The Optimist by E. M. Delafield - HTML preview

 

II
 ADRIAN

(i)

“YOU know, I can’t help thinking you’ve been all wrong about this business of Val’s,” Adrian said reproachfully to his remaining sisters.

Lucilla seemed singularly undisturbed by the distressing pronouncement, but Flora said anxiously:

“Why, Adrian?”

“Well, look how frightfully hard it is on the rest of us. You know what Father is—he’ll be days and days, if not months and months, getting over this, and it’ll put him dead against anything of that sort for life.”

“These things don’t happen twice in one family, I hope,” said Lucilla. “Neither Flora nor I are particularly likely to break off one engagement and enter into another and get married and go off to Canada, all inside a week.”

“You girls never think of anybody but yourselves.”

“Are you thinking of doing anything like that, then, Adrian?”

Lucilla appeared mildly to be amused, and not at all impressed by the probability of her own suggestion.

“How can I think of doing anything at all when I can’t get a decent job and only have a nominal allowance? I know Father can’t afford more, and we’re all in the same box—and then Val goes and marries a chap like Cuscaden, who hasn’t a penny, when she could have had a fellow with a decent little property and some money of his own, besides what I suppose he makes by writing. Why, just think what she could have done for all of us!”

Lucilla laughed outright.

“It wouldn’t have made millionaires of us, if she had married Owen.”

“Well, I can’t say I blame her, from one point of view,” Adrian conceded. “A more absolute prig than Owen has turned into, I never wish to meet. You know he won’t promise me the living at Stear?”

“The living at Stear?”

Flora looked at her brother in all but speechless astonishment, and Lucilla observed that a living was usually offered to a clergyman.

“And is there any reason why I shouldn’t go into the Church?” Adrian enquired, in counter-irony. “Goodness knows there was enough talk about it before the war, and it would please the governor frightfully. In fact, really, I’m thinking of him as much as anything. He was disappointed about old David going into the army, and he’s frightfully cut up about Val, and he may as well get a little comfort out of one of us. And I really don’t dislike the idea much, especially if it means a settled income in a year or two’s time.”

Lucilla got up.

“Talk to Mr. Clover, before you say anything to Father,” she advised. “Flossie, I’m going to see about Val’s class.”

Flora looked at Adrian with grave, unhumourous eyes.

“You don’t realize what Father would feel about your speaking of going into the priesthood in that sort of way, Adrian. You have no faintest vocation to the life of a clergyman.”

“What do you know about it? I’m the only person who can judge of that.”

“It lies between you and your conscience, certainly. But if you suppose that Father, with all his experience, would be satisfied with any but the highest motives——”

She stopped expressively.

“There may be different opinions as to what the highest motives are,” said Adrian. “I wish this business of Val’s hadn’t put it out of the question to ask Owen anything.”

“Owen is coming to Stear in another month. I am quite certain that he doesn’t mean to let this make any difference, and you can ask him anything you want to. But really and truly, Adrian, if this suggestion wasn’t so absolutely wild, I should call it most irreverent.”

It was evident that Flora had uttered the most profound condemnation of which she was capable.

That night she enquired of Lucilla whether it was Adrian’s infatuation for Miss Duffle that brought to birth his strangely sudden desire for clerical life.

“I suppose so.”

“But apart from everything else, he’s much too young to marry. And I don’t suppose she’d look at him.”

“Neither do I. So we needn’t worry about it.”

“I feel as if Adrian was somebody quite new, whom I’d never known before.”

“He’s only growing up.”

“Does Father really know Adrian?”

Lucilla shook her head.

Both missed Valeria, and the mournful haste with which she had been equipped for her wedding and immediate departure for Canada had left them with a curious sense of having come through a great catastrophe.

The Canon was more profoundly depressed than they had ever seen him, and rarely spoke. The reduced number of people present at every meal rendered more significant the abysmal silences of each gathering.

Owen Quentillian, who had shown no marked disposition to take an immediate departure from St. Gwenllian, had been constrained to do so by the Canon’s grieved air of perceiving for him no other alternative.

The house bore a stricken aspect.

Only Adrian retained a sort of uneasy jauntiness, that petered away into silence in the presence of his father.

Canon Morchard’s presence, however, was far more withdrawn than usual from his family circle. Always energetic, he seemed able to find innumerable claims upon his time, and after the daily adjustment of these, the study door was apt to shut upon him decisively.

At dinner-time only were they certain of seeing him, and the resultant gloom was of a nature that induced Adrian, far more affected by it than either of his sisters appeared to be, to invite the innocuous Mr. Clover to dinner very soon after Valeria’s departure.

The curate was always ready to promote conversation, and sincerely supposed that his efforts must be consolatory to his hosts. His attempts took the form habitual to him of slightly self-evident remarks upon whatever caught his eye in his surroundings.

“Ha! Clover, dear man!” The Canon’s voice was sepulchral, rather than cordial. “Sit ye down—sit ye down.”

Mr. Clover made a few timid remarks to his neighbour, Flora, and wished that it had been Lucilla. He was always rather frightened of the silent Flora, and showed his alarmed consciousness of her musical talent by inquiring:

“And how is the piano?”

“What have we here, Lucilla?” said the Canon gravely, although the dish of cutlets was of an unmistakable nature.

He often made use of the phrase, and on this occasion it bore an inflexion of disapproval that was evidently not inspired by the cutlets themselves, but by some inner, more profound discontent.

“Cutlets in a silver dish,” said Mr. Clover.

“Do you know that the Admastons are getting up a theatrical show?” Adrian inquired. “Good idea, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know any of them could act,” said Flora.

“Oh, they’ve got friends and people. I tell you who’s awfully good—Olga Duffle. She’s going to stay on for the performance. As a matter of fact, they’ve asked me to help get the thing up.”

Adrian’s elaborately casual tone did not prevent anyone except Lucilla from glancing surreptitiously at the Canon, to see how the announcement was received.

The Canon was frowning heavily.

“No one has more sympathy than myself with any diversions for young people, but the modern craze for amusement is carried too far. What is it that your friends are proposing to do, Adrian?”

“Just get up a musical show—a sort of Pierrot entertainment. It’ll be mostly singing and dancing, I expect.”

“I presume they have a charitable object in view.”

“I suppose so,” returned Adrian, in a tone that conveyed with sufficient accuracy to the majority of his hearers that he had no reason for supposing anything of the sort.

“The youth of today is an amazement to me,” said the Canon impressively. “After coming through Armageddon, the young men and young women of the present generation seem given over to a spirit of triviality—I can call it nothing else—that amazes me. There is no humour, today, there is ‘ragging’ or ‘rotting.’ There is no dancing—there is ‘fox-trotting,’ and ‘jazzing.’ There is no dressing, with beauty and dignity, for young womanhood—there is blatant indecency and an aping of a class that I cannot even name in this room. There is no art, no drama, no literature—there are revues, and a new class of novel of which I cannot even trust myself to speak.”

The Canon drew a long breath and Adrian murmured sub-audibly:

“And fifthly, and lastly——”

Mr. Clover gazed at the bowl in the middle of the table and said:

“Very—very—nice maidenhair,” in a rapid undertone, and Canon Morchard resumed:

“I yield to no one, as you young folk here should readily admit, in my appreciation of the lighter side of life. I believe, indeed, that I have poked some shrewd enough fun in my day, at those who would have us believe that this world is a gloomy place. Rather would I say, in the old words we all know: ‘A merry heart goes all the way, but a sad one tires in a mile’—ah! You children can very well vouch for the amount of innocent amusement and recreation that has gone on amongst us. Our Sunday walks, our collecting crazes, our family quips in which young and old have taken full share—with deference due, be it understood, with deference due—our evening readings-aloud—I think all these, if they have been an entertainment, have also provided a certain instruction. And that is as it should be, let me tell you, young people—as it should be.”

“My father read aloud the whole of the Waverly novels to us, when we were children,” Lucilla explained to the curate.

“Nowadays, I am given to understand that children read an illustrated supplement entitled Comic Cuts,” said the Canon bitterly.

“Pretty Wedgwood plate,” came in an aside from Mr. Clover.

“There is a reaction even against Tennyson, that king of song,” thundered the Canon.

“Most of all against Tennyson, according to Owen Quentillian,” said Adrian rather maliciously.

“Owen is tainted by the folly of the day, undoubtedly—but I cannot but believe that a young man of intellectual calibre such as his will learn to distinguish the true from the false in time. Owen is ‘the child of many prayers,’” said the Canon with a sudden softening of his voice.

A moment later he sighed heavily.

The direction of his thoughts was only too evidently concerned with the recent disastrous turn taken by Quentillian’s affaire de cœur.

“What is the programme of your friends’ entertainment?” the curate timorously inquired of Adrian.

“Well, they’ve not really worked out the details yet, but I’ve been asked to go over there this afternoon and help them settle. Of course, Miss Duffle will sing, and she’s promised to do a step-dance, and she and I thought of getting up a play of some kind.”

“You are not in a position to bind yourself to anything of that sort, Adrian,” said the Canon hastily. “I would have you realize that this supineness cannot go on. You appear to forget that you have to find some work for yourself.”

It was so seldom that Canon Morchard vented his feelings upon his younger son that an appalled silence followed his words, rendering them the more noticeable.

Then Mr. Clover said:

“Half-past eight,” in time to the chiming of the clock on the mantelpiece, and there was another silence.

Adrian looked sulky, and Flora nervous. The curate gazed across the table at Lucilla and inquired:

“What news from India?”

It was the head of the house who replied.

“David is strangely lax as a correspondent, Clover, strangely lax. Flora there is favoured with a letter more often than most of us—or should I rather say, less seldom? And yet it costs so little to send a few lines regularly to the loving ones at home! You young folk little think what you are laying up for yourselves in the years to come by neglecting tokens that may appear trivial at the time. The unspoken kind word, the unwritten affectionate letter—how they come back to haunt us later on!”

It almost appeared that these non-existent symbols were haunting St. Gwenllian at once, so heavily did the shadow of David’s remissness hang over the dinner table.

The Canon alternated between fits of profound and cataclysmic silence, during which he ate nothing and his eyes became grave and fixed in their unhappiness, and outbursts of vehement discoursiveness, that not infrequently took the form of rhetorical remonstrances addressed to an audience only too willing to agree with him.

The consciousness of his grief pervaded the atmosphere. No one could be unaware of it. His children, indeed, knew of old the successive stages of anger, morose irritability, and heart-broken remorse, to which mental suffering reduced their father.

Mr. Clover’s ineptitudes fell upon tense pauses, and remained unanswered.

Gradually the little man’s kind, anxious face showed a faint reflection of the misery that was so plainly to be read upon the Canon’s.

Flora’s face looked set in its gravity, Adrian was frankly sulky and resentful, and Lucilla’s impassivity was tinged with regretfulness.

Outside sounds struck almost with violence upon the silence within, and Mr. Clover murmured distressfully:

“A motor going along the road, towards the town.”

“The craze for rapid transport is ruining our English countryside,” said the Canon. “Frankly, I cannot away with it. What profit or pleasure can there be in whirling past unseen scenery, leaving clouds of dust and an evil odour behind?”

No one attempted to defend the satisfaction to be derived from the pastime so epitomized, and the Canon after a moment pushed back his chair.

“Don’t move—do not move on any account. Clover, you will pardon me, I know. I have a great deal of writing to get through. I shall require no coffee, Lucilla.”

He went out of the room, unsmiling, and with a slow, dejected step, his grey head a little bowed forward.

“How long is this going to last?” inquired Adrian, after a moment.

No one attempted to misunderstand his meaning.

“The worst of it is that he’ll be still more unhappy a little later on, when he realizes that his depression has reacted on all of us,” said Flora.

“In the meantime, Adrian, I strongly advise you to find a job and begin to work at it,” Lucilla added.

“Your father is very, very much depressed,” said Mr. Clover.

Adrian appeared to ponder these encouraging statements, and then he observed:

“Well, I don’t seem to be doing any good by staying here, so I think the best thing I can do is to accept the Admastons’ invitation and go over there and stay until after this show. It’ll be much handier for rehearsals, after all.”

It may be supposed that this reason, however adequate in fact, was not put forward, unsupported, by Lucilla, upon whom Adrian as a matter of course devolved the task of announcing his immediate intentions to the Canon.

“Let it be understood that he makes no further engagement of the kind,” said the Canon curtly. “I cannot interfere with his promise to these people, but this state of affairs must end. I will speak to him before he goes. Adrian is only a boy still, for all his war experience.”

There was the indulgent note in his voice that always crept there sooner or later when speaking of his youngest son.

Adrian went to the Admastons, and St. Gwenllian became used to the silence. Gradually the Canon resumed his habits of reading aloud after dinner, and of exchanging small items of general and parish news with his family during meals.

He seldom mentioned Valeria, but they knew that he had written to her.

He spoke of her again when an invitation came from the Admastons to witness their entertainment—an invitation which Adrian, it was evident to his sisters, cheerfully took it for granted that his father would refuse.

“It is very soon—very soon, indeed—to meet our neighbours after this unhappy affair of Valeria’s, that I fear has been only too much talked about. But it may be right to accept—it may be right. I cannot wish to disappoint the dear Adrian, either, though I am out of tune with gaieties at present. I will think over it, Lucilla, my dear, and let you know what answer to return.”

Lucilla, according to her wont, uttered no opinion, until Flora said to her:

“Wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t go to these theatricals? Won’t Father dislike them very much?”

“Very much indeed, I should imagine.”

“And do you suppose Adrian wants us to be there?”

“Probably not.”

They looked at one another, Lucilla with a certain rueful humourousness, Flora with none at all.

“But, Lucilla, can’t you stop him?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

Miss Morchard was always philosophical, rather than enterprising.

The Canon’s decision was communicated to his daughters a few days later.

“I have pondered this matter, my daughters, trivial though it be in itself. And it seems to me that we should do well to accept Mrs. Admaston’s invitation. Lucilla, you are my secretary.... And one thing more, my daughters.”

The Canon’s glance rested upon Flora, upon whose face a shade of dismay had fallen.

“One thing more. ‘God loveth a cheerful giver.’ Even though it costs us something, let us go with a good grace. We owe it to Valeria, to our dear erring one, to show that she is whole-heartedly forgiven. Yes, I can say it now, children. I have written my full and free forgiveness to your sister. The cloud has lifted.”

If so, it appeared to have done so only with a view to descending upon other members of the Morchard ménage.

Neither Lucilla nor Flora prepared for the Admastons’ party with any feelings save those of profound apprehension, and Adrian, meeting them in the hall, drew Lucilla aside in order to ask indignantly:

“Couldn’t you have stopped Father from coming tonight? I don’t want to be a beast, but really, it’s quite out of his line, and he won’t enjoy himself. In fact, he’ll probably be sick.”

The aspirant to the ministry was garbed as a Pierrot, with a curiously-shaped black patch upon his cheek, revealed as a miniature couple of dancers intertwined.

“Olga made it—isn’t it ripping?” said Adrian of this masterpiece. “I can’t wait—I ought to be behind the scenes at this minute. I came to look for some salts or something—Olga’s most awfully nervous. She’s simply shaking. What’s the proper thing to do for her, Lucilla? She’s really most awfully upset.”

“What about?”

“Stage fright, I tell you. Really good actors and actresses always get it. I wish I could get hold of some champagne for her.”

“Try standing over her with the water-jug,” Lucilla suggested crisply, and thereby deprived herself of her brother’s presence.

The Canon was always apt, at any gathering, to require a daughter upon either side, although he knew almost everyone in the county, and met old friends with a great and urbane pleasure. On this occasion, his eye roved in vain for Flora.

She had murmured to Lucilla: “I don’t think I can bear it. Even Maud Admaston says they’re all going to be very silly, and I know Father will loathe it. I’ll change places later if you want me to.”

She had then disappeared to the very back of the large billiard-room at one end of which a stage and curtains had been erected.

Their hostess, with what Lucilla inwardly qualified as misguided kindness, conducted the Canon to a seat near the top of the room.

Lucilla resignedly took her place beside him.

“Capital, capital!” said the Canon genially. “But where is my little Flora?”

“I think she found someone who wanted to talk to her.”

“Flora is still timid—very timid. I fear that Flora has let slip her chance of joining our little family group. I should have enjoyed having a daughter on either side of me, to exchange impressions.”

The first item on the heterogeneous programme, however, was provocative of no very eloquent exchange of impressions between Canon Morchard and anyone else.

He listened with a faint air of surprise to an opening chorus from a row of Pierrots and Pierrettes, interspersed with various noises from a whistle, a comb, a pair of castanets, and a small and solid poker banged loudly and intermittently against a tin tray.

At the close of it he only said:

“I hardly recognized our dear lad, at first. That was he, was it not, at the end of the row, next to the little lady with black hair?”

“Yes. The girl was Olga Duffle. I believe she sings a great deal.”

The literal truth of her own description was borne in upon Lucilla as the evening went on. Miss Duffle did sing a great deal.

She sang a solo about the Moon, and another one about a Coal-black Baby Rose, and a third one, very short and modern and rather indeterminate, asking where was now the Flow’r, that had died within an Hour, and ending on the still more poignant enquiry, addressed to le Bon Dieu Above, Where was one who said “I love”?

The Canon, to this item, only asked in a puzzled way if the end was not rather abrupt?

“What in my day, we should have termed an unresolved discord,” he observed with some slight severity.

The sudden introduction of a quantity of toy balloons amongst the audience did not amuse him in the least, although he smiled, coldly and politely, as the guests, with little screams, buffeted them lightly from one to another.

Only the people on the stage, all very young, seemed thoroughly to realize the function of the toy balloons.

They banged them hither and thither, shrieking with laughter when the inevitable destruction ensued, and making each miniature explosion an excuse for calling out the catchword of the evening—imported from a revue comedian whose methods, more or less successfully imitated by most of the young men on the stage, appeared to consist in the making of grotesque facial contortions:—“May—I—ask—you—politely—to—absquatulate?”

At each repetition of the phrase, the actors and actresses were overcome with mirth.

The members of the audience were more divided in their opinions. Their laughter was not immoderate, and that of Canon Morchard was non-existent.

Lucilla, gazing anxiously at his severe profile, was yet able to feel it some slight relief that at least Owen Quentillian was not present. One such expression of melancholy beside her was more than enough.

“I hope I am not what is vulgarly called ‘superior’,” said the Canon, “but I confess that all this noise appears to me to be little short of senseless. Surely our faculties were given us for some better purpose than pointless, discordant merriment? No one is more ready than myself to concede——”

The upheaval of an enormous drum on to the stage debarred Lucilla from hearing what it was that no one was more ready than her father to concede, and she was left, amidst ever-increasing din, to judge from his exceedingly uncompromising expression, how much more of the performance would elapse without causing him to become what was vulgarly called superior.

(ii)

LUCILLA Morchard was not naturally of a sanguine disposition, and it must have been an optimist indeed who would have ventured to augur that the effect of the evening’s entertainment might be of benefit to the Canon’s spirits.

From placidity he passed to tolerance, and from tolerance to endurance. In the course of the short play that concluded the performance, Lucilla perceived with resigned dismay that endurance was turning rapidly to serious vexation.

“Extravagant, vulgar, decadent nonsense,” was the Canon’s verdict, and Lucilla’s critical faculty endorsed the trenchant adjectives that he had selected, although she was devoid of her parent’s apparently acute sense of disgust.

“Olga Duffle is a good actress,” she said.

“One dislikes the levity of it all so profoundly,” said the Canon. “I believe I am the last man in the world to hold back from any cheerful, innocent amusement at fit and proper times and seasons, but I cannot but regret that Adrian, naturally gifted as he is, should turn his talents to no better account than mere buffoonery.”

The part relegated to Adrian in the little play was indeed of no exalted order, and the most subtle display of humour conceded to him was concerned with the sudden removal of a chair behind him and his consequent fall on to the floor.

The audience laughed, with mild amusement.

Lucilla dared not look at her father.

A spirited speech from Olga Duffle, who had shown no signs whatever of the stage fright that had caused her fellow-actor so much solicitude, brought down the curtain. Lucilla’s applause was rendered vigorous by an impulse of extreme thankfulness.

She was also grateful to the Canon for the measured clapping of the palm of one hand against the back of the other, with which he rewarded a performance that he had certainly found to be neither instructive nor amusing.

Adrian sought no parental congratulations, when the performers, still in theatrical costume, came down amongst the audience, but Olga Duffle made her way towards the Canon.

She looked, as usual, more attractive than any of the prettier girls present, and spoke with her habitual childlike, almost imperceptible, suggestion of lisping.

“Didn’t you think us all very silly? I’m afraid we were, but so few people care for anything else, nowadays.”

Her glance and gesture eloquently numbered the Canon in the few, though she did not extend the implication quite so far as to include Lucilla.

“You are a good actress, Miss Duffle. Have you had training?”

“Oh, no, nothing to speak of,” said Olga modestly. “They did offer to give me a year at the big Dramatic Training place, free, after I’d acted in a charity matinée a few years ago in London. They said I could easily play juvenile lead in any theatre in London at the end of a year, but of course that was all nonsense. Anyway my people naturally wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Indeed. Certainly it is a very moot point how far the possession of a definite talent justifies embracing a life such as that of a professional actress must needs be.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Olga.

Her big dark eyes were fixed on the Canon’s face, her lips parted with the expression of absorbed interest that lent her charm as a listener.

Lucilla was not surprised to see that the Canon’s face relaxed as he looked down at the small up-gazing figure.

She left them, in response to an imperious glance directed upon her from the other end of the room.

“I particularly want the old man to get to know Olga,” said Adrian with agitation. “It’d do him all the good in the world to have some of his ideas about the modern girl put straight, and if anyone can do it, she can. Wasn’t it priceless of her to make straight for him like that?”

“Perhaps she likes to talk to a distinguished man.”

“My dear old thing, don’t be absurd. Why, Olga has half London at her feet.”

Lucilla felt unable to make any display of enthusiasm at the announcement, although she saw no reason to doubt that a substratum of fact underlay Adrian’s hyperbole.

“I suppose Father thought the whole show utter tripe?”

“He didn’t say so,” Lucilla observed drily.

“Well, for goodness sake get him away as soon as Olga’s had her talk with him. The Admastons are determined to turn the whole thing into a glorious rag, and it’ll go on till all hours. Father would be wretched, and besides I should have him on my mind the whole time. I daresay I shan’t have many more opportunities of enjoying myself, so I may as well make the most of this,” said Adrian in a voice charged with meaning, that Lucilla understood to be an allusion to his recent ecclesiastical ambitions.

When she found herself beside her father again, he was in conversation with a short, fat, dark man whom he made known to his daughter with a somewhat abstracted air.

“Mr. Duffle, Lucilla.”

She was rather amused at the ease with which Olga’s parentage could be traced, although in her, a retroussé nose replaced the wide and upturned pug of her father, and her dark, intelligent gaze was an unmistakably improved edition of his shrewd black eyes. From both faces shone the same ardent, restless, and essentially animal, vitality.

Mr. Duffle, however, had none of Olga’s claims to social charms and talents. Lucilla knew him to be a successful building contractor, who had amassed a fortune during the war, and decided that he looked the part.

“I’ll come along one morning then, Canon, and have a little chat with you,” Mr. Duffle was declaring with a breezy assurance that could hardly have been derived from the Canon’s expression.

“You’re kept pretty hard at it, I daresay?”

“The man who wants me is the man I want,” quoted the Canon, with his grave smile.

“Capital. I’ll blow along then, and give you a call. My big car is in London, but we’ve got a little Daimler down here that does very well for country lanes. My daughter, of course, runs her own little two-seater. These young people, nowadays, there’s no end to what they expect. Not that I grudge Olga anything in reason, you understand. She’s our only one, and naturally her mother and I think the world of her.”

A very simple pride beamed in his face as he spoke of Olga, and Lucilla congratulated him upon her acting.

“She’s pretty good, isn’t she? I believe she could take her place amongst professionals any day, so she tells me. But of course we shouldn’t hear of anything like that for her. In fact, her mother and I look very high for our little girl, very high indeed, I may say, after all that Nature’s done for her, and the advantages we’ve given her as well.”

He laughed heartily, and then leaning confidentially towards Lucilla he said in a semi-whisper:

“Whoever gets our little Olga, young lady, will be a very lucky fellow. There’ll be a little bit of—” he tapped his forehead knowingly “and a little bit of—” the tap was repeated, against his coat pocket this time. Lucilla required no very acute powers of intuition to refer these demonstrations to her brother’s intention.

She wondered whether the Canon had made a similar deduction.

He was silent during their long drive home, but it was the silence of thoughtfulness rather than that of depression. The Canon’s intimates could generally interpret without difficulty the nature of his silences.

On the morning following he called Lucilla into the study.

“I had no word with Adrian last night,” he said wistfully. “I saw you talking to him, my dear. Did he tell you what day he is coming home again?”

“No, Father.”

“I confess that I am perturbed. Are these new friends of his gentlefolk, are they church people, are they even Christians?” said the Canon, walking up and down. “If only the boy would be more unreserved with me! One is so terribly anxious.”

“I don’t think he wants to be reserved. He really has no serious suggestion to offer, as to the future.”

“My poor lad! He is not sufficiently in earnest. I have blinded myself to it long enough. His early piety and simplicity were so beautiful that perhaps I dwelt upon them as tokens of future growth more than I should have done. But there was a levity of tone about these intimates of his that displeased me greatly. It must cease, Lucilla—this intercourse must cease.”

Lucilla dreaded few things more than such resolutions, from which she knew that her father, at whatever cost to himself or to anybody else, never swerved.

“The Admastons are neighbours,” she pointed out.

“All the more reason for Adrian to be content to meet them in the ordinary course of events, without treating their house as an hotel. But there is a further attraction, Lucilla, I am convinced of it.”

The Canon dropped his voice to impart his piece of penetration.

“That little Miss Duffle is undoubtedly attractive, but can the boy have the incredible folly to be paying his addresses to her?”

It did not seem to Lucilla that any such formal term could possibly be applied to Adrian’s highly modern methods of displaying his admiration for Olga, and she informed her father so with decision.

“He must at all events be aware that he is in no position to render any young lady conspicuous by his attentions,” said the Canon. “I am displeased with Adrian, Lucilla.”

Canon Morchard was not alone in his displeasure. Two days after the theatricals, Olga Duffle’s father appeared at St. Gwenllian, and was shown into the study.

The Canon greeted him, his habitual rather stately courtesy in strong contrast to his visitor’s bluff curtness of manner.

“Sit you down, my dear sir.”

The Canon took his own place on the revolving chair before the writing-table, and the tips of his fingers were lightly joined together as he bent his gaze, benignant, and yet serious, upon the little building contractor.

“You’ve got a nice little old place here. Needs a lot of seeing to, though, I daresay. I see you haven’t the electric light.”

The Canon glanced round him as though he had hardly noticed, as indeed he had not, the absence of this modern advantage.

“It wouldn’t cost you more than a couple of hundred to put it in,” said Mr. Duffle negligently.

The Canon was not in the least interested in the problematical expense to be thus incurred, but he replied gently that perhaps one of these days his successor might wish to improve St. Gwenllian, and be in a position to do so.

“Ah,” said Mr. Duffle. “That brings me to my point, in a roundabout sort of way. Your young man, Canon, has no particular inheritance to look forward to, if I understand rightly?”

“My young man?”

“Your boy Adrian. Not even your eldest son, is he?”

“Adrian is the youngest of my five children,” said the Canon with peculiar distinctness. “I have two sons and three daughters. May I enquire the reason of this interest in my family?”

“No offense, I hope, Canon. I thought you’d have guessed the reason fast enough—my girl Olga. Now mind you, I know very well that boys will be boys, and girls girls, for the matter of that. I’m not even saying that the little monkey hasn’t led him on a bit—she leads ’em all on, come to that! But Master Adrian has been talking of an engagement, it seems, and that won’t do at all, you know. So I thought you and me, Canon——”

“Stop!” The Canon’s face was rigid. “Am I to understand that your daughter has reason to complain that my son presses undesired attentions upon her, or causes their names to be coupled together in a manner displeasing to her?”

The builder’s stare was one of honest bewilderment.

“Coupled together!” he repeated derisively. “Why, the lad follows her about like a little dog. I should think old Matthew Admaston is as easy going as they make ’em, but even he thought it a bit thick to have your young moon-calf, if you’ll excuse the expression, on his doorstep morning, noon and night, while my girl was in the house, till they had to ask him to stay, to save the front-door bell coming off in his hand.”

Mr. Duffle’s humourous extravagance of imagery awoke no response in Canon Morchard.

“My son’s impertinent folly shall be put a stop to immediately,” he said, through closely compressed lips.

“Bless me! there’s nothing that needs a rumpus made about it, you understand. Only when it comes to prating about being engaged, and promising to marry him in goodness knows how many years, and goodness knows what on—why, then it’s time us older folk stepped in, I think, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.”

“Do I understand that my son—without reference to me, I may add—has asked Miss Duffle to do him the honour of becoming his wife?”

Mr. Duffle stared at the Canon blankly.

“Ill though he seems to have behaved, you will hardly expect me to accept, on his behalf, an entire rejection of his suit, without reference to the young lady herself.”

A resounding blow from Mr. Duffle’s open palm onto his knee startled the Canon and made him jump in his chair.

“Good God!” roared the builder, causing Canon Morchard to wince a second time, “is this talk out of a novel? How in the name of all that’s reasonable can the boy marry without a profession or an income? I’ll do him the justice to say that I’ve never thought him a fortune hunter. (He’s not got the guts for that, if you’ll excuse me being so plain-spoken.) He’s besotted about the girl, and not the first one either, though I do say it myself. But my Olga is our only child, and will get every penny I have to leave, and the fact of the matter is that she’ll be a rich woman one of these days, in a manner of speaking. Therefore, Canon, you’ll understand me when I say that Olga can look high—very high, she can look.”

The Canon’s countenance did, indeed, show the most complete comprehension of the case so stated. His face, in its stern pallor, became more cameo-like than ever.

“Sir, do you accuse my son of trifling, of the unutterable meanness of endeavouring to engage a young lady’s affections without any reasonable prospect of asking her in marriage like an honourable man?”

“Bless me, Canon, I don’t accuse the young fellow of anything, except of being a bit of an ass,” said the builder. “I daresay it’s been six of one and half a dozen of the other. He’s a nice-looking boy, and all this play-acting has thrown them together, like; but that’s over now, and Olga comes back to London with us next week. But I thought I’d throw you a hint,” said Mr. Duffle delicately, “so that there’s no nonsense about following us to town, or anything of that sort. Her mother’s going to speak to Olga about it, too. Bless me, it’s not the first time we’ve had to nip a little affair of this sort in the bud. The fellows are round our little girl like flies round a honey-pot. We give her a loose rein, too, in a manner of speaking, but as the wife pointed out to me last night, it only keeps off better chances if a girl is always seen about with lads who don’t mean business.”

The Canon groaned deeply, and Mr. Duffle, fearing himself misunderstood, hastily interposed:

“Don’t run away with the idea that I’ve anything against the boy, now, Canon. I’m sure if he was only a year or two older, in a good job, and with a little something to look to later on, I’d be only too glad of the connection. But as things are, I’m sure as a family man yourself you see my point.”

He looked almost pleadingly at the Canon as he spoke.

“You did perfectly right to come to me, Mr. Duffle; you did perfectly right. Unspeakably painful though this conversation has been to me, I fully recognize the necessity for it.”

If Mr. Duffle still looked perplexed, he also looked relieved.

“That’s right, Canon. I felt you and me would understand one another. After all, we’ve been young ourselves, haven’t we, and I daresay we’ve chased a pretty pair of ankles or said more than we meant on a moonlight night, both of us, once upon a time.”

So far did Canon Morchard appear to be from endorsing this view of a joint past that his visitor added an extenuation.

“Of course, before you turned parson, naturally, I mean. I know you take your job seriously, if you’ll excuse me passing a personal remark, and that’s not more than’s needed nowadays. There’s no idea of young Adrian going in for the clerical line, I suppose?”

“What I have heard today would be enough to convince me that it is out of the question,” said the Canon bitterly. “But my son has evinced no such desire.”

“H’m. There was some nonsense talked amongst the young people about a fat living at Stear being ready for him if he chose to step into it. I daresay there was nothing in it but a leg-pull, as they say. In any case, my girl wouldn’t look at a country parson. No offence to you, Canon, but it’s best to have these things out in plain English.”

“Enough,” said the Canon with decision. “You may rest assured that my son will cease this insensate persecution of——”

“Excuse me interrupting, but why make a mountain out of a molehill? There’s been no persecution or any of that talk out of books, in the case. Why, my Olga can’t help making eyes at a good-looking lad, and letting him squeeze her hand every now and then.”

The Canon gave utterance, irrepressibly, to yet another groan.

Mr. Duffle looked at him with compassion.

“Why make a mountain out of a molehill, as I said before?” he repeated. “There’s been no harm done, except maybe a little gossiping among the Admaston lot, and if you tip the wink to your lad, and mother and I trot Olga back to London again, we needn’t hear any more of it. We’re old-fashioned people, and brought up the child old-fashioned, and she’s not one of these modern young women who can’t live at home. I give her the best of everything, and a pretty long rope, but she knows that as long as she’s living under my roof and spending my money she’s got to obey me and her mother when we do give an order.”

The builder’s face, momentarily dogged, relaxed again and he laughed jovially.

“Though I’m not saying the little puss can’t get most things out of us by coaxing! But we’re set on a good marriage for her, that I tell you straight.”

“There is only one foundation for the sacrament of marriage,” said the Canon sombrely, “and that is mutual love, trust and esteem.”

“Quite, quite; the wife always takes that line herself. ‘When the heart is given, let the hand follow,’ she always says, and Olga knows well enough that she’ll have a free choice, within reason. But love in a cottage isn’t her style, and things being as they are, there’s no reason, as I said before, why she shouldn’t look high. She’s a sensible girl, too, and if there is a bit of the flirt about her, she doesn’t lose her head. I will say that for her.”

“I wish that I could say the same of my son,” bitterly rejoined the Canon.

“Well, well, don’t be too hard on the lad. Human nature is human nature all the world over, is what I always say. All the parsons in Christendom can’t alter that, if you’ll excuse the saying. It’s natural enough your son should lose his head over a pretty girl like my Olga,” said Miss Duffle’s parent indulgently. “All I mean is, that it must stop there, and no nonsense about being engaged, or anything of that kind.”

“Do these unhappy young people consider themselves bound to one another, as far as you know?”

“Bless me, Canon, they’re not unhappy. At least, my Olga certainly isn’t, and if your lad throws off a few heroics, he’ll soon get over it. Why, I remember threatening to blow out my brains—as I chose to call them—when I was no older than he is, and all for the sake of a lady ten years older than myself, and married and the mother of three, into the bargain!”

Mr. Duffle was moved to hearty laughter at this reminiscence, although it failed signally to produce the same exhilarating effect upon Canon Morchard.

Perhaps in consequence of this, his mirth died away spasmodically, with a rather apologetic effect.

“Well, well, Canon, take a tip from me, if I may suggest such a thing, and don’t take this business too seriously. He’ll be head over ears in love with somebody else before you can look round, and it’ll all be to do over again.”

Before this luminous vista of future amatory escapades, the builder appeared to feel that the interview had better be brought to its conclusion, and he rose.

An evident desire to console and reassure his host possessed him.

“Get the young fellow a job of work, if I may advise. It’s wonderful how it steadies them down. He’ll have no time to run after the petticoats when he’s tied by the leg to an office, or roughing it in one of the Colonies.”

“The choice of a career lies in my son’s own hands,” said the Canon stiffly. “But you may rest assured, Mr. Duffle, that he will be allowed no further occasion for misusing his time and abusing other people’s hospitality as he appears to have been doing. I am obliged to you, painful though this conversation has been to us both, for treating me with so much frankness in the matter.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Mr. Duffle.

The Canon bowed slightly and escorted his visitor to the door.

The Daimler car was in waiting, but the builder paused with one foot on the step.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Canon,” he remarked confidentially.

The Canon, with extreme reluctance in his demeanour, signified attention.

“If you should think of having that little improvement made to the place that I suggested—you know, the electric light put in—I can tell you the very people to go to—Blapton & Co. They’ve done a lot of work for our firm, and they’ll do it as reasonable as you can hope for. Don’t hesitate to mention my name.”

He nodded, and got into the car.

The Canon stood upon the front doorstep, his face pale and furrowed, his lips compressed.

“Stop!” shouted Mr. Duffle, suddenly thrusting his head from the window of the slowly moving car.

The Daimler stopped.

Mr. Duffle descended from it nimbly and once more approached the Canon.

He looked, for the first time, heated and confused.

“It slipped my memory that I wanted to give you this trifle. Perhaps you’ll see to some of those poor fellows who are out of work through no fault of their own, having the handling of it for the wives and kiddies. I’ve been lucky myself, and I never like to leave a place without what I may call some sort of thanksgiving. Not a word, please. Ta-ta.”

The Daimler made another sortie, and the Canon was left, still standing motionless on the doorstep, with the builder’s cheque for twenty-five pounds in his hand.

(iii)

“DEAR LUCILLA,

“I think you’d better not expect me till you see me, if that’ll be all right. I may be going up to London for a day or two when the party breaks up here tomorrow, as I really must see about a job of some kind. I’m sure Father will approve of this, so mind you tell him it’s the reason. I hope he wasn’t frightfully sick at the way we all played the fool the night of the show, but really it was his own fault for coming, and if he didn’t like it, he must just do the other thing.

“Cheerio.

“Yours,
 “ADRIAN.”

“MY DEAR ADRIAN,

“It would be better if you could come back here before deciding to go to London. Father is writing to you, and you will probably see from his letter that he particularly wants you at home. I hope you are not in trouble, but Father is certainly upset about something, and you will only make matters worse by going off in a hurry. Besides, I think he would quite likely follow you.

“Your affectionate sister,
 “LUCILLA MORCHARD.”

“DEAR LUCILLA,

“If you hear of me doing something desperate, you may tell Father that he has only himself to thank! I now know what he and old Duffle have been up to, between them, and I may tell you that I do not intend to put up with this sort of thing any longer. Father doesn’t seem to realize that I am a man, and in grim earnest over some things, and he and old Duffle have now utterly scotched my chances of happiness for life, although I daresay without realizing what they were doing. Olga is the only girl I shall ever love, and if I have lost her I do not care what I do or what becomes of me, and you may tell Father so. If this is what religion leads to, you can also tell him that I am utterly off it for life. That is what they have done, by their interference with my affairs, because I am almost sure Olga would at least have become engaged to me, if she had been let alone, and not bullied by her father and mother, and threatened with poverty if she married me. As you know, it needn’t have been anything of the sort, if my plans had worked out all right, and we could have had Stear, but I am completely off the Church, in any shape or form, so that is what Father has done, whether he knows it or not!!!

“You will, I suppose, be upset at this letter being so bitter in tone, but I may say that my faith in human nature is utterly shattered for good and all, and this has been done by my own father!! I am coming home on Monday and not before, so it’s no use father dictating to me.

“Yours,
 “ADRIAN.”

“MY DEAREST ADRIAN,

“I don’t understand why Lucilla tells me that you are returning home on Monday, when you know it is my wish, distinctly expressed in my letter to you two days ago, that you should be here on Saturday, so that we may spend the Sunday together. Unless you have a very valid reason for disregarding my wishes, I must insist, for your own sake, upon your complying with them. I do so want you to be considerate, quite apart from the question of dutifulness—for instance, it is quite a little thing, but you don’t say what time you are arriving here, and yet you surely know that this makes a difference with regard to questions of meals, etc., in a small household such as ours. It is only want of thought, dear lad, but do try and correct this fault. I have so often had to reprove myself for the like small negligences that it makes me anxious to see the same tendency in you. This is not a lecture, my dear boy, but only a reminder, from one who has had to be both mother and father to you.

“I have other, and very much more serious, matters to talk over with you when we meet, but all shall be done in the spirit of love and confidence, I do trust, and if I am obliged to inflict pain upon you, you must remember that it is multiplied ten-fold upon my own head.

“I shall expect a line, sent either to myself or to Lucilla, announcing the hour of your arrival on Saturday. God by you, dearest of lads, until we meet.

“Your devoted
 “FATHER.”

“DEAR LUCILLA,

“On second thoughts, I shall come home on Saturday, in time for dinner. Most likely I shall go straight off to London on Monday morning, but you needn’t say anything to Father about this. If you can, persuade him to have up the port on Sunday night.

“Yours,
 “ADRIAN.”

“Dear lad! He is all anxiety to do right, at bottom,” said the Canon tenderly to Lucilla, when a censored version of this communication had been passed on to him. “You see how readily he submits to returning on Saturday, in order to please me.”

If Lucilla thought this act of submission inspired by fear, rather than by a desire to please, she did not say so.

The Canon had said nothing to her of his interview with Mr. Duffle, and made only one remark which might be held to refer to his visitor:

“We are all of us apt to set a false value on appearances, I suspect. Aye, my daughters, in spite of his ‘forty years in the wilderness,’ it is so with your father. Trivial vulgarities, or mere superficial coarseness, have blinded one time and again, till some sudden, beautiful impulse or flash of generous delicacy comes to rebuke one. Well, well—each mistake can be used as a rung of the ladder. Always remember that.”

That trivial vulgarities and superficial coarseness were characteristics of Mr. Duffle was undeniable, but Lucilla deduced that these had been redeemed in the manner suggested, since the builder’s prolonged visit to her father had left him, though grave, singularly calm. He had, indeed, summoned Adrian to St. Gwenllian, but his manner showed none of the peculiar restrained suffering that was always to be discerned when the Canon felt one of his children to be in serious fault.

“It is more than time that Adrian found his vocation,” said the Canon. “I have been to blame in allowing him to drift, but it has been an unutterable joy to have him with us, after these terrible war years. However, there is no further excuse for delay. He and I must have a long talk.”

Lucilla could surmise only too well the effect of a long talk upon Adrian, if his frame of mind might be judged correctly from his impassioned letter to her.

As usual, however, she said nothing.

The Canon’s mood of mellow forbearance continued to wax as the day went on, and he met his favourite son with a benign affectionateness that contrasted strangely with Adrian’s dramatically-restrained demeanour.

Flora, as a rule utterly incurious, asked Lucilla what was the matter.

“I don’t quite know. Something to do with Olga Duffle, I imagine. Probably Adrian has proposed to her, or something foolish of the kind, and the Duffles want it stopped.”

“Has he said anything more about his idea of taking Orders?”

“I hope not,” said Lucilla rather grimly.

She preferred not to imagine the Canon’s probable reception of an ambition thus inspired.

The long talk projected by Canon Morchard was impracticable on a Sunday, always his busiest day, until evening.

As the Canon rose from the late, and scrupulously cold, evening meal, he said:

“Daughters, you will not sit up beyond your usual hour. Adrian, my dear—come.”

The door of the study shut, and Lucilla and Flora remained in the drawing-room.

Lucilla occupied herself with note-books and works of reference, and Flora, in the exquisite copper-plate handwriting that the Canon had insisted upon for all his children, in close imitation of his own, wrote out an abstract of her father’s sermon, as she had done almost every Sunday evening ever since she could remember.

The silence was unbroken till nearly an hour later, when Lucilla observed:

“Do you know, Flossie, that Father’s book is very nearly finished? There are only two more chapters to revise.”

“‘Leonidas of Alexandria,’” said Flora thoughtfully.

The subject of the Canon’s exhaustive researches and patient compilations was known to the household.

“He’ll publish it, of course?”

“He hopes to. But Owen told me that there isn’t a very great demand for that kind of work, nowadays.”

Flora looked inquiringly at her sister.

“I hope Father isn’t going to be disappointed,” she said, half interrogatively.

“I’m very much afraid that he is.”

On this encouraging supposition of Miss Morchard’s, the conversation ended.

In accordance with their father’s desire, both sisters had gone upstairs before the conference in the study came to an end.

There came a knock at Lucilla’s door.

She opened it.

“Come in, Adrian.”

“It’s all up,” said Adrian, in the eloquent idiom of his generation, and made a melodramatic gesture of desperation.

Lucilla closed the door and sat down, seeming undisturbed by so cataclysmic an announcement of finality.

“I’m off on my own, after this. Father has utterly mucked up my entire life, as I think I told you in my letter, and he can’t see what he has done!”

Lucilla wondered whether Adrian had spent two and a half hours in endeavouring to open his parent’s eyes to his own work of destruction.

“Would you mind telling me exactly what has happened?”

Adrian embarked upon a tone of gloomy narrative.

“Well, I don’t know whether you had any idea that I am—was—well, frightfully hard hit by that girl Olga. Not just thinking her pretty and clever, and all that sort of thing, you know, though of course she was—is, I mean. But simply knowing that she was the one and only person I should ever care for. Of course, I know now that I was mistaken in her, to a certain extent, and I can tell you, Lucilla, that it’s very hard on a man to be as thoroughly disillusioned as I’ve been. It’s enough to shatter one’s faith in women for life.”

“But what did Father do?” said Lucilla, as her brother seemed inclined to lose himself in the contemplation of his own future mysogyny.

“What did he do?” echoed Adrian bitterly. “He and old Duffle had the—the audacity to meet together and discuss my private affairs, and take upon themselves to decide that anything between me and Olga ought to be put an end to. I must say, I thought that kind of thing had gone out with the Middle Ages, when people walled up their daughters alive, and all that kind of tosh. And how Olga, of all people, put up with it I can’t imagine; but they seemed to have pitched some yarn about my not being able to afford to marry, and frightened her with the idea of my being after her money, I suppose.”

“But Adrian, had you asked her to marry you?”

“No, of course not. But I did think we might have been engaged. Then I wouldn’t have had to put up with seeing a lot of other fellows after her,” said Adrian naïvely.

“And did you explain that to Father?” Lucilla inquired, not without a certain dismay in picturing the Canon’s reception of these strange ideals.

“More or less; but you know what he is. He always does most of the talking himself. I can quite understand why we were so frightened of him as kids, you know. He seems to work himself up about things, and then he always has such a frightfully high-faluting point of view. We might really have been talking at cross-purposes, half the time.”

“I can quite believe it.”

“Of course, I’m not exactly afraid of him now, but it does make it a bit difficult to say what’s in one’s mind.”

“That’s just the pity of it, Adrian. He always says that he does so wish you were more unreserved with him. He does very much want you to say what’s in your mind.”

“But he wouldn’t like it if I did—in fact, he probably wouldn’t understand it.”

Few things could be more incontrovertible.

“The fact is that father has quite a wrong idea of me. He seems to expect me to have all the notions that he had, when he was a young high-brow at Oxford, about ninety years ago. As I told him, things have gone ahead a bit since then.”

Lucilla, for her consolation, reflected that few people are capable of distinguishing accurately between what they actually say, and what they subsequently wish themselves to have said, when reporting a conversation. It was highly probable that Adrian had been a good deal less eloquent than he represented himself to have been.

“You didn’t say anything, did you, about your idea of taking Orders?”

“No,” said Adrian rather curtly. “I did begin something about it, just to show that I hadn’t been the unpractical ass he seemed to think I was, but he went off at the deep end almost directly. I said something about going into the Church, you see, and he didn’t wait for me to finish, but started away about our all being ‘in the Church’ from the day of our baptism, and so on—splitting hairs, I call it. As if everyone didn’t know what is generally meant by going into the Church.”

“Well, in this case, I really hope he didn’t know. Flossie and I always told you that Father would be very much shocked at your way of looking at the priesthood.”

“Anyhow, it’s all off now,” said Adrian gloomily. “There wouldn’t be the slightest object in it, and besides I’m thoroughly off religion at the moment, as I think I told you. No, I shall go to London.”

Lucilla looked further inquiry.

“No, I’m not going after Olga; you can be quite easy about that. In fact, I may say I don’t ever want to set eyes on her again, after the way she’s let me down. No, I’m going to try journalism, or something like that. Anyhow, I mean to be a free lance for a bit.”

The first note of real resolution that Lucilla had heard there, crept into Adrian’s young voice.

“Father really can’t go on running the show for me like this. It’s me that’s got to decide what to do with my life, and I’m going to get a bit of experience on my own. I know I had six months in France, but that isn’t going to be the whole of my life. In fact, Lucilla, I’ve decided, though I’m sorry in a way, to say such a thing, that Father has got to be taught a lesson, and it’s me that’s going to do the teaching.”

Iron firmness, denoted by a closely compressed mouth and a rather defiant eye fixed glassily upon Lucilla’s, characterized Adrian’s announcement.

“Listen,” said Lucilla.

They heard a heavy footfall, eloquent of weariness, outside the door. It was followed by the sound of an imperative tap.

Adrian’s face relaxed and a more normal expression succeeded to the compelling one that had petrified his gaze.

“Adrian, my son, are you there?”

“Yes, father.”

“Dear lad, how thoughtless you are! Your sister is tired, and it is already very late. Finish your talk tomorrow, my dear ones.”

There was a pause.

Then Adrian said:

“Well, I suppose Time is on the wing, as usual. Good-night, Lucilla.”

He went out.

Lucilla heard the Canon bid him good-night, and his voice held profound sadness, rather than the vexation that she had feared.

She moved swiftly to the door.

“Father, I have found that reference in Origen.”

The Canon’s face, drawn and tired, lightened on the instant.

“My indefatigable searcher after truth! Lucilla indeed casts light into dark places—you were well named, my daughter. That is good news indeed—good news indeed.”

“Should you like me to come down again, or are you too tired?”

“Nay, Lucilla, you heard me bid Adrian to his room. Would you have me transgress my own regulations? That would be inconsistent indeed. We will investigate our Origen tomorrow.”

“You are so near the end of it now, Father.”

“Aye, the work has progressed wonderfully these last few months. And I have been wonderfully blessed in your help, my child—my right hand! It has been a labour of love indeed.”

Lucilla hoped that he would go to his room still cheered by the thought of the book. But the Canon lingered, to enquire sadly:

“You have talked with Adrian?”

“A little.”

“Dear fellow, one must make all allowance for his disappointment of his first fancy, but there is a want of stability—what I can only call a levity of spirit—that distresses one beyond words. He was all submission and deference, but there was not the spontaneous calling of deep unto deep that one somehow looked for.... And yet Adrian is the one of you all from whom I had hoped for the greatest unreserve, the most ideal companionship....”

Lucilla knew it, had always known it, only too well.

Not one of his other children had been treated with the indulgence that the Canon had always displayed towards his youngest-born.

The Canon’s next words chimed in oddly with her thoughts.

“Perhaps I have condoned too much in Adrian. It is not a strong character—but the strongest are not always the most lovable. He talks now of going to London.”

“So he told me.”

“One can only trust,” said the Canon with a heavy sigh. “I must bid you good-night, dear daughter. It is not right that you should be kept up in this fashion.”

Lucilla was left to seek what repose she might.

The next day at St. Gwenllian was one of constraint.

Adrian was silent in his father’s presence, and full of adamantine resolution in his absence. At meal times, the subjects to be avoided—which now included the Admastons, their theatricals, and the Duffle family, as well as Valeria’s marriage—seemed unduly numerous. In the evening, the Canon made a great and evident effort, that struck Lucilla as infinitely pathetic, to readjust matters.

His show of laboured brightness could deceive no one, but Lucilla and Mr. Clover seconded his attempts at general conversation with determination, and Flora was not more silent than was her wont. Adrian, manifestly sulky at first, awoke presently to a change in the atmosphere, and thereupon erred rather upon the side of garrulity than on that of restraint.

His face darkened, however, when the Canon after dinner suddenly said with pseudo-heartiness:

“I am about to call one of our old-time family councils, young people. What say you, Adrian, to a little friendly discussion of your future plans? Time was, perhaps, when these things were settled rather in a long, heart-to-heart talk between father and son; but times change, and we must move with them—we must move with them.”

It was impossible to doubt that the Canon was, or supposed himself to be, moving with the times rather in the hope of pleasing Adrian, than from any personal liking for the direction in which they appeared to be taking him.

“Perhaps some of these wiseacres may make a helpful suggestion as to the future. Clover, you have been guide, philosopher and friend to us all this many a year. And Lucilla—Lucilla is gifted with a very level head, as I sometimes tell her—a very level head. As for my little Flora, whose head is sometimes in the clouds, at least those who say least see most, eh Flora? Let us to the with-drawing-room, children.”

Seated in the lamp light, with Lucilla and Flora both occupied with needlework—the Canon had long ago decreed that no discussion need entail idle hands—Canon Morchard looked wistfully at Adrian, leaning against the marble mantelpiece with an air of embarrassment.

“What are your wishes, dear lad—your hopes, your plans?”

To this singularly comprehensive enquiry, Adrian seemed to find some difficulty in making an immediate reply.

“Your father is very anxious—we’re all anxious,” said Mr. Clover pleadingly.

“Why should you be?” Adrian demanded fretfully, turning sharply towards the curate. “I’m quite old enough to settle for myself what I’m going to do.”

“But you haven’t settled it, Adrian,” said Lucilla mildly.

“That is why we all want to help you, if possible,” the Canon observed. “Perhaps you may remember some words that I am very fond of, and that have found their way now and again into our pleasant confabulations on life and letters in general:

There comes a tide in the affairs of men
That, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

“There is, indeed, a higher Leading that I trust, and indeed know, you would none of you disregard, but opportunity may very often serve us as an indication—an indication. It seems to me, dear Adrian, that some such ‘tide’ has come in your affairs now, and it would be pleasant indeed to feel that, taken at the flood, it would lead on to fortune, in the best and highest sense of the word.”

There was a pause, and then Mr. Clover said:

“Or at least independence.”

“That’s what I want,” said Adrian ungraciously. “Only never having been brought up to anything special, it’s a bit hard to know what to go in for.”

“You said something about journalism,” Lucilla reminded him, aware that the word, which would certainly be distasteful to the Canon, must be uttered sooner or later.

Adrian looked at his sister, and not at his father, as he replied:

“I think that’s really what I shall do.”

“But who is going to employ you, Adrian?” Flora enquired with simplicity.

The boy frowned.

“You don’t understand these things. I shall just get up one or two things, and show them to the right people, and if they’re any good at all I shall get taken on somewhere.”

“The Press is a great force for good as, alas, for evil, my son, but I confess that such a course would be a disappointment to me. Have you no other ambition?” asked the Canon wistfully.

“I can’t think of anything else, Father.”

“I thought—” breathed Flora to Lucilla.

Lucilla shook her head, in repudiation of Adrian’s erstwhile schemes of clerical life, and she heard from Flora a sigh that probably denoted relief.

“Then, my dearest fellow, so be it. You know that we wish nothing but your highest good, and your happiness here and hereafter. I will increase your present allowance as far as I can do so without robbing others, and that should enable you to maintain yourself in London until you are earning enough to dispense with it. Have you any definite starting point in your mind?”

“Not yet, but I can write to a fellow I know. I say, Father—this is very good of you.”

There was both surprise and genuine gratitude in Adrian’s voice.

The Canon, entirely regardless of anyone else as he always was when deeply in earnest, rose and placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“I have no wish but your truest and highest good, dear lad, as I said before. If I have been weak enough to indulge in plans and fancies of my own, they shall not come between us now. I believe I may say that I have learnt at last that whatever is, is best. Let us go on, believing all things, hoping all things.... If there has been weakness in the past, dear Adrian, I know that you will justify my confidence in the future, God helping you.”

The Canon’s voice had grown husky over the last few words. He bent his head and gently and solemnly kissed Adrian’s forehead.

Then he went out of the room.

(iv)

FOR many months after Adrian’s departure, the monotonous round of life at St. Gwenllian remained undisturbed.

News came from Canada of the birth of a son to Valeria, and the Canon’s last resentment vanished, although he still spoke of “our poor Valeria.”

He derived unmistakable satisfaction from Owen Quentillian’s presence at Stear, and the young man received frequent invitations to the Vicarage, after a first visit during which the host suffered infinitely more than the guest, in the fear of reviving past associations.

Adrian wrote occasionally, giving no very encouraging accounts of his progress in journalism, and continued to receive the increased allowance that his father sent him with scrupulous regularity. He did not come home again, even in the summer.

Then one day the Canon, at his writing-table, laid down his pen and said to Lucilla:

“Nunc dimittis.... My book is done, Lucilla; I can add no more to it. It has been a long task, and at times a heavy one, for the flesh is weak—for all that the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. But it is over now.”

His rapt, smiling gaze held Lucilla’s for a long while, as she smiled back her congratulation.

“And now, my dear one, to give our work to the world!” He rubbed his hands together exultantly. “For it is yours, Lucilla, almost as much as mine.”

She shook her head, still smiling. The Canon’s generosity, any more than his occasional injustice, did not blind his daughter to the bald facts of a case as she saw it.

A shadow was across her genuine participation in his joy, now.

“What shall you do with it, Father?”

“There is no more to be done,” repeated the Canon. “All is copied, all is corrected. Your typescript is admirable, Lucilla, and I trust that my few emendations have not defaced it.”

“Then is it going to the publishers?”

“My practical Lucilla! Is your mind already in search of an adequate supply of brown paper and sealing wax? These things are not done so hastily as impetuous youth would wish, however. There will be a preliminary correspondence, my dear, even when I have definitely decided which of the publishing houses to approach. A work such as this one, which has taken years of labour, is not sent lightly forth to take its chance, as might be a work of fiction.”

The Canon laid his hand lovingly upon the immense pile of typescript before him. It represented, as he had said, the labour of years.

“Owen is in touch with several publishers, I believe.”

“Possibly so, Lucilla.” The Canon’s tone was not altogether pleased. “But such a work—on such a subject—requires no casual introduction.”

Lucilla wondered, not without foreboding, what it did require. Owen Quentillian, who shared her own inability to take optimistic views on principle, had spoken discouragingly of the modern market for such works as the Canon’s on “Leonidas of Alexandria.”

The Canon himself appeared to entertain no misgivings, until a few weeks later, when he handed a letter silently to Lucilla.

It was a courteously worded assurance from the most eminent of theological publishing firms that the probable sales of such a work as “Leonidas of Alexandria” would not, in their opinion, justify the expenses of publication.

The Canon seemed more bewildered than dismayed.

“I shall approach the Oxbridge Press,” he declared. “I had decided against them, but this very unexpected attitude leaves me no alternative.”

The reply of the Oxbridge Press, although longer delayed, was almost identical in substance with that of its predecessors.

“I do not understand it,” the Canon repeated, and wrote to another publishing house.

He still spoke as though the ultimate appearance of the book were a certainty; even when confronted with a third refusal, but he allowed Lucilla to consult Owen Quentillian.

As the result of a letter to Quentillian’s own publishers, an offer came from them to produce “Leonidas of Alexandria” if the author would advance a substantial sum towards the cost of bringing out the book.

“It’s more than I dared to hope for,” Owen told Lucilla candidly, in private. “Only I’m afraid he’ll still be disappointed, if the book appears and makes no stir.”

“He has thought of it for so many years,” said Lucilla.

“And always as a magnum opus—something that the world would recognize?”

“Yes, I think so. But even so, I’m not certain whether he’ll accept these terms.”

“He won’t get better ones,” said Owen with conviction.

They awaited the Canon’s reply. It came, calm and very decided.

“It cannot be. It is not within my power to accept the terms suggested. Thank you, Owen, my dear—and you Lucilla—but my work must await better days—better days.”

For the first time, Owen was struck by the singular sweetness of the Canon’s smile, as he stood with his hand resting on the great bulk of papers that stood to him for the loving preoccupation of many years. No faintest touch of bitterness accompanied his deep disappointment.

“I have had the great pleasure of the work, and it has brought me into close association with many writers, both living and dead. We have derived great benefit from our toil, Lucilla, and if the fruits of reward are to be denied us yet awhile, so be it. You remember the old story of the dying man who bade his sons dig for a treasure beneath the apple-tree. They did so, and the natural yield of the fertile earth was their reward—their own industry proved to be their treasure. If it is to be so with my book, I am content.”

Quentillian’s stern sense of the futility of false hopes kept him silent, but Lucilla said:

“Is it any use to try another publisher?”

The Canon shook his grey head.

“This is neither our first attempt nor our second. No doubt times have changed, and there is no longer the same interest taken in these researches. The wheel will come round in due course, young people, and I make no doubt that Leonidas will yet be given to the world, in God’s good time whether in my day or not. I am very well content.”

He put the heavy package into a drawer, of which he turned the key.

“You remember, Lucilla, the words inscribed upon my front page—‘Ad majorem Dei gloriam’? Surely we can trust the fulfilment of those words to Him, and as surely He can justify them in obscurity as in the notoriety of a day. We will say no more about this, children.”

He turned towards Quentillian, and smiled again.

“Nay, dear fellow, there is nothing to look so blank about. I will not deny a natural disappointment, but it is no more than that—no more than that. These things pass....”

Even to Lucilla, in private, the Canon scarcely said more. The one revelation that he did make, hardly surprised her.

“All else apart, I could not have paid the money to that publishing firm. The dear Adrian must be my first consideration at present, and with the increased amount that he is receiving, the drain upon my purse is too heavy to admit of a personal gratification. Some day the dear fellow will pay it all back, I make no doubt, though even were it not so—but it will be so. And now, Lucilla, we will drop the subject. What I have told you is between ourselves, and we need not refer to it again.”

A very little while later, the Canon began to make minute and elaborate notes for a Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians.

Lucilla, according to her wont, acted as his secretary without comment.

It was more difficult, however, to pursue this course when the Canon, with a look of distress and perplexity, handed to her several closely-written sheets of paper, and observed:

“As you know, I hold very strongly to the sacredness of personal correspondence. It was, indeed, at least partly on that account that I have said nothing to you of a letter from Adrian that has caused me some anxiety. He seems to me to be getting amongst a set of people whom I can only call undesirable. They may be leading him into foolish extravagance—I fear it must be so. It seems to me my clear duty to write to the boy very frankly, but God knows how carefully I have weighed every word, for fear of saying too much. I believe I am justified in letting you read it. A sister’s influence can do much, more especially when she has been obliged to enact the part of mother, and it may even be that Adrian will listen to you more readily than to me.”

The Canon sighed heavily.

Although his sudden, sharp outbursts of anger had, at one time or another, included each and every one of his children, his tolerance was always longest where Adrian was concerned. So, too, was his profound distress when the shortcomings of his youngest-born were made only too manifest.

Lucilla read the letter with considerable inward disquiet.

“MY DEAREST ADRIAN,

“First and foremost, I enclose a cheque, with which you must at once discharge outstanding liabilities. You must not, however, take this as an easy method of getting out of difficulties into which you have placed yourself. I shall stop this money out of your allowance, in justice both to yourself and to me, in quarterly instalments. And now, my son, you must bear with me while I write of several things that seem to me to be much amiss in your present way of life. Your letters are so far from explicit (how I wish it were otherwise!) that one can only guess at much which is left unsaid, but your request for money, however veiled, is an admission in itself. You write of ‘others,’ but can you not see that it is absolute dishonesty to give presents, stand host at various small outings, and the like, when this implies the spending of money that I give you for one purpose, on quite another? No one knows better than myself the pleasure to be derived from such little attentions to those whose kindness calls for recognition, or to whom we feel drawn by sympathy, and before whom we perhaps like to pose in the light of a benefactor. Such gratifications are harmless, and may even be beneficial, in themselves, but they are at present amongst the things which you must learn to deny yourself. How I wish I could say this, instead of writing it! Could you not come to us for a few days, and we would thrash all these matters out together as one can only do in a long, tête-à-tête evening talk over the fire, or perhaps a ten-mile tramp far out into the country. Let me know what hope there is of your getting down here, and when.

“In regard to the question of returning hospitality, it does seem to me a most moot point how far such obligations should bind us. Certainly they should not do so if entailing interference with work or prayer. You say nothing on these points, so do consider this question next time you write. It is so disappointing to receive short notes, written in haste, telling one nothing of yourself, and with questions in home letters left unanswered. Do write more fully of yourself—I am so much disturbed about you, and cannot understand why you should say that you have ‘nothing to write about.’ All is of the deepest interest to those who love you so, and you tell us so little! You give no account of your Sundays, spiritual experiences, private readings and the like, but if this does not come spontaneously, it is of no use to try and force it.

“I should like to hear something, however, of your friends. With whom do you work, spend your Sundays, evening leisure hours, etc.? All these details would be of the greatest interest, and, although one has no wish to press on that particular aspect of the case, they are points upon which your father has every right to information.

“Why did you not tell me of your little sketch in the Athene? Owen Quentillian brought it to my notice, supposing me, naturally, to be aware of its authorship. It seemed to me to be well and brightly written, though perhaps a little trivial in conception, but you have a slip in the first paragraph, line 4, where you make ‘etomology’ do duty for ‘entomology.’ If this is a printer’s error, and you did not correct the proofs yourself, draw your editor’s attention to it at once. The final quotation from de Musset, is, I think, incorrect, but I am not sure of this, and cannot verify at present. He is not a writer about whom I care. Do you read much of him?”

At this point Lucilla laid down the letter and said emphatically:

“No, he doesn’t. Read de Musset, I mean. Probably he got the verse he quotes out of a book of quotations.”

The Canon looked surprised.

“I am aware that modern methods are slip-shod, but Adrian’s knowledge of French is much above the average. Our evening readings-aloud have seen to that.”

Lucilla picked up the sheets of paper again, wondering if there was very much more of the letter to come—a wonder not infrequently felt by those with whom Canon Morchard was in correspondence.

“Do eschew the use of slang absolutely, at least in writing! I quite consider that ‘stunt’ comes under this heading, in your article. It is an Americanism, and so ugly! These criticisms, if such they be, are only the outcome, need I tell you, of my really intense desire that you should do full justice to yourself, and to the talent that I feel sure is in you. And let me repeat again, my dearest lad, that this applies doubly to the more serious fault-finding that I have been obliged, as your father, to put into this letter. You must write to me fully and freely if it seems to you that anything which I have said is unjust, but I believe that your own conscience, and the candour that I know is yours, will endorse all that I have written. In that case, you will know well where to seek for the unfailing strength necessary to a fresh beginning and a full confession of error.

“I cannot tell you with what anxiety I shall await your answer, and do make it a really open-hearted one, as I well know that you can. There shall be no cloud upon our meeting when we do meet, once things have been made clear between us by letter, but I do feel that for your own sake, far more than for mine, this strange reticence on your part must not continue.

“Look upon me as your best earthly friend, dear lad, as well as your father, for no one can be more eager to sympathize with you on every point than I am—and have always been. It has always seemed to me that the relationship of father and son could—and should—be an utterly ideal one.

“My love to you, as always, and do write at once. I must not end this without reminding you that business-like habits, which I am so anxious that you should acquire, make it obligatory to acknowledge a cheque by return of post, even were there not other reasons for writing without delay. Anything that you wish treated as confidential will of course be sacred—but that you know already.

“In all lovingness, dear Adrian, I remain your most devoted father,

“F. L. M.”

“Can I say more?” the Canon enquired sadly and anxiously, as Lucilla laid down the letter. To which Lucilla, with restraint, replied by a bald negative.

“I have weighed every word,” her father repeated, with, as she knew, only too much truth.

“Perhaps Adrian may feel that you are taking him too seriously altogether. He sometimes seems——”

“Whom, and what, should I take seriously if not my son, and his earthly and eternal welfare?” the Canon interrupted her rather sternly. “You take a great deal upon yourself, Lucilla, in speaking so. No doubt you say to yourself: ‘I am young, I am of the period, it is for me to act as interpreter between the parent, who is of another generation, and the youth, who belongs to mine.’ But if I read your thought correctly, my child—and I have no doubt that I do—it is an arrogant one, and altogether unworthy of you.”

Lucilla did not explain that no such determination had crossed her mind as the self-sufficient one ascribed to her. She was aware, in common with all the Canon’s children, that he was prone to attribute to them occasionally motives and attitudes of mind strangely and almost incredibly alien to anything to which they could ever reasonably lay claim. Far more often, did he credit them with aspirations and intentions of a quite undeserved sublimity.

Her inward fear, that Adrian would probably leave the major part of his father’s letter unread, she did not put into words.

“Owen tells me that he is shortly going to London, and I shall make a point of asking him to see our dear fellow and bring me a full report,” said the Canon.

He proffered his request shortly afterwards to Quentillian, by whom it was received with no enthusiasm whatever.

“Will Adrian like it?” he enquired, although fully conscious that Adrian would not.

“Aye, that he will,” said the Canon with emphasis. “It is just because we feel you to be so thoroughly one of ourselves, dear Owen, that I am asking you to act the elder brother’s part that would be David’s, were he at home.”

Lucilla could sympathize in the entire absence of elation with which Quentillian took his departure, under the new honour thus thrust upon him.

There was a certain rueful amusement under his discomfiture when he left St. Gwenllian.

On his return, Lucilla discovered instantly that any lurking amusement had been stifled under a perfectly real anxiety.

“What is it?” she almost involuntarily asked, as she mechanically made her preparations at the tea-table for the Canon’s entrance.

“I’m afraid I have news that will distress you all, about Adrian.”

“Is he ill?” said Flora.

“No. I’m sorry if I frightened you. He has taken up some work that I’m afraid the Canon will disapprove of—on the staff of Hale’s paper.”

“What is that?” Flora asked, with grave, innocent eyes.

But Lucilla said at once: “That’s the new review that has been so very much criticized for its attitude towards the Church, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Oh!” Flora caught her breath, and her delicate face expressed the violent and instinctive recoil of her spirit.

Owen looked at Lucilla.

Her indignation took a line that was not altogether what he had expected.

“Well, surely Adrian need not have found a way of asserting his independence that must run counter to everything Father has ever taught!”

“He isn’t exactly doing it out of the spirit of opposition. Hale has taken a fancy to him, and it’s the first chance Adrian has had of regular, paid work. From a worldly point of view, he’d be a fool not to have accepted it.”

“A worldly point of view!” echoed Flora. “One doesn’t expect that in Father’s son, somehow.”

Theoretically, Quentillian felt, one didn’t.

“Surely Adrian isn’t capable of controversial writing?” Flora added, with a severity that saw apparently nothing humourous in the suggestion.

“Nothing of that sort will be required of him. He will only write light articles, like that thing you saw in the Athene. The point is that he is working for a man like Hale, whose reputation—which is fairly considerable in its own way—rests entirely upon his very anticlerical attitude.”

“But how can Adrian reconcile that with his duty as a Church member?” said Flora tersely.

“I didn’t ask him,” was Quentillian’s equally terse reply.

They all three remained silent.

“Is Adrian going to write to Father, or has he written already?” Flora asked at last.

“He hasn’t written.”

Lucilla’s short-sighted gaze, with the rather intent look characteristic of a difficulty in focussing, rested for a moment upon Quentillian’s face. Then she asked quietly:

“Did he ask you to tell Father for him?”

“He did.”

“How like Adrian,” said Lucilla.

She made the statement very matter-of-factly, but Quentillian knew it to be none the less a condemnation.

“There was—is—no chance of making Adrian give it up?” Flora asked.

“None, I should think, at present. Hale is a man of great personality, and Adrian is a good deal flattered, naturally enough, at being taken up by him. Of course he knows as well as you or I that it’s the thing of all others to distress the Canon most. He’s genuinely upset about it, in a way, but he struck me as being rather childishly bent on showing that he can strike out a line of his own.”

“Poor, poor Father! He has had so much to bear lately. Must he be told?” said Flora.

“Of course he must. But I don’t think Owen is the person to do the telling. Adrian should do it himself.”

“So I told him,” Quentillian observed rather grimly. “The utmost I could get out of him was a very short note, that I am to give to the Canon when he knows the facts.”

No comment followed the announcement of so slender an achievement, and they were sitting in silence when Canon Morchard came in.

He greeted Owen Quentillian affectionately, as he always did, but said quickly:

“I am afraid that you bear no very glad tidings, dear fellow. No matter. We will have our talk later. Let us forget grave subjects, and partake of ‘the cup that cheers,’ which I can see that Lucilla there has ready for us. What think you of this political crisis?”

In the ensuing conversation the Canon, if not merry, was at least gravely cheerful.

Afterwards he took Owen into the garden, his arm laid across the young man’s shoulders in the fashion that he so often adopted.

They remained out for a long while.

Lucilla did not see her father again until evening, when it was evident that a weight of unhappiness had descended upon him.

He read Prayers as usual, and the servants left the room.

“One moment, my daughters. It is right that you should know the very grievous news I have learnt today. Adrian has definitely adopted a career which must cut him off from those of us who are living members of the Church. He has cast in his lot with an enemy of the Church—a man who makes his living, and has acquired a disgraceful notoriety, by attacking the Church. Your brother has been seduced into a friendship with this man—he is working for him, writing for his paper.”

The Canon’s voice broke.

“I am going up to seek him tomorrow, and plead with him, but I have little hope. He does not answer the letters that I write with such yearning anxiety and love—I have lost my influence over him. If it is, as I fear, then—‘if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.’ My dear children, I ask you to join with me here and now in intercession for our erring one.”

He broke down, and the tears ran down his face.

It was as though Adrian’s defection cost him a double pang: that to his own fatherhood, and that to the ministry of the Church which he felt to be such a living reality.