The Country House
PART II
CHAPTER VIII

COUNCIL AT WORSTED SKEYNES

It was on the following evening—the evening on which he was expecting his son and Mr. Paramor that the Squire leaned forward over the dining-table and asked:

“What do you say, Barter? I'm speaking to you as a man of the world.”

The Rector bent over his glass of port and moistened his lower lip.

“There's no excuse for that woman,” he answered. “I always thought she was a bad lot.”

Mr. Pendyce went on:

“We've never had a scandal in my family. I find the thought of it hard to bear, Barter— I find it hard to bear——”

The Rector emitted a low sound. He had come from long usage to have a feeling like affection for his Squire.

Mr. Pendyce pursued his thoughts.

“We've gone on,” he said, “father and son for hundreds of years. It's a blow to me, Barter.”

Again the Rector emitted that low sound.

“What will the village think?” said Mr. Pendyce; “and the farmers— I mind that more than anything. Most of them knew my dear old father—not that he was popular. It's a bitter thing.”

The Rector said:

“Well, well, Pendyce, perhaps it won't come to that.”

He looked a little shamefaced, and his light eyes were full of something like contrition.

“How does Mrs. Pendyce take it?”

The Squire looked at him for the first time.

“Ah!” he said; “you never know anything about women. I'd as soon trust a woman to be just as I'd— I'd finish that magnum; it'd give me gout in no time.”

The Rector emptied his glass.

“I've sent for George and my solicitor,” pursued the Squire; “they'll be here directly.”

Mr. Barter pushed his chair back, and raising his right ankle on to his left leg, clasped his hands round his right knee; then, leaning forward, he stared up under his jutting brows at Mr. Pendyce. It was the attitude in which he thought best.

Mr. Pendyce ran on:

“I've nursed the estate ever since it came to me; I've carried on the tradition as best I could; I've not been as good a man, perhaps, as I should have wished, but I've always tried to remember my old father's words: 'I'm done for, Horry; the estate's in your hands now.'.rdquo; He cleared his throat.

For a full minute there was no sound save the ticking of the clock. Then the spaniel John, coming silently from under the sideboard, fell heavily down against his master's leg with a lengthy snore of satisfaction. Mr. Pendyce looked down.

“This fellow of mine,” he muttered, “is getting fat.”

It was evident from the tone of his voice that he desired his emotion to be forgotten. Something very deep in Mr. Barter respected that desire.

“It's a first-rate magnum,” he said.

Mr. Pendyce filled his Rector's glass.

“I forget if you knew Paramor. He was before your time. He was at Harrow with me.”

The Rector took a prolonged sip.

“I shall be in the way,” he said. “I'll take myself off'.”

The Squire put out his hand affectionately.

“No, no, Barter, don't you go. It's all safe with you. I mean to act. I can't stand this uncertainty. My wife's cousin Vigil is coming too—he's her guardian. I wired for him. You know Vigil? He was about your time.”

The Rector turned crimson, and set his underlip. Having scented his enemy, nothing would now persuade him to withdraw; and the conviction that he had only done his duty, a little shaken by the Squire's confidence, returned as though by magic.

“Yes, I know him.”

“We'll have it all out here,” muttered Mr. Pendyce, “over this port. There's the carriage. Get up, John.”

The spaniel John rose heavily, looked sardonically at Mr. Barter, and again flopped down against his master's leg.

“Get up, John,” said Mr. Pendyce again. The spaniel John snored.

'If I move, you'll move too, and uncertainty will begin for me again,' he seemed to say.

Mr. Pendyce disengaged his leg, rose, and went to the door. Before reaching it he turned and came back to the table.

“Barter,” he said, “I'm not thinking of myself— I'm not thinking of myself—we've been here for generations—it's the principle.” His face had the least twist to one side, as though conforming to a kink in his philosophy; his eyes looked sad and restless.

And the Rector, watching the door for the sight of his enemy, also thought:

'I'm not thinking of myself— I'm satisfied that I did right— I'm Rector of this parish it's the principle.'

The spaniel John gave three short barks, one for each of the persons who entered the room. They were Mrs. Pendyce, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil.

“Where's George?” asked the Squire, but no one answered him.

The Rector, who had resumed his seat, stared at a little gold cross which he had taken out of his waistcoat pocket. Mr. Paramor lifted a vase and sniffed at the rose it contained; Gregory walked to the window.

When Mr. Pendyce realised that his son had not come, he went to the door and held it open.

“Be good enough to take John out, Margery,” he said. “John!”

The spaniel John, seeing what lay before him, rolled over on his back.

Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her husband, and in those eyes she put all the words which the nature of a lady did not suffer her to speak.

'I claim to be here. Let me stay; it is my right. Don't send me away.' So her eyes spoke, and so those of the spaniel John, lying on his back, in which attitude he knew that he was hard to move.

Mr. Pendyce turned him over with his foot.

“Get up, John! Be good enough to take John out, Margery.”

Mrs. Pendyce flushed, but did not move.

“John,” said Mr. Pendyce, “go with your mistress.” The spaniel John fluttered a drooping tail. Mr. Pendyce pressed his foot to it.

“This is not a subject for women.”

Mrs. Pendyce bent down.

“Come, John,” she said. The spaniel John, showing the whites of his eyes, and trying to back through his collar, was assisted from the room. Mr. Pendyce closed the door behind them.

“Have a glass of port, Vigil; it's the '47. My father laid it down in '56, the year before he died. Can't drink it myself— I've had to put down two hogsheads of the Jubilee wine. Paramor, fill your glass. Take that chair next to Paramor, Vigil. You know Barter?”

Both Gregory's face and the Rector's were very red.

“We're all Harrow men here,” went on Mr. Pendyce. And suddenly turning to Mr. Paramor, he said: “Well?”

Just as round the hereditary principle are grouped the State, the Church, Law, and Philanthropy, so round the dining-table at Worsted Skeynes sat the Squire, the Rector, Mr. Paramor, and Gregory Vigil, and none of them wished to be the first to speak. At last Mr. Paramor, taking from his pocket Bellew's note and George's answer, which were pinned in strange alliance, returned them to the Squire.

“I understand the position to be that George refuses to give her up; at the same time he is prepared to defend the suit and deny everything. Those are his instructions to me.” Taking up the vase again, he sniffed long and deep at the rose.

Mr. Pendyce broke the silence.

“As a gentleman,” he said in a voice sharpened by the bitterness of his feelings, “I suppose he's obliged——”

Gregory, smiling painfully, added:

“To tell lies.”

Mr. Pendyce turned on him at once.

“I've nothing to say about that, Vigil. George has behaved abominably. I don't uphold him; but if the woman wishes the suit defended he can't play the cur—that's what I was brought up to believe.”

Gregory leaned his forehead on his hand.

“The whole system is odious——” he was beginning.

Mr. Paramor chimed in.

“Let us keep to the facts; without the system.”

The Rector spoke for the first time.

“I don't know what you mean about the system; both this man and this woman are guilty——”

Gregory said in a voice that quivered with rage:

“Be so kind as not to use the expression, 'this woman.'.rdquo;

The Rector glowered.

“What expression then——”

Mr. Pendyce's voice, to which the intimate trouble of his thoughts lent a certain dignity, broke in:

“Gentlemen, this is a question concerning the honour of my house.”

There was another and a longer silence, during which Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted from face to face, while beyond the rose a smile writhed on his lips.

“I suppose you have brought me down here, Pendyce, to give you my opinion,” he said at last. “Well; don't let these matters come into court. If there is anything you can do to prevent it, do it. If your pride stands in the way, put it in your pocket. If your sense of truth stands in the way, forget it. Between personal delicacy and our law of divorce there is no relation; between absolute truth and our law of divorce there is no relation. I repeat, don't let these matters come into court. Innocent and guilty, you will all suffer; the innocent will suffer more than the guilty, and nobody will benefit. I have come to this conclusion deliberately. There are cases in which I should give the opposite opinion. But in this case, I repeat, there's nothing to be gained by it. Once more, then, don't let these matters come into court. Don't give people's tongues a chance. Take my advice, appeal to George again to give you that promise. If he refuses, well, we must try and bluff Bellew out of it.”

Mr. Pendyce had listened, as he had formed the habit of listening to Edmund Paramor, in silence. He now looked up and said:

“It's all that red-haired ruffian's spite. I don't know what you were about to stir things up, Vigil. You must have put him on the scent.” He looked moodily at Gregory. Mr. Barter, too, looked at Gregory with a sort of half-ashamed defiance.

Gregory, who had been staring at his untouched wineglass, turned his face, very flushed, and began speaking in a voice that emotion and anger caused to tremble. He avoided looking at the Rector, and addressed himself to Mr. Paramor.

“George can't give up the woman who has trusted herself to him; that would be playing the cur, if you like. Let them go and live together honestly until they can be married. Why do you all speak as if it were the man who mattered? It is the woman that we should protect!”

The Rector first recovered speech.

“You're talking rank immorality,” he said almost good-humouredly.

Mr. Pendyce rose.

“Marry her!” he cried. “What on earth—that's worse than all—the very thing we're trying to prevent! We've been here, father and son—father and son—for generations!”

“All the more shame,” burst out Gregory, “if you can't stand by a woman at the end of them——!”

Mr. Paramor made a gesture of reproof.

“There's moderation in all things,” he said. “Are you sure that Mrs. Bellew requires protection? If you are right, I agree; but are you right?”

“I will answer for it,” said Gregory.

Mr. Paramor paused a full minute with his head resting on his hand.

“I am sorry,” he said at last, “I must trust to my own judgment.”

The Squire looked up.

“If the worst comes to the worst, can I cut the entail, Paramor?”

“No.”

“What? But that's all wrong—that's——”

“You can't have it both ways,” said Mr. Paramor.

The Squire looked at him dubiously, then blurted out:

“If I choose to leave him nothing but the estate, he'll soon find himself a beggar. I beg your pardon, gentlemen; fill your glasses! I'm forgetting everything!”

The Rector filled his glass.

“I've said nothing so far,” he began; “I don't feel that it's my business. My conviction is that there's far too much divorce nowadays. Let this woman go back to her husband, and let him show her where she's to blame”—his voice and his eyes hardened—“then let them forgive each other like Christians. You talk,” he said to Gregory, “about standing up for the woman. I've no patience with that; it's the way immorality's fostered in these days. I raise my voice against this sentimentalism. I always have, and I always shall!”

Gregory jumped to his feet.

“I've told you once before,” he said, “that you were indelicate; I tell you so again.”

Mr. Barter got up, and stood bending over the table, crimson in the face, staring at Gregory, and unable to speak.

“Either you or I,” he said at last, stammering with passion, “must leave this room!”

Gregory tried to speak; then turning abruptly, he stepped out on to the terrace, and passed from the view of those within.

The Rector said:

“Good-night, Pendyce; I'm going, too!”

The Squire shook the hand held out to him with a face perplexed to sadness. There was silence when Mr. Barter had left the room.

The Squire broke it with a sigh.

“I wish we were back at Oxenham's, Paramor. This serves me right for deserting the old house. What on earth made me send George to Eton?”

Mr. Paramor buried his nose in the vase. In this saying of his old schoolfellow was the whole of the Squire's creed:

'I believe in my father, and his father, and his father's father, the makers and keepers of my estate; and I believe in myself and my son and my son's son. And I believe that we have made the country, and shall keep the country what it is. And I believe in the Public Schools, and especially the Public School that I was at. And I believe in my social equals and the country house, and in things as they are, for ever and ever. Amen.'

Mr. Pendyce went on:

“I'm not a Puritan, Paramor; I dare say there are allowances to be made for George. I don't even object to the woman herself; she may be too good for Bellew; she must be too good for a fellow like that! But for George to marry her would be ruination. Look at Lady Rose's case! Anyone but a star-gazing fellow like Vigil must see that! It's taboo! It's sheer taboo! And think—think of my—my grandson! No, no, Paramor; no, no, by God!”

The Squire covered his eyes with his hand.

Mr. Paramor, who had no son himself, answered with feeling:

“Now, now, old fellow; it won't come to that!”

“God knows what it will come to, Paramor! My nerve's shaken! You know yourself that if there's a divorce he'll be bound to marry her!”

To this Mr. Paramor made no reply, but pressed his lips together.

“There's your poor dog whining,” he said.

And without waiting for permission he opened the door. Mrs. Pendyce and the spaniel John came in. The Squire looked up and frowned. The spaniel John, panting with delight, rubbed against him. 'I have been through torment, master,' he seemed to say. 'A second separation at present is not possible for me!'

Mrs. Pendyce stood waiting silently, and Mr. Paramor addressed himself to her.

“You can do more than any of us, Mrs. Pendyce, both with George and with this man Bellew—and, if I am not mistaken, with his wife.”

The Squire broke in:

“Don't think that I'll have any humble pie eaten to that fellow Bellew!”

The look Mr. Paramor gave him at those words, was like that of a doctor diagnosing a disease. Yet there was nothing in the expression of the Squire's face with its thin grey whiskers and moustache, its twist to the left, its swan-like eyes, decided jaw, and sloping brow, different from what this idea might bring on the face of any country gentleman.

Mrs. Pendyce said eagerly

“Oh, Mr. Paramor, if I could only see George!”

She longed so for a sight of her son that her thoughts carried her no further.

“See him!” cried the Squire. “You'll go on spoiling him till he's disgraced us all!”

Mrs. Pendyce turned from her husband to his solicitor. Excitement had fixed an unwonted colour in her cheeks; her lips twitched as if she wished to speak.

Mr. Paramor answered for her:

“No, Pendyce; if George is spoilt, the system is to blame.”

“System!” said the Squire. “I've never had a system for him. I'm no believer in systems! I don't know what you're talking of. I have another son, thank God!”

Mrs. Pendyce took a step forward.

“Horace,” she said, “you would never——”

Mr. Pendyce turned from his wife, and said sharply:

“Paramor, are you sure I can't cut the entail?”

“As sure,” said Mr. Paramor, “as I sit here!”

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