The Three Sisters Part 29

"Poor Essy," said Gwenda.

"Poor Essy," said Alice. She was sorry for Essy now. She could afford to be sorry for her.

Mary said nothing, and from her silence you could not tell what she was thinking.

The long day dragged on to prayer time.

The burden of Essy hung heavy over the whole house.

That night, at a quarter to ten, fifteen minutes before prayer time, Gwenda came to her father in his study.

"Papa," she said, "is it true that you've sacked Essy at three days'

notice?"

"I have dismissed Essy," said the Vicar, "for a sufficient reason."

"There's no reason to turn her out before Christmas."

"There is," said the Vicar, "a very grave reason. We needn't go into it."

He knew that his daughter knew his reason. But he ignored her knowledge as he ignored all things that were unpleasant to him.

"We must go into it," said Gwenda. "It's a sin to turn her out at three days' notice."

"I know what I'm doing, Gwenda, and why I'm doing it."

"So do I. We all do. None of us want her to go--yet. You could easily have kept her another two months. She'd have given notice herself."

"I am not going to discuss it with you."

The Vicar put his head under the roll top of his desk and pretended to be looking for papers. Gwenda seated herself familiarly on the arm of the chair he had left.

"You'll have to, I'm afraid," she said. "Please take your head out of the desk, Papa. There's no use behaving like an ostrich. I can see you all the time. The trouble is, you know, that you won't _think_. And you _must_ think. How's Essy going to do without those two months'

wages she might have had? She'll want every shilling she can lay her hands on for the baby."

"She should have thought of that before."

The Vicar was answering himself. He did not acknowledge his daughter's right to discuss Essy.

"She'll think of it presently," said Gwenda in her unblushing calm.

"Look here, Papa, while you're trying how you can make this awful thing more awful for her, what do you think poor Essy's bothering about? She's not bothering about her sin, nor about her baby. She's bothering about how she's landed _us_."

The Vicar closed his eyes. His patience was exhausted. So was his wisdom.

"I am not arguing with you, Gwenda."

"You can't. You know perfectly well what a beastly shame it is."

That roused him.

"You seem to think no more of Essy's sin than Essy does."

"How do you know what Essy thinks? How do I know? It isn't any business of ours what Essy thinks. It's what we do. I'd rather do what Essy's done, any day, than do mean or cruel things. Wouldn't you?"

The Vicar raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. It was the gesture of a man helpless before the unspeakable.

He took refuge in his pathos.

"I am very tired, Gwenda; and it's ten minutes to ten."

It may have been because the Vicar was tired that his mind wandered somewhat that night during family prayers.

Foremost among the many things that the Vicar's mind refused to consider was the question of the status, of the very existence, of family prayers in his household.

But for Essy, though the Vicar did not know it, it was doubtful whether family prayers would have survived what he called his daughters' G.o.dlessness. Mary, to be sure, conformed outwardly. She was not easily irritated, and, as she put it, she did not really _mind_ prayers. But to Alice and Gwendolen prayers were a weariness and an exasperation. Alice would evade them under any pretext. By her father's action in transporting her to Gardale, she considered that she was absolved from her filial allegiance. But Gwendolen was loyal.

In the matter of prayers, which--she made it perfectly clear to Alice and Mary--could not possibly annoy them more than they did her, she was going to see Papa through. It would be beastly, she said, not to.

They couldn't give him away before Essy.

But of the clemency and generosity of Gwendolen's att.i.tude Mr.

Cartaret was not aware. He believed that the custom of prayers was maintained in his household by his inflexible authority and will. He gloried in them as an expression of his power. They were a form of coercion which it seemed he could apply quite successfully to his womenkind, those creatures of his flesh and blood, yet so alien and intractable. Family prayers gave him a keener spiritual satisfaction than the church services in which, outwardly, he cut a far more imposing figure. In a countryside peopled mainly by abominable Wesleyans and impure Baptists (Mr. Cartaret spoke and thought of Wesleyans and Baptists as if they were abominable and impure pure) he had some difficulty in procuring a congregation. The few who came to the parish church came because it was respectable and therefore profitable, or because they had got into the habit and couldn't well get out of it, or because they liked it, not at all because his will and his authority compelled them. But to emerge from his study inevitably at ten o'clock, an hour when the souls of Mary and Gwendolen and Alice were most reluctant and most hostile to the thought of prayers, and by sheer worrying to round up the fugitives, whatever they happened to be doing and wherever they happened to be, this (though he said it was no pleasure to him) was more agreeable to Mr. Cartaret than he knew. The very fact that Essy was a Wesleyan and so far an unwilling conformist gave a peculiar zest to the performance.

It was always the same. It started with a look through his gla.s.ses, leveled at each member of his household in turn, as if he desired to satisfy himself as to the expression of their faces while at the same time he defied them to protest. For the rest, his rule was that of his father, the schoolmaster, before him. First, a chapter from the Bible, the Old Testament in the morning, the New Testament in the evening, working straight through from Genesis to Revelation (omitting Leviticus as somewhat unsuitable for family reading). Then prayers proper, beginning with what his daughter Gwendolen, seventeen years ago, had called "fancy prayers," otherwise prayers not lifted from the Liturgy, but compiled and composed in accordance with the freer Evangelical taste in prayers. Then (for both Mr. Cartaret and the schoolmaster, his father, held that the Church must not be ignored) there followed last Sunday's Collect, the Collect for Grace, the Benediction, and the Lord's Prayer.

Now, as his rule would have it, that evening of the fifth of December brought him to the Eighth chapter of St. John, in the one concerning the woman taken in adultery, which was the very last chapter which Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as a defense of laxity.

"'Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?'

"She said, 'No man, Lord.' And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I condemn thee.'"

Mr. Cartaret lowered his voice and his eyes as he read, for he felt Gwendolen's eyes upon him.

But he recovered himself on the final charge.

"'Go'"--now he came to think of it, that was what he had said to Essy--"'and sin no more.'"

(After all, he was supported.)

Casting another and more decidedly uneasy glance at his family, he knelt down. He felt better when they were all kneeling, for now he had their backs toward him instead of their faces.

He then prayed. On behalf of himself and Essy and his family he prayed to a G.o.d who (so he a.s.sumed his G.o.dhead) was ever more ready to hear than they to pray, a G.o.d whom he congratulated on His ability to perform for them far more than they either desired or deserved; he thanked him for having mercifully preserved them to the close of another blessed day (as in the morning he would thank him for having spared them to see the light of another blessed day); he besought him to pardon anything which that day they had done amiss; to deliver them from disobedience and self-will, from pride and waywardness (he had inserted this clause ten years ago for Gwendolen's benefit) as well as from the sins that did most easily beset them, for the temptations to which they were especially p.r.o.ne. This clause covered all the things he couldn't mention. It covered his wife, Robina's case; it covered Essy's; he had dragged Alice's case as it were from under it; he had a secret fear that one day it might cover Gwendolen's.

Gwendolen was the child who, he declared and believed, had always given him most trouble. He recalled (perversely) a certain thing that (at thirteen) she had said about this prayer.

"It oughtn't to be prayed," she had said. "You don't really think you can fool G.o.d that way, Papa? If I had a servant who groveled to me like that I'd tell him he must learn to keep his chin up or go."