A Lost Cause

CHAPTER V

WEALTHY MISS PRITCHETT AND POOR GUSSIE DAVIES ENTER THE VICARAGE GARDEN

"Todgers," Mr. Stephens remarked to Lucy, as they went down into the garden after lunch on Saturday, "could do it when it chose."

The last preparations for the garden party were being made. The big marquee was erected, the tennis lawns were newly marked, there was a small stand for the string band.

Waiters, looking oddly out of their element in the brilliant sunshine, which showed dress-coats, serviceable enough at night, tinged with a metallic green like a magpie's wing, were moving about with baskets of strawberries and zinc boxes of ice.

The old-fashioned garden, an oasis in the wilderness of brick all around, was brilliant with sunflowers, stocks, and geraniums; the lawns were fresh and green. The curate was in tennis flannels and an Oxford blazer, and Lucy meditated upon the influence of clothes, as her betters had done before her. Stephens seemed to have put off his priesthood with his tippet and cassock, and the jaunty cap covered a head which seemed as if it had never worn a berretta. Lucy found, to her own surprise, that she liked the man less so. It was a total inversion of her ordinary ideas. She began to think that a priest should be robed always.

Miss Cass, the housekeeper, in a new cap, came up to them. Lucy had talked to the woman for more than an hour on Friday afternoon, and the prejudice caused by her appearance was removed.

"I hope everything is satisfactory, Miss," she said. "It all seems to be going on well. The men from Whiteley's know their business."

"It all seems splendid, Miss Cass," Lucy said. "I'm sure it couldn't be better. Have the band people come?"

"Yes, Miss, and the piano-entertainer too. They're having some refreshment in the library. His Reverence is telling them funny stories, Miss."

She hurried away to superintend further arrangements.

"The vicar is always so fine," the young man said, with a delighted enthusiasm in his chief that was always pleasant for Lucy to hear. "He gets on with men so well; such a lot of parsons don't. There's nothing effeminate about the vicar. He's a man's man. I'll bet every one of those fellows in there will go away feeling they've made a friend, and that parsons aren't such scalawags after all."

A burst of laughter came from the door leading into the garden, as if to confirm his words, and Father Blantyre descended the steps with a little knot of men dressed in something between livery and uniform, carrying oddly shaped cases of black waterproof in their hands.

Laughing and joking, the men made their way towards the music stands.

The vicar came up to Lucy. "How will it do?" he said. "It seems all right. Just walk round with me, my dear, and I'll give ye a few tips how to play hostess in Hornham."

They strolled away together. "Now, ye'll be careful, won't ye, mavourneen?" he said rather anxiously. "The folk coming this afternoon require more management and tact than any I've ever met. They'll all have what they think is the high society manner – and ye mustn't laugh at um, poor dears. I love 'em all, and I won't have you making fun of them. I like them better in church than in society, I'm quite free to admit to you, and their souls are more interesting than their bodies! Perhaps half a dozen people here this afternoon will be what you'd call gentlefolk – the doctor, Dr. Hibbert, and a few others. The rest of them will be fearfully genteel. The young gentlemen will be back early from the city, and they'll come in flannels and wear public-school ribbons round their hats, roses in their button-holes and crimson silk cummerbunds!"

"Good heavens!" Lucy said.

"Yes, and they'll all want to flirt with ye, in a very superfine, polite sort of way, and mind ye let um! They'll ask if they might 'assist you to a little claret cup,' and say all sorts of strange things. But they're good enough at heart, only they will be so polite!"

"And the women?"

Father Blantyre shrugged his shoulders. "You'll find them rather difficult," he said. "You bet they see your name in the papers – they all read the 'Fashionable Intelligence' – confound um! – and the attitude will be a little hostile. But be civil for my sake, dear. I hate all this just as much as you do. I can get in touch with them spiritually, but socially I find it hard. But I think it's the right thing to do, to entertain them all once or twice a year, and they do enjoy themselves! And I owe them a deep, deep debt of gratitude for their loyalty during this trying week. I have had dozens and dozens of letters and calls. Every one has rallied to the church in a wonderful and touching way since the Sunday affair. God bless them all!"

Lucy squeezed his arm with sympathy. In an hour, the guests began to arrive.

Lucy and her brother met them by the garden door of the house. It was a gay scene enough. A brilliant flood of afternoon sunshine irradiated everything; the women were well and fashionably dressed, the band played, and every one seemed happy.

Lucy found it much easier than she expected. The guests were suburban, of course, and not of the "classic suburbs" at that. But, she reflected, there was hardly a man there who had not better manners than Lord Rollington or General Pompe. And if they wore Carthusian or Zingari ribbons, that meant no more than that they were blessed with a colour-sense; while a slight admixture of "i" in the pronunciation of the first vowel was certainly preferable to the admixture of looseness and innuendo that she was sometimes forced to hear in much more exalted circles. So she received tea and strawberries at the hands of gallant and debonair young gentlemen engaged in the minor walks of commerce; she chatted merrily with fluffy young ladies who, when they had gotten over their first distrust of a girl who went to the drawing-room and stayed with lords, finding that she wasn't the "nasty, stuck-up thing" they expected, were somewhat effusively affectionate. She talked gravely about the "dear vicar and those dreadful men" to ample matrons who for a moment had forgotten the cares of a small suburban villa and a smaller income, in the luxury of fashion, the latest waltz tunes, the champagne cup, and a real social event. Indeed, everything went "with a snap," as one young gentleman remarked to Lucy. She became popular almost at once, and was surrounded by assiduous young bloods of the city "meccas."

Father Blantyre, as he went about from group to group, was in a state of extreme happiness, despite his somewhat gloomy anticipations. It was an hour of triumph for him. His people, for whom he prayed and laboured and gave his life and fortune, were one and all engaged to show him how they would stand by him in the anticipated trouble. Everywhere he was greeted with real warmth and affection, and before long the quick Celtic temperament was bringing a mist before the merry grey eyes and a riot and tumult of thankfulness within.

On all sides, he heard praises of his sister. "The pretty dear," one good lady, the wife of a cashier in a small Mincing Lane firm, said to him. "I had quite a long talk with her, Father Blantyre. And a sweet girl she is. We're not in the way of meeting with society folk, though we read of all the gay goings-on in the Mail; but I said to Pa, 'Pa,' I said, 'if all the society girls are like that, then there's nothing much the matter with the aristocracy, and Modern Society is a catchpenny rag.' And Pa quite agreed. He was as much struck by her as I was."

And so on. Every one seemed pleased with Lucy. The guests began to arrive less and less frequently, until at length the gardens were crowded and no one else appeared to be coming. All the various games and entertainments were in full swing, and Lucy was about to accept the invitation of a tall boy in a frock coat and a silk hat to sit down and watch a set of tennis with him, when there was a slight stir and commotion at the garden door of the house.

Miss Cass came hurriedly down the steps, as a sort of advance guard for two ladies who were ushered into the garden by a waiter. The housekeeper dived into the crowd and found the vicar, who turned and went with her at once to meet the late-comers.

"There's Miss Pritchett and Gussie Davies," said the young man to Lucy in rather an awed voice, and then, as if to banish some unwelcome impression, relieved his feelings by the enigmatic remark of "Pip, pip," which made Lucy stare at him, wondering what on earth he meant.

She noticed that nearly every one at this end of the garden was watching, more or less openly, the meeting between the vicar and his guests. She did not quite understand why, but guessed that some local magnate had arrived, and looked with the rest.

The elder of the two women was expensively dressed in mauve silk, and wore a small bonnet with a white aigrette over a coffee-coloured fringe of hair that suggested art. Her face was plump and pompous, a parrot-like nose curved over pursy lips that wore an expression of arrogant ill-temper, and the small eyes glanced rapidly hither and thither. In one white-gloved hand, the lady held a long-handled lorgnette of tortoise-shell and gold. Every now and then she raised these glasses and surveyed the scene before her, in exactly the manner in which countesses and duchesses do upon the stage.

Her companion was young, a large, blonde girl, not ill-looking, but without character or decision in her face or walk. She was dressed very simply.

Lucy turned to her companion. "Do you know them, then?" she said.

"Rather," he replied. "I should think I did. That's Miss Pritchett, old Joseph Pritchett's daughter, old Joseph, the brewer. He left her all his money, she's tons of stuff – awfully wealthy, I mean, Miss Blantyre."

"Does she live here, then?"

"Oh, yes. In spite of all her money she's always been an unappropriated blessing. She's part of Hornham, drives a pair in a landau. The girl is Gussie Davies, her companion. She's not half a bad sort. All the Hornham boys know Gussie. Nothing the matter with Gussie Davis! The old cat sits on her fearfully, though. She can't call her soul her own. It's bally awful, sometimes, Gussie says."

Lucy gasped. These revelations were startling indeed. She was moving in the queerest possible set of people. She hadn't realised that such folk existed. It took her breath away, like the first plunge into a bath of cold water.

The artless youth prattled on, and Lucy gathered that the lady with the false front was a sort of female arbiter elegantarium to Hornham, indubitably the richest person there, a leading light. She saw her brother talking to the woman in an eager way. He seemed afraid of her, – as, indeed, the poor man was, under the present circumstances, – and Lucy resented it. With a quick feminine eye, she saw that Miss Pritchett was assuming an air of tolerance, of patronage even, to the vicar.

At last, Bernard caught sight of her. His face became relieved at once and he led the spinster to the place where she was sitting.

Every instinct of the girl rose up in dislike and rebellion as the woman drew near. She had felt nothing of the sort with the other people. In this case, it was quite different. She prepared to repel cavalry, to use the language of the military text-books.

On the surface, the incident was simple and commonplace enough. A well-bred girl felt a repulsion for an obviously unpleasant and patronising woman of inferior social rank. That was all. It is a trite and well-worn aphorism that no event is trivial, yet it is extraordinarily true. Who could have said that this casual meeting was to be fraught with storm and danger for the Church in England; that out of a hostile handshake between two women a mighty scandal and tumult was to rise?

Miss Pritchett came up to Lucy, and Father Blantyre introduced her. Then, with an apologetic murmur, he hurried away to another part of the garden.

"Won't you sit down?" Lucy said, looking at the chair that had been left vacant by her late companion.

"Thank you, Miss Blantyre, but I've been sitting in my carriage. I should prefer to stand, if it's the same to you," said Miss Pritchett.

Lucy rose. "Perhaps you would like to walk round the grounds?" she asked.

"Probably I know the grounds better than you," the elder woman answered with a patronage which was bordering on the purely ludicrous. "This residence was one of my dear father's houses, as were many of the Hornham houses. When the vicar acquired the property, the brewery trustees sold it to him, though I think it far from suitable for a parish clergyman."

"Well, yes," Lucy answered. "It certainly is a dingy, gloomy old place, but what else can you expect down here?"

Miss Pritchett flushed and tossed her head till the aigrette in her smart little bonnet shook like a leaf.

"One is liable to be misunderstood," she said. "Your brother's small private means enable him to live in a house which the next vicar or any ordinary clergyman could hardly hope for."

"It is very good of Bernard to come down here and spend his life in such an impossible place," Lucy said. She was thoroughly angry now and quite determined to give the woman a lesson. Her impertinence was insufferable. To hear this creature speak of Bernard's income of three thousand a year – every penny of which he gave away or spent for good – in this way was unendurable.

Miss Pritchett grew redder than ever. She was utterly incapable of bearing rebuff or contradiction. Her local eminence was unquestioned. She had never moved from Hornham, where her wealth and large interests secured for her that slavish subserviency that a vain and petty spirit loves. For months past, she had been gradually gathering up cause for quarrel and bitterness with the clergy of St. Elwyn's. She had found that once within the portals of the church she was just as anyone else. She could not lord it over the priests as she wished to do. For once, she was beginning to find that her money was powerless, there was no "high seat in the synagogue" that it could buy.

"The place has been good enough for me," she said angrily, never doubting that this was final.

"Ah, yes," Lucy answered. "That, Miss Pritchett, I can quite understand." The Hornham celebrity was a stupid woman. Her brain was as empty as a hen's, and she was not adroit enough to seize upon the real meaning of this remark. She had an uneasy suspicion that it was offensive, and that was all.

"What you may mean by 'impossible' I am not aware," she continued. "I speak plain English myself. But those that don't know of a place didn't ought to speak unfavourable of it. As for your brother, I've always said that he was a worthy person and acted as well as he might, until late months, when I've felt it my duty to say a word or two in season as to some of the church matters."

"I hope he profited, Miss Pritchett."

"I fear that he did not receive my words as he should, coming from a lady of standing in the place – and him only here three years. I'm beginning to think that there's something in the popular agitation. Upon my word! Priests do take a good deal on themselves nowadays. It wouldn't have been allowed when I was a girl."

"Things have altered very much for the better during the last fifty years," Lucy said pointedly.

This the lady did immediately apprehend. She lifted the lorgnette and stared at her companion in speechless anger. The movement was meant to be crushing. It was thus, Miss Pritchett knew from her reading, that women of the aristocracy crushed inferiors.

It was too much for Lucy. She endeavoured to control her feelings, but they were irresistible. She had not seen anything so funny as this vulgar and pompous old thing for years. A smile broadened out upon her face, and then, without further ado, she burst out into peal after peal of laughter.

The flush on Miss Pritchett's face died away. It grew perfectly white with passion.

She turned round. Her companion had been walking some three yards behind them in a listless and dejected fashion, looking with greedy eyes at the allurements on every side, and answering the furtive greetings of various male friends with a pantomime, expressive of contempt, irritation, and hopeless bondage in equal parts.

Miss Pritchett stepped up to her, and caught hold of her arm. Her fingers went so deep into the flesh that the girl gasped and gave a half-smothered cry.

"Take me to the carriage," Miss Pritchett said. "Let me leave this place of Popery and light women!"

The obedient Gussie Davies turned and, in a moment or two, both women had disappeared.

Lucy sought her brother. She found him eating a large pink ice in company with a florid, good-humoured matron in maroon, with an avalanche of lace falling from the edges of her parasol. "Hallo, dear!" he said. "Let me introduce you to Mrs. Stiffe, Dr. Hibbert's sister. And where's Miss Pritchett?"

"She's gone," Lucy answered. "And, I'm very much afraid, in a towering rage. But really she was so insolent that I could not stand it. I would do most things for you, Ber, but, really, that woman!"

"Well, it can't be helped, I suppose," the vicar said with humorous resignation. "It was bound to come sooner or later, and I'm selfish enough to be glad it's you've given me lady the congé and not me. Mrs. Stiffe here knows her, don't you, Mrs. Stiffe?"

"I do, Mr. Blantyre," the stout lady said. "I've met the woman several times when I've been staying down here with my brother. A fearful old cat I call her! I wonder that you put up with her so long!"

"Policy, Mrs. Stiffe – ye know we're all Jesuits here, the local paper says so in yesterday's issue – policy! You see, when I first came here Miss Pritchett came to church. She's a leading person here and I made no doubt others would follow her. Indeed, they did, too! and when they saw what the Catholic Church really was they stayed with us. And then, again, Miss Pritchett was always ready to give us a cheque for any good work, and we want all the money we can get! Oh, there's a lot of good in Miss Pritchett!"

"I fail to see it on a short acquaintance," Lucy remarked; "if she gave generously, it was only to flatter her vanity. I'm sure of that."

"It's a great mistake to attribute unworthy motives to worthy deeds," the vicar said. "We've no right to do it, and it's only giving ourselves away when we do, after all!"

"Oh, it's all very well, Vicar," said good Mrs. Stiffe; "we know you never say anything against any one. But if Miss Pritchett is such an angel, what's the reason of her behaviour now? My brother told me that things were getting very strained."

"Ah, that's a different matter entirely," Blantyre said. "She began to interfere in important things. And, of course, we couldn't have that. I'd have let her manage the soup-kitchens and boss the ladies' guilds till the sky fell. But she wanted to do more than that. Poor dear King offended her in some way – he's not what ye'd call a ladies' man – and she wrote to me to send him away at once! And there were other incidents. I've been doing my best to meet her views and to keep in with her, but it's been very difficult and I felt the storm would burst soon. I wanted to keep her in the Faith for her own silly sake! She's not a very strong-minded person beneath her manner, and she's just the sort of woman some spiritualistic quack or Christian Science gentleman would get hold of and ruin her health and happiness. I did hope she'd find peace in the Church. Well, it can't be helped," he ended with a rather sad smile, for his heart was tender for all his flock and he saw far down into the human soul and loved it. Then he changed suddenly. "What am I doing!" he cried, "talking parochial politics at a garden party! Shame on me! Come on, Mrs. Stiffe, come on, Lucy, Mr. Chaff, the piano-entertainer, is going to give his happy half-hour at Earl's Court."

They went merrily away with him. As they approached the rows of chairs in front of the piano, he turned suddenly to his sister.

"Why didn't ye knock her down?" he said suddenly, with an exaggerated brogue and real comic force. Both ladies burst out laughing.

"You ought to have been on the music-hall stage, Vicar," Mrs. Stiffe said, "you're wasted in Hornham."

"So I've been told," he said. "I shall think seriously of it. It's a pity to waste a talent."

CHAPTER VI

BOADICEA, JOAN OF ARC, CHARLOTTE CORDAY, JAEL, AND MISS PRITCHETT OF HORNHAM

People of taste are never without wonder at the extraordinary lack of it that many well-to-do folk display. It was but rarely that a person of taste entered Malakoff Lodge, where Miss Pritchett dwelt, but when such an event did happen, the impression was simply that of enormous surprise. The drawing-room into which visitors were shown was an immense place and full of furniture. In each of the corners stood a life-sized piece of statuary painted in "natural colours." Here one saw an immense negro, some six feet high, with coffee-coloured skin, gleaming red lips, and a gaudy robe of blue and yellow. This monster supported a large earthenware basket on his back, painted, of course, in correct straw-colour, from which sprang a tall palm that reached to the ceiling. In other corners of the room were an Egyptian dancing-girl, a Turk, and an Indian fakir, all of which supported ferns, which it was part of Miss Gussie Davies' duty to water every morning.

The many tables, chiefly of circular or octagonal form, which stood about the room, bore a multitude of costly and hideous articles which should have been relegated to a museum, to illustrate the deplorable taste of the middle classes during the early and mid-Victorian era. Here, for example, was a model of the leaning tower of Pisa done in white alabaster, some two feet in height, and shielded from harm by a thick glass case. There, the eye fell upon a bunch of very purple grapes and a nectarine or two, made of wax, with a waxen bee settling upon them, all covered with glass also. Literary tastes were not forgotten. Immense volumes of Moore's poems, the works of Southey or Robert Montgomery lay about on the tables. These were bound in heavy leather boards, elaborately tooled in gold representations of Greek lyres and golden laurel crowns. The shining gilt edges were preserved from the profanation of a casual opening by two or three immense brass clasps which imprisoned the poet's thoughts within.

The time in which these things were made was a sentimental age, and it was well reflected in its bijouterie. Innumerable nymphs and shepherdesses stood about offering each other hearts, madrigals, and other dainties. But they had none of the piquant grace that Watteau would have given them, or the charm the white-hot fires of Dresden might have burnt into them. They were solid, very British nymphs, whose drapery was most decorously arranged that one thick ankle might be visible, but no more; – nymphs and shepherdesses who, one might imagine, sat happily by the bank of some canal, singing the pious ditties of Dr. Watts as the sun went down, – nymphs, in short, with a moral purpose. The hangings of Miss Pritchett's room, the heavy window curtains that descended from baldachinos of gleaming gold, were all of a rich crimson, an extraordinary colour that is not made now, and the wall-paper was a heavy pattern in dark ultramarine and gold. Indeed, there was enough gold in this mausoleum to have satisfied Miss Killmansegg herself.