by F. M. Mayor
About this time Mary had a joyful letter from Brynhilda announcing her engagement, shortly afterwards another announcing her marriage to a journalist. They were to live in Paris. It was unlikely that she and Mary would see much more of one another. Mary received the news with indifference. She felt now nothing was of account which did not concern Mr Herbert.
Sometimes she longed for confession, but the two local professional confessors did not invite confidence. Father Murphy greeted her with bad puns in an uproarious brogue; he was just a comfortable peasant. Father Lynne, the vicar of Long Clouston, confessed five penitents, so she heard from indignant Low Church parishioners. She thought he was more interested in baiting his bishop than in performing spiritual duties, however irregular.
‘Mary,’ said Ella Redland one day when she was at the cottage, ‘you’ve made a wretched tea, and I noticed when we were talking about that meeting you seemed distrait. I wonder if you’re quite well.’
‘Oh yes, perfectly well,’ said Mary quickly.
‘I don’t think you are. The strain of your life undermines you more than you realize, the being always with an old person.’
‘It’s only that I have a headache today,’ said Mary.
‘You want a change. Let’s go off together somewhere. I’m rather busy, but I think I could put off my small meeting, and I’ll get Miss Bowes to run my two committees next week. It’s a bad time of year, but somewhere in Devonshire would be sunny, and it’s really rest from strain you want.’
Mary did want it – a rest from the strain of love, but not for the world would she leave Dedmayne, where, though she never began the subject, she constantly heard Mr Herbert mentioned, and there was the dangerous hope of seeing him.
‘It’s very nice of you to think of it, Ella, but next week Lent begins, and I am always busy then.’
‘Oh, Lent,’ said Ella with some impatience.
But Mary was grateful for the Redland kindness, which was less fitful than the Meryton kindness. Lady Meryton had no notion that it was so, but out of sight was out of mind with her. The invitation promised last September had never got beyond a wish.
At this time Canon Jocelyn broke a small blood-vessel in his eye, and both eyes had to be bandaged for a few days. She read aloud to him to relieve the tedium. She asked him what he would like to hear, and received the uncharacteristic answer, ‘Anything you care for will interest me.’ Some masterful people become meek if they have once consented to be invalids. His and her tastes in light literature were not similar, but she remembered hearing her aunt say that Canon Jocelyn used to read ‘Mr Gilfil’s Love Story’* aloud to her and her mother. So Mary took Scenes of Clerical Life. When she had finished ‘Amos Barton’ Mr Jocelyn said, ‘That is a beautiful tale, told very touchingly; but the older I grow the more I feel that pleasure in George Eliot cannot but be spoilt by the remembrance of her association with Lewes. I know that there are excuses made for her, but one cannot blink the fact that to indulge in love for a married man is always illicit, and the eminence of the guilty parties makes the sin more, not less, serious.’
Mr Jocelyn, exaggeratedly reserved in general, spoke sometimes with unaccountable openness. He was always more approachable and communicative if there was anything the matter with him.
She said, ‘Yes, of course it is,’ hardly knowing how she managed to articulate. He went on to describe his meeting George Eliot at a party in Cambridge. ‘It was after Lewes’s death, of course.’ Once he had started, he continued his reminiscences, dissecting the celebrated people of his youth with clear-sighted mercilessness, so that his daughter almost cried out, ‘Who, then, shall be saved?’ She made answer within herself, ‘Certainly I should not.’ She had had a long course of taking part in conversations which did not interest her; she could keep up an appearance of attention while her mind was all the while repeating, ‘He ought to know what I am.’
When he gave her his good night cheek to receive her kiss, and remarked, ‘It has been a pleasant retrospect of old times,’ she could bear no longer sitting with him under a guise of innocence, and stammered, ‘I just wanted to ask you something – I meant about love. Do you think if a husband or wife loved some one, and perhaps also that some one might have loved too, and they never saw one another but once, could there be an excuse –’
‘I do not understand what you mean.’
She recollected, more than twenty-five years before, when she and Will had gone trespassing against their father’s strict orders. They had robbed an orchard; she had thought it wrong all the time, but had yielded to please Will. He had lied about it, and in the interview with her father in the study after the lie she had been too petrified to speak connectedly, and he had thought she lied too. She was able to recall clearly the utter blank in her mind. She had never entirely recovered her confidence. Whether she would really have confessed Mr Herbert’s kiss to her father must be uncertain; at this moment she could not.
He waited, and then repeated, ‘I don’t understand what it is you wished to ask me.’
‘I don’t think it is worth – at least – I think I would rather – Good night, Father –’ and she left him abruptly.
Her timid brusqueness, almost uncouthness, so different from the limpid, peaceful joyousness of his wife, always jarred on him. He might have understood her, perhaps he ought to have understood her, for the wild, uncontrolled side of her character came from his family. She was the modern and less extreme counterpart of certain good but odd aunts and great-aunts of his, who in the intervals of passions and hysterics had played delightfully with him when he was a child. Canon Jocelyn had become used to Mary’s deficiencies and resigned to them. He thought little of this further instance. She lay awake many hours. One thing she vowed. She would have a clear conscience before her father. From henceforth she would not allow one thought of Mr Herbert to intrude. The next day she did think of him, on the sly first of all, as it were, to deceive her conscience, afterwards openly in defiance of it.
When she tried to check herself with the recollection of her father’s words, she felt she hated him. In her struggles she could only say with St Paul, ‘Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’
It was at this season of the year that she always had private talks with the girls who were to be confirmed. As she looked into each stolid, innocent face and spoke against yielding to temptations, she felt an outcast. The blacksheep candidate, who ran after boys, had promised she would not run after them any more. She was keeping her word. And though the wonder was, looking at her unattractive appearance, that the boys had ever allowed themselves to be caught, her reformation was none the less to be commended. On the whole, Mary’s misery during those weeks was greater than her bliss.
There was a Spanish poem she had read and re-read in the days when she had learnt Spanish. Spanish was a part of the honey of knowledge Canon Jocelyn had sipped by the way, together with Italian, considering it a dishonour to Dante and Cervantes to read them in anything but the original. What he had learnt once, he had learnt for his whole life. What Mary learnt she generally forgot, but the poem had chimed in with early romantic sentimentality. She had never imagined its feelings would be her own, felt at first hand.
She wrote a translation hot from her brain:
For thee I am outcast from God,
I have forfeited Heaven for thee,
And, lo, I am doomed to remain
Alone – all alone, woe is me!
And lo, I am doomed to remain
Without God, without Heaven, without thee.
For thee I am outcast from God,
I have forfeited Heaven for thee.
She put Mr Herbert’s name at the top, and ‘In remembrance of February l5th,’ and the date. The writing of his name thrilled her as if he had been standing by her side.
In that bursting agitation she felt she must be going mad, and if her father, Mr Sykes, the Redlands, and all the neighbours with whom she was the gentl
e Rector’s daughter had seen into her mind, they would certainly have thought her already mad. Mr Herbert, too, might have felt a little startled, yet it was for that very quality in her he loved her; he alone would have understood.
17
Weeks passed. It was now the end of February. The days were unusually mild and balmy; the fields were basking in the sweet air, getting ready for spring. Mary was miserable. One day she had indulged herself in rage against Kathy. ‘If she really loved him I could bear it, but she doesn’t. She can’t make him happy and I can –’ An insane impulse seized her. She threw on her hat and coat and started off for Lanchester, walking so fast that people turned to stare at her. She did not know what she meant to do when she got there; her real, sober self would have recoiled from any idea of joining Mr Herbert.
She had passed the first knot of cottages belonging to Lanchester when she suddenly saw Mr Herbert in front of her. He did not see her. He had an unusual expression in repose, as if absorbed in sublime meditation. Mary thought now the look of sublimity was intensified. It was her eye of love that magnified it. His thoughts at that moment were of her, and bitter with longing. Her heart felt as if it stopped beating. She turned into a field and walked rapidly away from Lanchester, never looking back.
She went into the churchyard to her mother’s grave. She was terrified at what she had done; her unbalanced side was hateful to the rest of her. She longed to die. She made four resolutions. She would destroy everything that reminded her of Mr Herbert. She would occupy herself more actively and allow no time for thought. If this failed she would go away on a visit. If the visit failed, she would kill herself.
She went indoors, took all her poems and his letter, and put them into the drawing-room fire. Her Lenten penance was a small fire; they would not burn. Then she heard footsteps and voices; it was her father and a guest. She worked herself into an agony that he might ask what she was doing. She snatched them out, and hid them as the door opened. The guest was a curate; he had come to consult her father about religious difficulties. Mary had seen the dejected expression in his eyes at tea. The weight was now removed. Canon Jocelyn had listened and advised with kindness, almost tenderness. To the stranger curate he could be fatherly. Much as the curate wanted fatherliness, his daughter wanted it more. The guest stayed to supper. When he was gone Miss Brewer came. Then Emma began one of her chats, which dawdled on interminably, because Mary had not the sense to stop her. Mary was so tired when it was over that there was no time to finish the task of destruction.
In the morning her resolutions were less rigorous; common sense prevailed. She decided it was unnecessary to destroy everything. She picked out Mr Herbert’s letter and the translation from the Spanish, repaired and smoothed them, placed them in an envelope, sealed it, and wrapped it in paper. She put it at the bottom of a box in her room, where she kept her letters and papers. The Rectory abounded in great black boxes studded with nails. Some years hence, she reflected, when she was calmer, she would read them again, not till then.
Cook was in a temper that morning because, for the fifth day running Mary had forgotten her weekly cheque. ‘But there, I don’t know what’s come over you; you don’t seem like our Miss Mary at all, and Mrs Gibbs said she did think you would have been round to see baby, but things were so different now.’
‘See baby, but I didn’t know it had come already; no one told me.’
‘Excuse me, miss, but I did myself. Last week I told you.’
‘Did you really? I believe you did, and I completely forgot. I’ll go at once.’
‘You can’t go in all this pouring rain; it would be quite ridiculous, and there’s no call, I should say, to see Mrs Gibbs’s baby at all. There’s some say we’d better not ask how it was come by.’
‘But I can’t bear the people to think I don’t care.’
‘No one thinks that, but you always take up whatever one says.’
But Mary knew that out of the abundance of her heart Cook’s mouth spoke, however she might tone it down afterwards. She was different. Only the week before she had forgotten the Bible Class, which in the fifteen years of its existence she had never forgotten. She remembered her resolution returning from Lanchester, but, on the contrary, she had deteriorated in the performance of every duty.
After the visit to the baby, she set herself to write a new catalogue for the village library. She was aghast to find she had lately allowed her mind to wander so persistently that she made numberless mistakes; twice she had to tear it up and begin again. She read three chapters of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, but that was a weak defence against thought. While her eyes had disposed of several pages she was settling the towns in Italy they would visit during the wedding-tour. She put on her mackintosh and went off to see Susan. She knew Susan must think this odd; she never called on her at half-past eleven in the morning. In her comfortable society she strove to find forgetfulness. Susan saw something was the matter, and said in her soft country voice, ‘Are you well, my dear? This dear white hand is so thin.’
‘It’s getting on for spring, you know,’ said Mary, ‘and I always think that’s trying; but I believe I do rather want a tonic.’
In the afternoon – it was Saturday – she asked Miss Gage for a walk. To have an extra walk lifted Miss Gage into ecstasy. She did not cease speaking from the moment of starting till the door closed upon her on their return. As thus: ‘No, Mr Clarkson’ (the church-warden) ‘and I don’t speak. I would not make it too marked for anything, but we really don’t speak. You remember the social – no, not last Christmas, the Christmas before. I was singing “The Holy City.” I was asked specially, because it is always such a favourite. It was my second song – I had “Lavender” for my first – and fancy, Mr Clarkson, when he was writing the programme, put “ Song, Miss Gage,” not the title, when people would have made a special effort if they had known it was to be “The Holy City”. It was a peculiar thing to do, wasn’t it, Miss Jocelyn? But then, what hurt me still more was that when the time came for it he should get the Canon to say it was too late for it. We know what the Canon is, such a perfect gentleman in all his ways, so it wouldn’t be like him to say such a thing. It was Mr Clarkson pushing himself forward. I didn’t say a word – I’m sure you know I wouldn’t – but the way he came up to me. “We all think the Canon’s rather tired, so we’d better cut the proceedings a bit short and miss out your song.” I just said, “I’m afraid there’ll be a good deal of disappointment, Mr Clarkson, but every one must do as they think right.” You were poorly, you know, Miss Jocelyn; you had one of your dreadful colds, but I said at the time, “If Miss Jocelyn was here it wouldn’t have happened, because she is so broad-minded,” and I always meant to tell you, for I knew you would see my point of view.’
Miss Gage was little qualified to be a diverter of thoughts. Mary’s mind could not but wander, but she was always ready when she was wanted with, ‘Yes, but I don’t think he really meant it.’
Between tea and dinner were the special hours she had devoted to reverie. It had become like a drug; her ennui at everything else was almost unendurable.
Refrain tonight
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence.*
She hoped this might be the case with her. She was ashamed to find that what calmed her most just now was not prayer, but patience. She played patience till her hands were too tired to hold the cards, and her eyes too tired to see them.
She asked one of the farmer’s daughters to bicycle with her and come back to tea. Her activity in sending invitations and paying calls would cause widespread comment. She abandoned Gibbon and read Trollope. She did not exactly wish it had been possible to exchange her father for Trollope, but she felt if he had been more like him he might have had more mercy, more understanding.
There was a moment in the twenty-four hours which carried her through; it was when she mentioned Mr Herbert in her prayers. She found she counted the minutes to half-past ten, and d
evised excuses for going to bed early. Thereupon Reason and Duty bade her give up praying for him; she did.
Some talkative and at the same time interesting visitor to stay would have best helped her. Who was she to have? Aunt Lottie was talkative but she missed the other qualification. Bustling Cousin Maria rubbed all the household up the wrong way. Canon Jocelyn did not like visitors, except Dora. He would draw his daughter aside after the first two days with, ‘Do you know how much longer your aunt will be staying with us?’ They had some infirm, poverty-stricken, elderly pensioners who came now and then. Mary seized the opportunity to despatch two of them one after another – Mrs Plumtree, the widow at Shepherd’s Bush, and one still humbler, Miss Davey.
By all the laws of logic, a deaf, crippled, ugly spinster, racked with rheumatism, should have been dejected, but life being paradoxical, Miss Davey was, instead, almost too cheerful. Seated close to the window, facing their uneventful lane, she derived endless amusement and subjects for chat from what she saw.
‘Who can that be coming down the road? Why, it’s the pretty little girl with the dark curls we saw yesterday when the Canon took me out a little walk – your dear father. Oh no, it’s not; now she comes nearer I see it’s not the little girl with the dark curls. My sight isn’t quite as good as it was. No, she has red hair and spectacles. Dear me, what a plain little thing. Did you say she would be calling for the milk, dear? Or is this the little one you say helps Cook? Oh no, not that one, only ten; no, she would be rather young. Yes, what the girls are coming to. You say you don’t find a difficulty. Mrs Barkham – my new lodgings; I told you about her, poor thing, she suffers so from neuralgia – she says the girls now – fancy her last girl wearing a pendant when she was waiting. Just a very plain brooch, no one would say a word against, costing half-a-crown or two shillings. I’ve given one myself to a servant many a time. Oh, that dear little robin – Mary, you must look – or is it a thrush? There, it’s gone. You’ve missed it. Perhaps we could see it out of the other window. Thank you, dear; if I could have your arm. Oh, I didn’t see the footstool. No, thank you, I didn’t hurt myself in the least; only that was my rheumatic elbow.’
