Saint's Progress

Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes. “She looks ‘fey,’” he said, and went out of the room.

Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture. “Fey? What does that mean, mademoiselle?”

“Possessed, or something.”

And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:

“I think there is still a little too much light on that ear.”

The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.

“Nollie, I want you to know something. In all but the name, Captain Fort is a married man.”

He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.

She said calmly: “I know; to Leila.”

“Do you mean she has told you?”

Noel shook her head.

“Then how?”

“I guessed. Daddy, don’t treat me as a child any more. What’s the use, now?”

He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with his hands. By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to her, murmuring: “Oh, Daddy dear! Oh, Daddy dear!”

He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks pressed together, not speaking a word.

VI

1

The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a Sunday. And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she could to her father; Noel said to him:

“Would you like me to come to Church?”

“Of course, Nollie.”

How could he have answered otherwise? To him Church was the home of comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and troubles – a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and love. Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of God.

And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George, for the week-end. She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty pew, under the pulpit. Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and twenty minutes. Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval, and resentment ran a stealthy course. On her all eyes were fixed sooner or later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments. From every soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout. She disturbed their devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class. She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church’s authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her. Men experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness. Young folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle. Old maids could hardly bear to look. Here and there a man or woman who had seen life face to face, was simply sorry! The consciousness of all who knew her personally was at stretch how to behave if they came within reach of her in going out. For, though only half a dozen would actually rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be, and many felt it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to establish their attitude once for all. It was, in fact, too severe a test for human nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse. The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a faint lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship – all combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which so soon becomes, offensive. And, half unconscious, half aware of it all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt. Once or twice she saw her father’s eyes fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night’s pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face. But for the most part, her own wore the expression Lavendie had translated to his canvas – the look of one ever waiting for the extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies which existence holds for the human heart. A look neither hungry nor dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth and depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.

When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very still, without looking round.

There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind her, and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came forth. After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she turned away and walked home alone.

It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched the business. The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings, is always dangerous. They felt cheated. If Noel had come out amongst all those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things; and, after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social decency. But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after Sunday the same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a dozen quite unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of as many letters, signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter. London is no place for parish conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution, could perhaps only thus be dealt with. Besides, in certain folk there is ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter – such missives satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to get even with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording the offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.

Letters which are posted often reach their destination.

On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced, “Canon Rushbourne, sir,” and he saw before him an old College friend whom he had met but seldom in recent years. His visitor was a short, grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-humoured face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a little. He grasped Pierson’s hand, and said in a voice to whose natural heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain unction:

“My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met! Do you remember dear old Blakeway? I saw him only yesterday. He’s just the same. I’m delighted to see you again,” and he laughed a little soft nervous laugh. Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days, and Pierson looked at him and thought: ‘What has he come for?’

“You’ve something to say to me, Alec,” he said, at last.

Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident effort: “Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward. I hope you won’t mind. I do hope you won’t.”

“Why should I mind?”

Canon Rushbourne’s eyes shone more than ever, there was real friendliness in his face.

“I know you’ve every right to say to me: ‘Mind your own business.’ But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from – er” he stammered, and began again: “I think you ought to know of the feeling in your parish that – er – that – er – your position is very delicate. Without breach of confidence I may tell you that letters have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean. Do believe, my dear friend, that I’m actuated by my old affection for you; nothing else, I do assure you.”

In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness. The sun shone brightly on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out of their well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which. underlies the clothes of clergymen.

At last Pierson said: “Thank you, Alec; I understand.”

The Canon uttered a resounding sigh. “You didn’t realise how very easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a kind – a kind of challenge. They were bound, I think, to feel that; and I’m afraid, in consequence – ” He stopped, moved by the fact that Pierson had closed his eyes.

“I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?”

The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of that clear question.

“My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can’t say at all. But there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You haven’t quite seen, I think, that – ”

Pierson raised his hand. “I can’t talk of this.”

The Canon rose. “Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply. I felt I had to warn you.” He held out his hand. “Good-bye, my dear friend, do forgive me”; and he went out. In the hall an adventure befell him so plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne that night.

“Coming out from my poor friend,” he said, “I ran into a baby’s perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little thing” – he held his hand at the level of his thigh – “arranging it for going out. It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: ‘Is it a boy?’ The poor young thing looked up at me. She has very large eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes. ‘Have you been speaking to Daddy about me?’ ‘My dear young lady,’ I said, ‘I’m such an old friend, you see. You must forgive me.’ And then she said: ‘Are they going to ask him to resign?’ ‘That depends on you,’ I said. Why do I say these things, Charlotte? I ought simply to have held my tongue. Poor young thing; so very young! And the little baby!” “She has brought it on herself, Alec,” Mrs. Rushbourne replied.

VII

1

The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the study, with anger rising in his, heart. His daughter or his parish! The old saw, “An Englishman’s house is his castle!” was being attacked within him. Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace? Was he not thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and she could pursue? To go back on that decision and imperil his daughter’s spirit, or else resign his parish – the alternatives were brutal! This was the centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely a man could hope to feel even the semblance of home; a thousand little threads tethered him to his church, his parishioners, and this house – for, to live on here if he gave up his church was out of the question. But his chief feeling was a bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he should be attacked by his parishioners.

A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt – these parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked so long – beset him now, and he went out. But the absurdity of his quest struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go to people and say: “Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments.” And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts? And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it. He went at random into a stationer’s shop; the shopman sang bass in his choir. They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years. But when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time. The Russian proverb, “The heart of another is a dark forest,” gashed into his mind, while he said:

“Well, Hodson, what news of your son?”

“Nothing more, Mr. Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at present.”

And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man’s face clothed in a short, grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking: ‘Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?’ No one would ever tell him to his face what he was thinking. And buying two pencils, he went out. On the other side of the road was a bird-fancier’s shop, kept by a woman whose husband had been taken for the Army. She was not friendly towards him, for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her husband for keeping larks, and other wild birds. And quite deliberately he crossed the road, and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that from this unfriendly one he might hear truth. She was in her shop, and came to the door.

“Have you any news of your husband, Mrs. Cherry?”