“Certainly not. I could compare my wife with no other woman. It would be in all respects wrong.”
“Well,” she replied, bidding him adieu, “I hope that you will be happy.”
“My dear Emmeline,” said the Canon, “I have been humbly conscious for years that my happiness has always been one of your chief considerations.”
From Mrs. Winstanley’s he proceeded at once to Lady Santyre’s, where he received congratulations and luncheon. He left with the comfortable certainty that all Fulminster would ring with the news of his engagement during the course of the afternoon. His announcement was as public as if he had proclaimed it from the pulpit. And Fulminster did ring as he had expected—not that it was unprepared, for the Canon’s attentions to Madame Latour had been a subject of universal speculation. Murmurings arose in certain quarters. The neighbourhood abounded in the aristocratic fair unwedded, and the Canon was highly eligible. One of the aggrieved declared that all the Chiselys were eccentric, and instanced the unfortunate Stephen.
“My dear,” replied in remonstrance her interlocutor, who had just married her last daughter to the leading manufacturer in Fulminster, “You must not talk as if the Canon had run off with a ballet-girl.”
But generally his indiscretion was condoned. It had been a stroke of genius to let Yvonne charm her critics from a public platform at the very outset.
For Yvonne herself, the remainder of her visit passed in a whirl. Families called upon her; mothers congratulated her; the “Fulminster Gazette” interviewed her; the Santyres changed the small dinner-party, to which she had been already asked, into a solemn banquet in her honour; and the Canon was ever at her side, attentive, courteous, dignified, authoritative, playing his part to perfection. The flattery pleased her. The universal deference paid to the Canon, of which she had grown more keenly conscious, awakened a shy pride. But it all seemed an incongruous dream, out of which she would awake when she found herself in her tiny flat in the Marylebone Road. She was afraid to go back. If it was a dream, she would regret this sudden lifting from her shoulders of all sordid cares, the dread of losing her voice, of poverty, and the grasshopper’s wintry old age. If it continued true, she feared lest the familiar surroundings might pain her with regret for the life she was abandoning—the sweet artist’s life, with all its inconsequences and its purposes, its hopes and fears, its freedom and its claims. Even now, she cried a little at the prospect of giving it up. And then she wouldn’t know herself. Hitherto, her conception of herself had been Yvonne Latour, the singer. That was her Alpha and Omega. It would be like looking in the glass and seeing a total stranger. It was pathetic.
On Sunday she received a series of sensations. She believed such elemental doctrines as she had received at her mother’s knee: in a beautiful heaven and a fearful hell, in Christ and the angels—she was not quite certain about the Virgin Mary—in the Lord’s Prayer, which she said every night at her bedside, and in the goodness of going to church. Her religion might have been that of a bird of the air for all the shackles it laid upon her soul. But the outer forms of worship impressed her strongly—church music, solemn silences, vestments, stained windows, even words. She felt very solemn when she called her innocent self a “miserable sinner” in the Litany, and the word “Sabbaoth,” in the “Te Deum,” always seemed fraught with mystic meaning. The symbolic hushed her into awe. Even the surplices of the choir-boys set them apart for the moment, in her mind, from the baser sort of urchins. And, a fortiori, the clergyman, in surplice and stole, had always appealed to her childish imagination as a being that moved in an especial odour of sanctity. It is fair to add that Yvonne’s church-going had never been as regular as might have been desired, so these reverential feelings had not been staled by custom. However, when the Canon appeared at the reading-desk, and his fine voice rang through the Abbey, Yvonne felt a sudden pang of alarm. The night before he had been so tender and playful that he had almost seemed to be upon her level. And now, he was far, far away. The distance between her, poor, insignificant little Yvonne, and him performing his sacred office, appeared immeasurably vast. And when he mounted the pulpit, her awe grew greater. She could not realise that he was her affianced husband.
He preached on the text from the story of Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again.” The words caught her fancy as being apposite to her own case, and, disregarding the thread of the Canon’s discourse, she preached a little sermon to herself. She was going to be born again. Yvonne the singer would die, and a new, regenerate Yvonne, the lady of the Rectory, Mrs. Everard Chisely, would appear in her stead. She caught a phrase in which the Canon touched upon the spiritual pain attending on the death of the old Adam. She wondered whether she would be called upon to suffer the fire of purification. It was like the Phoenix. At this point she pulled herself up short. To mix up the Phoenix and Nicodemus might be profane. So she bestowed her best attention on the remainder of the sermon.
That afternoon he took her through the Rectory—a great rambling Elizabethan house, with nineteenth-century additions. She followed him meekly from room to room, filled with wonder at the beauty of her future home. The Canon had spent much money over his collections—overmuch, some critics said—and the house was a museum of art treasures. Pictures, statuary, wood-carvings, rare furniture met her in every apartment, at every turn of the stairs. At first, the awe with which his sacerdotal character had inspired her kept her subdued, but gradually the new impressions effaced it. He spoke as if all these things were already hers—established, as it were, a joint ownership.