at Cambridge about the attitude of the superior clergy, and what not to say to them, though he knew more than he always practised. Jane had been at Somerville College, Oxford, but this particular branch of learning is not taught there. Eileen had never adorned any institution for the higher education. Her father was an Irish poet, and the editor of a Nationalist paper, and did not like any of the many Deans of his acquaintance. In Ireland, Deans and Nationalists do not always see eye to eye. Eddy hoped that Eileen had not any hereditary distaste for the profession.
“Father and mother’ll think it funny, Mrs. Le Moine not living with her husband,” said Daphne, who had that insight into her parents’ minds which comes of twenty years co-residence.
Eddy was afraid they would.
“But it’s not funny, really, and they’ll soon see it’s quite all right. They’ll like her, I know. Everyone who knows her does.”
He remembered as he spoke that Hillier didn’t, and James Peters didn’t much. But surely the Dean wouldn’t be found on any point in agreement with Hillier, or even with the cheery, unthinking Peters, innocent of the Higher Criticism. Perhaps it might be diplomatic to tell the Dean that these two young clergymen didn’t much like Eileen Le Moine.
While Eddy ruminated on this question, they reached the Hall. The Hall was that type of hall they erected in the days of our earlier Georges; it had risen on the site of an Elizabethan house belonging to the same family. This is mentioned in order to indicate that the Bellairs’ had long been of solid worth in the country. In themselves, they were pleasant, hospitable, clean-bred, active people, of a certain charm, which those susceptible to all kinds of charm, like Eddy, felt keenly. Finally, none of them were clever, all of them were nicely dressed, and most of them were on the lawn, hitting at a captive golf-ball, which was one of the many things they did well, though it is at best an unsatisfactory occupation, achieving little in the wayof showy results. They left it readily to welcome Eddy and Daphne.
Dick (the Guards) said, “Hullo, old man, home for Christmas? Good for you. Come and shoot on Wednesday, will you? Not a parson yet, then?”
Daphne said, “He’s off that just now.”
Eddy said, “I’m going on a paper for the present.”
Claude (Magdalen) said, “Awhat? What a funny game! Shall you have to go to weddings and sit at the back and write about the bride’s clothes? What a rag!”
Nevill (the House of Commons) said, “What paper?” in case it should be one on the wrong side. It may here be mentioned (what may or may not have been inferred) that the Bellairs’ belonged to the Conservative party in the state. Nevill a little suspected Eddy’s soundness in this matter (though he did not know that Eddy belonged to the Fabian Society as well as to the Primrose League). Also he knew well the sad fact that our Liberal organs are largely served by Conservative journalists, and our great Tory press fed by Radicals from Balliol College, Oxford, King’s College, Cambridge, and many other less refined homes of sophistry. This fact Nevill rightly called disgusting. He did not think these journalists honest or good men. So he asked, “What paper?” rather suspiciously.
Eddy said, “TheDaily Post,” which is a Conservative organ, and also costs a penny, a highly respectable sum, so Nevill was relieved.
“Afraid you might be going on some Radical rag,” he said, quite superfluously, as it had been obvious he had been afraid of that. “Some Unionists do. Awfully unprincipled, I call it. I can’t see how they square it with themselves.”
“I should think quite easily,” said Eddy; but added, to avert an argument (he had tried arguing with Nevill often, and failed), “But my paper’s politics won’t touch me. I’m going as literary reviewer, entirely.”
“Oh, I see.” Nevill lost interest, because literature isn’t interesting, like politics. “Novels and poetry, and all that.” Novels and poetry and all that of course must be reviewed, if written; but neither the writing of them nor the reviewing (perhaps not the reading either, only that takes less time) seems quite a man’s work.
Molly (the girl) said, “Ithink it’s an awfully interesting plan, Eddy,” though she was a little sorry Eddy wasn’t going into the Church. (The Bellairs were allowed to call it that, though Daphne wasn’t.)
Molly could be relied on always to be sympathetic and nice. She was a sunny, round-faced person of twenty, with clear, amber-brown eyes and curly brown hair, and a merry infectious laugh. People thought her a dear little girl; she was so sweet-tempered, and unselfish, and charmingly polite, and at the same time full of hilarious high spirits, and happy, tomboyish energies. Though less magnetic, she was really much nicer thanDaphne. The two were very fond of one another. Everyone, including her brothers and Eddy Oliver, was fond of Molly. Eddy and she had become, in the last two years, since Molly grew up, close friends.
“Well, look here,” said Daphne, “we’ve come for the puppy,” and so they all went to the yard, where the puppy lived.
The puppy was plump and playful and amber-eyed, and rather like Molly, as Eddy remarked.
“The Diddums! I wish Iwaslike him,” Molly returned, hugging him, while his brother and sister tumbled about her ankles. “He’s rather fatter than Wasums, Daffy, but notquiteso tubby as Babs. I thought you should have the middle one.”
“He’s an utter joy,” said Daphne, taking him.
“Perhaps I’d better walk down the lane with you when you go,” said Molly, “so as to break the parting for him. But come in to tea now, won’t you.”
“Shall we, Eddy?” said Daphne. “D’you think we should? There’ll be canons’ wives at home.”
“That settles it,” said Eddy. “There won’t be us. Much as I like canons’ wives, it’s rather much on one’s very first day. I have to get used to these things gradually, or I get upset. Come on, Molly, there’s time for one go at bumble-puppy before tea.”
They went off together, and Daphne stayedabout the stables and yard with the boys and the dogs.
The Bellairs’ had that immensely preferable sort of tea which takes place round a table, and has jam and knives. They didn’t have this at the Deanery, because people do drop in so at Deaneries, and there mightn’t be enough places laid, besides, drawing-room tea is politer to canons and their wives. So that alone would have been a reason why Daphne and Eddy liked tea with the Bellairs’. Also, the Bellairs’en famillewere a delightful and jolly party. Colonel Bellairs was hospitable, genial, and entertaining; Mrs. Bellairs was most wonderfully kind, and rather like Molly on a sobered, motherly, and considerably filled-out scale. They were less enlightened than at the Deanery, but quite prepared to admit that the Prayer Book ought to be revised, if the Dean thought so, though for them, personally, it was good enough as it stood. There were few people so kind-hearted, so genuinely courteous and well-bred.
Colonel Bellairs, though a little sorry for the Dean because Eddy didn’t seem to be settling down steadily into a sensible profession—(in his own case the “What to do with our boys” problem had always been very simple)—was fond of his friend’s son, and very kind to him, and thought him a nice, attractive lad, even if he hadn’t yet found himself. He and his wife both hoped that Eddy would make this discovery before long, for a reason they had.
After tea Claude and Molly started back with the Olivers, to break the parting for Diddums. Eddy wanted to tell Molly about his prospects, and for her to tell him how interesting they were (Molly was always so delightfully interested in anything one told her), so he and she walked on ahead down the lane, in the pale light of the Christmas moon, that rose soon after tea. (It was a year when this occurred).
“I expect,” he said, “you think it’s fairly feeble to have begun a thing and be dropping it so soon. But I suppose one has to try round a little, to find out what one’s job really is.”
“Why, of course. It would be absurd to stick on if it isn’t really what you like to do.”
“I did like it, too. Only I found I didn’t want to give it quite all my time and interest. I can’t be that sort of thorough, one-job man. The men there are. Traherne, now—I wish you knew him; he’s splendid. He simply throws himself into it body and soul, and says no to everything else. I can’t. I don’t think I even want to. Life’s too many-sided for that, it seems to me, and one wants to have it all—or lots of it, anyhow. The consequence was that I was chucked out. Finch told me I was to cut off those other things, or get out. So I got out. I quite see his point of view, and that he was right in a way; but I couldn’t do it. He wanted me to see less of my friends, for one thing; thought they got in the way of work, which perhaps they may have sometimes; also he didn’t much approve of all of them. That’s so funny. Why shouldn’t one be friends with anyone one can, even if their point of view isn’t altogether one’s own?”
“Of course.” Molly considered it for a moment, and added, “I believe I could be friends with anyone, except a heathen.”
“A what?”
“A heathen. An unbeliever, you know.”
“Oh, I see. I thought you meant a black. Well, it partly depends on what they don’t believe, of course. I think, personally, one should try to believe as many things as one can, it’s more interesting; but I don’t feel any barrier between me and those who believe much less. Nor would you, if you got to know them and like them. One doesn’t like people for what they believe, or dislike them for what they don’t believe. It simply doesn’t come in at all.”
All the same, Molly did not think she could be real friends with a heathen. The fact that Eddy did, very slightly worried her; she preferred to agree with Eddy. But she was always staunch to her own principles, and didn’t attempt to do so in this matter.
“I want you to meet some friends of mine who I hope are coming to stay after Christmas,” went on Eddy, who knew he could rely on a much more sympathetic welcome for his friends from Molly than from Daphne. “I’m sure you’ll like them immensely. One’s Arnold Denison, whom I expectyou’ve heard of.” (Molly had, from Daphne.) “The others are girls—Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine.” He talked a little about Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine, as he had talked to Daphne, but more fully, because Molly was a more gratifying listener.
“They sound awfully nice. So original and clever,” was her comment. “It must be perfectly ripping to be able to do anything really well. I wish I could.”
“So do I,” said Eddy. “I love the people who can. They’re so—— well, alive, somehow. Even more than most people, I mean; if possible,” he added, conscious of Molly’s intense aliveness, and Daphne’s, and his own, and Diddums’. But the geniuses, he knew, had a sort of white-hot flame of living beyond even that....
“We’d better wait here for the others,” said Molly, stopping at the field gate, “and I’ll hand over Diddums to Daffy. He’ll feel it’s all right if I put him in her arms and tell him to stay there.”
They waited, sitting on the stile. The silver light flooded the brown fields, turning them grey and pale. It silvered Diddums’ absurd brown body as he snuggled in Molly’s arms, and Molly’s curly, escaping waves of hair and small sweet face, a little paled by its radiance. To Eddy the grey fields and woods and Molly and Diddums beneath the moon made a delightful home-like picture, of which he himself was very much part. Eddy certainly had a convenient knack of fitting into anypicture without a jar, whether it was a Sunday School class at St. Gregory’s, a Sunday Games Club in Chelsea, a canons’ tea at the Deanery, the stables and kennels at the Hall, or a walk with a puppy over country fields. He belonged to all of them, and they to him, so that no one ever said “What ishedoing in thatgalère?” as is said from time to time of most of us.
Eddy, as they waited for Claude and Daphne at the gate, was wondering a little whether his new friends would fit easily into this picture. He hoped so, very much.
The others came up, bickering as usual. Molly put Diddums into Daphne’s arms and told him to stay there, and they parted.