E. M. Delafield

“ Adrian would drift, the type that does little harm, if less good. Strength of intellect, as of character, had been denied him. No interest would hold him long, no aim seem to him to be worth sustained effort.
And yet the Canon had felt Adrian, too—perhaps most of all Adrian, in the flush of reconciliation after their estrangement—to be “safe” and “happy.”
Then optimism was merely a veil, drawn across the nakedness of Truth?
From the depths of a profound and ingrained pessimism, Quentillian sought to view the question dispassionately, and felt himself fundamentally unable to do so. ”

“ Bodily separation, one can resign oneself to—he is resigning himself, poor Father, to separation from nearly all those whom he loves,—but suicide would mean eternal separation. It would be worse than anything—the loss of David’s soul.”
“I see.”
Quentillian did indeed see.
“Val, and Adrian, and David—they’ve all gone away from him,” said Flora. “Only he knows there is another life, so much more real and enduring than this one, to which he looks. It means everything to him. If David did do—that—then the hope of meeting him again, in eternity, is gone.” ”

“ Owen would not sit there, where only the Canon had sat, under the crucifix mounted on the green velvet plaque. He went instead to another, smaller table, in the embrasure of a window, and sat there writing until the morning light streamed in upon him.
Then he laid down the pen, with a sense of the futility of activities that sought to cheat reflection, and let his mind dwell upon that which subconsciously obsessed it.
Canon Morchard had died as he had lived—an optimist. An invincible faith in the ultimate rightness of all things had been his to the end, and perhaps most of all at the end. ”

“ Forget that I’m Valeria’s father—think of me only as one who has known suffering—aye, and sin, too. Make a safety-valve of me—let yourself go. But I can bear this sham cynicism of yours no longer. It’s wrong, Owen, it’s wrong. True fortitude faces what lies before it, finds its Gethsemane, and rises, purged of bitterness. Break down—weep, nay, curse if you will, only cast [105] open the floodgates. Let loose whatever devils possess your soul, you, the victim of treachery—let them loose, I say, and we will conquer them together. ”

“ And I thought I knew my child—my merry Valeria, as I have called her from her babyhood—I thought I knew her through and through! She to be dishonourable, she to be heartless, she to attach herself to a godless, brainless, mannerless fellow—and when a man like yourself had received her troth! Owen, it is as though mine own right hand had turned against me.”
The Canon held out a trembling right hand and gazed upon it.
“Where is Captain Cuscaden now, sir?” enquired Quentillian, almost expecting to hear that the object of his solicitude had been bound and cast into outer darkness. ”

“ She surprised him by a little laugh.
“You see, Owen, I think now that I was quite wrong.”
“Quite wrong,” he echoed gravely.
“It was an odd, muddled sort of time for some years after that. I suppose I was resenting my own decision, and yet trying to buoy myself up all the time by thinking of my own self-abnegation and generosity. It had seemed rather a beautiful thing to do at the time—to sacrifice my own life to my widowed father and my motherless brothers and sisters. At first, I remember thinking that there would be something almost sacred about my everyday life at home.” ”

“ There has been a period of darkness for Flora, undoubtedly, but she is emerging more and more into the light—that light that shineth into the Perfect Day!”
The Canon seemed rather inclined to forget himself in profound musings.
“It implies losing her,” said Lucilla.
“Humanly speaking, yes, and it is hard to eradicate the human element. But once that is done—and done it shall be—what remains is altogether joyful. I shall see her go, if go she does, with feelings far other than those with which I saw our poor Valeria leave home!” ”

“ Even at the last, she bade them good-bye without any of that aspect of remorse which Flora privately considered that she ought to have worn.
The Canon was very kind and forbearing, and said at the last moment:
“I hope and believe that you children understand what is meant by large-mindedness, and that I myself am the last man in the world to deny to each individual the right of an independent judgment. You are acting according to your lights, Lucilla, and I am willing—nay, eager—to believe in the sincerity of your motives. God bless you, my dearest one, and prosper your mission.” ”

“ She spoke so gently, with so simple a note of sincere regret in her quiet voice, that the Canon, to Flora’s perceptions, appeared to overlook the slightly blasphemous implication in the first words of her sentence.
“No man is more averse than myself from tampering with another’s conscience,” he said, with gravity and displeasure. “You are no longer a child, Lucilla, but have a care lest self-will should blind you. ”

“ Little Flora has never yet tried her wings away from home. She is more like her mother than any of them—she and the dear Adrian.”
A smile like an illumination came into the Canon’s eyes as he spoke Adrian’s name. “The light of mine eyes, that dear lad has always been. My Benjamin! There are no words for what I went through whilst Adrian was fighting, Owen. One could only remember in Whose keeping he was, and that all must be well, in reality. But all one’s faith was needed—it must be so, with poor human nature. The soul goes through dark waters, Owen, as you are finding now.” ”

“ To the perceptions of Valeria Morchard, trained in the eclectic school of the Canon’s taste, the musical inspiration in question was not only undeserving of being called lovely, but was vulgar to the point of blatancy, ringing through the St. Gwenllian drawing-room in Olga’s little, high, soprano voice.
She was not at all surprised that Owen should look at her through his pince-nez with eyebrows expressively elevated, nor that Mr. Clover, presumably in a futile endeavour to spare the Canon’s ears, should unobtrusively go and shut the door. ”

“ I will assist this new little life that is coming into the world.’ You picture to yourself a triumphal progress—a rapturous welcome—the acclamations of a New World. But you deceive yourself, Lucilla. You deceive yourself grossly.”
Flora felt herself colouring as she bent over her needlework. A display of violent emotion as that into which Canon Morchard was now working himself by force of his own eloquence, was always distasteful to her, and she felt a vicarious shame for Lucilla, convicted of such presumptuous flights of fancy. ”

“ Flora there is favoured with a letter more often than most of us—or should I rather say, less seldom? And yet it costs so little to send a few lines regularly to the loving ones at home! You young folk little think what you are laying up for yourselves in the years to come by neglecting tokens that may appear trivial at the time. The unspoken kind word, the unwritten affectionate letter—how they come back to haunt us later on!”
It almost appeared that these non-existent symbols were haunting St. Gwenllian at once, so heavily did the shadow of David’s remissness hang over the dinner table. ”

“ As though the Canon, too, were mildly averse from such trivialities, he began to speak again.
“What one feels in the cleverness of the day is the note of ugliness that prevails. Do you not feel that? The sordid, the grotesque, the painful—all, all sought out and dwelt upon. That, we are told, is the new realism. We know, indeed, that there is a sad side to life, but is it realism to dwell only upon one side of the picture? Surely, surely, a sane optimism were the better outlook—the truer realism.” ”

“ Lucilla and the Canon looked at one another, each seeming momentarily to despair of the other.
At last Lucilla said:
“A little time ago, you thought she was ill, too.”
“Mind and body react upon one another, no doubt, and our little Flora is highly strung. I do not recognize it as being in any way incumbent upon me to explain to you my treatment of any soul in my charge, Lucilla, but I may say that I have now come to the conclusion that Flora’s malady was of the soul. With that, you must rest content.” ”

“ At first the Canon was pleased, assuring Lucilla that the pleasant home-life at St. Gwenllian, even if robbed of its old-time joyousness, would best restore Flora to herself. But after a time, he, too, watched her with anxiety.
“Little Flora is not herself,” he began to say.
“Let me send for the doctor, Father,” Lucilla urged.
“We will see, my dear, later on. The unsettled weather is trying to us all just now—no doubt things will right themselves in a day or two, and we shall smile at our own foolish, faithless fears.” ”

“ She felt unable to voice the terror and the profound distrust that possessed her at the thought of Flora, fanatically eager for discipline of her own seeking, finding in religious emotionalism an outlet for instincts that she had not dared, so far as Lucilla could judge, to call by their right name.
“One can only let other people go their own way, then?” she murmured, more to herself than to the Canon. ”

“ The Canon lifted a haggard face.
“Perhaps I had set my heart overmuch upon your marriage with my child, Owen. It may be so—it may be so. I may have forgotten that we poor mortals cannot, after all, see very far—that all plannings and schemings are very vain, seen by the light of Immortal Wisdom. If so, I am receiving my punishment now.”
The Canon groaned again.
“I am at a loss how to act. I can decide nothing. I must see Valeria, but how can I do so until I can command myself?” ”

“ Lucilla, my dear love, at your desk again? You look pale—you should be in the open air. Is not the day a glorious one? When this world about us is so unutterably fair, does it not make one think of ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, what things He hath prepared for them that love him’?”
The Canon’s uplifted gaze was as joyful as it was earnest. ”

“ Canon Morchard gazed anxiously at the victim of this neatly-analysed situation.
[102] “For Heaven’s sake, Owen, don’t let yourself become bitter. It is so easy—so fatally easy, when one is suffering. Take a stronger grip of your faith than ever before, dear lad—remember that ‘all things work together for good.’ One learns to dwell upon those words, and the meaning deepens into something so unspeakably precious....” ”

“ The youthful Owen Quentillian had cared less than nothing for the non-appearance of his future host and tutor. The prospect of the schoolroom tea had touched him more nearly.
But the schoolroom tea had turned out to be a sort of nightmare.
Even now, he could hardly smile at the recollection of that dreadful meal.
Eventually Val and Flossie had resolved themselves into good-natured, cheerful little girls, and Adrian into a slightly spoilt and rather precocious little boy, addicted to remarks of the type hailed as “wonderful” in the drawing-room and “affected humbug” in the schoolroom. ”

“ Lucilla was not surprised to see that the Canon’s face relaxed as he looked down at the small up-gazing figure.
She left them, in response to an imperious glance directed upon her from the other end of the room.
“I particularly want the old man to get to know Olga,” said Adrian with agitation. “It’d do him all the good in the world to have some of his ideas about the modern girl put straight, and if anyone can do it, she can. Wasn’t it priceless of her to make straight for him like that?”
“Perhaps she likes to talk to a distinguished man.” ”

“ Lucilla thought so, too, and would emphatically have given the preference to Valeria’s method of inaugurating an independent career.
“I cannot be anything but glad that one of mine should be dedicated!” the Canon exclaimed, as though the exclamation broke from him almost irrepressibly.
“But does Flora mean to go away at once?”
“She wishes it greatly, and I should hardly feel justified in restraining her. Flora is not a child, and her own desire, as she says herself, is to feel that wayward, wayless will of hers at safe anchorage at last. Dear child, her one regret is for me.” ”

“ Indeed, some of the things I see in print today strike me as not only crude and immature, but absolutely mischievous—false, foolish, shallow teaching from those who have never submitted to be taught themselves. I am not afraid of that in your case, Owen. But remember this, all you young people: Nothing can be of real or lasting value that is not founded upon the broad principles of Christianity—charity, self-sacrifice, humility, loving-kindness. One feels that, more than ever, nowadays, when cynicism is so much in fashion. ”

“ Lucilla shook her head.
Both missed Valeria, and the mournful haste with which she had been equipped for her wedding and immediate departure for Canada had left them with a curious sense of having come through a great catastrophe.
The Canon was more profoundly depressed than they had ever seen him, and rarely spoke. The reduced number of people present at every meal rendered more significant the abysmal silences of each gathering. ”

“ The only thing that gives one courage to face the present (saving always that far-reaching Comfort which one knows to be there, but which poor humanity cannot always feel) is a mournful, tender lingering over the past. Nor must you fear that I always weep, dear Owen—there is often absolute rest and joy in dwelling on the past happiness that one knows to be only a shadow and faint forecasting of the Joy that is to come. ”

“ It was evidently what the Canon wished.
“Will you, dear lad? I own that I should be glad of your arm, aye, and your presence. Flora is overwrought and overtired.”
She did indeed look very ill, not at all to Quentillian’s surprise.
“She has been taking too much thought for me, dear child,” said the Canon, Quentillian could not help thinking with more truth than he realized. “I wish Flora to take some rest. Let the expedition tomorrow be yours and mine, Owen. Tell me, my daughter, what time am I free?” ”

“ Flossie raised her eyebrows with an indescribable effect of fastidious distaste, and closed her lips.
“I don’t think I want to, particularly. Father is the most wonderful man that anyone could ever want to know, I should imagine.”
“Oh, yes,” said Valeria.
She was perfectly conscious of speaking anything but whole-heartedly.
She did indeed think her father wonderful, but she could not, like Flora, feel herself to be forever satisfied by the contemplation of parental wonderfulness.
“You’re different since you came back from France, Val. I think you’d better marry Owen,” said Flora calmly. ”

“ The Canon’s voice trembled very much as he spoke, but his smile was one of single-hearted sincerity.
“But does she rejoice?” said Lucilla rather faintly.
“Indeed she does. I confess that Flora’s earnest desire for self-immolation, her ardent spirit, have taken me by surprise. She is of the stuff of which the martyrs were made. No austerity has any terrors for her—she is already far advanced upon the way of the mystic.” ”

“ Canon Morchard admitted. “I have never desired wealth for my dear ones, nor have they been brought up to it. Valeria is not unfitted to become the wife of a poor man. Nay, had she but acted an honourable and high-minded part throughout, I should gladly send her forth into the New World. Valeria has something of the pioneer spirit, I have always felt.”
He sighed heavily.
“In short, Owen, if, as Lucilla tells me, you share her own view, then I shall not withhold my consent to this marriage. ”

“ And when you speak of our lives, Owen, can’t you see that Val and Adrian and I, and perhaps in a way even Flora, too, have come to what we were meant for? No one can stand between another soul, and life, really. ”

“ Her face was pale and lined, but her eyes had lost neither humour nor sanity of outlook.
“Not for the only reason that it ought to be, dear Lucilla,” he answered humbly. “But because of the awful loneliness at Stear, and my own weakness which makes me afraid of it. And a little because of your sadness here, perhaps, but most of all because you are the only person I know who can face facts, and then be happy. It’s the most wonderful combination in life.” ”