Trimblerigg

by Laurence Housman

This she managed to do: and all day nursed her guilty secret that Davidina would arrive by a late train to know what was the matter. And as a consequence, as much as possible she avoided him.

Meanwhile Mr. Trimblerigg was thinking. Immediate conditions were conducive to a quiet examination of the problem; but though temporarily at ease, he was not getting more reconciled to the prospect. He had been long accustomed to hear and speak of people being overtaken in sin; but it had never entered his mind that, by a similar involuntary capitulation to a stronger power, they could also be overtaken in goodness—still less in goodness of so conspicuous a character, attaching itself like a disease, independent of the will.

‘The white flower of a blameless life’ was a poetic phrase which, like that other about sin, had passed into the currency of the language: and mentally he had always been able to wear it, and feel the better for the consciousness that it was there. But it was a different matter when becoming visible and almost concrete, it turned into an evening primrose, catching him by the hair of his head, and refusing to let go.

Martin’s question, ‘Is Father a holy man?’ was a child’s way of putting it; but substantially it was so much his own point of view about the visitation now afflicting him, that he began to wonder whether he might not get rid of it by ceasing to be holy. If he went into the kitchen and kissed the charwoman, if he made himself drunk, if he went down to the marine parade and extracted cigarettes from the automatic slot-machine by inserting metal discs instead of pennies, or if—to make the matter worse—he were to add sacrilege to dishonesty, go into the church and rob the poor box—if he did those or other similar things, would this outward expression of his sanctity take itself off—go away and leave him?

But while entertaining the fancy that it might do so, he more than doubted it; for he felt that in his own heart he would not be doing any of those things; that it would not really be him; internally his good qualities and motives would remain unaffected. On such lines it would be useless, therefore, to experiment.

But mentally was there nothing which, if sedulously entertained, might bring him back to a more mundane and normal condition? Here, as he sat on the shore, with his children building sand-castles near by, and his wife making domestic sounds in the bungalow behind him, could he not definitely will away the manifestation by a slight deflection from his high ideals towards what is called temptation?

He began to think of Isabel Sparling; and to think of her pleasurably; she was still attractive to him; and that he had once again held her in his arms counted for something, gave to youthful memories a livelier flavour—a bouquet which hitherto they had lacked. He and Isabel Sparling had become enemies—or rather she had become his, and had all the more remained so because he had successfully evaded and got the better of her. But he had always liked her, her pluck, her perseverance, her capacity, and the spark of zealous fire for a cause which had burned in her for years, and which nothing could quench. Provocative, annoying, unscrupulous and vindictive though she might be, she was never dull. He knew that with her he would have had a more uneasy time than with Caroline—yet now he wished—or told himself he wished—that he had taken the risk, adopted her crusade as his own, and married her. It would have been harder, more uphill work—but looking back complacently on his successful career, due entirely to his own powers and intuitions—he believed he could have done it. And had he adopted that course, life, otherwise so interesting, would not have had at its centre that dull, that very dull spot which was Caroline.

So Mr. Trimblerigg sat and thought, indulging himself with the imagined sweetness of forbidden fruit. But as he was not in the very least ashamed or put out of countenance by the entertainment of these wayward fancies they had of course no effect upon him. His internal unity of purpose not consciously weakened, he continued to feel complacent and good, in the sense that he had always been—good to himself. It was not as if anybody had found him out; then it would have been different. The only person who ever found him out was Davidina; and as to her, since their last encounter, his mind was at peace.

The evening post brought letters forwarded from town; and Caroline, having to confess what she had done, made them the occasion for breaking into the solitude in which all day she had left him. An added reason was that one of the bunch was in the handwriting of Davidina. It was futile any longer to postpone the news that Davidina was on her way to see him.

Caroline handed him the letters, and as after sorting them through he seemed in no hurry to open them—Davidina’s she noticed, he put aside from the rest—she opened, on her own account, the matter wherewith she was charged.