“Yes, I suppose so. He doesn’t mind, does he? I believe he really takes it a lot better than I do.”
Hillier believed so, too, and made no comment. Traherne laughed. “Wilkes! Oh, he means well, no doubt. But I wouldn’t turn up on Sunday afternoon if I was going to be taught by Wilkes. What an ass you are, Oliver, going to lunch parties on Sundays.”
With Traherne, work came first, and everything else, especially anything social, an immense number of lengths behind. With Eddy a number of things ran neck to neck all the time. He wouldn’t, Traherne thought, a trifle contemptuously, ever accomplish much in any sphere of life at that rate.
He said to the vicar that night, “Oliver’s being caught in the toils of Society, I fear. For such a keen person, he’s oddly slack about sticking to his job when anything else turns up.”
But Hillier said, at a separate time, “Oliver’s being dragged into a frightfully unwholesome set, vicar. I hate those people; that man Datcherd is an aggressive unbeliever, you know; he does more harm, I believe, than anyone quite realises. And one hears things said, you know, about him and Mrs. Le Moine—oh, no harm, I daresay, but one has to think of the effect on the weaker brethren. And Oliver’s bringing them into the parish, and I wouldn’t care to answer for the effects.... It made me a little sick, I don’t mind saying to you, to see Datcherd talking to the lads to-night; a word dropped here, a sneer there, and the seed is sown from which untold evil may spring. Of course, Mrs. Le Moine is a wonderful player, but that makes her influence all the more dangerous, to my mind. The lads were fascinated this evening; one saw them hanging on her words.”
“I don’t suppose,” said the vicar, “that she, or Datcherd either, would say anything to hurt them.”
Hillier caught him up sharply.
“You approve, then? You won’t discourage Oliver’s intimacy with them, or his bringing them into the parish?”
“Most certainly I shall, if it gets beyond a certain point. There’s a mean in all things.... But it’s their effect on Oliver rather than on the parish that I should be afraid of. He’s got to realise that a man can’t profitably have too many irons in the fire at once. If he’s going perpetually to run about London seeing friends, he’ll do no good as a worker. Also, it’s not good for his soul to be continually with people who are unsympathetic with the Church. He’s not strong enough or grown-up enough to stand it.”
But Eddy had a delightful lunch on Sunday, and Wilkes took his class.