The Country House
CHAPTER VII
SABBATH AT WORSTED SKEYNES
In the white morning-room which served for her boudoir Mrs. Pendyce sat
with an opened letter in her lap. It was her practice to sit there on
Sunday mornings for an hour before she went to her room adjoining to put
on her hat for church. It was her pleasure during that hour to do nothing
but sit at the window, open if the weather permitted, and look over the
home paddock and the squat spire of the village church rising among a
group of elms. It is not known what she thought about at those times,
unless of the countless Sunday mornings she had sat there with her hands
in her lap waiting to be roused at 10.45 by the Squire's entrance
and his “Now, my dear, you'll be late!” She had sat
there till her hair, once dark-brown, was turning grey; she would sit
there until it was white. One day she would sit there no longer, and, as
likely as not, Mr. Pendyce, still well preserved, would enter and say,
“Now, my dear, you'll be late!” having for the moment
forgotten.
But this was all to be expected, nothing out of the common; the same thing
was happening in hundreds of country houses throughout the “three
kingdoms,” and women were sitting waiting for their hair to turn
white, who, long before, at the altar of a fashionable church, had parted
with their imaginations and all the changes and chances of this mortal
life.
Round her chair “the dear dogs” lay—this was their
practice too, and now and again the Skye (he was getting very old) would
put out a long tongue and lick her little pointed shoe. For Mrs. Pendyce
had been a pretty woman, and her feet were as small as ever.
Beside her on a spindley table stood a china bowl filled with dried
rose-leaves, whereon had been scattered an essence smelling like
sweetbriar, whose secret she had learned from her mother in the old
Warwickshire home of the Totteridges, long since sold to Mr. Abraham
Brightman. Mrs. Pendyce, born in the year 1840, loved sweet perfumes, and
was not ashamed of using them.
The Indian summer sun was soft and bright; and wistful, soft, and bright
were Mrs. Pendyce's eyes, fixed on the letter in her lap. She turned
it over and began to read again. A wrinkle visited her brow. It was not
often that a letter demanding decision or involving responsibility came to
her hands past the kind and just censorship of Horace Pendyce. Many
matters were under her control, but were not, so to speak, connected with
the outer world. Thus ran the letter:
“S.R.W.C., HANOVER SQUARE,
“November 1, 1891.
“DEAR MARGERY,
“I want to see you and talk something over, so I'm running
down on Sunday afternoon. There is a train of sorts. Any loft will do for
me to sleep in if your house is full, as it may be, I suppose, at this
time of year. On second thoughts I will tell you what I want to see you
about. You know, of course, that since her father died I am Helen Bellew's
only guardian. Her present position is one in which no woman should be
placed; I am convinced it ought to be put an end to. That man Bellew
deserves no consideration. I cannot write of him coolly, so I won't
write at all. It is two years now since they separated, entirely, as I
consider, through his fault. The law has placed her in a cruel and
helpless position all this time; but now, thank God, I believe we can move
for a divorce. You know me well enough to realise what I have gone through
before coming to this conclusion. Heaven knows if I could hit on some
other way in which her future could be safeguarded, I would take it in
preference to this, which is most repugnant; but I cannot. You are the
only woman I can rely on to be interested in her, and I must see Bellew.
Let not the fat and just Benson and his estimable horses be disturbed on
my account; I will walk up and carry my toothbrush.
“Affectionately your cousin,
“GREGORY VIGIL.”
Mrs. Pendyce smiled. She saw no joke, but she knew from the wording of the
last sentence that Gregory saw one, and she liked to give it a welcome; so
smiling and wrinkling her forehead, she mused over the letter. Her
thoughts wandered. The last scandal—Lady Rose Bethany's
divorce—had upset the whole county, and even now one had to be
careful what one said. Horace would not like the idea of another
divorce-suit, and that so close to Worsted Skeynes. When Helen left on
Thursday he had said:
“I'm not sorry she's gone. Her position is a queer one.
People don't like it. The Maldens were quite——”
And Mrs. Pendyce remembered with a glow at her heart how she had broken
in:
“Ellen Malden is too bourgeoise for anything!”
Nor had Mr. Pendyce's look of displeasure effaced the comfort of
that word.
Poor Horace! The children took after him, except George, who took after
her brother Hubert. The dear boy had gone back to his club on Friday—the
day after Helen and the others went. She wished he could have stayed. She
wished—— The wrinkle deepened on her brow. Too much London was
bad for him! Too much—— Her fancy flew to the London which she
saw now only for three weeks in June and July, for the sake of the girls,
just when her garden was at its best, and when really things were such a
whirl that she never knew whether she was asleep or awake. It was not like
London at all—not like that London under spring skies, or in early
winter lamplight, where all the passers-by seemed so interesting, living
all sorts of strange and eager lives, with strange and eager pleasures,
running all sorts of risks, hungry sometimes, homeless even—so
fascinating, so unlike—
“Now, my dear, you'll be late!”
Mr. Pendyce, in his Norfolk jacket, which he was on his way to change for
a black coat, passed through the room, followed by the spaniel John. He
turned at the door, and the spaniel John turned too.
“I hope to goodness Barter'll be short this morning. I want to
talk to old Fox about that new chaff-cutter.”
Round their mistress the three terriers raised their heads; the aged Skye
gave forth a gentle growl. Mrs. Pendyce leaned over and stroked his nose.
“Roy, Roy, how can you, dear?”
Mr. Pendyce said:
“The old dog's losing all his teeth; he'll have to be
put away.”
His wife flushed painfully.
“Oh no, Horace—oh no!”
The Squire coughed.
“We must think of the dog!” he said.
Mrs. Pendyce rose, and crumpling the letter nervously, followed him from
the room.
A narrow path led through the home paddock towards the church, and along
it the household were making their way. The maids in feathers hurried
along guiltily by twos and threes; the butler followed slowly by himself.
A footman and a groom came next, leaving trails of pomatum in the air.
Presently General Pendyce, in a high square-topped bowler hat, carrying a
malacca cane, and Prayer-Book, appeared walking between Bee and Norah,
also carrying Prayer-Books, with fox-terriers by their sides. Lastly, the
Squire in a high hat, six or seven paces in advance of his wife, in a
small velvet toque.
The rooks had ceased their wheeling and their cawing; the five-minutes
bell, with its jerky, toneless tolling, alone broke the Sunday hush. An
old horse, not yet taken up from grass, stood motionless, resting a
hind-leg, with his face turned towards the footpath. Within the churchyard
wicket the Rector, firm and square, a low-crowned hat tilted up on his
bald forehead, was talking to a deaf old cottager. He raised his hat and
nodded to the ladies; then, leaving his remark unfinished, disappeared
within the vestry. At the organ Mrs. Barter was drawing out stops in
readiness to play her husband into church, and her eyes, half-shining and
half-anxious, were fixed intently on the vestry door.
The Squire and Mrs. Pendyce, now almost abreast, came down the aisle and
took their seats beside their daughters and the General in the first pew
on the left. It was high and cushioned. They knelt down on tall red
hassocks. Mrs. Pendyce remained over a minute buried in thought; Mr.
Pendyce rose sooner, and looking down, kicked the hassock that had been
put too near the seat. Fixing his glasses on his nose, he consulted a worn
old Bible, then rising, walked to the lectern and began to find the
Lessons. The bell ceased; a wheezing, growling noise was heard. Mrs.
Barter had begun to play; the Rector, in a white surplice, was coming in.
Mr. Pendyce, with his back turned, continued to find the Lessons. The
service began.
Through a plain glass window high up in the right-hand aisle the sun shot
a gleam athwart the Pendyces' pew. It found its last resting-place
on Mrs. Barter's face, showing her soft crumpled cheeks painfully
flushed, the lines on her forehead, and those shining eyes, eager and
anxious, travelling ever from her husband to her music and back again. At
the least fold or frown on his face the music seemed to quiver, as to some
spasm in the player's soul. In the Pendyces' pew the two girls
sang loudly and with a certain sweetness. Mr. Pendyce, too, sang, and once
or twice he looked in surprise at his brother, as though he were not
making a creditable noise.
Mrs. Pendyce did not sing, but her lips moved, and her eyes followed the
millions of little dust atoms dancing in the long slanting sunbeam. Its
gold path canted slowly from her, then, as by magic, vanished. Mrs.
Pendyce let her eyes fall. Something had fled from her soul with the
sunbeam; her lips moved no more.
The Squire sang two loud notes, spoke three, sang two again; the Psalms
ceased. He left his seat, and placing his hands on the lectern's
sides, leaned forward and began to read the Lesson. He read the story of
Abraham and Lot, and of their flocks and herds, and how they could not
dwell together, and as he read, hypnotised by the sound of his own voice,
he was thinking:
'This Lesson is well read by me, Horace Pendyce. I am Horace Pendyce—Horace
Pendyce. Amen, Horace Pendyce!'
And in the first pew on the left Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes upon him, for
this was her habit, and she thought how, when the spring came again, she
would run up to town, alone, and stay at Green's Hotel, where she
had always stayed with her father when a girl. George had promised to look
after her, and take her round the theatres. And forgetting that she had
thought this every autumn for the last ten years, she gently smiled and
nodded. Mr. Pendyce said:
“'And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that
if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be
numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the
breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent,
and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built
there an altar unto the Lord.' Here endeth the first Lesson.”
The sun, reaching the second window, again shot a gold pathway athwart the
church; again the millions of dust atoms danced, and the service went on.
There came a hush. The spaniel John, crouched close to the ground outside,
poked his long black nose under the churchyard gate; the fox-terriers,
seated patient in the grass, pricked their ears. A voice speaking on one
note broke the hush. The spaniel John sighed, the fox-terriers dropped
their ears, and lay down heavily against each other. The Rector had begun
to preach. He preached on fruitfulness, and in the first right-hand pew
six of his children at once began to fidget. Mrs. Barter, sideways and
unsupported on her seat, kept her starry eyes fixed on his cheek; a line
of perplexity furrowed her brow. Now and again she moved as though her
back ached. The Rector quartered his congregation with his gaze, lest any
amongst them should incline to sleep. He spoke in a loud-sounding voice.
God-he said-wished men to be fruitful, intended them to be fruitful,
commanded them to be fruitful. God—he said—made men, and made
the earth; He made man to be fruitful in the earth; He made man neither to
question nor answer nor argue; He made him to be fruitful and possess the
land. As they had heard in that beautiful Lesson this morning, God had set
bounds, the bounds of marriage, within which man should multiply; within
those bounds it was his duty to multiply, and that exceedingly—even
as Abraham multiplied. In these days dangers, pitfalls, snares, were rife;
in these days men went about and openly, unashamedly advocated shameful
doctrines. Let them beware. It would be his sacred duty to exclude such
men from within the precincts of that parish entrusted to his care by God.
In the language of their greatest poet, “Such men were dangerous”—dangerous
to Christianity, dangerous to their country, and to national life. They
were not brought into this world to follow sinful inclination, to obey
their mortal reason. God demanded sacrifices of men. Patriotism demanded
sacrifices of men, it demanded that they should curb their inclinations
and desires. It demanded of them their first duty as men and Christians,
the duty of being fruitful and multiplying, in order that they might till
this fruitful earth, not selfishly, not for themselves alone. It demanded
of them the duty of multiplying in order that they and their children
might be equipped to smite the enemies of their Queen and country, and
uphold the name of England in whatever quarrel, against all who rashly
sought to drag her flag in the dust.
The Squire opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Folding his arms, he
coughed, for he was thinking of the chaff-cutter. Beside him Mrs. Pendyce,
with her eyes on the altar, smiled as if in sleep. She was thinking,
'Skyward's in Bond Street used to have lovely lace. Perhaps in
the spring I could—— Or there was Goblin's, their Point
de Venise——'
Behind them, four rows back, an aged cottage woman, as upright as a girl,
sat with a rapt expression on her carved old face. She never moved, her
eyes seemed drinking in the movements of the Rector's lips, her
whole being seemed hanging on his words. It is true her dim eyes saw
nothing but a blur, her poor deaf ears could not hear one word, but she
sat at the angle she was used to, and thought of nothing at all. And
perhaps it was better so, for she was near her end.
Outside the churchyard, in the sun-warmed grass, the fox-terriers lay one
against the other, pretending to shiver, with their small bright eyes
fixed on the church door, and the rubbery nostrils of the spaniel John
worked ever busily beneath the wicket gate.