Never again did he conduct Divine service in any church.
He felt infinitely happier when he had done this, and a new brightness came to Mrs. Folyat and Mary when they knew they were to escape from the town where they had come by so much suffering, and the numbing monotony of a rather idle existence in drab surroundings. They set their faces southwards, for they had decided to live in Potsham, where Francis had held his first curacy. They were going to live in Crabtrees, where Francis Folyat and Martha Brett had met and loved each other so long ago, and all day long Francis would be busy in the garden running down to the river, and all day long Martha would sit in the gazebo and look out at the water, and see the tide coming in, and the herons fishing, and the boats go sailing by, all as it had been long ago, peaceful and beautiful. . . . Already, weeks before they could go, the peace of it began to fill the house in Burdley Park, and the dark past slipped away from them and Francis began to feel the richness of old age, when best and worst have been done, and the fruits of reflection can be gathered in.
Often as he sat working in the greenhouse, or in the study turning over his books—he had gone back to the loves of his early days, Fielding and Don Quixote—Francis would think of Serge, and the day when together they had walked away from Mrs. Entwistle’s cottage. That memory preoccupied him more and more, and he felt a desire to see Annie Lipsett again before he went away. She wrote to him at long intervals to let him know that she had not forgotten. His feeling about the episode had always been spiced with the joy of forbidden things. It had been entirely separate from the rest of his life, and yet, unknown to him, it had informed the whole of it, and, in his most need, had given him the assurance of love and mercy which had upheld him in the face of the doctrine and dogma of his Church, even though he had seemed to himself to be upholding the Church by the sacrifice of himself.
He found Annie Lipsett busy and thoughtful. She was going to be married to an auctioneer who had been a lodger in her mother’s house. She had just had a letter from Serge in Ceylon and its friendliness had removed her last anxieties.
“You see, sir,” she said to Francis, “Mr. Serge found me when everything was as complicated as that piece of lace, and he made it all simple. And after that, being with him made one able to bear everything, because one felt that, whatever it was, it would go away. He used to say that being unhappy and dark in your mind was just the same as being unwell in your body, and if it was taken in time there was always a cure for it. So funny he used to be about it. He was always talking to me about the boy, and he used to say that I must teach him nothing, because children are always right by themselves until they begin to imitate grown-up people, and bad things are easier to imitate than good because they are grotesque, and grown-up people have always to be learning good things from children over and over again.”
“I have never forgotten that day when I came to see you.”
“Nor I, sir.”
“We’re going away, for ever. It is queer, but you are the only person whom I really wanted to see before I left. We have never seemed to belong to this place.”
“I used to hate it too, but Mr. Serge made me laugh at it all. He said it was just an accident, though I didn’t know what he meant by that. I often didn’t really understand Mr. Serge, except about the boy, but then I could see that everything he said was true.”
“I hope you will be very, very happy.”