Mrs Penberthy was recovering from her tenth child, born on June the 3rd, 1904. On an average once in every eighteen months, four weeks comparative repose was forced upon her by the pains of childbirth. She would have made it three if she could, but, as each child brought her perilously near to the door of death, she was obliged to take the full measure of an inexpensive monthly nurse.
After her first confinement, and each one that followed, Doctor Boase had told the rector that it would not be safe for his wife to have another child, and each time the rector had said ‘Quite so,’ or words to that effect. But, as Mrs Penberthy’s shy little sister Aunt Lizzie so delicately put it, ‘Edwin always forgot.’
Edwin always forgot.
The fruits of Edwin’s forgetfulness, gathered back into the Rectory fold from the friends’ and relations’ houses that had sheltered them during their mother’s illness, were variously occupied about the house and garden. Two children had died as babies, so there were eight of them, counting the new boy, who slept in a perambulator under a tree. On what was more like a stale cake than a lawn, an incomplete croquet set with wide hoops and a bell in the middle straggled inconsequently. With its cracked mallets and balls it had been presented by Mr Burgess of The Hall, who had bought himself a new set of the latest pattern. Two bare-legged girls were playing a quarrelsome game. From the house came sounds of violent hammering, and a clatter of plates from the kitchen window, where the daily maid was trying to catch up with the lunch things, as it was just on tea time.
‘Oh, cheat! Oh, cheat! I saw you move your ball! I did! I did!’
‘Don’t be such an ass. You know the blue ball has a chip out of it. I was only putting it on its right side. You can’t play it when it’s lying on the flat bit.’
‘Oh, you rotten little outsider! I saw you push it in front of the hoop. Look at it! Plum in front! It wasn’t there before. I shan’t play with you. I can’t play with cheats and liars.’
Maura flung her mallet in the direction of the cheat and flopped down beside her eldest sister who was mending an enormous hole in what remained of a dull grey sock.
‘What is to be done with Ursula? She cheats at everything. I don’t mind what she does at school. That doesn’t matter. But I do think at games she might try to be straight. I don’t understand it. Where on earth does she get it from?’
Elizabeth’s tragic eyes glanced for a moment from the sock to her erring sister, who was finishing the game by herself with an air of bravado.
‘Why worry? There’s nothing to be done about it. She’s a cheat, and there’s an end of it. Don’t play with her.’
‘You’re so beastly resigned, Betty. I want to reform her — try to convince her that decent people don’t cheat or lie. Why are you so beastly resigned?’
‘Because I know it’s no use being anything else. Even if you could teach Ursula not to cheat, you would always know that she was a cheat by nature, and you couldn’t ever do anything but distrust her. No one has taught her to cheat — unless she learnt it at the village school — so it must be just her nature, and the best thing is not to give her an opportunity.’
‘You frighten me, Betty. I believe it’s what Guy calls “cynical” — that way of looking at things.’
‘Oh, well, if I am cynical, perhaps it’s not surprising. Guy is too.’ She stopped her darning for a moment and looked away towards the house.
‘Guy’s got something on his mind since he came back from the Mannings. He looks rotten — sort of haunted.’
‘Guy’s growing up. He’s beginning to think — and understand things.’
‘Oh, well, I’m glad I’m not beginning to grow up; if that’s what it does to you. He looks miserable sometimes.’
‘You’re right, my dear. Keep young as long as you can.’
‘Come and have a game with me.’ Maura was rather frightened of Elizabeth in this sombre mood.
‘My dear, no! Who’s going to do all these socks and stockings? Malcolm and Ursula didn’t have anything mended while they were away. They like my mending best. Very kind of them, I’m sure. There was nothing to do for Guy,’ she added proudly.
‘Guy can’t bear your doing all this work. He was saying so this morning.’
‘I know he can’t. But he can’t do much about it, poor boy.’
‘Give me a sock to do.’
‘Not now. It’s enough for you to do your own mending in the holidays. Make the most of them while you’ve got them. When you leave school you don’t get any, remember.’
A tremendous crash in the kitchen drew a faint cry from Mrs Penberthy who was lying on a dilapidated chaise longue, also presented by Mr Burgess, when it had become too shabby for his lawn. The seventh Penberthy, aged two, was solemnly turning over a rag picture book at her side.
‘Maura, my dear!’
Maura ran to the mulberry tree and bent over her mother.
‘I’m afraid Gladys has broken another plate, or perhaps something worse. It sounded like something more than a plate, but there’s hardly anything left for her to break. Go and help her, there’s a dear. Otherwise we shall never get tea.’
‘All right, darling. Can you stand Malcolm’s hammering? Shall I stop him?’
‘Oh, no, please! I believe he’s making something for me, and wants to get it finished. So he told Elizabeth. A secret! Such a clever little carpenter!’
Maura, with a sceptical look, went towards the house, and as she did so the rector entered the gate at the bottom of the garden. Tall, sleek and well-cut, he looked at least ten years younger than his wife. In reality he was five years older. His slightly grizzled hair invaded his neck, not from carelessness, but because it was his manner. It gave him a sort of dignity, and at the same time enhanced the romance of his general appearance, especially when he wore the swinging cape he affected in the winter months. In the summer he wore his hair somewhat shorter, and today it only just dribbled over his collar.
‘Well, and how is the invalid?’ He patted his wife’s hand with a kindly smile.
‘Not an invalid any longer, father dear. I’m only lazy this afternoon. I had a walk this morning, you know.’
‘To be sure. But you must be careful, my dear. Piano, piano, as they say in Italy. I have arranged for your churching on Saturday. You fainted last time, you remember, because you would have it too soon. By Saturday you should be strong enough.’
At this moment Maura’s head appeared at the kitchen window.
‘It was the last willow pattern vegetable dish, mother! It wasn’t Gladys’s fault. It jumped out of her hand.’
‘What!’ exclaimed the rector. ‘Another breakage! Really this is insufferable. Two plates yesterday and the last vegetable dish today. I shall be glad, my dear Constance, when you are able to superintend the kitchen again. What are the girls doing? Where is Elizabeth?’
He was not greatly moved by the sight of his own grey sock which Elizabeth waved at him for answer.
‘Well, well — there is a time for everything. Please understand that we cannot afford to have all our china broken. We must eat off something. I assure you I cannot afford to invest in a new dinner service.’
The rector was annoyed, and retired towards the house. The hammering that had scarcely ceased all the afternoon stopped abruptly, and the rector’s voice was heard, raised in angry expostulation. He reappeared almost immediately.
‘Who gave leave for Malcolm to do his carpentering on the landing outside my study? What is the matter, I say, with the carpenter’s shop? The whole place is in a disgusting mess, and stinks of glue, which he is apparently warming on my Primus stove.’
Malcolm at this moment slunk on to the lawn.
‘There wasn’t room in the carpenter’s shop. I didn’t mean to make a mess. I wanted to get it done quickly.’
‘And what is this colossal piece of work, if I may ask?’
‘A rabbit hutch, father. Jones is giving me a pair, and I haven’t got anywhere to put them.’
Mrs Penberthy winced at this information, but she only said:
‘I am afraid it is my fault that he worked in the house, as I gave him leave through Elizabeth. It was not good of you, Malcolm, to use your father’s stove without permission.’
‘I’m the only person that can make it work,’ Malcolm growled.
The rector, painfully conscious of the truth of this remark, turned upon his son:
‘Silence! Enough! Go and clear all the mess away at once. Where is tea? Surely it is more than time. I’ve had a thirsty walk. Many congratulations, my dear, on the new youngster. Everyone full of delight at another boy. Mrs Boger wanted to know how many pounds. I said eight. That’s about it, isn’t it,’ with his hearty parochial laugh.
‘Eight and a half to be quite correct, darling,’ murmured his wife, with a note of heaviness in her voice.
‘Ah, well — that’s as near as makes no difference. A letter by this afternoon’s post from Uncle George, by the way, my dear, approving my scheme for Guy in Canada. He says his neighbour, a worthy person of good family, takes farming pupils and will be glad to have Guy at the very lowest possible fee. I aired the question of Canada with the boy again yesterday, and he seemed unresponsive and not over-keen. However, this seems to be the course indicated for him. A most friendly note added by Aunt Emma — who, judging by her writing, I gather is somewhat failing — saying what a warm welcome her great-nephew will receive, and mentioning the cheery young society he will find out there. Yes, I am glad to think that the problem of Guy’s future may be considered settled.’
Elizabeth, who had heard most of this conversation, rose very suddenly with a stocking on her hand and disappeared into the house …
Malcolm at this moment emerged with his hutch and a bundle of shavings.
‘Have you cleared up your horrible mess?’ demanded the indignant rector.
‘Maura’s finishing it,’ he mumbled.
‘But Maura is to get tea!’ the rector almost screamed, showing his beautiful white teeth much as a large dog might whose bone is being withheld. ‘Good gracious! How long am I to wait for what should have been ready half an hour ago. Go back at once and send Maura to the kitchen and finish clearing up yourself.’
Malcolm, scowling, returned to the house, leaving his hutch in the middle of the lawn. Realising just in time that his tea would be again delayed if he complained of this, the rector turned his back on it. Malcolm passed through the dining-room window into the obscurity of the house.
In the dining-room hung the two family portraits that had been inherited by Edwin Penberthy. They were not of very great value, or they would have been sold long ago, but they were of a good school and period. John and Mary Penberthy, his great grandfather and grandmother, had been people of substance — courtiers — of the great world. They looked down proudly on the dingy poverty of the Rectory dining-room. These two handsome people had made a fine thing of life, going through it with dignity and decorum, and ending, as in those days all the best people ended, under a ponderous tomb whose laboured description of their virtues for once did not fall far short of the truth. There followed a reaction in their son Herbert, who scattered the carefully garnered fortune of his parents, loved too many women, and was too well loved by them, married a sad little lady for her fortune, spent it, and blew his brains out, leaving the sad little lady with nothing in the world but three small children. Of these the eldest was Edwin Penberthy’s father, who had been put into the Church in order to occupy a family living. Edwin himself had gone as a scholar to Eton and Cambridge, scraping through on a meagre allowance, and going automatically into the Church, marrying the pretty rose-leaf daughter of his first vicar, and finally settling down in the parish of Mead, which was small as the Rectory was large, two wings having been added at various times by prolific incumbents.
Edwin Penberthy’s inheritance amounted to a mere hundred pounds a year, and the living, including a few acres of glebe, brought in another hundred and fifty. There was room in the Rectory for the Penberthy family — lots of it — but it was as bare as a rabbit-warren. The scant furniture, faded and darned curtains and covers, dingy wall-papers and worn paint, testified to the forlorn poverty of the empty, echoing house.
Under the portraits of his ancestors sat Guy, the rector’s eldest son, his hands buried in his fair hair, his mind absorbed by the book he was reading.
‘Hullo, Guy,’ said Malcolm. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘No, but I knew you were there. Hellish row you’ve been making.’
‘Why didn’t you sing out?’
‘Well, I understood from Betty that you were doing something for mother. So I didn’t interfere.’
Malcolm reddened slightly. ‘I had to finish my hutch —’
‘Oh, I see. Another illusion gone.’ He rose and stretched his long grey-flannelled limbs. ‘Someone will have to teach you not to be a public nuisance. The village school doesn’t give you much of that, I know.’
‘I’m coming to Burlingham next year, you know.’
‘Worse and worse. You’ll end as badly as I shall. Seedy masters, lousy boys, and a head’s wife with the manners and smell of an under-housemaid. No hope of social reform there, I’m afraid.’
‘Where’s Manning at school?’ asked Malcolm rather panderingly. He knew that the family of Guy’s late host was somehow important to his brother, and he chose a good topic with which to change the subject, which threatened to become too personal.
‘Manning’s at Eton,’ said Guy.
‘I suppose his people are rich?’
‘Not at all. His father is a parson with a small income and an unimportant living.’
‘How can they do it, then?’
‘Ah! now you’re asking. Manning got a scholarship from a decent private school and there are only three Mannings, and there are eight Penberthys … Run along and wash your filthy hands for tea, little rabbit.’
‘Rum chap, Guy,’ thought Malcolm, plastering the walls with gluey scum as he sloped up to the bathroom. ‘Why “rabbit” just because I’m making a hutch?’ He poured some nutty rainwater into a cracked basin and picked up a wizened bit of soap.
☙
Tea appeared at last and a rush was made for Maura’s scones, which were buttered on Sundays and jammed on week-days.
Elizabeth’s eyes were red when she was fetched down from her room by Ursula. Maura poured out and Elizabeth sat silent and remote over her tea, refusing scones or cake.
‘Hullo, Betsy, you look as if you’d been crying!’ Malcolm exclaimed, taking his third scone. ‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing’s “up”,’ said Elizabeth disdainfully.
‘Elizabeth’s eyes are tired,’ hastily interposed Mrs Penberthy, who had a lively sense of the situation. ‘She has been darning all the afternoon.’
Mr Penberthy clucked and handed his cup. He was not going to have his grey socks flung in his face, as it were. That enormous hole, half filled, which his daughter had waved at him should have troubled his conscience. He had allowed it to spread until it became visible over the heel of his shoe; not till then did he discard those grey socks. He gave a little cough.
‘You girls are lucky in your friends. I hear Mrs Burgess has sent another box of presents for you,’ he said, helping himself to three lumps of sugar.
‘Doris and Mona’s cast-off clothing, you mean, I suppose,’ said Guy.
‘I’ve looked at them,’ said. Elizabeth.
‘Anything decent?’ asked Maura.
‘Nothing much. The blue hat which Doris wore in church all last year. Two blouses with all the buttons cut off, and a pair of shoes that ought to have buckles. Oh, and a dress for you, mother, all worn out under the arms.’
‘Beastly!’ said Guy, flushing.
The rector found this an opportune moment for rising from the tea table.
‘Guy, a word with you in my study.’ He led the way through the dining-room. Guy followed gloomily. When they were in the study the rector handed Guy his Uncle James’s letter. Guy read it through and handed it back in silence, but it was not an empty silence.
‘Well, my son, have you nothing to say?’
‘I said all there was to say yesterday. You know I am not keen on the Colonies, but I am ready to go if you want me to.’
’My desire has always been that you and Malcolm should carve out your own careers in the Colonies. Have you any ideas for yourself?’
Guy’s face seemed to catch fire, but the fire was instantly extinguished.
‘No, father, none — that it’s any use having.’
He added: ‘I am ready to go and carve out a career, as you put it, in any colony you like. At any rate, though I shall hate the life, I shan’t be under an obligation to anybody. I hope I shall be able to keep myself, and perhaps get Elizabeth to come out and keep house for me later on.’ His eyes narrowed and he gave a strange, faunlike smile.
‘Yes, yes, an excellent idea,’ exclaimed the rector to ease the situation, and without any intention of losing Elizabeth’s house-wifeliness. But, he was not altogether insensitive and was uncomfortably aware that all was not quite well with his eldest son.
‘I have no doubt,’ he went on with a trace of sarcasm, ‘that you would prefer Cambridge to the Colonies. But you must understand, and I have explained over and over again, that our means do not admit of such a thing, either for you or Malcolm. Facts must be faced, however unpleasant. We are now eight, and I am hard put to it to provide even the common necessities of life, much less the luxuries.’
The flame rose again in Guy’s face, but this time it was not extinguished.
‘You need not have had so many children.’
‘What are you saying? It is God’s will.’
‘I don’t think it’s that —.’ A blush stole to the roots of Guy’s fair hair as he said this, slowly meeting his father’s indignant eye with a look of such chilling comprehension that the indignant eye flinched. ‘I think when a man’s as poor as you are he ought to do without — luxuries. It isn’t as though you had lost money. We should all be ready to sacrifice ourselves if you had, but you’ve always known exactly how much you had and you knew it was impossible to bring up a large family in any sort of decency. If you had ever thought of that — we shouldn’t have had to do without necessities. I call it hypocritical to bring God into the argument at all. You just like to amuse yourself — that’s all it is — and mother — and we all — suffer for it. We pay for your pleasures.’
Mr Penberthy gasped. He groped for his study table and began arranging books upon it with a hand that trembled when it was not grasping with exaggerated firmness the objects upon it. A sign of weakness. Guy went on:
‘Don’t imagine that our poverty has anything noble about it. It would be far more appropriate if we lived in a burrow than in this miserable barrack. It’s indecent to be as poor as we are. Look at Malcolm and Ursula, picking up filthy ways at the village school, cheating and lying. What can you expect? We are despised and humiliated by rotten people who happen to have more money than we have. That common slut Mona Burgess and her cast-off clothing! No doubt she gloats over the sight of Elizabeth and Maura, both so much better-looking than her, wearing her old hats in church; patronising them when she ought to be making their beds and brushing their clothes. It’s revolting. I don’t know how you can bear it.’
By this time the rector had found his tongue, and with a trembling upper lip he reeled out a string of indignant platitudes, in which Divine Purpose and ‘The Lord will provide’, the sacred duties of marriage, played their usual part.
‘Bosh!’ Guy shouted at last. ‘Call it self-indulgence and be honest for once. You know that mother’s life has been in danger every time she’s had a child, yet you go on —’
‘Leave my room!’ shouted the rector. ‘Revolting! Disgusting! Depraved! What are we coming to, I should like to know? Out of my sight, you — you scoundrel!’
Guy, feeling much better after this outburst, went out, slamming the door of the study with such violence that the Rectory shivered.
So did the rector. That shattering and final impudence set him trembling again. He muttered under his breath several words that he had not used since he was an undergraduate, (and sparingly even then).
There was a small mirror in the corner of the study, to which he went unsteadily.
‘Come, come, come, this will never do!’
Gazing at his disordered face, he smoothed his straggling hair, and finally gave himself a long-toothed smile, such a smile as he gave to his parishioners when they were troubled.
☙
That night, by the light of two candles, Mrs Penberthy lay and watched her husband preparing for bed. He was brushing his sleek locks, standing there in his nightshirt that looked so like a surplice. They had already knelt together at the prie dieu which had been a wedding present.
‘What was the matter with Guy tonight?’ she asked. ‘He seemed so queer and changed. Have you been having any trouble with him?’
‘There was a little bother, but I was able to put things right.’
‘What was it all about?’
‘Oh, nothing that you would understand, my dear,’ he answered in a tone that suggested ‘for men only’. ‘Nothing of any real consequence. Just a boyish difficulty that only a father can deal with,’ he added, and slid into bed beside her.