When she married Francis, ambition was stirred in her and satisfied. Through the long years at St. Withans she bore him children with great regularity and also with the indifference of an automaton. She regarded herself as a perfect wife because she was faithful, and as a perfect mother for no other reason than that she was a mother. When her children offended her she chastised them, when they pleased her she kissed and fondled them. On the whole she brought them up on the principle of Rabelais’ Abbé: Fais ce que vouldras. On that principle also she conducted her own life, but, unhappily, she never wanted anything much.
She believed herself to be a Christian. She was so familiar with the Bible that it had absolutely no meaning for her. Her memory was astonishing, so that she did not need to read the book. Her childhood had been spent in an atmosphere of great piety, and she had absorbed the whole Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, through the pores of her skin rather than through her brains. What most nearly penetrated her consciousness was, curiously enough, the prophecies of the end of the world: There shall be wars and rumours of wars, and every now and then she indulged herself in the luxury of terror, reading signs in everything. She was extremely superstitious and would never walk under a ladder, nor sit thirteen at a table, and when a mirror was broken in the house or salt was spilt or knives were crossed, she would see in the next disaster, great or small, the infallible consequence. She was delighted when she met a hunchback in the street, for that portended luck; alarmed on an encounter with a cross-eyed woman, for that boded no good. Her mind was like a dusty empty room, the door of which was sealed with cobwebs, showing that she had not for many years passed out nor had any entered in. She was romantic and picturesque, loving the romance of fiction, and entirely oblivious of the romance of fact. Only twice in her life did she deliver herself of utterances the least philosophical, and as, being what she was, her sincerity must remain suspect, neither can be taken as giving a clue to the inward workings of her mind. These are they:
(1) Long after Gertrude was married and had lived through her little tragi-comedy she said:
“All men are beasts. I married the best of them, and he’s a beast.”
(2) When one of her grandchildren—(this being a digression we may skirmish up and down the alleys of time)—beset by philosophic doubt, wanted to know what was going to happen to the world she made this pronunciamento:
“The world will go on getting worse and worse until the end of everything comes, just as the Bible tells you. There shall be wars and rumours of wars, . . . &c.”
At the back of her mind during all her adult life was the belief in the proximity of the end of the world, and in her inevitable translation to divine regions, where, with her husband, she would live an untroubled and unsexed life of uninterrupted habit. She took her husband with her, partly because he was a clergyman and had a prescriptive right to a heavenly mansion, but chiefly because, after so many years, she was unable to conceive of an existence without him. It was all very hazy, but it was towards this future that she turned when she said her prayers morning and evening. This she did as mechanically as she dressed and undressed, between which two operations she devoted herself to her public duties as rector’s wife—Bible classes, mothers’ meetings, and mission work—and to the cultivation of the nearest approach to a passion in her existence, gentility. She spent many solitary hours in the drawing-room because she could not sit with Francis in his study, as she disliked the smell of tobacco and detested his allegiance to a clay pipe. She was hardly ever known to stoop to enter the kitchen.
Withal her authority was never questioned, and she obtained from her family, their friends and acquaintances, the homage and service she expected.
She was a match-maker, and no combination of male and female was too grotesque for her. She was delighted with Gertrude’s engagement. Bennett Lawrie’s personality lent itself to sentimental heroics, and she was more than a little in love with him herself—as a little girl is in love with the first-comer. Minna’s plurality in affairs of the heart baffled and annoyed her, for in love she always looked for constancy. She had marked down Streeten Folyat for Mary, though, beyond sending a brace of grouse every August, he showed little sign of desiring the more acquaintance of his cousins. . . . Annette and Serge she left unmated, of Serge she was afraid, and of Annette she took little account. But for Frederic she had planned many famous weddings and had laid countless traps for him. He never saw her scheming, but, going his own way, he ever evaded her until, having failed in her higher flights, she came to look nearer home. The Clibran-Bells had inherited money, and there was only one life between them and a large fortune, so that all the girls would possess some three hundred a year, while George would eventually be a man of large means, for the money came through Mrs. Clibran-Bell and avoided Mr. Clibran-Bell altogether. This sudden and unexpected outcrop of wealth occasioned great excitement in Fern Square, and the Clibran-Bells added another servant to their two. They also made a gift of two new altar-cloths and a chalice to the church. One of the altar-cloths was worked by Jessie Clibran-Bell with embroidery and appliqué. She was an accomplished needlewoman, had many little talents, and she was intelligent and pious. She was the eldest of the family and the most nearly beautiful. Her nose was straight and like her mother’s, whereas her sisters had unfortunately gone to their father for their noses and got them of an unwomanly hugeness. Mrs. Folyat selected Jessie for Frederic, and soon perceived, what had escaped her before, that she was in love with him.