Part 11

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 ‘_en_tomology.’ 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.

III

DAVID AND FLORA

(i)

“It cannot be, my dear,” the Canon repeated. So inexorable was his voice, in all its kindness, that his daughter Flora felt that it could not, indeed be.

But it was Lucilla who had launched the “it” in question, and it was to Lucilla that the parental negative had been already addressed no less than three times.

“If I am thus patient with this strange persistence of yours, Lucilla,” said the Canon, his voice deepening after a fashion which indicated not at all obscurely that he might not continue to be patient very much longer, “if I am thus patient, it is because I do you the justice to believe that it is sisterly affection for our poor Valeria and her little one, and not a mere restless desire for change, that has induced you to put forward this astonishing proposal. But consider the folly and selfishness of this scheme, my child. You propose to spend money--which we can ill afford, any of us--and sacrifice time and strength in a wild rush overseas, an insensate dash through an unknown country, in search of your sister’s new home. No doubt you say to yourself ‘I am the winged Messenger of the Gods. I fly to take help and comfort to our erring one. I will assist this new little life that is coming into the world.’ You picture to yourself a triumphal progress--a rapturous welcome--the acclamations of a New World. But you deceive yourself, Lucilla. You deceive yourself grossly.”

Flora felt herself colouring as she bent over her needlework. A display of violent emotion as that into which Canon Morchard was now working himself by force of his own eloquence, was always distasteful to her, and she felt a vicarious shame for Lucilla, convicted of such presumptuous flights of fancy.

Flora was astonished at the calm of her sister’s reply, when it came.

“But I don’t, Father. I hadn’t any idea of doing anything but travelling to Canada in the ordinary way, and being with Val when her new baby arrives. You know, it is dreadfully soon after her first one, and she really isn’t----”

“Have a care, Lucilla! Who are you to question the time and seasons appointed by the All-seeing Wisdom for the bestowal of the infinite blessing of children?”

If Lucilla represented an infinite blessing to Canon Morchard, the fact was not over evident at the moment. His brow was thunderous as he gazed at her.

“It is Valeria’s own choice that has sent her into a far country. She might have been at our very gates, had she but willed it so.”

“Well,” said Lucilla reasonably. “I don’t think if Val had been so near us as all that, she would have written and begged one of us to come to her. It’s just because she’s out there, such a long way off, and with no one to help her, that she’s frightened. Why, she may not even be able to get a servant.”

“Poor child!” The Canon’s voice softened. “The way of transgressors is hard. But two wrongs never yet made a right, Lucilla. I recognize the generous impulse that moves you--if I spoke sharply just now, it was only from my intense wish to see you do justice to your own _really_ noble character, my child. Believe me, your duty lies here, in the state to which it has pleased God to call you.”

Lucilla’s brows contracted slightly, after her short-sighted fashion, but it was not at all with an effect of vexation, but rather of some slight perplexity.

At last she said:

“Could Flora go?”

Flora, startled, looked at her father. For a moment it occurred to her that perhaps he would be willing to spare her. Her heart leapt at the thought of seeing Val, and Val’s babies. A vista of new experiences, of hitherto undreamed-of independence, startled even whilst it pleasantly excited her.

Then her father said: “My dear, of what are you thinking? Your zealous desire to befriend one sister makes you strangely inconsiderate of the other. Flora is neither accustomed to responsibility, nor is she very robust in health. Certainly, were it a clear question of duty, one could put all that aside--but the call would have to be unmistakable, the leading beyond all question. I can see no such indications here.”

Flora, quietly bent over her needlework once more, was ashamed of the realization that she was disappointed.

Inwardly, she offered instant expiation for the rebellious moment, consciously addressing herself to the personal Divinity by whom, she had always been taught, every hair of her head was numbered.

The reflection came, in immediate consolation, that she was not without her spiritual glory, by this very act of resignation.

“They also serve who only stand and wait,” she thought.

The Canon had often quoted this to Flora, and indeed to any of his children who showed a desire for alien activities.

Flora might be said to have stood and waited for some time now. It occurred to her that if Lucilla went to Canada, responsibilities at home, other than passive ones, would become her own portion. The thought did not displease her. Flora, too, though far less consciously than Valeria, had sometimes glimpsed the sterility of her days.

“Lucilla, you know where to seek counsel, I believe,” said Canon Morchard gravely. “I make all due allowance for your natural, loving impulse towards our poor Valeria--all due allowance. If your heart bleeds for her, how much more does not mine? But there are times when we must do violence to our natural feelings and I believe that some such necessity is upon you now. Deny yourself, my daughter, and He will bless the sacrifice both to you and to our dear one far away.”

“But who will look after her when her baby is born?” said Lucilla reflectively.

“Lucilla, where is your trust?”

“Mostly in myself, I think,” said Lucilla gently. “I really shouldn’t feel it right not to go to Val, Father. I hope you will forgive me.” She spoke so gently, with so simple a note of sincere regret in her quiet voice, that the Canon, to Flora’s perceptions, appeared to overlook the slightly blasphemous implication in the first words of her sentence.

“No man is more averse than myself from tampering with another’s conscience,” he said, with gravity and displeasure. “You are no longer a child, Lucilla, but have a care lest self-will should blind you. I have long since warned you of the danger of self-complacency. I lay no commands upon you, but I do most earnestly beg, my child, that you will submit your own judgment to a higher Tribunal than any earthly one, before coming to any decision. Commune with your own heart, Lucilla, and be sure that self-seeking is not lurking under the guise of loving-kindness.”

The Canon went out of the room and Flora and Lucilla were left together.

It was evident that Lucilla saw no urgent necessity for complying with her father’s advice and communing with her own heart. She sat down at her writing-table, wrote for a few moments, and read over what she had written. Then she handed the half-sheet of notepaper to Flora.

It bore the announcement that a lady wishing shortly to travel to Canada, would give her services on the journey in return for part passage.

“But you mean to go, then?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I thought Father advised you to think it over?”

“I did think it over. Didn’t you hear me say just now that I should think it wrong _not_ to go to Val?”

“You are setting your own judgment up above Father’s,” Flora pointed out coldly.

“I suppose so,” Lucilla assented, seeming rather surprised, as though such an aspect of the case had not hitherto presented itself to her.

Flora softened.

“I can’t help being glad you’re going to be with poor Val when she wants you. And oh, Lucilla! You’ll see little Georgie!”

“I know. I wish you could, too.”

“So do I.” She suddenly caught her breath. “Not that I should do what you’re doing, for a moment. I don’t see how you _can_, in direct opposition to Father’s advice.”

“I’m sorry you see it like that,” said Lucilla gently. “Now, Flora, as I may have to take my passage when I can get it, without much notice, I’d like to arrange one or two things with you. Would you like me to give Ethel a month’s notice? She’s a bad housemaid, but if you’d rather she stayed on till----”

“Lucilla, you talk as though it were all settled!”

“My dear, it _is_ all settled. I told you that my mind was made up.”

“You know that Father will miss you most terribly? And, though he never speaks about it, he still grieves dreadfully over Adrian.”

“I know. That hasn’t really got anything to do with it, though, has it? If you keep on Ethel, you will have to make certain that she----”