them there vibrated a mutual though unspoken opinion that Elizabeth would need those hints.
Aunt Janet drew Mabel into the bedroom and lowered her voice.
‘It’s a good thing I came up here. Do you know, that girl had set out the chambers under the beds.’
Mabel could not resist the reflection that Hector had survived more shameless facts than unconcealed chamberpots. Nor was Elizabeth likely to be a stickler for propriety.
The flicker of mirth in her face did not escape Aunt Janet, who became almost voluminous as she enfolded young Mrs John in benevolence.
‘I know you’ll do your very best for Elizabeth, my dear. She hasn’t as much social experience as you, but she’s a dear girl – a dear girl. And she’s so clever you know; she has done very well at the University.’
‘Clever she must be,’ admitted Mabel, trying to shake off her aunt-in-law, ‘or she would never have got Hector to marry her. She’s the only woman who has ever managed that.’
If there was any personal feeling in these words Aunt Janet did not notice it; she observed only an aspersion on her beloved nephew.
‘Hector may be thoughtless, but he’s not so bad as you and John think. I assure you he’s not. And he’s so conscious of Elizabeth’s goodness in marrying him. “She’ll keep me straight, Aunt Janet,” he said. “I promise you I’ll go straight.” Poor boy, he has so much against him.’
She absentmindedly patted the eiderdown on the nearest of the twin beds.
‘Oh, Elizabeth will keep him in order,’ said Mabel, walking to the window and staring out of the garden. Aunt Janet was too irritating.
‘A dear girl. A dear girl.’ Aunt Janet furtively wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sure they’ll be happy.’
In the kitchen Mary Ann was singing to herself. ‘Isn’t it fine,’ she was thinking, ‘a bride comin’ hame to her ain hoose? My certy! they’ll be here in half-an-’oor. Where’s that clean apron?’
TWO
William Murray stood looking out of the window, his hands clasped behind his back, while Sarah piled the dirty dinner-dishes on a tray. Now that Ned was actually out of the house she felt exhausted; the exertion of lifting the tray was almost too much for her. She would be thankful when she got into bed. So precisely regulated was her scheme of life, however, that she thought it rather a disgraceful weakness to lie down during the day, and for the same reason it did not occur to her that William, being stronger and less tired, might carry the tray into the kitchen.
Nor did it occur to William. He had not quite escaped the influence of his father, who had ruled his house, as he had ruled his school, on the assumption that the female sex was devised by God for the lower grades of work and knowledge, and that it was beneath the dignity of a man to stoop to female tasks. But although this assumption lay at the back of William’s mind it appeared so natural that he had never recognized it; if Sarah had asked him to carry the tray he would have taken it willingly; the assumption merely hindered him from thinking of such an action. So he gazed out of the window, meditating on his sermon and on Ned.
‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.’ That was his text. The thought which had arisen in his mind that morning had given it a new aspect; he was looking at it from a longer perspective. Instead of being an absolute virtue forgiveness was merely a second-best, a concession to ordinary flesh and blood which was too imperfect to enter at once into the full peace of God. That blessed state, he thought, could not be conveyed in words alone to those who had never experienced it; but perhaps it could be transmitted by contagion…. It was a state of fearless trust in the love of God, a fearless acceptance of the universe, acceptance without criticism, without fear of criticism, without self-consciousness. But most of us, he thought, live on the defensive; we live as if under a jealous and critical eye. ‘Thou God seest me.’ For such timid creatures the leap into the infinite space of God’s love is too great; small fears must first be cast out, small encouragements given. That was the purport of his text: to cast out people’s fear of each other, as a step on the way to boundless trust in God.
Ned was clearly an extreme instance of human mistrust. He filled the world with the shapes of his fear. Every act, every word, every inflection of other people’s voices he construed as hostile; kind words appeared as hypocrisy, kindly services as specious intrigue. His fears were so monstrous that mere persuasion could not dispel them; he must be cured by the greater force, the more absolute revelation. The text was not enough for Ned.
‘Did you notice,’ said Sarah, ‘how Ned flared up at me when I told him Mabel wanted him to golf with her? And the things he said about her! But when she came he went off as meekly as a lamb…. I don’t understand it. It seems as if we brought out the very worst in him.’
Ned’s tirade was still rankling in Sarah’s heart.
‘You think I don’t see through you!’ he had shouted when she mentioned the proposed golf match. ‘Low, sneaking cunning,’ he had reiterated. Women were snakes in the grass. All alike. Not one better than another…. On the whole, it was a comfort to Sarah that he had abused Mabel too. But when Mabel appeared, gay and pretty, asking him if he cared to golf, he had become even excessively complaisant. It tortured Sarah to think that Mabel could succeed where she had failed.
‘No, no,’ said William, turning round. ‘We don’t bring out the worst in him. He fears us less than other people, that’s all. Other people impose a constraint on him. Don’t let such ideas discourage you. Go to bed now and sleep a little.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Sarah still lingered as if there were something left unsaid. She did not herself know what it was.
‘I shall visit Ann Watson,’ said the minister. ‘Go to bed now.’
Reluctantly Sarah withdrew, reminding herself again that she ought to feel grateful to Mabel.
William walked slowly by unfrequented by-roads towards the house where Ann Watson lay in bed. The sand-scoured, windswept little streets were filled with clear light; everything was sharply focussed as if seen through a reducing lens; above the plain grey-stone houses the sky was pale and remote. Clear and thin and sharp as the air were the voices of the passers-by, for the Calderwick dialect is born in the teeth of an east wind that keeps mouths from opening wide enough to give resonance to speech. The shrill almost falsetto tones pierced the minister’s meditations; he ceased to think about the peace of God, and remembered the querulous voice of Ann Watson. In spite of himself, his heart sank a little at the thought of the close-lipped, tight-fisted old woman. He turned a corner into a cobbled lane, at the end of which the Watsons’ house stood at right angles to the others, enclosed by a fence and presenting a blank wall to the street. Here Ann and Mary Watson had been born, and here they would die. Here as children they had played among the cobbles, like the children playing there that day. The minister paused to watch half-a-dozen little girls who were rushing, with screams of simulated terror, towards another girl standing by herself in the middle of the lane.
‘Mither! Mither!’ they shrieked. ‘I’m feared!’
‘Tits!’ said the ‘mother’, ‘it’s just yer faither’s breeks. Away ye go!’
Back they all rushed pell-mell to the Watsons’ gateway.
‘What are you playing at?’
