Chapter VI: Ivy-Leaves

This was Saturday. Harvey had purposed remaining until Monday, then spending one night in London, and starting for Paris next day. He had told his young wife as much, almost promising not to be longer away. Happily the promise had been modified by a condition— "if I can possibly help it." He began to see that he hardly would be able to help it.

"I do not think I can go into business matters to-night. My head is so heavy still—there must be thunder brewing," Mr. Dalrymple said after dinner. "I have always been sensitive to thunder. We must have our talk on Monday. You will stay with us till the middle of the week, at all events."

Harvey demurred, and Hermione's eyes rested upon him.

"After eight years!" she said.

"Not all brides would consent to even so much in the first month."

"That difficulty is not our fault," she rejoined in an undertone.

Harvey turned to Mr. Dalrymple. "I think I must say Tuesday," he remarked. "As you suggest, we can go into business on Monday morning; and a ride in the afternoon would be pleasant. I should like to visit old haunts."

"I must not ask more. We will be content with so much at the present moment. But you will bring your Julia to pay us a long visit soon. How soon?"

Harvey was touched again, as he had been before, with the old man's acquiescence in disappointment. "Then you will give her a welcome!"

"My dear fellow! You and she are one now."

Harvey wondered if the widowed sister and her child would be welcomed also. He did not care yet to confess having promised a home for the present to those two. Mrs. Trevor was, or could be, a very agreeable person; and since she had nothing now to live upon, his action was undoubtedly kind. Nobody could question that fact. But he had somehow a vague sense of having been "managed" in this arrangement, and he objected to others guessing what he suspected. After all, if he chose to add to his household, it was his own affair, certainly not Hermione's. Minor matters such as this could be divulged later.

Hermione seemed more willing to converse after dinner, though her first eagerness and warmth of manner had vanished. She showed Harvey all due courtesy and attention as to a guest, not sisterly affection as to a brother.

Mr. Dalrymple dropped asleep in his armchair, and Hermione remarked that he often did so in the evening for ten minutes, only this day it proved to be for a good deal longer. He slept on heavily, and when roused by the entrance of coffee he dropped off again, leaving his cup untasted. "I cannot think what makes him so tired," Hermione remarked uneasily; and Harvey was struck anew with Mr. Dalrymple's aged and wan look. He wondered that Hermione had never spoken in her letters of a change. Could it have crept on so gradually as to be unnoticed?

Sunday morning broke more cheerfully as to the household atmosphere, though outside in clouds and rain. For once Mr. Dalrymple did not appear until late. He had overslept himself, he said—the first time for years past—and he inquired curiously if nobody had heard any thunder. The air certainly had been charged with electricity the night before, and this morning he had quite a headache, so very unusual with him. But neither Hermione nor Harvey could speak of the most distant peal or flash, and Slade, when appealed to, stated the same in his suppressed tones.

"Well, well—it is an old man's fancy, I suppose!" and then Mr. Dalrymple sat down to breakfast, but did not seem able to eat.

He talked freely, however, and was markedly affectionate to Harvey. Hermione's manner too had thawed. Recollections of old days came up, and time went on wings till they had to dress for Church.

"You will not come to-day, I suppose, as you are not well," Harvey remarked to Mr. Dalrymple, but the old man seemed astonished at the suggestion. Nothing short of absolute inability would have been counted by him a sufficient reason for staying at home.

Rain had by this hour ceased, and the walk was pleasant in the soft grey June atmosphere, clouds still low, but a bright promise of future sunshine gleaming through them, and all trees and herbage rejoicing in the past downpour. Hermione wore one of her favourite white dresses, simple enough in make, and Harvey bore her waterproof on his arm.

"You don't use the carriage for this?" he asked as they neared the Church. It was a good half-mile of distance.

"No, no—not unless it were a matter of necessity," Mr. Dalrymple said. "I like my men and horses to have as much as possible of a Sunday, besides myself. Hermione and I are able-bodied people."

Then they were within the old building, replete for Harvey with childish recollections. He seated himself purposely on that same side of the square pew where he had been wont, long ago, to sit beside his fair young mother.

Mr. Dalrymple and Hermione occupied another side of the pew, where Harvey had them in full view. As the service went on, he was impressed with the old man's reverence of manner and look of deep devotion. There was no lounging, no seeking after positions of ease, no occupation with others present. Mr. Dalrymple, albeit pallid still and manifestly not well, stood and sat and knelt as required, with no apparent relaxation in his fixed attention. That was genuine worship, and Harvey knew it.

He did not trouble himself to question what manner of worship his own might be. Marjory Fitzalan claimed his attention next. She was in a pew near, and she too looked pale, even suffering. The long bout of continuous sitting and kneeling was a trial to Marjory's physical powers, and the body was not with her subservient to the spirit, as with Mr. Dalrymple. She wore a worried and depressed air.

Then there was Hermione. Harvey came back to her, casting little glances from the hymn-book which he decorously held open, without any attempt to join in or even to follow the words of praise. He could understand Sutton's use of the word "angelic." Hermione really did look lovely, her blue eyes bent upon the open page, her lips parted as she sang, her face lighted up with a glow of reverent devotion, which might almost have been a reflection of her grandfather's. Was it so genuine as his? and was she at that moment absolutely absorbed, absolutely unconscious of the pretty picture she made? Harvey was disposed to answer both questions in the negative. Like people who are very lenient to themselves, he was not very lenient to others; not disposed always to take the most charitable view of their actions or motives.

* * * * * * *

To Harvey's astonishment the service was at an end, and only the sermon remained. He had scarcely heard a word of the whole. As for any amount of prayer, praise, or adoration on his part, the less said the better, perhaps.

The sermon following was good, forcible, and well worked out. Harvey was not much in the habit, however, of listening to sermons. He sat through them as a kind of duty—whether a duty to himself, to the clergyman, or to society, he would have been at a loss to specify— but he did not commonly take in their sense. Listening means trouble, and Harvey disliked trouble. His attitude of polite endurance was a contrast to the earnest attention of the two seated opposite. Harvey did not even notice the text.

That window, how well he remembered it! The green ivy-leaves clustered around it outside still as of yore, and a gleam of sunshine came filtering softly through the leaves and the tinted panes. The vivid fancy of his childhood came back too, and once more in imagination he seemed to see his mother, clothed in white, mounting upwards by a pathway of wreathed leaves and glowing light— upwards to a far-off land of joy.

Only a child's fancy, of course; but Marjory had declared that children "see farther" sometimes than grown people. After all, why not? A child's picturing may well approach nearer to some grand reality than a man's forgetfulness of it.

Had Harvey any belief in such a land now? Well, yes, after a fashion, no doubt. Practically he knew that this little life may not go on for ever, and he hoped for something agreeable beyond when that beyond had to be reached. He was in no hurry at all to go to heaven; still he did not, of course, wish to go anywhere else after death except to heaven.

"But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heaven Than when I was a boy!"

Marjory's quotation flashed up suddenly; he had heard the words years before, and had forgotten their existence till Marjory recalled them. Now they obtruded themselves persistently, not to say impertinently. He could shut off the sermon, but he could not shut off Marjory's quotation. It haunted him, buzzed about him, so to speak, drowning the quiet voice of Mr. Fitzalan, winding in and out of the green ivy which circled the window, saying itself over and over, dying away and reviving again.

"But now, 'tis little joy—little joy—now—now—now—'tis little joy— to know I'm farther off—farther off from heaven—farther off from heaven—than when I was a boy—a boy—than when I was a boy!"

Harvey roused himself with a slight start at the sound of Mr. Fitzalan's "And now—" to find the sermon ended, the congregation rising. He had been sound asleep in his corner. He could only hope that nobody had observed the fact.

But Hermione's eyes wore a look of rebuke, and Marjory's quotation stayed by him still.