“In fact, a conceited pig,” said Daphne, not to herself.
Personally Daphne thought the best of the three was Mrs. Le Moine, who anyhow dressed well and could dance, though her habits might be queer. Better queer habits than queer clothes, any day, thought Daphne, innately a pagan, with the artist’s eye and the materialist’s soul.
Anyhow, Jane and Arnold departed on Monday. From the point of view of Mrs. Oliver and the Dean, it might have been better had it been Saturday, as their ideas of how to spend Sunday had been revealed as unfitting a Deanery. The Olivers were not in the least sabbatarian, they were much too wide-minded for that, but they thought their visitors should go to church once during the day. Perhaps Jane had been discouraged by her experiences with the Prayer Book on New Year’s Eve. Perhaps it never occurred to her to go. Anyhow in the morning she stayed at home and drew, and in the evening wandered into the Cathedral during the collects, stayed for the anthem, and wandered out, peaceful and content, with no suspicion of having done the wrong or unusual thing. Arnold lay in the hall all the morning and smoked and read The New Machiavelli, which was one of the books not liked at the Deanery. (Arnold, by the way, didn’t like it much either, but dipped in and out of it, grunting when bored.) In consequence (not in consequence of The New Machiavelli, which she would have found dull, but of being obliged herself to go to church), Daphne was cross and envious, the Dean and his wife slightly disapproving, and Eddy sorry about the misunderstanding.
On the whole, the visit had not been the success Eddy had wished for. He felt that. In spite of some honest endeavour on both sides, the hosts and guests had not fitted into each other.
Coming back into Welchester from a walk, and seeing its streets full of peace and blue winter twilight and starred with yellow lamps, Eddy thought it queer that there should be disharmonies in such a place. It had peace, and a wistful, ordered beauty, and dignity, and grace....
They were singing in the Cathedral, and lights glowed redly through the stained windows. Strangely the place transcended all factions, all barriers, proving them illusions in the still light of the Real. Eddy, beneath all his ineffectualities, his futilities of life and thought, had a very keen sense of unity, of the coherence of all beauty and good; in a sense he did really transcend the barriers recognised by less shallow people. With a welcoming leap his heart went out to embrace all beauty, all truth. Surely one could afford to miss no aspect of it through blindness. Open-eyed he looked into the blue night of lamps and shadows and men and women, and beyond it to the stars and the sickle of the moon, and all of it crowded into his vision, and he caught his breath a little and smiled, because it was so good and so much.
When he got home he saw his mother sitting in the hall, reading the Times. Moved by love and liking, he put his arm round her shoulders and bent over her and kissed her. The grace, the breeding, the culture—she was surely part of it all, and should make, like the Cathedral, for harmony. Arnold had found Mrs. Oliver commonplace. Eddy found her admirable. Jane had not found her at all. There was the difference between them. Undoubtedly Eddy’s, whether the most truthful way or not, was the least wasteful.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CLUB.
SOON after Eddy’s return to London, Eileen Le Moine wrote and asked him to meet her at lunch at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was a rather more select restaurant than they and their friends usually frequented in Soho, so Eddy divined that she wanted to speak to him alone and uninterrupted. She arrived late, as always, and pale, and a little abstracted, as if she were tired in mind or body, but her smile flashed out at him, radiant and kind. Direct and to the point, as usual, she began at once, as they began to eat risotto, “I wonder would you do something for Hugh?”
Eddy said, “I expect so,” and added, “I hope he’s much better?”