(iv)
In the spring Lucilla came back to St. Gwenllian.
The first time that Owen saw her was in the presence of the Canon.
In his relief at her return, Canon Morchard had evidently forgotten that he had thought it undutiful of her to go.
“You see I have my right hand once more,” he said fondly. “Owen here can tell you that you have been sadly missed, my daughter. Little Flora did her best, but she is not my housekeeper, my experienced secretary. Neither she nor our poor Valeria can equal Lucilla there.”
Quentillian took his advantage and asked Lucilla for news of Valeria. The Canon, habitually, seemed only too much inclined to view any mention of Valeria and her husband as a rank indecency in the presence of her quondam betrothed.
“Val is very well and very busy,” said Lucilla. “George is doing well, on the whole, though it’s a struggle, but the land there is wonderful. I should like to show you the photographs of their little farm, and the children.”
“Lucilla is our photographer,” said the Canon forbearingly, as though in extenuation of what Quentillian felt certain that he regarded as Lucilla’s indiscretion.
Not for the first time, Quentillian suspected that Lucilla was the only one of the Canon’s children able to contemplate the Canon by the light of a sense of humour, that detracted not at all from her affection and respect.
“They are not thinking of a visit to England, I suppose?”
“No. Expense is a consideration, and there are the children.”
“My grandsons!” said the Canon. “I should like a sight of my grandsons, but there could not be unalloyed joy in the meeting. Nay, I ask myself sometimes if there can be any unalloyed joy here below. Are not the warp and woof intermingled even in the nearest and dearest relationships? And the manner of poor Valeria’s leaving home was such as to make one’s heart ache, both for her and with her. But enough of reminiscences, my children. I am in no mood for them tonight. I wish to rest, and perhaps read. You may some of you remember a very favourite old story of mine,” said Canon Morchard genially. “That of the famous saying, ‘We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest.’”
This terrible pronouncement, however historical, seldom amused the juniors of its raconteur, and Flora and Lucilla only accorded to it the most perfunctory of smiles. Owen Quentillian remained entirely grave.
“No one has more admiration than myself for the quality of infallibility,” the Canon continued, humourously “(always provided that it is not that which is claimed by the Pope of Rome), but I must confess that I am not amongst those who take the modern craze for youthful intellectuals very seriously. This being so, dear Owen, you will forgive me in that I have not yet read anything of yours. Tonight I have a free hour—a rare treat—and I am going to rectify the omission. Will you read aloud to us of your work, or is that too much to ask?”
It was indeed too much to ask, Owen felt.
He could have read his own work aloud with comparative complacency to any critic capable of taking it seriously, but to Canon Morchard the slight, cynical epigrams, the terse, essentially unsentimental rationalism of Owen’s views upon God and man, must come either as wanton impertinence, or as meaningless folly.
It was impossible to suppose that the Canon would keep either opinion to himself, and Quentillian felt it unlikely that he would either find himself capable of listening to him tolerantly, or be given an opportunity for demolishing his views.
“I think I had rather not inflict my trivialities upon you at all, sir,” he remarked, with truth, and yet with an absence of sincerity of which he felt that Lucilla, at all events, was quite as well aware as he was himself.
“I assure you that I’m not worth reading.”
“I shall judge of that for myself,” said the Canon kindly. “Was there not something in that Review that was sent to you, Flora?”
“Yes,” said Flora unwillingly.
“Fetch it, my dear.”
Quentillian cast his mind over his more recent productions, and was invaded by a grim dismay.
His opinion of the Canon’s literary judgment, where writings not directly connected with Church matters were concerned, was of the slightest, but he disliked the thought both of the pain that the elder man would feel in reading that which would offend his taste, and of the remonstrance that he would certainly believe it his duty to make.
It was a relief to him when Flora returned without the Review, and said:
“There is someone who wants to speak to you in the hall, Father. I’m so sorry.”
The Canon rose at once.
“‘The man who wants me is the man I want’,” he quoted, and left the room.
When the door had closed behind him, Flora said to her sister, with a certain ruthless disregard of Quentillian’s presence that at least established the earnestness of her concern:
“What shall we do?”
“Nothing,” said Lucilla laconically.
“But we can’t let him see that Review. Adrian sent it to me—it’s got something in it by that man Hale. Father would hate the whole thing.”
Lucilla looked at Quentillian.
“He won’t like my article, and I should very much prefer him not to read it,” said the author candidly.
She smiled slightly.
“It’s the one on the Myth of Self-Sacrifice?”
Owen nodded.
“It might have been worse,” said Lucilla. “It might have been the one in which you said that the parental instinct was only another name for the possessive instinct. And now I come to think of it, that one was called The Sanctification of Domestic Tyranny, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” said Quentillian, in a tone which struck himself as being rather that of a defiant child to its nurse.
“Well, Father would have liked that even less than the Myth of Self-Sacrifice, I imagine.”
She spoke without acrimony, without, in fact, any effect at all of personal bias, but Quentillian said dispassionately:
“You dislike the modern school of thought of which my writings are a feeble example. May I ask why you read them?”
“But I don’t dislike it, Owen,” she returned with a calm at least equal to his own. “As for what you write, I think you’re very often mistaken, but that doesn’t prevent my being interested.”
Quentillian was slightly taken aback at being considered mistaken, and still more at being told so. He had always respected Lucilla, both morally and intellectually, and he would have preferred to suppose the admiration mutual.
“Owen, haven’t you got anything else that he could have to read?” broke in Flora.
“Nothing that he would—care for,” answered Quentillian, who had very nearly said “Nothing that he would understand.”
“Father has asked for the Review, Flossie, and you’d better get it. You needn’t work yourself up about it. He knows its general character quite as well as you do.”
“I don’t think he ought to be allowed to make himself needlessly unhappy,” said Flora obstinately.
“You can’t prevent it.”
“I suppose it would be wrong to say that I don’t know where the Review is?”
“It would be foolish, which is worse,” said Lucilla curtly. Her un-moral pronouncement closed the discussion.
Flora, looking grave and unhappy, left the room, and presently returned with the instrument of destruction, as she evidently regarded the production.
“Let us hope that Canon Morchard will continue to be detained,” said Quentillian, not altogether ironically.
Flora made no reply.
In less than a quarter of an hour’s time, the Canon came back again, picked up the Review and made a careful scrutiny of the table of contents.
“The Myth of Self-Sacrifice?” he enunciated, with a strongly-enquiring inflexion in his tone, as though prepared to receive the writer’s instant assurance that he was not responsible for so strange a heading.
Owen desired to leave the room, but was mysteriously compelled to remain in it, glancing at intervals at the all-too expressive face of his reader.
The Canon read very attentively, pausing every now and then to turn back a page or two, as though comparing inconsistencies of text, and sometimes also turning on a page or two ahead, as if desirous of establishing the certainty that a conclusion was eventually to be attained. His eyebrows worked as he read, after a fashion habitual with him.
There had been evenings when Flora had made the slightest of pencil sketches, hardly caricaturing, but embodying, this peculiarity, for her father’s subsequent indulgent amusement. But no such artistic pleasantry was undertaken tonight. The atmosphere did not lend itself to pleasantry of any kind.
At last the Canon closed the volume, laid it down, and removed his glasses with some deliberation.
“Dear lad, I am disappointed.”
“I was afraid you would be.”
“Is this quite worthy of you?”
Owen felt that a reply either in the affirmative or in the negative, would be equally unsatisfactory, and made none.
“You have adopted the tone of the day to an extent for which I was by no means prepared,” the Canon said gently. “I am sorry for it, Owen—very sorry. I think you have heard me speak before of my dislike for the modern note, that emphasises the material aspect, that miscalls ugliness realism, and coarseness strength. Forgive me, dear Owen, if I hurt you, but this—this trivial flippancy of yours, has hurt me.”
Owen had no doubt that Canon Morchard spoke the truth.
“How emphatically he belongs to the generation that took the errors of other people to heart,” Quentillian reflected.
He felt no great sympathy with such vicarious distresses.
“There is so much that is sad and bad in life, that one longs to read of happiness, and hope, and beauty,” said the Canon. “Why not, dear Owen, seek out and write of the ‘something afar from the sphere of our sorrow’?”
“Because to my way of thinking, only first-hand impressions are of any value. The only value that any point of view of mine can lay claim to, must lie in its sincerity.”
“Words, words! You delude yourself with many words,” said the Canon sadly, rousing in Quentillian a strong desire to retort with the obvious tu quoque.
“Do not misunderstand me, dear fellow—there is talent there—perversely exercised, if you will, but talent. I cannot but believe that life has many lessons in store for you, and when you have learnt them, then you will write more kindly of human nature, more reverently of Divine.”
Hope was once more discernible in the Canon’s voice and on his face, and as he rose he laid his hand affectionately upon the young man’s arm. “Hoping all things—believing all things,” he murmured, as he left the room.
Quentillian was left to the certainty that his brief exposition of his literary credo had entirely failed to convey any meaning to the Canon, and that the long list of the Canon’s optimistic articles of faith now included his own regeneration.