§ 21

On Sunday mornings Gervase always went to see his mother before breakfast. It was to make up, he said, for seeing so little of her during the rest of the week. Lady Alard was subtly pleased and flattered by these visits. No one else ever paid them. He would sit on the bed and talk to her—not as the rest of the family talked, in a manner carefully adapted to her imbecility, but as one intelligent being to another, about politics and books and other things she could not understand. This pleased her all the more because he was careful to suggest her part of the conversation as well as carrying on his own; he never let her expose her ignorance. And though she secretly knew he was aware of it, and that he knew that she knew, the interview never failed to raise her in her own esteem, as a mother in whom her son confided.

This particular Sunday he stayed rather longer than usual, giving her the right attitude towards Queen Victoria, as to which she had always been a little uncertain. He had just been reading Lytton Strachey’s Life, and they laughed together over the tartan upholstery of Balmoral, and shook their heads and wondered over John Brown. From John Brown the conversation somehow wandered to Gervase’s work at Ashford, and finally ended in a discussion of the days not so very far ahead when he should have finished at the workshop and be his own master.

“What shall I do with myself then, Mother? Shall I open a garage in Leasan, so that you can sack Appleby and sell the car, and hire off me? Or would you like just to sack Appleby and let me drive the car? You’d find me most steady and reliable as a shuvver, and it would be such fun having tea with the maids when you went calling.”

“I wish you’d taken up a more dignified profession. There really doesn’t seem to be anything for you to do now that isn’t rather low.”

“I’m afraid I like doing low things, Mother. But I really don’t know what I’m going to do when I leave Gillingham’s. It’s funny—but my life seems to stop at Christmas. I can’t look any further. When I first went into the works I was always making plans for what I’d do when I came out of them. But now I can’t think of anything. Well, anyhow, I’ve got more than three months yet—there’ll be time to think of something before then. Did you know that I start my holiday next week?—Ten whole, giddy days—think of that!”

“Shall you be going away?”

“No, I don’t think so. A man I was with at Winchester asked me to come and stop with his people. But he lives in Scotland, and I can’t afford the journey. Besides it wouldn’t be worth it just for a week.”

“I thought you said you’d got ten days.”

“Yes—but I’m going to spend four of them at Thunders Abbey near Brighton. Father Luce thought it would be a good idea if I went to a retreat.”

“Oh, Gervase!—is it a monastery?”

“The very same. It’s the chief house of the Order of Sacred Pity.”

“But, my dear—are you—oh, you’re not going to become a monk?”

“No fear—I’m just going into retreat for four days, for the good of my soul.”

“Well, I don’t know what a retreat is, but I feel it would do you much more good if you went to Scotland. You’re looking quite white and seedy. Are you sure your heart’s all right? You know we’ve got angina in the family. I’ve had it for years and years, and poor George died of it. I’m so afraid you’ve got it too.”

“I haven’t—honour bright. I’m looking white because I want a holiday—and I’m going to have one—for both body and soul.... And now I really must go down to breakfast or I shan’t be able to get more than my share of the kidneys.”

Sunday breakfast was an important contrast with the breakfasts of the week. On week-days he either scrambled through a meal half-cooked by the kitchen-maid, or shared the dry short-commons of Father Luce’s cottage. On Sundays he ate his way exultingly through porridge, bacon, kidneys, toast and honey, with generally three cups of coffee and a slice of melon. As a rule the family were all down together on Sunday, having no separate engagements, but an hour of united loafing before Appleby brought round the car to take to church such of them as felt inclined for it.

Gervase had to start earlier—directly breakfast was over. His Parish Mass was at half-past ten, in consideration for Vinehall’s Sunday dinners, since there the rich and the poor were not separated into morning and evening congregations. Also he was Master of the Ceremonies, and had to be in the sacristy well before the service began, to make the usual preparations, and exhort and threaten the clumsy little servers, who came tumbling in at the last moment with their heads full of Saturday’s football. Gervase was not a ritualist, and his aim was to achieve as casual an effect as possible, to create an atmosphere of homeliness and simplicity round the altar. But so far he had got no nearer his ideal than a hard-breathing concentration—the two torch-bearers gripped their torches as if they were to defend their lives with them, and the panting of the thurifer mingled with the racket of his cheap brass censer.

It was not till the sermon began that he had time to look for Stella. When he had taken his seat in the Sanctuary with his arms folded, and had seen that the three little boys were also sitting with their arms folded instead of in more abandoned attitudes, he was free to search for her face through the incense-cloud that floated in the nave. He found her very soon, for a ray of golden, dusty sunshine fell upon her as she sat with her arm through Dr. Mount’s. The sunshine had dredged all the warm brown and red tints out of her hair and face, giving her a queer white and golden look that made her unreal. As he looked at her, she smiled, and he found that her smile had come in response to a smile of his which had unknowingly stolen over his face as he watched her. Her smile was rather sad, and he wondered if the sadness too was a response.

Mr. Luce was delivering one of Newman’s Parochial Sermons in his own halting words, and though Gervase always made it a point of discipline to listen to sermons, however much they bored him, he found that this morning attention was almost impossible. Stella seemed to fix his thoughts so that he could not drag them from her. He knew that his attitude towards her was changing—it was becoming more disturbed, more desperate. His heart must have been ready for this change, for he did not think that Jenny’s words would have had power to work it of themselves. He wondered where it was leading him ... he wondered if it had anything to do with this feeling as of a ditch dug across his life at the end of the year.... But probably his leaving the works after Christmas would account for that. Well, anyhow, he would have to put an end to the present state of affairs—they were the result of mere selfishness and cowardice on his part. Perhaps he ought to go away—leave Stella altogether, since she did not love him and his heart was unquiet because of her ... he would have his chance to go away in January—right away.... But he could not—he could never bear to live away from her. And he had no certain knowledge that she did not love him—perhaps she did—perhaps Jenny was right after all.... “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”