§ 14

During the upheaval which followed Mary’s departure, George Alard kept away from Conster. He wouldn’t go any more, he said, where he wasn’t wanted. What was the good of asking his advice if he was to be insulted—publicly insulted when he gave it? He brooded tenaciously over the scene between him and his father. Sir John had insulted him not only as a man but as a priest, and he had a right to be offended.

Rose supported him at first—she was glad to find that there were occasions on which he would stand up to his father. George had been abominably treated, she told Doris—really one was nearly driven to say that Sir John had no sense of decency.

“He speaks to him exactly as if he were a child.”

“He speaks to us all like that.”

“Then it’s high time somebody stood up to him, and I’m very glad George did so.”

“My dear Rose—if you think George stood up....”

After a time Rose grew a little weary of her husband’s attitude, also though she was always willing to take up arms against the family at Conster, she had too practical an idea of her own and her children’s interests to remain in a state of war. George had made his protest—let him now be content.

But George was nursing his injury with inconceivable perseverance. Hitherto she had often had to reproach him for his subservience to his father, for the meekness with which he accepted his direction and swallowed his affronts.

“If you can put up with his swearing in church, you can put up with what he said to you about Mary.”

“He has insulted me as a priest.”

“He probably doesn’t realise you are one.”

“That’s just it.”

She seemed to have given him fresh cause for brooding. He sulked and grieved, and lost interest in his parish organisations—his Sunday School and Mothers’ Union, his Sewing Club and Coal Club, his Parochial Church Council—now established in all its glory, though without Peter’s name upon the roll, his branches of the S.P.G., the C.E.M.S., all those activities which used to fill his days, which had thrilled him with such pride when he enumerated them in his advertisements for a locum in the Guardian.

He developed disquieting eccentricities, such as going into the church to pray. Rose would not have minded this if he had not fretted and upset himself because he never found anyone else praying there.

“Why should they?” she asked, a little exasperated—“They can say their prayers just as well at home.”

“I’ve never been into Vinehall church and found it empty.”

“Oh, you’re still worrying about Gervase going to Vinehall?”

“I’m not talking about Gervase. I’m talking about people in general. Vinehall church is used for prayer—mine is always empty except on Sundays.”

“Indeed it’s not—I’ve often seen people in it, looking at the old glass, and the carving in the South Aisle.”

“But they don’t pray.”

“Of course not. We English don’t do that sort of thing in public. They may at Vinehall; but you know what I think of Vinehall—it’s un-English.”

“I expect it’s what the whole of England was like before the Reformation.”

“George!” cried Rose—“you must be ill.”

Only a physical cause could account for such mental disintegration. She decided to send for Dr. Mount, who confirmed her diagnosis rather disconcertingly. George’s heart was diseased—had been diseased for some time. His case was the exact contrast of Lady Alard’s—those qualms and stabs and suffocations which for so long both he and his wife had insisted were indigestion, were in reality symptoms of the dread angina.

He must be very careful not to overstrain himself in any way. No, Dr. Mount did not think a parish like Leasan too heavy a burden—but of course a complete rest and holiday would do him good.

This, however, George refused to take—his new obstinacy persisted, and though the treatment prescribed by Dr. Mount did much to improve his general condition, mental as well as physical, he evidently still brooded over his grievances. There were moments when he tried to emphasise his sacerdotal dignity by a new solemnity of manner which the family at Conster found humorous, and the family at Leasan found irritating. At other times he was extraordinarily severe, threatening such discipline as the deprivation of blankets and petticoats to old women who would not come to church—the most irreproachable Innocent Partner could not have cajoled the marriage service out of him then. He also started reading his office in church every day, though Rose pointed out to him that it was sheer waste of time, since nobody came to hear it.