At the gate of his old friend’s drive he was compelled to sit down once again to rest himself and he sat down on one side of the drive, resting his back against a sycamore tree. Here in his exhaustion he dozed off into an old man’s heavy sleep. He was aroused by a high-pitched feminine voice and he saw himself confronted by Mrs Shotover. The lady was bare-headed and carried her favourite tabby-cat in her arms. She was taking the air after her early tea. She scolded Mr Moreton for attempting that walk in the heat. She scolded him with the familiarity of an old friend and with the burnt-up malice of an old ‘flame’.
‘So you’ve come at last,’ she said in a gentler voice when, having got him safely into her drawing room, she made fresh tea for him which he drank with avidity. ‘I thought you and I would never see each other again.’
He smiled feebly at her, his old half-ironical half-benevolent smile; but he was too tired to reply.
‘It isn’t quite like old days is it, John Moreton?’ she said. He nodded, smiling still, and then shook his head and sighed.
‘When you and I worried the life out of my George and your Cecily — dear innocents that they were!’
He refused her offer of anything to eat with a wave of his hand. ‘You’re the same as ever, Betty,’ he said.
He looked so bedraggled and helpless, lying against her cushions, so caught by the red-tongued hounds of the years, that she stepped up to his side and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Poor old John!’ she murmured, running her jewelled fingers through his stubbly grey hair.
He grew a trifle more rested as time went on; and the obscure shadows across his face receded before the ancient cajolery of her voice.
‘What a world it is, Betty!’ he sighed at last. ‘What a world! You know I’ve come to a stage in my life when, except for hearing Nell laugh and seeing her look happy, I don’t care much what happens. My work interests me still, in a way, Betty, in a way. But not as it used to. If it wasn’t for the church and the Mass I couldn’t go on, Betty. I should just give up.’
‘But they don’t let you do that any more, you poor old heathen, do they?’ asked Mrs George Shotover.
He gave her out of his cavernous eyes a most whimsical look. ‘Someone must remember the rabbits killed by weasels and the sheep slaughtered by man and the trees killed by ivy and the mice killed by owls and the flies in spiders’ webs. Someone must remember these things, little Betty!’
‘And the butterflies caught by John Moreton!’ she laughed mischievously at him.
‘And the butterflies, too,’ he said. ‘But they would have died anyway,’ he added. ‘And my killing-bottles only send them to sleep, you know. I wish you’d put me into a killing-bottle, Betty!’
‘But surely they don’t let you say Mass any more, you dear old lunatic? I can’t imagine the Reverend Sugary Salt, as I call him, allowing such a thing!’
The late Vicar of Littlegate regarded his hostess with a glance full of suppressed and chuckling amusement. ‘Have you never heard of a Midnight Mass?’ he said.
The old lady’s face grew very grave. ‘That’s what you’ve been up to, John Moreton, is it? Well! You just listen to me. That sort of thing’s got to stop. Do you hear? Got to stop and stop at once!’
She paused and looked at him very anxiously, with tears in her eyes. ‘So it’s pranks of that sort has brought you downhill so fast, is it?’
She got up out of her chair and stood in front of him, scowling at him with knitted brow and quivering lips.
‘John Moreton! John Moreton!’ she cried, waving her forefinger at him. ‘I’m afraid you’re no better than a muddle-headed old fool!’
But he smiled at her so reassuringly and made his next remark in so quiet and normal a manner that she relaxed her tense expression and resumed her seat.
‘Dear old Betty!’ he said. ‘It’s not such a very nice world, after all, that old people like you and me should want to live on indefinitely. Why don’t you smoke your cigarettes, Betty, as you used to? You haven’t reformed, I hope?’
Comforted by his tone she did light a cigarette then.
‘John Moreton,’ she said after a pause, sending a puff of smoke through her daintily curved nostrils, ‘do you believe in a life after death?’
Her ancient admirer looked at her rather wistfully.
‘As keen on life as ever, Betty, I see! Oh, my dear, I don’t know! And to tell you the honest truth I don’t greatly care. The whole thing is such a bitter sorry business that we should all be well enough out of it, to my thinking. But there may be another life. Oh yes! certainly there may be. I think Christ is alive. If I didn’t think that, I should go crazy.’
They chatted on, after that, on less serious topics; till at last Mrs Shotover spoke what was rankling in her mind. ‘I shall never forgive Nelly,’ she said. ‘I shall never forgive her. To turn on an old friend for the sake of a man! And what did I say to her? Nothing but the plain truth; that she’s turning your house into I don’t know what, with her husband and her lover!’
The old naturalist rose slowly to his feet. ‘I must be walking home now, Betty; and you mustn’t talk like that.’ He staggered a little as he spoke and leant against the table.
‘Of course I shall have Thomas drive you back,’ said the lady. But you may take this from me, John Moreton: it’s your fault; it’s your going and getting yourself turned out of your living that has brought your girl down to this miserable mess-up. You may say what you please but the truth is you have driven that girl into all this. Canyot is a ruffian and this other fellow is a sly, sneaking, self-satisfied, conceited prig. And here the silly girl is, married to one of them, and hanging on to the other! You’ve brought about a pretty kettle of fish, John Moreton, by your pranks and your manias!’
The old man wilted under her storm of words like an ancient hollyhock bowed down by a cruel wind. He made a feeble movement with his hands and sank back upon the sofa.
‘Ring for your Thomas, Betty dear,’ he gasped. ‘That walk’s been too much for me. I am no doubt very much to blame — very much to blame. But we must forget and forgive, Betty; forget and forgive.’
Chapter 10
Nelly was glad that it was Canyot’s way to make her walk fast by his side. She was glad that it was his way to be silent when he was strongly moved. The effort of keeping pace with him soothed her; and his silence made it possible for her to collect her thoughts and arrive at some sort of understanding with herself.
It had been the most unpleasant shock she had ever known, this business of the letter. It was not only a blow to her love, to her pride, to her happiness. It was a blow to something deeper than these; to that innate respect for life as a thing of quite definite aesthetic values, which made up the very illusion of her soul.
Except for the young man by her side now, she had never known anything of love or lovemaking; and though Mrs Shotover had riddled her with cynical advice she had not really been roused from her illusion by the old lady’s words.
She kept going over in her mind every incident of the scene. It must be some woman that he cares a good deal for, she thought, otherwise he would have shown me the letter and just laughed at its sentiment. It must have been one particular letter in a long correspondence; or his surprise at seeing an unexpected hand would not have disarmed him. He must have known that it would reveal to me the whole story. He must have been thoroughly terrified of my seeing it.