THE OPTIMIST

By
E. M. DELAFIELD

Humbug. A Study in Education
The Heel of Achilles
Tension

THE
OPTIMIST

BY
E. M. DELAFIELD

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyrighted, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1922.

FERRIS
PRINTING COMPANY
NEW YORK CITY

Dedicated
TO C. A. DAWSON-SCOTT IN
AFFECTIONATE ADMIRATION OF
THE NOVELIST AND THE WOMAN.

I
VALERIA AND OWEN QUENTILLIAN

(i)

The ship swung slowly away from the side of the wharf. Several people on board then said, “Well, we’re off at last!” to several other people who had only been thinking of saying it.

Owen Quentillian remembered another, longer, sea-voyage taken by himself at an early age. Far more clearly he remembered his arrival at St. Gwenllian.

It was that which he wanted to recall, aware as he was of the necessity for resuming a connection that had almost insensibly lapsed for several years.

He deliberately let his mind travel backwards, visualizing himself, a disconsolate, shivering morsel, being taken away from Papa and Mamma at the very station itself, and put into an open pony-cart beside Miss Lucilla Morchard.

The conversation between them, as far as he could recollect it, had run upon strangely categorical lines.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Canon Morchard’s daughter. You can call me Lucilla.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m fifteen, but you shouldn’t ask grown-up persons their age.”

“Oh, are you a grown-up person?”

“Of course I am. My mother is dead, and I look after the house and the children, and now I’m going to look after you as well.”

Lucilla had smiled very nicely as she said this.

“How many children are there?”

“Three, at home. My eldest brother is at school.”

“What are the names of the other ones?”

“Valeria and Flora and Adrian. Valeria and Flora are sometimes called Val and Flossie.”

He had discovered afterwards that they were seldom called anything else, except by their father.

“Why don’t Papa and Mamma come in this little carriage too?”

“Because there wouldn’t have been room. They will come in the brougham, later on.”

“They won’t go back to India without saying good-bye first, will they?” he asked wistfully.

He had known for a long time that Papa and Mamma were going back to India and leaving him at St. Gwenllian.

“No, I promise you they won’t do that,” had said Lucilla seriously.

Owen had felt entirely that her word was one to be relied upon. Very few grown-up persons gave him that feeling.

He remembered extraordinarily little about the house at St. Gwenllian. It was large, and cold, and there were a good many pictures on the walls, but the only two rooms of which he retained a mental photograph were the schoolroom, and the Canon’s library.

He saw the latter room first.

Lucilla had taken him there at once.

He remembered the books against the wall—numbers and numbers of books—and the big black writing table, with a small bowl of violets next to a pile of papers, and above the writing-table a finely-carved ivory figure, crucified upon a wooden cross, set in a long plaque of pale-green velvet.

Lucilla had seemed to be disappointed because her father was out.

“He said he did so want to be here to welcome you himself, but he is always very busy. Some one sent for him, I think.”

The youthful Owen Quentillian had cared less than nothing for the non-appearance of his future host and tutor. The prospect of the schoolroom tea had touched him more nearly.

But the schoolroom tea had turned out to be a sort of nightmare.

Even now, he could hardly smile at the recollection of that dreadful meal.

Eventually Val and Flossie had resolved themselves into good-natured, cheerful little girls, and Adrian into a slightly spoilt and rather precocious little boy, addicted to remarks of the type hailed as “wonderful” in the drawing-room and “affected humbug” in the schoolroom.

But on that first evening, Val and Flossie had been two monsters with enormous eyes that stared disapprovingly, all the time, straight at Owen Quentillian and nobody else. Adrian had been an utterly incomprehensible, rather malignant little creature, who had asked questions.

“Can you see colours for each day of the week?”

Quentillian wondered whether he had looked as much alarmed as he had felt, in his utter bewilderment.

“I think Monday is blue, and Tuesday light green, and Wednesday dark green,” Adrian had then proclaimed, triumphantly, and casting his big brown eyes about as though to make sure that his three sisters had heard the enunciation of his strange creed.

“Adrian is not a bit like other little boys,” one of them had then said, with calm pride.

Owen Quentillian, unconscious of irony, had ardently hoped that she spoke truly.

Adrian had pinched him surreptitiously during tea, and had laughed in a way that made Owen flush when they had asked him what India was like and he had answered “I don’t know.”

He had thought the thick bread-and-butter nasty, and wondered if there was never any cake. A vista of past teas, with sugared cakes from the drawing-room, especially selected by himself, and brought to his own little table on the back veranda by the Ayah, made him choke.

There had been a dreadful moment when he had snatched at the horrid mug they had given him and held it before his face for a long, long time, desperately pretending to drink, and not daring to show his face.

Lucilla, seated at the head of the table, had offered the others more tea, but she had said nothing to the little strange boy, and he still felt grateful to her.

The miserable, chaotic jumble that was all that his mind retained, of interminable slices of bread-and-butter that tasted like sawdust, of thick, ugly white china, of hostile or mocking gazes, of jokes and allusions in which he had no share, all came to a sudden end when he had given up any hope of ever being happy again so long as he lived.

Canon Morchard had come into the room.

And, magically, Val and Flossie had turned into quiet, insignificant little girls, looking gently and trustfully at their father, and no longer staring curiously at Owen Quentillian, and Adrian had become a wide-eyed, guileless baby, and the thick bread-and-butter and the ugly china no longer existed at all.

Only Lucilla had undergone no transformation.

She said “This is Owen Quentillian, Father,” in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

“I know, my child, I know.”

His hand, large and protecting, had grasped the boy’s hand, and after a moment he stooped and put his lips gently to Owen’s forehead.

Quentillian remembered a presence of general benignity, a strangely sweet smile that came, however, very rarely, a deep voice, and an effect of commanding height and size.

Memory could not recapture any set form of words, but Quentillian endeavoured, whimsically, to recast certain speeches which he felt to be permeated with the spirit of the Canon.

“My dear little boy, I hope you may come to feel this as home. We shall all of us endeavour to make it so. Lucilla here is my little housekeeper—ask her for anything that you want. Valeria—my tomboy. She and you will have some grand romps together. Flora is younger; nearer your own age, perhaps. Flora plays the piano, and we hope that she may show great feeling for Art, by and bye. Little Adrian, I am sure, has already made friends with you. I call him the Little Friend of all the World. There are some very quaint fancies under this brown mop, but we shall make something out of them one of these days—one of these days.”

Some such introduction there had certainly been. The Canon had been nothing if not categorical, and Quentillian could fancifully surmise in him a bewilderment not untinged with resentment had his Valeria one day tired of being a tomboy, and elected to patronize the piano, or Flora suddenly become imbued with a romping spirit, to the detriment of her artistic propensities.

But the Canon’s children had always refrained from any volte-face calculated to disconcert their parent. Quentillian was almost sure that all of them, except Lucilla, had been afraid of him—even Adrian, on whom his father had lavished a peculiar cherishing tenderness.

Quentillian could remember certain sharp, stern rebukes, called forth by Valeria’s tendency to untimely giggles, or Flora’s infantile tears, or his own occasional sulks and obstinacy under the new régime. But he could only once remember Adrian in disgrace, and so abysmal had been the catastrophe, that imagination was unneeded for recalling it clearly.

Adrian had told a lie.

Quentillian re-lived the terrible episode.

“Which of you children took a message for me from Radly yesterday? Not you, Lucilla?”

“No, father.”

“Mrs. Radly died last night.” The Canon’s face was suffused. “She asked for me all yesterday, and Radly actually left her in order to find some way of sending me a message. I hear now that he met ‘one of the St. Gwenllian children’ and sent an urgent summons which was never delivered. Which was never delivered! Good Heavens, children, think of it! I was here, in our own home-circle, enjoying a pleasant evening reading aloud, when that woman was dying there in the farm, craving for the help and comfort that I, her shepherd and pastor, could and should have given her.”

He covered his face with his hand and groaned aloud.

“In all the years of my ministry,” he said slowly, “I have never had a more bitter blow. And dealt me by one of my own household! Children,” his voice boomed suddenly terrible, “which of you received Radly’s message yesterday?”

Quentillian, in the retrospect, felt no surprise at the absence of any competition in laying claim to the implied responsibility.

At last Lucilla said tentatively:

“Val? Flora?”

“I never saw Radly at all, yesterday, nor any other day,” said Val, her brown eyes wide open and fixed straight upon her father.

Flora’s little, pretty face was pale and scared.

“It wasn’t me. No one ever gave me any message.”

Her voice trembled as though she feared to be disbelieved.

“Owen?” said the Canon sternly.

“No, sir.”

“Adrian?” his voice softened.

“No, father.”

The Canon hardly appeared to listen to Adrian’s answer. His hand was on the little boy’s brown curls, in the fond, half-absent, gesture habitual to him.

He faced the children, and his eye rested upon Owen Quentillian.

“If any one of you,” he said sternly and slowly, “has been betrayed into telling me a lie, understand that it is not yet too late for full confession. Selfish heedlessness cannot be judged by its terrible consequences, and if I spoke too strongly just now, it was out of the depths of my own grief and shame. The forgetfulness was bad—very bad—but that I can forgive. A lie, I can not forgive. It is not too late.”

His face was white and terrible as he gazed with strained eyes at the children.

Little Flora began to cry, and Lucilla put her arm round her.

“Understand me, children, denial is perfectly useless. I know that message was given to one of you, and that it was not delivered, and it is simply a question of hours before I see Radly and obtain from him the name of the child to whom the message was given. I accuse no one of you, but I implore the culprit to speak out. Otherwise,” he hit the table with his clenched fist, and it seemed as though lightning shot from his blazing eyes, “otherwise I shall know that there dwells under my roof a liar and a coward.”

Quentillian could hear still the scorn that rang in that deep, vibrant voice, terrifying the children.

Not one of them spoke.

And the Canon had gone out of the room with anguish in his eyes.

The nursery court-martial that followed was held by Lucilla.

“Flossie, it couldn’t have been you, because you stayed in all yesterday with your cold. Owen and Val were out in the afternoon?”

“We went to see the woman with the new twins,” said Val, indignantly. “We never met anyone the whole way, did we, Owen?”

“No.”

Owen Quentillian had known all the time what was coming. He knew, with the terrible, intimate knowledge of the nursery, that Adrian was the only one of the Canon’s children who did not always speak the truth.

Apparently Lucilla, also, knew.

She said “Oh, Adrian,” in a troubled, imploring voice.

“I didn’t,” said Adrian, and burst into tears.

“I knew it was Adrian,” said little Flora. “I saw Radly coming up the lane very fast, I saw him out of the night-nursery window, and I saw Adrian, too. I knew it was Adrian, all the time.”

None of the children was surprised.

Adrian, confronted with their take-it-for-granted attitude, ceased his mechanical denials.

The preoccupation of them all, was Canon Morchard.

“It’ll be less bad if you tell him yourself than if Radly does,” Owen Quentillian pointed out.

“Of course, it makes it much worse having told him a lie,” Val said crudely, “but perhaps he didn’t much notice what you said. I’m sure he thought it was Owen, all the time.”

How much better if it had been Owen, if it had been any one of them, save the Canon’s best-loved child, his youngest son!

“You must come and tell him at once,” Lucilla decreed—but not hopefully.

“I can’t. You know what he said about a liar and a coward under his roof.”

Adrian cried and shivered.

“He wasn’t angry the time I broke the clock,” said Flora. “He took me on his knee and only just talked to me. I didn’t mind a bit.”

“But you hadn’t told a story,” said the inexorable Val.

They all knew that there lay the crux of the matter.

Quentillian could see the circle of scared, perplexed faces still—Lucilla, troubled, but unastonished, keeping a vigilant hold on Adrian all the time, Val, frankly horrified and full of outspoken predictions of the direst description, Flossie in tears, stroking and fondling Adrian’s hand with the tenderest compassion. He even visualized the pale, squarely built, little flaxen-haired boy that had been himself.

They could not persuade Adrian to confess.

At last Lucilla said: “If you don’t tell him, Adrian, then I shall.”

And so it had been, because Canon Morchard, re-entering the schoolroom, had, with a penetration to which his children were accustomed, instantly perceived the tears and the terror on Adrian’s face.

“What is it, little lad? Have you hurt yourself?”

The kind, unsuspicious concern in his voice, as he held out his hand!

Quentillian was certain that a pause had followed the enquiry—Adrian’s opportunity, conceded by Lucilla, even while she knew, as they all did, that he would take no advantage of it.

Then Lucilla had told.

Quentillian’s thoughts went off at a tangent, dwelling for the first time, with a certain surprised admiration, upon Lucilla’s resolute, almost matter-of-fact performance of her painful and alarming task.

Canon Morchard had been incredulous at first, and Lucilla had steadily repeated, and reiterated again and again, the dreadful truth.

A black time had followed.

It assumed the proportions of a twelve-month, in the retrospect. Could it have extended over a week? Strangely enough, Quentillian could not recall the exact fate of Adrian, but he knew that the Canon first fulminated words of wrath and scorn, and at last had actually broken down, tears streaming down his furrowed face, and that the sight of this unrestrained display of suffering had caused the boy Owen to creep from the room, with the strange, sick feeling of one who had witnessed an indecency.

All the children except Lucilla, who indeed scarcely counted as one of them, had avoided Canon Morchard in the ensuing days. They had crept about the house silently, and at meals no one spoke until the Canon had left the room. Owen Quentillian, playing with a ball in the passage and inadvertently bouncing it against the closed study door, had been suddenly confronted by the Canon, and the look of grief and horror fixed upon that handsome face had rendered any spoken rebuke for levity unnecessary.

After all, they had left an impression, those Morchards, all of them, Quentillian reflected.

Lucilla had been calm, matter-of-fact, competent—perhaps a little inhuman. Val, impetuous, noisy, inclined to defiance, yet frankly terrified of her father. Flossie—impossible to think of her as Flora, unless the name was uttered in the Canon’s full, deep tones—surely the prettiest of the three, gentler than Val, less self-assured than Lucilla, timid only with her father. Adrian, of course, did not speak the truth. His contemporaries had known it, although Canon Morchard had not realized the little boy’s habitual weakness. But then he had never realized that the children were afraid of him.

Why had they all been afraid of him?

Quentillian decided that it must have been because of his own phenomenal rectitude, his high standard of honour, and above all and especially, his deep, fundamental sense of religion.

Canon Morchard, undoubtedly, lived “in the presence of God.” Even the little boy Owen had known that, and, thinking backwards, Quentillian was convinced of it still.

He felt curious to see the Canon again. David Morchard had said to him in Mesopotamia: “Go and see him. They’ve none of them forgotten you, and they’ll be glad of first-hand news. I’ve only been home once in five years.”

The shrug of his shoulders had seemed to Quentillian expressive.

But evidently David had judged his family correctly. The Canon had written and invited his old pupil to stay with him.

“It will not only be joy untold to receive news of our dear lad, David, but a real pleasure to us all to welcome you amongst us once more. I have not forgotten my pupil of long-ago days, nor my daughters their erstwhile playfellow. You will find all at home, including Adrian. Dear fellow, I had hoped it was to be the Church for him, but he has been so open, so anxious to decide the whole important question rightly, that one can only leave the decision to him in all confidence. I would not hurry him in any way, but his brief Army days are over, thank God, and we have the untold pleasure of having him with us now, so full of fun and high spirits, dear boy. You, with your pre-war experience of Oxford, will perhaps be able to talk things over with him and help him to a right and wise decision.

“You will remember my eldest daughter, Lucilla. She is still my right hand, mothering the younger ones, and yet finding time for all sorts of wider interests than those afforded by her secretarial work for me. I think that you will agree with me that Lucilla’s intellectual abilities, had she been less of a home-bird, must have made their mark in the world.

“Valeria is still something of the madcap that perhaps you remember. Her energy and enthusiasm keep us all in the best of spirits, even though we are sometimes a little startled at the new ideas sprung upon us. Both she and Flora worked valiantly during the terrible war years, though I could spare neither of my darlings to leave home for very long at a time. Valeria, however, was six months in France at a Canteen, and I believe rendered really valuable service. Little Flora, as I still call her, gives pleasure to us all with her music, and our men in hospital were sharers in her gift as far as we could manage it.”

Quentillian took up yet another sheet of notepaper covered with small, legible writing. It came back to him with a sense of familiarity, that the Canon had always been an expansive and prolific writer of letters.

“Make us a long visit, my dear boy. There are no near ones to claim you, alas, and I should like you to remember that it was to us that your dear father and mother first confided you when they left you for what we then hoped was to be only a short term of years. God saw otherwise, my dear lad, and called them unto Himself. How incomprehensible are His ways, and how, through it all, one must feel that mysterious certainty ‘all things work together for good, to those that love Him!’ Those words have been more present to me than I can well tell you, during the years of storm and stress. David’s long, weary time in Mesopotamia tried one high, but when Adrian, my Benjamin, buckled on his armour and went forth, my heart must have failed me, but for that wonderful strength that seems to bear one up in the day of tribulation. How often have I not said to myself: ‘He hath given His angels charge over thee ... in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone!’

“Perhaps you will smile at this rambling letter of an almost-old man, but I fancy that as one grows older, the need to bear testimony becomes ever a stronger and more personal thing. His ways are so wonderful! It seems to me, for instance, a direct gift from His hand that the Owen Quentillian to whom I gave his first Latin prose should be returning to us once more, a distinguished young writer. I wonder if we shall recognize you? I have so vivid a recollection of the white hair and eyelashes that made the village boys call out, ‘Go it, Snowball!’ as they watched your prowess on the football field!

“Well, dear fellow, I must close this. You have only to let us know the day and hour of your arrival, and the warmest of welcomes awaits you.

“I must sign myself, in memory of old happy times,

“Yours ever affectionately,
“Fenwick Morchard.”

Quentillian, with great precision, folded the sheets together again.

“So Lucilla is a home-bird, Valeria is still something of a madcap, Flora is still ‘little Flora,’ and Adrian is a dear lad who is anxious to decide rightly about his future career.”

He wondered doubtfully whether he himself would come to endorse the Canon’s opinion of the Canon’s progeny.

And what was the Canon himself, if labels were to be thus distributed?

The sensation of doubt in Quentillian’s mind was accentuated, but he concluded his reflections by reminding himself, half tolerantly, and half with a certain grimness, that the Canon was at least, according to himself, Quentillian’s ever affectionate Fenwick Morchard.

(ii)

“This is like old times,” said Quentillian.

Lucilla Morchard smiled, shook hands with him, and made no answer, and Quentillian immediately, and with annoyance, became conscious that the occasion was not in the least like old times.

Apparently Miss Morchard did not accept clichés uncritically.

Her face, indeed, expressed a spirit both critical and perceptive. Quentillian could still trace the schoolgirl Lucilla in the clearly-cut, unbeautiful oval, with the jaw slightly underhung, grey, short-sighted eyes, and straight black brows. Her dark hair was folded plainly beneath her purple straw hat, but he could discern that there was all the old abundance of it. Her figure was tall and youthful, but her face made her look fully her age. He surmised that Lucilla must be thirty-five, now.

“This time, my father is here to welcome you.”

She turned round, and Quentillian saw the Canon.

“Ah, dear fellow! Welcome—welcome you be, indeed!”

A hand grasped Quentillian’s hand, an arm was laid across his shoulders, and the Canon’s full, hearty voice, very deep and musical, rang in his ears.

Quentillian felt inadequate.

With all the acute self-consciousness of the modern, he was perfectly aware that Canon Morchard’s warmth of feeling and ardour of demonstration awoke in himself nothing but a slight, distinctly unpleasant, sensation of gratitude, and a feeble fear of appearing as unresponsive as he felt.

“I think it’s the same Owen Quentillian, isn’t it?”

The steady pressure of the Canon’s arm compelled his unwilling returned prodigal to remain still, facing him, and submit to a scrutiny from kind, narrowed eyes.

“Just the same. All is well—well, indeed.”

The Canon’s hand smote Quentillian gently between the shoulders, as they walked down the platform.

“The trap is waiting, dear boy. They are eager for your arrival, at home. I have my whole goodly company awaiting you, thank God—Lucilla here, and my merry Valeria, and little Flora with her incurably shy ways, and my Benjamin—the youngest of the flock—Adrian. You and Adrian must have many talks, dear lad. I want just such a friend for him as yourself—full of youth, and fun, and merriment, as he is himself, and yet able to help him when it comes to facing the deeper issues—the deeper issues. You young people must have many wise, deep talks, together, such as youth loves. I remember my University days so well and how ‘we tired the sun with talking’—aye, Owen, your father and I were famous philosophers, once upon a time! How does that strike you, eh?”

It struck Quentillian principally that his father’s contemporary reminded him oddly of a book of late Victorian memoirs, but he did not voice the impression aloud.

Instead, it was a relief to him to be able to make an obvious, and yet perfectly sincere, comment upon the unchanged aspect of the old red-brick house, standing well away from the small town.

“Valeria is our gardener,” said Canon Morchard. “You will be consulted about various borders and the like, no doubt. But we have all of us an interest in botany. You must remember that from the old days, eh? There was a collecting craze, if I remember rightly, that led to a great deal of friendly rivalry amongst you children.”

Quentillian’s recollection of the collecting craze differed so drastically from that of the Canon, that he glanced involuntarily at Lucilla. She met his eye calmly, but he fancied a little latent hostility in her unconsciousness.

It rather served to confirm his impression of the extreme lack of spontaneity that had characterized those bygone excursions into the realms of Nature. They had been undertaken, at least by himself and his ally and contemporary, Valeria, with one eye, as it were, upon the Canon’s study window. Even Adrian, if Quentillian remembered rightly, had relaxed the normal enthusiasm of boyhood in the pursuit of bird’s eggs, after the wondrous eye for detail of the bird’s Creator had been sufficiently often pointed out to him.

“Welcome home,” said the Canon happily. “You remember the old garden? I seem to recollect some capital fun going on amongst the old rhododendron bushes at hide-and-seek, eh? We play lawn-tennis, nowadays. I see a sett is going on now. Who is here this afternoon, Lucilla?”

“Captain Cuscaden is playing with Flora, and I suppose it’s Mr. Clover in the far court.”

“To be sure. Clover is my excellent curate, who has been one of ourselves for several years now. Sit ye down, young people, sit ye down. Tea will be out here directly, and the players will no doubt come for refreshment.”

The Canon settled himself with the deliberation of a heavily-built man, and leant back in his wicker chair, with finger-tips joined together, the breeze stirring the thick grey hair upon his temples.

It was a cameo-like head, with something of the ivory colouring of a cameo, but the cameo’s blank orbs were replaced by deeply-set, brilliant hazel eyes of which the flashing, ardent outlook recalled at once the child and the fanatic. Innumerable fine lines were crossed and recrossed at the corners of either socket, but the broad forehead was singularly open and unlined.

Quentillian noted the feminine sweetness of the closed mouth, contrasting with the masculine jut of the strong, prominent jaw. His mind registered simultaneously the recollection of the Canon’s violent and terrifying outbursts of anger, and his astonishing capabilities of tenderness.

The latter expression was altogether predominant, as the tennis players came to join the group under the cedars.

“Valeria—Flora—you need no introductions here, dear lad. Clover, let me present my old pupil—one of whom you have very often heard us speak—Owen Quentillian. This is my very good friend and helper. And.... Ah, Captain Cuscaden—Mr. Quentillian.”

Quentillian fancied less enthusiasm in this last introduction, and it seemed to him significant that no descriptive phrase followed the name. Either Captain Cuscaden was not worth classifying, or he could not satisfactorily be relegated into any class, and Quentillian suspected that Canon Morchard would resent the latter state of affairs more than the former.

At all events, Cuscaden was good-looking, of bold allure and sunburnt face, revealing the most perfect of teeth in a pleasant smile.

Mr. Clover was sandy and pale and seemed to be talkative.

“I believe I should have known you anywhere,” Valeria Morchard told Quentillian, frankly gazing at him. He was not sorry to have the opportunity of gazing back as frankly at her.

As children, the handsome or unhandsome looks of Val, his inseparable playmate, had naturally interested him not at all. He had vaguely acquiesced in the universal nursery dictum that Flora, with her fair curls and wide, innocent eyes, was pretty, but he now found her blond slenderness insignificant in the extreme compared to Valeria, with her tall and perfectly balanced figure, ripe-apricot bloom, and brown laughing eyes. No longer a very young girl, she somehow combined the poise of her twenty-seven years with a shy, semi-abruptness of diction reminiscent of seventeen.

Quentillian thought her charming.

So, apparently, did the other men.

“And who bore off the palm of victory?”

Canon Morchard indicated the tennis court.

“We won, at five games all. A very good sett,” Clover replied. “My partner’s service is almost invincible.”

Canon Morchard smiled.

“We think Valeria’s service is her strong point,” he explained to Quentillian. “She was coached by our dear David, and David is no mean player, I assure you. Little Flora needs to stand up to the ball better—stand up to the ball better. Flora has the feminine tendency to hit out too soon—eh, Flora? Our champion is Adrian, however. You and he will have some great contests, I foresee.”

The more the Canon foresaw, the more did Quentillian’s own aspirations turn in search of contrary directions. The only diversion of those predicted by his host, of which he felt able to tolerate the thought, was that of being consulted by Valeria upon the herbaceous borders.

“Clover, there, has a particularly good stroke on to the back line, but you’ll get to know it. Have you played at all since you left the ’Varsity?”

“I got a good deal of tennis when I was home on leave in nineteen-sixteen, but nothing after that, when I was in Mesopotamia.”

“Were you not in Flanders, dear boy?”

“In ’fifteen and ’sixteen,” said Quentillian briefly.

He wished to remember neither his two years on the Western front, nor his many months in Hospital with shell-shock.

“Where did you and David meet, in Mesopotamia?” inquired Lucilla.

Quentillian had forgotten her presence, if not her existence, but he felt grateful to her for sparing him the tentative category of his soldiering capabilities which he suspected the Canon of having in readiness.

He was not, however, given time to answer Lucilla’s question.

The Canon’s hand was uplifted.

“Ah, Lucilla my dear—please! My little talk with Owen there, is to come later. There is so much that I want to hear about our David—much, indeed. And you shall have your share of news about your brother, my child, but wait—at least wait—until we have had our little private talk together.”

Lucilla bent her head a little under the rebuke either in acquiescence or to conceal some slight confusion; but Valeria blushed hotly and unmistakably, and everyone looked constrained except the Canon, who looked rather severe, rather grieved, and at the same time perfectly serene. When he spoke again, it was with marked suavity.

“Tell us something of your literary work, dear fellow,” he requested Quentillian. “I am ashamed to say that I have read nothing of yours, as yet. My time is so little my own. Lucilla here is our literary critic.”

He placed his thin, beautiful hand, for a fleeting moment upon his eldest daughter’s hand.

“Lucilla tells me that she knows your work. Critical essays, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Quentillian gravely acknowledged the truth of the assertion. His self-consciousness rather enhanced than diminished in him a keen appraisement, perhaps rather less detached than he would have liked it to be, of his own literary value.

“I published a small volume of essays before the war, but since then I have only been a very occasional contributor to one or two of the reviews.”

“Ah, yes. You must let me see what you have done, some day. This is the era of youth. Indeed, some of the things I see in print today strike me as not only crude and immature, but absolutely mischievous—false, foolish, shallow teaching from those who have never submitted to be taught themselves. I am not afraid of that in your case, Owen. But remember this, all you young people: Nothing can be of real or lasting value that is not founded upon the broad principles of Christianity—charity, self-sacrifice, humility, loving-kindness. One feels that, more than ever, nowadays, when cynicism is so much in fashion.”

The Canon leant back in his chair again with his eyes closed, as though momentarily exhausted by the extraordinary passion with which he had spoken.

So profoundly did Owen Quentillian disagree with his host, that he remained absolutely silent. He reminded himself that since his majority he had sought, voluntarily, only the companionship of those whose views were at least as progressive as his own. He had almost forgotten that those other, older, views existed, were held with a passion of sincerity contrasting oddly with the cool, detached, carefully impersonal logic that was the only attitude contemplated by himself and his kind for the consideration of all problems of ethics, morals, or of Life itself.

No doubt the Canon did not admit the normal evolution of the art of self-sacrifice to be self-advertisement, and held the officious pelican to be the best of birds.

Quentillian, horribly aware of his own priggishness, wanted to reform the whole of the Canon’s philosophy at once.

Nevertheless he retained enough humour to hope that the preposterous desire had not been apparent in his silence.

His eyes met those of Valeria Morchard, and read there amusement, and something not unlike protest.

Lucilla, in her level voice, offered him tea.

“The cup that cheers,” said Mr. Clover in a nervous way.

The ineptitude roused in Quentillian a disproportionate sense of irritation and renewed his old conviction that his nerves were not even yet under his complete control.

As though the Canon, too, were mildly averse from such trivialities, he began to speak again.

“What one feels in the cleverness of the day is the note of ugliness that prevails. Do you not feel that? The sordid, the grotesque, the painful—all, all sought out and dwelt upon. That, we are told, is the new realism. We know, indeed, that there is a sad side to life, but is it realism to dwell only upon one side of the picture? Surely, surely, a sane optimism were the better outlook—the truer realism.”

“You don’t think, then, that the optimism of England is responsible for her present plight, sir?”

Quentillian’s tone was one of respectful suggestion, but he was aware that Val, beside him, had suddenly caught her breath as though at an audacity, and that Flora and Mr. Clover were both gazing anxiously at the Canon.

A flash of lightning shot from those ardent eyes straight into the passionless irony of the younger man’s.

“But for England’s optimism, there would be no England today. It was the spirit of optimism that won the war, Owen.”

A sick recollection of men, armed and disciplined, taking steady aim at other men, standing against a wall to be shot for cowardice or treason, of grey-faced commanders leading those who followed them into certain death, all surged into Quentillian’s rebellious mind. They, the men who had been there, had known better than to prate of optimism.

They had faced facts, had anticipated disaster, had envisaged the worst possibilities, and their pessimism had won the war.

“Are you, too, bitten with the folly of the day?”

The Canon’s voice was gentle again, his arm once more laid across Quentillian’s shoulders.

“Did I not hear something about shell-shock, dear fellow? We must have no talk of the war here. Thank God for that He hath brought it to an end. Tell me, dear lad, will you play tennis?”

Bewildered, almost affronted, Quentillian yet agreed to play tennis, feeling himself more like a forward boy, being treated with forbearance, than like a modern intellect illuminating the way of thought for the older generation.

He played with Valeria as his partner, and found the Canon’s eulogy of her service to be entirely justified.

He found an opportunity at the end of the game of expressing his admiration for her play, and she replied, conventionally enough, that she had a great deal of practice.

“There isn’t much else to do,” she added, with a slight grimace.

Under pretext of looking for a distant ball, they continued the conversation.

“If you remember this place at all,” Val said, “you know how dull it is. Just tennis in the summer, and horrible bazaars and jumble sales, and never a new person or a new idea from year’s end to year’s end.”

“It sounds appalling. But, after all, you’re not bound, in the old, antiquated way. You can go away.”

“No I can’t,” she said bluntly. “I did get to France, for six months, during the war, but it was only because it was the war. And even then—oh, well, the sort of letters I got were enough to make me feel that Father really hated my being there.”

Quentillian was genuinely aghast.

“But I thought that sort of attitude had gone out with all the other Victorian traditions. I thought women did what they liked—were as free as men.”

“That’s what it says in the books I read, and what some of the girls I met in France told me. But it isn’t like that here. And one can’t hurt Father. You know what he’s like—so good, and so sensitive, and—and so noble, somehow. He makes modern things seem trivial—vulgar, even.”

“Your father is a reactionary,” said Quentillian kindly, rather as one might say: “Your father is a Hottentot.”

“You mustn’t think that he just wants us to stay at home and arrange the flowers,” Val said. “You know how he always wanted us to have intellectual interests. Oh, Owen, don’t you remember the collections?”

She broke off, and blushed and laughed.

“It seems so very natural—I’ve so often thought of you as Owen.”

“That was very nice of you, Val,” said Quentillian calmly.

He had every intention of retaining his early privileges, where Val was concerned.

“I should like to read some of the things you’ve written,” she said abruptly. “Lucilla reads your articles, and has always admired them.”

It seemed to Quentillian so extremely natural that anybody who read his articles should admire them, that he was conscious of receiving a slight shock when Valeria added:

“I gather that Father wouldn’t like them at all. Lucilla always kept them out of his way.”

“She is devoted to him, I can see that.”

“Yes, of course.”

Something in her voice made him look at her, and she exclaimed, half laughing and half petulant: “We’re all devoted to him, Lucilla and Flossie and I! I didn’t mean the least shadow of a criticism of him. Only that it’s a little difficult, sometimes, to keep up to his level.”

It seemed to Quentillian so monstrous a state of affairs that the Canon’s three daughters should have no worthier aim in life than the one implied, that something of his feeling was reflected in his face, and Valeria on the instant applied herself to looking for the missing ball, found it, and returned to the tea-table and the group there.

The Canon was again speaking, this time to young Cuscaden.

“If it is to be Canada, I believe I could give you one or two introductions that might be of service to you. The Government people, for instance.... I have one or two very good friends amongst them. You are really anxious to leave the Army and try colonization?”

“Quite determined to, sir.”

“Ah, you young fellows, you young fellows! It seems to me that there is none of the spirit of stability that existed in our day! But perhaps the wish to see further afield is a natural one. Certainly, my own greatest regret is that I have had so little time for travelling.”

He turned to Lucilla.

“Your dearest mother and I had planned a visit to Italy the very year that she was taken from us. Well, well! It was not to be. I shall never see the Eternal City now, I imagine, except with the eyes of the mind. Clover, you are amongst those who have seen Rome. Think of it! Seen Rome, where Peter healed and Paul preached the Gospel, where Laurence and Agnes and Cyprian and countless others were martyred! Tell us something of the Coliseum.”

Mr. Clover did not give the effect of being an eloquent person, but he had evidently been called upon before by the Canon, and he gave a not unilluminating little description, punctuated, and indeed supplemented, by Canon Morchard’s exhaustive comments.

Quentillian listened in a sort of amazement, not at all untinged by a rather uncertain wonder as to how he should ever sustain his own part in these ingenuous conversations....

The others, he saw, listened, with the possible exception of Lucilla, whose eyes were fixed upon a distant flower-bed.

Captain Cuscaden kept his gaze upon Valeria, but he put in an occasional question, generally upon a subject of architecture. Flora played with a leaf and said nothing at all, and Val, unconsciously, Quentillian felt sure, repeated everything her father said in more colloquial English.

“It amazes me to realize that with a lack of all our modern appliances, such veritable giants of architecture should yet have been raised,” mused the Canon.

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful to think they had none of our machines and things, and yet made those enormous statues and gates and things?” said Val.

“Well for us, indeed, that they did so, my child. Every fresh excavation proves to be a new link with the past.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Clover.

“Yes, all the new things they dig up seem to make a fresh link with those old Roman days,” echoed Val faithfully.

“Yes, indeed,” said Mr. Clover.

“If any of you young people followed the accounts of the recent Egyptian excavations—Valeria, I think you are our keenest antiquarian—were you not struck by the extraordinary confirmation of Scripture narrative afforded by each fresh discovery?”

This time Mr. Clover only said “Indeed?” and Valeria repeated:

“Yes, it all carried out the things one reads in the Bible, didn’t it?”

“We required no such confirmation, certainly, but it comes to one as a fresh joy, and brings these things home with full force.”

And Mr. Clover, with what Quentillian perversely chose to regard as misplaced ingenuity, once more found a variation of his formula, and remarked, “Indeed, yes.”

On these lines they talked about Egypt.

Then they talked about Rome again.

Then they went back to Egypt.

Quentillian looked at the rebellious profile beneath Val’s shady hat, and came to the conclusion that, whether she fully realized it or not, she was as profoundly bored as himself.

It was Captain Cuscaden who released them from the strain, by rising to take his leave.

“I’m sorry you have not seen Adrian. He will be disappointed to have missed you,” Canon Morchard said courteously. “Another day, when Adrian is at home, you must come over again. He is spending the afternoon with friends at a distance, and will hardly be home before dinner-time. You must come over again.”

“Thank you, sir. I should like to very much.”

Something in the Captain’s prompt reply convinced Quentillian that his acceptance was not merely a conventional one.

“Your motor-bicycle is round by the hall door,” said Valeria, and she and Captain Cuscaden left the garden together.

“And now, dear lad, you and I must have some talk together.”

Rather to Quentillian’s dismay, the firm and genial pronouncement of his host seemed to have been anticipated. Lucilla could be discerned bending over the distant flower-bed which had been the object of her solicitation during the talk about Rome, and Flora had disappeared. Mr. Clover now turned and hastened towards the house.

“You and I have had our heart-to-heart talks before now, Owen,” said the Canon affectionately. “We must have many more of them, dear fellow—many more.”

(iii)

The natural instinct of Quentillian, as of everybody else, was to suppose that a heart-to-heart talk must necessarily be upon the subject of himself.

He was therefore slightly disconcerted, though also undoubtedly relieved, when he perceived that the Canon’s thoughts were only preoccupied with his own two sons.

They disposed of David with a rapidity that was partly due to Quentillian’s own determined uncommunicativeness, and partly to the Canon’s evident anxiety to get on to the topic of Adrian.

“I wish David had been able to come home before returning to India, but no doubt these things are ordered for us. He writes fondly and affectionately, dear boy—fondly and affectionately. Not as often as I could wish, perhaps, but the young are thoughtless. It costs so little to send one line to those who are anxiously waiting and watching at home! Well, well—it has been a great joy to hear that the dear fellow is his own bright self. And his faith, Owen? Is all well there? Did he say anything to you of that?”

“No, sir.”

The Canon sighed.

“Perhaps it was not to be expected. You of the present generation do not discuss these things as we did. Even at Oxford, I am told, the men no longer preoccupy themselves with such questions in the same way.”