“No; but I have read a review of it. That, as I told Hugh, was enough.”
Mrs. Owen hesitated.
“Now I’m going to be very brave,” she said. “I am going to ask you to see it. There is something in it, is there not, Mr. Grainger, which somehow redeems the painful character of the plot. It is not wrong-doing that one condones, I think; it is the dreadful punishment that one pities. Surely one may pity everyone who is being punished, however justly.”
Then Canon Alington made an enormous concession.
“I do not wish to condemn the play unheard,” he said. “And when I am in town next I will go to see it. But I don’t think anybody but you could have persuaded me to! You see, I hold very strong views on the question of what are fit subjects for Art to treat of. I believe that the object of all Art is to raise our aspirations, to make us braver, better than we were. But pity, I allow, is a Christian virtue. I confess I had not thought of the play in that light. From what I read, I drew a very different conclusion; indeed, it inspired me with the subject I am going to talk about on Tuesday at the Literific.”
Mrs. Owen clapped her hands, not having heard what was known in Mannington as the Canon’s “last portmanteau-word.”
“Literific!” she cried. “How delightful! What a sweet portmanteau. And is the paper written? And what is its title? Is it fair to ask?”
“Yes, Agnes sent out the cards this afternoon, did you not, dear? So it is no longer a secret. I call it: ‘The True Test of Literary and Artistic Immortality.’”
Mrs. Owen’s face beamed at the thought.
“And now,” she said, “I am going to be very brave again. Might we, dear Canon Alington, hear a little of it, just a little, if it would not tire you, after dinner? It would be such a treat!”