§ 8

Peter was a little annoyed to find that Stella had come back. It would perhaps be difficult to say why—whether her return was most disturbing to his memory or to his pride. He would have angrily denied that to see her again was in any sense a resurrection—and he would just as angrily have denied that her attitude of detached friendliness was disagreeable to his vanity. Surely he had forgotten her ... surely he did not want to think that she could ever forget him....

He did not press these questions closely—his nature shrank from unpleasant probings, and after all Stella’s presence did not make anything of that kind necessary. He saw very little of her. She came to tea at Starvecrow, seemed delighted with the improvements, was becomingly sweet to Vera—and after that all he had of her was an occasional glimpse at Conster or on the road.

It could not be said, by any stretch of evidence, that she was running after a married man. But Rose Alard soon had a fresh cause for alarm. Stella was seeing a great deal too much of Gervase. She must somehow have got into touch with the younger brother during her absence from home, for now on her return there seemed to be a friendship already established. They were occasionally seen out walking together in the long summer evenings, and on Sundays he sometimes went with her to church at Vinehall—which was a double crime, since it disparaged George’s ministrations at Leasan.

“I should hate to say she was mercenary,” said Rose reflectively, “but I must say appearances are against her—turning to the younger brother as soon as she’s lost the elder.”

“I don’t see where the mercenariness comes it,” said Mary—“Gervase won’t have a penny except what he earns, and there’s Peter and his probable sons, as well as George, between him and the title.”

“But he’s an Alard—I expect Stella would like to marry into the family.”

“I fail to see the temptation.”

“Well, anyhow, I think it very bad taste of her to take him to church at Vinehall—it’s always been difficult to get him to come here as it is, and George says he has no influence over him whatever.”

Mary only sighed. She could not argue with Rose, yet she had a special sympathy for a woman who having had love torn out of her heart tried to fill the empty aching space as best she could. Of course it was selfish—though not so selfish in Stella as it had been in herself, and she hoped Stella would not have to suffer as she had suffered. After all, it would do Gervase good to be licked into shape by a woman like Stella—he probably enjoyed the hopelessness of his love—if indeed it was hopeless ... and she could understand the relief that his ardent, slightly erratic courtship must be after Peter’s long series of stolid blunders.

But Stella was not quite in the position Mary fancied. She was not letting Gervase court her, indeed he would never have thought of doing so. She seemed definitely apart from any idea of love-making—she set up intangible barriers round herself, which even his imagination could not cross. Perhaps some day ... but even for “some day” his plans were not so much of love as of thinking of love.

Meanwhile she fulfilled a definite need of his, just as he fulfilled a need of hers. She gave him an outlet for the pent-up thoughts of his daily drives, and the society of a mind which delighted him with its warmth and quickness. Gervase too had a quick mind, and his and Stella’s struck sparks off each other, creating a glow in which he sometimes forgot that his heart went unwarmed. Their correspondence had been a slower, less stimulating version of the same process. They had discussed endless subjects through the post, and now Stella had come home in the midst of the most interesting. It was the most interesting to him because it was obviously the most interesting to her. She had bravely taken her share in their other discussions, but he soon discovered that she was too feminine to care about politics, too concrete to grasp abstractions, and that in matters of art and literature her taste was uncertain and often philistine. But in the matter of religion she showed both a firmer standing and a wider grasp. Indeed he was to find that her religion was the deepest, the most vital and most interesting part of her—in it alone did the whole Stella come alive.

The topic had been started by the tragedy of Mary’s marriage, and at first he had been repulsed by her attitude, which he thought strangely unlike her in its rigidity. But as time went on he began to contrast it favourably with George’s compromises—here was a faith which at least was logical, and which was not afraid to demand the uttermost.... They continued the discussion after she had come home, and he was surprised to see what he had hitherto looked upon equally as a fad and a convention, a collection of moral and intellectual lumber, show itself almost shockingly as an adventure and a power. Not that Stella had felt the full force of it yet—her life had always run pretty smoothly through the simplicities of joy and sorrow, there had been no conflict, no devastation. But strangely enough he, an outsider, seemed able to see what she herself possibly did not realise—that she carried in her heart a force which might one day both make and break it.

It had been his own suggestion that he should go with her to church, though he did not know whether it was to satisfy a hope or dismiss a fear. He had lost the detached attitude with which he had at first approached the subject, much as he would have approached Wells’s new novel or the Coalition Government. To his surprise he found himself at ease in the surroundings of Vinehall’s Parish Mass. Its gaiety and homeliness seemed the natural expression of instinctive needs. Vinehall church was decorated in a style more suggestive of combined poverty and enterprise than of artistic taste; the singing—accompanied rather frivolously on a piano—was poor and sometimes painful; the sermon was halting and trite. These things were better done by brother George at Leasan. But the Mass seemed strangely independent of its outward expression, and to hold its own solemn heart of worship under circumstances which would have destroyed the devotions of Leasan. Here, thought Gervase, was a faith which did not depend on the beauty of externals for its appeal—a faith, moreover, which was not afraid to make itself hard to men, which threw up round itself massive barriers of hardship, and yet within these was warm and sweet and friendly—which was furthermore a complete adventure, a taking of infinite risks, a gateway on unknown dangers....

As he knelt beside Stella in a silence which was like a first kiss, so old in experience did it seem, in spite of the shock of novelty, he found that the half-forgotten romances of his childhood were beginning to take back their colours and shine in a new light. Those figures of the Mother and her Child, the suffering Son of Man, the warm-hearted, thick-headed, glorious company of the apostles, which for so long had lived for him only in the gilt frames of Renaissance pictures, now seemed to wake again to life and friendliness. Once more he felt the thrill of the Good Shepherd going out to see the lost sheep ... and all the bells of heaven began to ring.