The Rector's Daughter Read online

  So the economics class had not been quite resultless, but most of her schemes left no trace behind them.

  When the parish phase passed, her energy found vent in writing. One day she showed her father in pride and trepidation an article she had finished on Education.

  He read it and said, ‘Yes, it is not a bad way of clearing the mind to write down your ideas, however crudely, though in this case I should have suggested waiting till you had a little more knowledge.’

  She felt so dashed to the ground that she must resist him. She asked if he would show the article to his publisher. He never had been able to make allowance for youth, and he opened his eyes, which were often half-shut, and gave her a look before which she quailed. With the look came the words, ‘I should be very sorry if any one of our name gave this kind of work to the public. No one should attempt publication until he is sure he has written the very best that is in him. In a few years’ time you will thank me for what I say now.’

  Mary tore her article up and threw it into the paper-basket.

  ‘Yes,’ said Canon Jocelyn, ‘I think that is the best place for it.’

  She went away and sobbed, and determined she would never write more, and for some years she never did. But during solitary walks she had much time for dreaming and thinking. Her silent, pent-up life made her inarticulate in speech, but she had much seething within her waiting for an outlet. She wrote her thoughts down to get rid of them. But she was glad of her father’s advice, and no one saw her writings.

  When she was twenty-two, her aunt, who had always disliked Canon Jocelyn, could again make use of her rheumatism. She said Dedmayne was too damp for her, and retired to Tunbridge Wells, Then the sister, who had been for years in an asylum, was pronounced well enough to come home. She had become more quiet, but was childish and astray; she needed incessant care. Mary and a nurse divided the duties between them. Though incapable of steadiness in everything else, Ruth never changed in love for Mary. Mary returned her love, finding something to treasure in what others shunned.

  No nurse stayed long; Ruth turned against them. They were with her at night, Mary a great part of the day; Mary left her as little as possible.

  The doctor warned her that she must give herself change of thought and scene, and as the Rector’s daughter she had other duties. She did well with the village people, less well with her own class. The village remembered her as a dear little girl full of spirits. They sympathized with her in her charge, understanding and admiring her devotion. Her own class, with their colder hearts, wondered at her, and considered it was morbid of the Jocelyns to have ‘that poor thing at home’; it was making Mary so eccentric.

  As time passed on her contemporaries married, or settled into spinsters with objects in life. The neighbourhood arranged its friendships. At the tea-parties she had neither the charm of novelty nor familiarity. She was rather a fish out of water with the married. She played games with their children better than they did, for she kept something of a child in her; but the Rectory never had to search for servants, so the topic of registries was closed. She could not hunt; she cared for no sport; she was useless at committees; she did not like gardening. This cut her off. She longed for friends, but friend-making needs practice and beginning early in life, and her best friend-making years slipped by unused. She had had a friend Dora in that Redland family that moved to Southsea, but their correspondence languished. Dora was no letter-writer; Mary had little to say. She could not accept Dora’s many invitations to Southsea or ask her to the Rectory.

  Her greatest friend at Dedmayne was Cook. Mary poured out freely to her, their perfect confidence only checked sometimes by the fact that Cook was a working woman of sixty-three, and Mary a lady with youth not so very far behind her. For if Mary could not make friends with her own class, she had an unusual power of intimacy with cottage people. She liked them best. She had more in common with them, and with them she was never shy. But she and Cook preserved most of the etiquette between mistress and servant; it did not occur to them to modify it. Cook revered Mary’s intellect, and thought no treat so great as Miss Mary’s conversation. They did not choose the usual village topics, symptoms, and chit-chat of passing events. They roamed over poetry and the English classics in the study. They had mystical discussion, for Cook had one of the poetic peasant minds which Nature seems to have lost the habit of producing. Cook had come when Mary was six; Emma, the housemaid, had only been at the Rectory seventeen years. Both servants felt Canon Jocelyn a treasured child, to be guarded from the rough world. Cook looked on Mary as a child, too, in all practical matters, and constantly took things from her with, ‘I can’t bear to see you tiring your little hands,’ so that when Cook and Emma were there, it was rather beyond Mary’s capacity to boil the water for tea. Cook also did as much of the ordering and buying as she could. When Mary tried to resist, Cook would cry and say Mary did not trust her. If Mary had been more capable, Cook would not have revered her, only liked her.

  Canon Jocelyn thought of Mary, not as a child, but as seventeen perhaps, ‘heedless and slap-dash,’ not to be trusted with his money affairs, over which he now fretted away hours in his study. The incompetent gardener ‘couldn’t abide young ladies interfering.’ All this gave Mary more time for her duties in the village.

  Dedmayne was small, and fewer and fewer babies were born there; but some there were, and the mothers would have thought it indeed ‘strange,’ ‘funny’, ‘abrupt’, and all their other terms of reproach, if Mary had not been the first outside the family to welcome the arrival. The old people sometimes died, but it took a long time – they were like tough gnarled trees – and Mary must be constantly with them to talk about their bequests. As the girl-babies grew up, they went away to service, and it was Mary who found the ‘nice little places,’ and sometimes escorted them thither. The day-school was not large, and was half-asleep, and Mary had to cheer it up with visits. These set aflame a passion for her in Miss Gage, the teacher, who lay in wait and pounced on her in the lanes. In a sense the whole village adored Mary, but quietly. Far from being grateful to Miss Gage, Mary could not bear it. She felt herself, though not worth adoring, worth more than that. But she would not neglect a parishioner, isolated by her intellectual attainments, and on tenterhooks about her status. Mary had walks with her on Sundays after Sunday School.

  Of course she superintended the Sunday School, trained the Choir, had a boys’ Bible Class and a Mothers’ Meeting, and every fortnight or so tried to patch up those differences among the various layers of society which make the excitement of village life.

  The year went round with its accustomed routine: Advent Sunday, Carols, the Christmas treat, Ash Wednesday, and a hope that people will come to Church this Lent (never realized); the Confirmation, with occasionally the Bishop to lunch; summer treats; garden- and tennis-parties, their own among the number; the Clerical Book Club Tea, with peaches on the lawn; the Harvest Festival, with the preacher to supper afterwards; and the Diocese and Government Inspectors. If they were gentlemen, and in addition classical gentlemen, Canon Jocelyn would enjoy himself, and make them enjoy themselves. If they were neither, Canon Jocelyn would get further and further into his shell. The more unobservant would say, ‘The poor old man’s ageing very much; he takes no notice of anything now,’ but others, perceiving the sardonic gleam in his half-shut eye, writhed with nervousness. He could see the misery he was inflicting. He thought it a just punishment to the Universities and the Board of Education for sending Dedmayne such unsuitable representatives.

  By October outside life was over, and as Mary wrote to Dora Redland, ‘We go into our holes and live like dormice, nothing but ourselves and the village all the winter through, certain that for weeks and weeks on end the front-door bell will not ring.’

  Mary liked the long Dedmayne winter evenings. In October, as regularly as the leaves fell, she began the winter habit of reading her favourite novels for an hour before dinner, finding in Trollope, Miss Yonge, Miss Austen,
and Mrs Gaskell friends so dear and familiar that they peopled her loneliness.

  Such was Mary’s life. As the years passed on, the invalid’s room became more and more her world. Sometimes she felt the neighbourhood, the village, even her father, becoming like shadows. On the whole she was happy. She did not question the destiny life brought her. People spoke pityingly of her, but she did not feel she required pity.

  3

  At two in the morning Canon Jocelyn sat reading Virgil in his study. He turned over the leaves quickly as his eye finished the page. The words were very familiar to him; it could not be said whether he took them in. The door opened; his daughter entered hurriedly.

  ‘I think you had better come, Father.’ She spoke in a low voice; the tension was evident.

  He put down his book and followed her upstairs. His invalid daughter had had a stroke the night before; she was dying. She was not conscious, and lay motionless. He went up to the bed and pressed her hand gently. He asked a question or two of the nurse; he knelt down and read the prayer for those at the point of departure. Then he sat near the window; Mary was at the bedside. They waited in silence no one knew how long. The end, when it came, was peaceful. The nurse said, ‘She’s gone, sir.’ He again looked at the form in the bed, and laid his hand on the brow. Then he went up to Mary and said, ‘I think you had better come with me now, Mary.’ She shook her head, and he left the room.

  Her farewell was not so calm; she kissed the face again and again.

  ‘You know it’s best for her, Miss Mary,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Of course I know it is, ’ said Mary.

  Her father heard her coming downstairs, and went to meet her. He took her hand and said, ‘I believe there has just now been a joyful meeting of your mother and sister in bliss.’

  He never mentioned the dead, or any of his convictions about them or about religion. But for the church services and family prayers he might have been a pagan, for all his daughter and household knew to the contrary. As he spoke of his wife he smiled. His smile was rare, and it encouraged Mary to do what she had never done before, fling her arms round him. She cried, ‘Oh, what shall I do without her?’ His smile disappeared, but he spoke kindly. ‘Yes, yes I am sure you will miss her.’ He did not return the embrace, but extricating himself gently, he said, ‘I think I should advise you to go to bed; you can do no good by staying up,’ and went back to the study.

  She was standing, too wretched and bewildered to settle what she should do, when Cook came up to her and said, ‘Miss Mary, darling, here’s some tea, and Emma’s got a lovely hot-water bottle in your bed.’

  When Mary cried in Cook’s arms, Cook did not reject her. ‘Let me help you into bed Miss,’ she said. They sat and talked till dawn. ‘Ah,’ said Cook to Emma, ‘she does feel it.’ But what Mary felt most was her father’s want of feeling.

  Beyond discussing the arrangements for the funeral, Canon Jocelyn never referred to his daughter again. He had, since her return to the Rectory, visited her twice a day for a few minutes, and talked quietly of the weather and the cat. On Sunday he read the psalms and lessons to her. Whether her affliction had been one of the calamities of his life, or her infirmity an irritation he was glad to be rid of, Mary did not know.

  ‘My dear William,’ wrote Aunt Lottie some days afterwards, ‘I know dear Mary will be very much upset by poor Ruth’s death, and I think that a change to Broadstairs will be just the thing for her. Unluckily I cannot get the lodgings that I am so fond of this year, for I am going rather earlier, as there is some papering we must have done, and most unfortunately Annie has to go home and nurse her mother, who was taken ill on Monday, otherwise she always goes with me. But I have heard of a nice quiet boarding-house where you can get good bedrooms, and really see hardly anything of the other people. I hope we shall get some pretty drives. I am telling Simpson at the livery stables I always employ, I shall want the fly every other day. I am sure drives will be good for Mary, and I am looking forward to some nice reading aloud. Annie will come back to take me to Victoria, but can Mary meet me there? I like to be there an hour before we start, so as to have plenty of time.’

  Canon Jocelyn had himself wondered whether a change would not benefit Mary; this was the very thing. So Mary went. She noticed many black figures, companions in bereavement, as she and Aunt Lottie walked slowly on the front; she could see from their heavy lids and weary eyes how many tears they had shed. She hoped they might be receiving more comfort than she. Aunt Lottie showed her sympathy actively by shutting up both the windows when they drove out in the fly. ‘The sun is shining brightly, but I would rather, Mary, dear. You must not be catching a cold now.’

  They saw more of the retired Anglo-Indians, officers’ wives, widows, and bachelors of the boarding-house than Aunt Lottie had intended, for an old lady taught her a patience. ‘Seven rows with three in each row,’ she explained. ‘You see how I am doing it. Leave out the Kings. It is such an easy patience; every one likes it. Now we choose any card we like. Oh, Miss Jocelyn, what are you doing taking out those Kings? No, it’s the aces we must take out. Oh, we’ve turned up nine; I don’t like nines. I shall put that back.’ By a freemasonry of muddleheadedness, Aunt Lottie understood this explanation, and played her patience nightly in the drawing-room. Mary had time to listen to the talk round her: the Anglo-Indians, homesick for the jungle; the women, too idle to keep house, recounting their past triumphs of management.

  There was an inevitable bore, a hanger-on to life, a middle-aged Mr Maltby with a stammer, who told anecdotes. ‘I knew a feller travelling in the Highlands . . . He went off to fish – salmon it was – he doesn’t do anything with trout . . . He took with him a feller from the village – gillies they call ’em . . . very decent chaps with quite a sense of humour of their own . . . My friend said to the gillie, “Well, Sandy,” etc. So Sandy says, “Na, na, I’m no afraid of that,” etc., etc.’

  His anecdotes had no point, but through them all ran the English gentleman’s kindly sentiment towards everybody as ‘not half a bad chap.’

  The boarding-house was tired of him, but Mary had not the presence of mind or the unkindness to snub him. He sought her out; his dismal face lighted up when he came near her. No man had ever sought her out before; she was too humble to be repelled by his dullness.

  All the ladies liked her, for she waited on them when they had headaches. One, Mrs Grace, a colonel’s pretty wife, said with prosperous warmth, doing almost more than justice to those less prosperous, ‘Miss Jocelyn has beautiful eyes, only so sad, poor dear, and, what I particularly like, good eyelids, and there’s a dear little line about the corners of her mouth. I’m sure she has a sense of humour. Of course she could never be pretty, but there is no reason why she should dress as if she came out of a jumble sale. It’s a crime to be so unvain. I wish one could tell her.’

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said another lady with married hardness, ‘to see those crowds of girls getting older, and all unmarried. I’d quite forgotten about them; I’ve been out of England so much, and it comes upon one as a shock. Now a girl like Miss Jocelyn – I’m sure she’s very nice and good, only people just pass her over. One can’t be surprised nothing ever happens to her. All those girls are just as like one another as two peas.’

  ‘I wish Mr Maltby would propose,’ said a grass-widow. ‘I believe she’d take him. She’d be so sweet to him; and didn’t some one say he’d got quite a lot of money?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Grace. ‘She’s much too nice. I’d much rather have nothing happen to me than poor Mr Maltby. Really she ought to have a Round Robin from all of us to thank her for taking him off our hands. He never will let her alone.’

  ‘You know I think all you people are so wrong about Miss Jocelyn,’ said a very handsome wife, who had been twice married. ‘I believe the great passions and the lasting ones are for the plain women. They’re the ones who can keep men, because they’re loved for something inside them. They have only one affair in their live
s, but it’s a big one. It’s rather a snub for us who think ourselves good-looking, of course. Those eyes show Miss Jocelyn has something rather particular inside her. She may chance to meet a man who’ll realize it, and then being very plain and badly dressed will simply make no difference at all. Only, of course, there are very few of those men about.’

  In spite of this defence Mary was looked back on at the boarding-house as a kind girl, who would have been lucky if she could have found favour with Mr Maltby.

  The time passed; the aunt and niece left Broadstairs. Mr Maltby said, ‘This has been a very pleasant six weeks to me, Miss Jocelyn,’ and sat for a long time after she was gone, looking out of window and thinking of her. Perhaps Mary would have liked if he had said more; she felt so desolate she might have taken him, but another lot was in store for her.

  4

  All the drive back from Cayley Mary had counted well-known trees, which told her she was coming nearer home. Her father stood at the study door as she entered the house.

  ‘Oh, Mary, is that you? I think your train was rather late. How did you leave your aunt?’

  She kissed him quietly, and said her aunt was better.

  ‘How have you been, Father?’

  ‘I have been just as usual. Why should I not?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I know; there wasn’t any reason. Oh, thank you, Emma. I’ve had tea, really, but it’s very nice to have an extra cup.’