The optimist

by E. M. Delafield

(ii)

“On the 18th November, suddenly, at Bombay, David, beloved elder son of Canon Morchard of St. Gwenllian Vicarage....”

Owen Quentillian was away from Stear when he read the announcement, with a strong sense of shock.

Why should David Morchard die?

He wrote to the Canon, and also, after a little hesitation, to Flora Morchard.

As he half expected, Flora’s reply told him more than the Canon’s numerous pages.

“My Dear Owen:

“Thank you for your letter. We knew that you would be sorry, and would understand what this must be to my father, and all of us. He is so brave and good, and everyone is kindness itself. We do not know anything at all except the bare fact, which was cabled from the Regimental headquarters, and it will probably be another three weeks before letters can reach us. If you like, I will write again when they do. We shall want to see you very much when you get back to Stear. Father speaks of you so often, as though it would be a comfort to him to see you again.

“Yours sincerely,
“Flora Morchard.”

The Canon’s minute legible handwriting covered several pages, and he, like Flora, but at far greater length, emphasized the kindness shown to him.

“My people here have shown feeling such as I dare hardly dwell upon, lest I overset altogether such composure as I may have won. Some of them, of course, remember our dear, dear fellow well, young though he was when he left us. But even those who never knew him speak such words as well-nigh break one’s heart with gratitude and pity and tenderness. I tell myself that whatever is, must be best, and yet, Owen, the longing, that I can only trust may not be repining, to have had but one day—one hour—together, before this blow fell! It was so long since we had spoken together! And sometimes I reproached him for his long silences, for the absence of the details that one longed for, in his letters home. How could I, ah, how could I, I now ask myself sadly, who will receive no more letters from him again. How one learns to be gentle, as the years go on, but the day comes when each unloving word, each selfish thought, comes back to break one’s heart! And yet, Owen, who could have thought that I should be left, who have seen nigh on three-score years, and that strong, gallant lad taken in the very strength of his manhood. Truly, God’s ways are not our ways.

“It does not bear writing of. We must have many long talks together, when you are with us again. What a contrast to that first visit of yours, Owen, when our numbers were yet unbroken, save indeed that first, great gap that only Lucilla and the dear lad who is gone, could realize. At least, their mother has one with her!

“When you first came to us after the war, it was to give us direct news of our beloved boy. I seem to remember some merry gatherings then, with Lucilla and Flora ‘making musik,’ and Valeria all fun and brightness—I can write of her freely, dear Owen, can I not—the old wound is healed now?—and Adrian still the veriest boy, the light and sunshine of the house.

“You will find change and stillness and emptiness about the old place, now. All are scattered, only Flora left in the empty nest. I can find no words to tell you what she has been, Owen. Friend, companion, daughter, comforter! Of all my children, Flora and Lucilla are the two who have never failed me, never failed their own higher selves. And Lucilla, as you know, is away from us at present. Poor child! What a punishment for her self-will in leaving us.

“Flora and poor Clover have spared me in every possible way these days, and whilst I have them, I can indeed never think myself wholly desolate. Letters will not reach us yet awhile from India, and one longs, and yet dreads, to receive them. There may be one from our poor lad himself—yet why do I call him ‘poor,’ when he is so far more blest than we who are left? We can only conjecture that cholera or fever struck him down, he said nothing of sickness in his last letter, and whatever it was must have come upon him with fearful suddenness. One can only hope and pray that the Infinite Mercy allowed him time to meet the dread King of Terrors as one knows that he would have wished to do, but all, all is in other hands than ours.

“I have said nothing of your letter, dear Owen, my heart is too full. Let me answer it in person. Both Flora and I look for your return with eagerness and hope to persuade you to come to us at least for a day or two. You knew our loved one, and it is not so long since you and he met. How I envy you that meeting now! We have heard of it all in detail, I know, but you will have patience, and go over it all once more with us. The only thing that gives one courage to face the present (saving always that far-reaching Comfort which one knows to be there, but which poor humanity cannot always feel) is a mournful, tender lingering over the past. Nor must you fear that I always weep, dear Owen—there is often absolute rest and joy in dwelling on the past happiness that one knows to be only a shadow and faint forecasting of the Joy that is to come.

“Bless you, dear fellow, and though I have said so little of thanks for all the sympathy and understanding in your dear letter, do not think of me as anything but profoundly touched and grateful.

“Sorrowfully and ever affectionately yours,
“Fenwick Morchard.”

Quentillian folded the letter and put it away.

He mentally visualized the silent and grief-stricken house, and his heart contracted strangely.

Valeria had gone, and would come back no more. Her heart was given to her new life, to her new country. Lucilla was with her. Adrian—the Adrian of the Canon’s tender love and pride—had never been. David, who had not wanted to come home, who had left “long intervals” between his scanty letters—David was dead.

There was only Flora left at St. Gwenllian.

He thought that he could see her, remote and austere, either devoid of capability for human emotion, or regarding emotional display as rebellion against Heaven. He had never known which. Flora would move about the cold, silent house, and write the letters, and give the orders, and remember the sane, everyday things that must be done. She would be helped by the eager, anxious curate. Mr. Clover would remember things, too, but he would not, like Flora, accomplish them in silence. He would suggest, and remind, and humbly and timidly deprecate his own efforts.

Quentillian could see the Canon, too.

The Canon would spare himself nothing, but he would break down, with gusts of overwhelming sorrow and bitter remorse for his own want of resignation. He would write, and write, and write, in the lonely study, often blinded with tears, yet deriving his realest comfort from the outward expression of his grief.

Quentillian could accept that, now, could realize it as the interpretation of a sincerity at least as complete as his own.

Within the fortnight, he went to St. Gwenllian. It was all very much as he had pictured it to himself. Only Flora was a little, a very little, less remote than he had expected to find her.

He thought that she dreaded the arrival of the letters from India, and feared their effect upon her father.

When the mail did arrive, the letters were brief, and said that David Morchard had died in hospital of dysentery after three days’ illness. The colonel of the regiment wrote in praise of a career interrupted abruptly, and a parcel of effects was promised.

There was no more.

“Such letters have become so sadly common in the last few years,” said the Canon wistfully. “How can one hope that in each individual case the writer will realize the yearning with which one looks for one personal touch—one word to show that all was well.”

“Perhaps they will write from the hospital—the chaplain or the matron,—when they send the things,” Quentillian suggested.

He, too, was faintly disappointed and puzzled at the reticence of the letters.

Flora’s face, set in its sad composure, told him nothing of her feelings.

But the day following brought him enlightenment from Flora herself.

They were sent out for a walk together.

“Take her for a walk, dear Owen,” said the Canon solicitously. “Flora is pale, and cold. She has shut herself up too much of late. Go, my child, I shall do very well, and can find only too much to occupy me. Enjoy the fresh air.”

Flora made no protestations of inability to enjoy herself, nor any assumption of indispensability at home. It was the Canon, again, who suggested an errand to a distant cottage, and she acquiesced without comment.

It was a cold, grey day, with swiftly moving masses of cloud and a chill in the wind. Flora and Owen walked quickly, and at first neither spoke. Then Flora said:

“How much, exactly, were you a friend of David’s?”

His own surprise made Quentillian realize afresh how very seldom it was that Flora initiated any topic of a personal nature.

“We were not intimate,” he replied.

“It was more the time that you spent with us here, when you were a little boy, than anything else, that established a relationship between you?”

“I suppose it was.”

“I think you are very much interested in people, and Lucilla says that you are very observant,” said Flora, smiling a little. “Would you mind telling me, quite dispassionately, if David was popular with other men—the officers in his regiment, for instance?”

He did not understand at what her question aimed, but replied with unhesitating candour.

“I should say he was very popular. He was a good sportsman, and everyone liked him, although as far as I know he wasn’t a man of intimate friendships. That type isn’t.”

“No. You see, Owen, there have been no letters from people who were in India with him, although you say he was popular. Only just those few lines from the Colonel. And I was afraid before—and I’m afraid now—” She stopped.

“Of what?”

“That it wasn’t dysentery, or anything like that. That they’re keeping the truth from us out of pity, or to save some scandal. I—I can’t get it out of my mind, Owen.”

He heard her with something that was not altogether surprise. Subconsciously, he felt that his own uneasiness had been only dormant.

“Have you anything beyond intuition, to go upon?”

“No.”

“Why have you told me?”

He felt certain that she had not spoken merely in order to be reassured, nor in order to find relief. Speaking was no relief to Flora, so far as Owen could see.

“I want you to try and find out definitely.”

“Yes. And supposing I do, supposing that what you fear is true—” he hesitated.

“That David took his own life?” said Flora, shuddering. “Then, don’t you see, Owen, I shall have to tell Father—or else to make it absolutely certain that no one will ever tell him.”

“You can’t,” said Owen gently.

“But I must,” she told him, with the same intensity. “He’s had a great deal to bear already, and this would be worse than anything. Suicide is a mortal sin. Bodily separation, one can resign oneself to—he is resigning himself, poor Father, to separation from nearly all those whom he loves,—but suicide would mean eternal separation. It would be worse than anything—the loss of David’s soul.”

“I see.”

Quentillian did indeed see.

“Val, and Adrian, and David—they’ve all gone away from him,” said Flora. “Only he knows there is another life, so much more real and enduring than this one, to which he looks. It means everything to him. If David did do—that—then the hope of meeting him again, in eternity, is gone.”

Quentillian felt the force of her low-spoken, anguished statement.

“You are taking it for granted that a suspicion—which after all, rests on very little indeed—is true.”

“You see, if I am to safeguard my father from this thing, I can’t very well afford to wait and do nothing, just because there’s quite a big chance that it isn’t true at all. The chance that it is true, may be infinitesimal—the hundredth chance, if you like—but it’s that which I’ve got to think about, not the other. Optimism doesn’t carry one far enough, in preparing a line of defence.”

“I agree with you.”

“I don’t think that either you or I are optimists, Owen,” said Flora, faintly smiling.

“No.”

“That’s why I want you to help me. Can you make enquiries at any of the headquarter places in London where they might know something?”

“I can try.”

“Thank you very much,” said Flora, as though his unenthusiastic assent had closed the subject.

They went along the muddy road in silence.

It was from no sense that it was necessary to break it, that Quentillian spoke again at last.

“Will Lucilla come back to England at once?”

“I don’t think so. She promised to stay till the spring. You know Val has another little boy? I wish we could see them, but Father will never really be happy about Val, I’m afraid. He forgave her, long ago, but he doesn’t forget things, ever, I don’t think.”

“I don’t consider that the Canon had anything to forgive,” said Quentillian in tones of finality.

“But he does.”

If Quentillian had expected a certain meed of recognition for the magnanimity of his point of view, he was not destined to be gratified. Flora spoke rather as one giving utterance to an obvious platitude.

“Is Val happy?”

“Very. She has exactly what she always really wanted. Sometimes they have a servant, but most of the time she does everything herself, and has occasional help. She is so happy with the two little boys, too, all her letters are about them, and about the house, and all they’re doing to improve it. She’s got the life that she was really meant for, and after all, isn’t that what makes happiness?”

“I suppose it is. She was meant for the primitive things, you think?”

“Lucilla always said so. There is the cottage, Owen. Will you wait outside, or come in?”

“I should like to come in with you.”

Life was inartistic, Quentillian reflected whimsically, while Flora delivered her father’s message to a middle-aged woman in an apron.

To accord with all literary conventions, there should have been a sick child in the cottage, and Flora’s tender soothing of its fretfulness should have proved a revelation of the unfulfilled maternal instinct within her.

But there was no sick child to provide a clou for Quentillian’s observations in psychology, and he was by no means assured of Flora’s powers of soothing. Rather would she urge the silence of resignation.

He was convinced that never in her life had Flora Morchard been the centre of a pretty picture. That her personality seldom dominated any scene was not, he felt, from any conscious effacement, but from an innate and instinctive withdrawal of her forces to some unseen objective, to her infinitely worth while. He reflected with dismay on his own undertaking to make enquiries concerning the death of David Morchard. But he did not think that Flora, whatever the result of the enquiries, would be dismayed. Dismay implied mental disarray, a quality of taken-abackness. Flora, as she would herself have told him, was strong in a strength not her own.

They walked back together almost in silence.

“Your little expedition did Flora good,” the Canon told Quentillian that evening. “I am grateful to you, dear fellow, very grateful. Let us see something of you still, from Stear. It means a great deal to us both. There must not be ‘good-bye’ between us, save for the beautiful old meaning of the word, ‘God by you.’ God by you always, dear Owen.”

Quentillian went to London, made no discoveries at all, and wrote to Flora.

She replied, thanking him, in the briefest of notes. A week later he received another letter from her.

“My Dear Owen:

“The Indian mail came in yesterday, and brought me a letter from David, written a week before he died. He asked me to break it to my father that a Major Carey, in his regiment, was on his way home to take divorce proceedings against his wife, citing David as co-respondent. David asked me in the letter to do anything I could for Mrs. Carey, as she is by herself, with no relations in England. The case was to be undefended, and David had decided to leave the Army and come to England as soon as possible to marry Mrs. Carey. I gather that he was very unhappy, especially at having to leave the regiment. I still do not know whether he found a dreadful solution to the whole question, in taking his own life.

“Mrs. Carey has written to Father, a strange note, which he showed me. She says nothing of the divorce proceedings, but only writes as a great friend of David’s, imploring to be allowed to see us. Naturally, Father is only too anxious to see her, and as she says that she is on her way to Scotland at once, we are coming to London on the 10th so as to meet her.

“I have told Father nothing whatever of David’s letter to me. I cannot imagine that Mrs. Carey will want to make the facts known to him, but I shall be able to judge better when I have seen her, which I have decided to do, by myself, before the appointment with Father.

“I can arrange this a great deal better with your help than without it, therefore will you come and see us on the evening we arrive—Thursday the 10th, at about six o’clock, Carrowby’s Hotel?

“Please destroy this letter.

“Yours sincerely,
“Flora Morchard.”

Quentillian, as he read Flora’s unvarnished statements, felt a sensation as of being appalled.

He could not believe that Flora, fanatically single-minded as her determination to shield her father from the knowledge of the truth might be, had any conception of the difficulties that probably lay before her, and he asked himself also whether she had in any degree realized what the consequences must be to the Canon, far more than to herself, of a deception that should break down half way.

His absolute conviction of Flora’s inflexibility, and his own strong sense of the impertinence, in both the proper and the colloquial sense of the word, of offering unasked advice, were not enough to restrain him from the mental composition of several eloquent and elaborate expositions of opinion. But they sufficed to restrain him from transferring the eloquence to a sheet of notepaper.

He went to Carrowby’s Hotel, to keep the appointment summarily made by Flora.

“You dear man!”

The Canon’s exclamation of pleasure rang through the dingy hotel sitting-room in which Quentillian found them. He always showed the same pleasure in seeing Owen, and Owen’s old sense of inadequacy had insensibly given place to a rather remorseful gratitude.

“Is this the doing of Flora? She told me that she should notify you of our coming, but it is good to meet with a friend’s face so early. Our stay is to be a very brief one. I have to return home for the Sunday. I cannot leave all in Clover’s hands. Besides, I trust there will be no need. You know the errand on which we are come?”

“I told him in my letter,” said Flora.

“This lady, this Mrs. Carey, had seen much of our dear fellow in India and her letter is full of feeling—full of feeling. She heard nothing of our tragedy until she landed in England. It seems that she had been in ill-health for some time, she writes of complete prostration, and is on her way to Scotland now. So you will understand our hasty journey hither. Has it not indeed been with us, ‘Ask and ye shall receive’? Flora, here, knows what my yearning has been for one word with those who knew him, who had been with him recently. And behold! it has been given unto me, ‘full measure, heaped up, pressed down and running over’.”

The Canon leant back. He looked very tired and old.

“Do you see her tomorrow morning, sir?”

“We go to her, Owen. She is good enough to receive us on Saturday morning, and I understand that she leaves that evening. Tomorrow I have a conference in the afternoon, but the morning is our own.”

He gazed wistfully at Owen.

“I had thought of a memorial window to the beloved David, and this is an opportunity which may not come again. I have the name of a place to which I half thought of going, if it be not too trying for little Flora.”

“Let me accompany you,” said Quentillian.

It was evidently what the Canon wished.

“Will you, dear lad? I own that I should be glad of your arm, aye, and your presence. Flora is overwrought and overtired.”

She did indeed look very ill, not at all to Quentillian’s surprise.

“She has been taking too much thought for me, dear child,” said the Canon, Quentillian could not help thinking with more truth than he realized. “I wish Flora to take some rest. Let the expedition tomorrow be yours and mine, Owen. Tell me, my daughter, what time am I free?”

“Tomorrow morning, till twelve o’clock. Your conference is at two.”

“Flora is my deputy secretary,” said the Canon smiling. “I trust it all to her, and her memory is unfailing. She is indeed my right hand.”

“Will you come at ten o’clock tomorrow, Owen, and start from here?” said Flora abruptly.

He assented, determined to obtain an opportunity of speaking to her alone. If he was to assist Flora in a scheme of concealment against which he inwardly revolted strongly, he must at least know of what that scheme consisted. His indignation waxed in proportion to his anxiety, until Flora said to him with deliberation:

“Ought we to keep you any longer, Owen? I’ll ring for the lift.” The suggestion took them both out of the room, and she closed the door after her.

“What is it you’re doing?” said Quentillian, his urgency too great for a choice of words.

She leant against the passage wall, white and rather breathless, but spoke low and very distinctly, as though to impress her facts upon him.

“Listen—I want you to be quite clear about it. The appointment with Mrs. Carey is for tomorrow—Friday morning. I’m going to her house. I’m certain from her letter, that she’s not a woman to be trusted. I don’t know why she wants to see us, but I think it’s to tell us things—things about David. I shall know when I’ve seen her.”

“But your father thinks the appointment is for Saturday?”

“I told him it was. I wrote the letter to arrange it.”

“And how are you to prevent his going there on Saturday?”

“She leaves for Scotland on Friday night.”

“You know that for certain?”

“Of course I do, Owen. One doesn’t leave these things to chance. But I shall telephone on Saturday and find out if she’s really left.”

“I still don’t understand altogether. How can you explain to the Canon that this lady isn’t there, when he goes by appointment to see her?”

“I shall have made a mistake. I’m keeping his engagements written down for him. And I shall have written down this engagement for Saturday, instead of for Friday. He will go exactly one day too late.”

“Flora, you can’t do it.”

She lifted tired eyes to his face, overwrought to the point of fanaticism.

“Don’t waste time. Only tell me if I can count on you. All I want you to do is to keep Father out, with you, tomorrow morning. I shall be at Mrs. Carey’s at half-past ten and I promise to be back here before one o’clock.”

“Suppose this lady is not what you think her, and you find that she will be—discreet—is your father to be disappointed of his hopes of seeing her?”

“I may be able to arrange something. Perhaps she’d put off going to Scotland, and see him on Saturday after all. It would be all right then, wouldn’t it? Or I might even be able to tell her the whole thing,” said Flora wistfully. “It isn’t very likely, though.”

He did not think that it was.

“You see, you didn’t see her original letter, and I did. It was the letter of a very hysterical person. She might say almost anything, I imagine and—well, there’s a good deal that mustn’t be said, isn’t there?”

It was incontrovertible, but Quentillian said roughly:

“I detest maneuvering, it’s utterly unworthy of you. All this juggling with dates and letters——”

“It’s no use doing things by halves,” said Flora stubbornly. “Yes or no, Owen, are you going to back me up if necessary?”

“If I say no, will it deter you from going through with this insane performance?”

“Of course it won’t.” She actually smiled. “What would be the sense of making up one’s mind if it’s to be unmade again just because one’s friends don’t agree with one?”

“Very well.” He shrugged his shoulders as one in desperation.

She evidently accepted it as the assent, however ungracious, that he meant it to be.

“Thank you very much,” said Flora with brief finality.