To Jane he talked about her father, a distinguished Oxford scholar, and meanwhile eyed her a little curiously, wondering why she looked somehow different from the girls he was used to. His wife could have told him it was because she had on a grey-blue dress, rather beautifully embroidered on the yoke and cuffs, instead of a shirt and coat and skirt. She was not surprised, being one of those people whose rather limited experience has taught them that artists are often like that. She talked to Jane about Welchester, and the Cathedral, and its windows, some of which were good. Jane, with her small sweet voice and pretty manners and charming, friendly smile, was bound to make a pleasant impression on anybody not too greatly prejudiced by the grey-blue dress. And Mrs. Oliver was artistic enough to see that the dress suited her, though she herself preferred that girls should not make themselves look like early Italian pictures of St. Ursula. It might be all right in Oxford or Cambridge (one understands that this style is still, though with decreasing frequency, occasionally to be met with in our older Universities), or no doubt, at Letchworth and the Hampstead Garden City, and possibly beyond Blackfriars Bridge (Mrs. Oliver was vague as to this, not knowing that part of London well); but in Welchester, a midland cathedral country town, it was unsuitable, and not done. Mrs. Oliver wondered whether Eddy didn’t mind, but he didn’t seem to. Eddy had never minded the things most boys mind in those ways; he had never, when at school, betrayed the least anxiety concerning his parents’ clothes or manners when they had visited him; probably he thought all clothes and all manners, like all ideas, were very nice, in their different ways.
But when Daphne came in, tweed-skirted, and clad in a blue golfer and cap, and prettily flushed by the keen air to the colour of a pink shell, her quick eyes took in every detail of Jane’s attire before she was introduced, and her mother guessed a suppressed twinkle in her smile. Mrs. Oliver hoped Daphne was going to be polite to these visitors. She was afraid Daphne was in a rather perverse mood towards Eddy’s friends. Denison, of course, she frankly disliked, and did not make much secret of it. He was conceited, plain, his hair untidy, his collar low, and his manners supercilious. Denison was well equipped for taking care of himself; those who came to blows with him rarely came off best. He behaved very well at tea, knowing, as Eddy had said, that it was a Deanery. But he was annoying once. Someone had given Mrs. Oliver at Christmas a certain book, containing many beautiful and tranquil thoughts about this world, its inhabitants, its origin, and its goal, by a writer who had produced, and would, no doubt, continue to produce, very many such books. Many people read this writer constantly, and got help therefrom, and often wrote and told him so; others did not read him at all, not finding life long enough; others, again, read him sometimes in an idle moment, to get a little diversion. Of these last was Arnold Denison. When he put his tea-cup down on the table at his side, his eye chanced on the beautiful book lying thereon, and he laughed a little.
“Which one is that? Oh, Garden Paths. That’s the last but two, isn’t it.” He picked it up and turned the leaves, and chuckled at a certain passage, which he proceeded to read aloud. It had, unfortunately, or was intended to have, a philosophical and more or less religious bearing (the writer was a vague but zealous seeker after truth); also, more unfortunately still, the Dean and his wife knew the author; in fact, he had stayed with them often. Eddy would have warned Arnold of that had he had time, but it was too late. He could only now say, “I call that very interesting, and jolly well put.”
The Dean said, genially, but with acerbity, “Ah, you mustn’t make game of Phil Underwood here, you know; he’s a persona grata with us. A dear fellow. And not in the least spoilt by all his tremendous success. As candid and unaffected as he was when we were at Cambridge together, five and thirty years ago. And look at all he’s done since then. He’s walked straight into the heart of the reading public—the more thoughtful and discriminating part of it, that is, for of course he’s not any man’s fare—not showy enough; he’s not one of your smart paradox-and-epigram-mongers. He leads one by very quiet and delightful paths, right out of the noisy world. A great rest and refreshment for busy men and women; we want more like him in this hurrying age, when most people’s chief object seems to be to see how much they can get done in how short a time.”
“He’s fairly good at that, you know,” suggested Arnold, innocently turning to the title-page of the last but two, to find its date.
Mrs. Oliver said, gently, but a little distantly, “I always feel it rather a pity to make fun of a writer who has helped so many people so very greatly as Philip Underwood has,” which was damping and final, and the sort of unfair thing, Arnold felt, that shouldn’t be said in conversation. That is the worst of people who aren’t clever; they suddenly turn on you and score heavily, and you can’t get even. So he said, bored, “Shall I come down with you to meet Eileen, Eddy?” and Daphne thought he had rotten manners and had cheeked her parents. He and Eddy went out together, to meet Eileen.
It was characteristic of Jane that she had given no contribution to this conversation, never having read any Philip Underwood, and only very vaguely and remotely having heard of him. Jane was marvellously good at concerning herself only with the first-rate; hence she never sneered at the second or third-rate, for it had no existence for her. She was not one of those artists who mock at the Royal Academy; she never saw most of the pictures there exhibited, but only the few she wished to see, and went on purpose to see. Neither did she jeer at even our most popular writers of fiction, nor at Philip Underwood. Jane was very cloistered, very chaste. Whatsoever things were lovely, she thought on these things, and on no others. At the present moment she was thinking of the Deanery hall, how beautifully it was shaped, and how good was the curve of the oak stairs up from it, and how pleasing and worth drawing Daphne’s long, irregular, delicately-tinted face, with the humorous, one-sided, half-reluctant smile, and the golden waves of hair beneath the blue cap. She wondered if Daphne would let her make a sketch. She would draw her as some little vagabond, amused, sullen, elfish, half-tamed, wholly spoilt, preferably in rags, and bare-limbed—Jane’s fingers itched to be at work on her.
Rather a silent girl, Mrs. Oliver decided, and said, “You must go over the Cathedral to-morrow.”
Jane agreed that she must, and Daphne hoped that Eddy would do that business. For her, she was sick of showing people the Cathedral, and conducting them to the Early English door and the Norman arches, and the something else Lady-chapel, and all the rest of the tiresome things the guide-book superfluously put it into people’s heads to inquire after. One took aunts round.... But whenever Daphne could, she left it to the Dean, who enjoyed it, and had, of course, very much more to say about it, knowing not only every detail of its architecture and history, but every detail of its needed repairs and pinnings-up, and general improvements, and how long they would take to do, and how little money was at present forthcoming to do them with. The Dean was as keen on his Cathedral as on revision. Mrs. Oliver had the knowledge of it customary with people of culture who live near cathedrals, and Eddy that and something more, added by a great affection. The Cathedral for him had a glamour and glory.
The Dean began to tell Jane about it.