'I will not be lectured on the subject of honour,' Arthur roars. 'I will not. I will not. And especially not by a man who writes a thief for a hero.'
He takes his hat from the peg and crushes it down to his ears. Well, that is that, he decides, that is that. The world is either for you or against you. And it makes things clearer, at least, to see how a prissy prosecuting counsel goes about his business.
Despite this disapproval – or perhaps to prove it misconceived – Arthur begins, very cautiously, to introduce Jean into the social life of Undershaw. He has made the acquaintance in London of a charming family called the Leckies, who have a country place in Crowborough; Malcolm Leckie, the son, is a splendid fellow with a sister called – what is it now? And so Jean's name appears in the Undershaw visitors' book, always beside that of her brother or one of her parents. Arthur cannot claim to be entirely at his ease when uttering sentences such as, 'Malcolm Leckie said he might motor over with his sister', but they are sentences that have to be uttered if he is not to go mad. And on these occasions – a large lunch party, a tennis afternoon – he is never entirely sure his behaviour is natural. Has he been over-attentive to Touie, and did she notice? Was he too stiffly correct with Jean, and might she have taken offence? But the problem is his to be borne. Touie never gives an indication that she finds anything amiss. And Jean – bless her – behaves with an ease and decorum which reassures him that nothing will go wrong. She never seeks him out in private, never slips a lover's note into his hand. At times, it is true, he thinks she is making a show of flirting with him. But when he considers it afterwards, he decides that she is deliberately behaving as she would do if they knew one another no better than they were pretending to. Perhaps the best way to show a wife that you have no designs on her husband is to flirt with him in front of her. If so, that is remarkably clever thinking.
And twice a year, they are able to escape to Masongill together. They arrive and leave by separate trains, like weekend guests who just happen to coincide. Arthur stays in his mother's cottage, while Jean is lodged with Mr and Mrs Denny at Parr Bank Farm. On the Saturday they sup at Masongill House. The Mam presides at Waller's table, as she always has, and presumably always will.
Except that things are no longer as simple as they were when the Mam first came here – not that they were ever simple then. For Waller has somehow managed to get himself married. Miss Ada Anderson, a clergyman's daughter from St Andrews, came to Thornton Vicarage as governess, and, so village gossip asserts, instantly set her cap at the master of Masongill House. She succeeded in marrying the man, only to find – and here gossip turned moralizing – that she could not change him. For the new husband had no intention of letting mere matrimony alter the way of life he had established. To be specific: he visits the Mam as often as he ever did; he dines with her en tête-à-tête; and he has a special bell installed at the back door of her cottage, which only he is allowed to ring. The Waller marriage does not bring forth children.
Mrs Waller never sets foot in Masongill Cottage, and absents herself when the Mam comes to sup at the House. If Waller desires that woman to preside, then so be it, but her authority at the table will not be recognized by the mistress of the house. Mrs Waller increasingly busies herself with her Siamese cats and a rose garden laid out with the rigour of a parade ground or vegetable plot. During a brief encounter with Arthur she showed herself both shy and stand-offish: the fact that he came from Edinburgh and she from St Andrews was no ground for intimacy, her manner suggested.
And so the four of them – Waller, the Mam, Arthur and Jean – sit round the supper table together. Food is brought and taken away, glasses shine in the candlelight, the talk is of books, and everyone behaves as if Waller were still a bachelor. From time to time, Arthur's eye is caught by the silhouette of a cat slipping along the wall and keeping well clear of Waller's boot. A sinuous form, easing its way through the shadows, like the memory of a wife discreetly absenting herself. Does every marriage have its own damn secret? Is there never anything straightforward at the heart of it all?
Still, Arthur long ago accepted that Waller would have to be endured. And since he cannot be with Jean all the time, he is content to golf with Waller. For a short and scholarly type, the master of Masongill House has a neat enough game. He lacks distance, of course, but is rather tidier, it has to be admitted, than Arthur, who still tends to despatch the ball in improbable directions. Apart from golf, there is decent shooting to be had in Waller's woods – partridge, grouse and rooks. The two men also go ferreting together. For five shillings the butcher's boy will arrive with his three ferrets and work them all morning to Waller's satisfaction, scaring up the contents of numerous rabbit pies.
But then there are the hours earned by such dutiful endeavour – the hours alone with Jean. They take the Mam's pony-and-dog cart and drive to nearby villages; they explore the range of wold and fell and sudden valleys north of Ingleton. Though Arthur's returns here are never uncomplicated – the taint of kidnap and betrayal will always linger – the role of tourist agent comes to him naturally and full-heartedly. He shows Jean the Twiss Valley and Pecca Falls, the gorge of the Doe and Beezley Falls. He watches her nerveless on a bridge sixty feet above Yew Tree Gorge. They climb Ingleborough together, and he cannot prevent himself feeling how good it is for a man to have a healthy young woman at his side. He is making no comparison, impugning nobody, just grateful that they do not have to make constant frustrating halts and rests. At the top, he plays archaeologist and points out the vestiges of the Brigantian stronghold; then topographer as they look west towards Morecambe, St George's Channel and the Isle of Man, while far to the northwest the Lake mountains and the Cumbrian ranges discreetly show themselves.
Inevitably, there are constraints and awkwardnesses. They may be far from home, but decorum cannot be abandoned; Arthur is, even here, a well-known figure, while the Mam has her position in local society. So a glance is sometimes required to rein in a certain tendency to candour and expressiveness on Jean's part. And though Arthur is more free to articulate his devotion, he cannot always feel as a lover should – like a man freshly invented. They are driving through Thornton one day, Jean's arm resting on his, the sun high in the sky and the prospect of an afternoon alone together, when she says,
'What a pretty church, Arthur. Stop, let us go in.'
He acts deaf for a moment, then replies, rather stiffly, 'It is not so pretty. Only the tower is original. Most of it is no more than thirty years old. It is all specious restoration.'
Jean does not press her interest, deferring to Arthur's gruff judgement as chief tourist agent. He snaps the reins against the idiosyncratic Mooi, and they drive on. It does not seem the moment to tell her that the church was no more than fifteen years restored when he walked down its aisle, a newly married man, with Touie's hand on his arm just where Jean's is now.
His return to Undershaw this time is not without guilt.
Arthur's way of being a father is to leave the children to their mother's care and then descend from time to time with sudden plans and presents. It seems to him that being a father is like being a slightly more responsible brother. You protect your children, you provide for them, you set an example; beyond that, you make them understand what they are, which is children, that is to say imperfect, even defective, adults. Yet he is also a generous man, and does not believe it necessary or morally improving for them to be deprived of what he was deprived of as a boy. At Hindhead, as at Norwood, there is a tennis ground; also a rifle range behind the house, where Kingsley and Mary are encouraged to improve their marksmanship. In the garden he installs a monorail, which skims and swoops through the hollows and rises of his four acres. Driven by electricity and stabilized by gyroscope, the monorail is the transport of the future. His friend Wells is certain of this, and Arthur agrees.