'Come now, Father, you know what I want with you, and if it could wait I should have let it.'
'Very well. My excuses, dame, but you startled me a little. Please sit down. And try to be calm.'
'I am calm. I haven't come here to say all over again what I said this morning. I've come to ask you about something I didn't know then. When my husband told me that he and all the men at St Cecilia's, that everyone concerned had agreed on this thing, you were silent. And you were silent when I called it a barbarity and an abomination and fit only for Turks and whatever else I called it. But I've since learned that you had already refused to sign the document authorising it.'
'Your husband and I had differed on the matter earlier. It would have been improper for me to continue the argument in your presence.'
'I understand that, Father. It wasn't what I meant to ask you about. There was something to the effect that you had some days to decide finally whether or not to give your consent. You will of course persist in withholding it?'
'I've not yet had time to consider the issues fully.'
'But what is there to consider?'
'The... interests of the child, your own feelings...'
'You know what they are, the interests and the feelings and everything else. What could induce you to change your mind and sign? What made you refuse at the outset?'
The answer to the first of her questions was easy to formulate but hard to deliver. The true answer to the second was in the same case, but false answers could at least be attempted. With the best show of firmness he could put on, Lyall said, 'The first concern of us all, as ever, is our duty to God. We speak of that as of a simple and obvious thing, and sometimes indeed it is so. But at other times we have to walk with caution and seek for guidance. That guidance may come—'
'Oh, is that all?'
He did not need to look at her to feel the weight of her disappointment.
'You must allow me to know more of these matters than you, my child.'
'Yes, I suppose I must. One last question, Father. If at the end of this period you were to remain steadfast in your refusal, what then?'
'Then,' he said, with real firmness this time, 'I should soon be removed from the office which gives import to my refusal, and a more pliant person would be substituted.'
'My husband would be compelled to dismiss you and to appoint...?'
'No compulsion would be necessary. Master Anvil is an exceedingly devout Christian, and is known to be one. A word from the right quarter acquainting him with the divine will in this business, and that would be an end of it.'
She nodded without speaking. After a moment she said in a lifeless tone, 'There must be some right of appeal, to the Archbishop or Convocation.'
'Right of appeal, well and good, but no surety that an appeal will not be dismissed without even being heard. No substantial grounds for appeal that I can discern in this case. And unsuccessful appellants are not well regarded in our polity.'
'In other words, you'll do nothing.'
'If I thought I could be of the least-'
'Enough.'
There were tears on Dame Anvil's face as she left the chair and made slowly for the door. Father Lyall barred her way, taking her gently by the upper arms. She lowered her forehead on to his chest.
'My child,' he said several times. To begin with he said it like a priest, but only to begin with. When she lifted her face in one of her brief timid glances, he kissed her. Her lips shook, then steadied, then responded, then withdrew.
'But you're... '
'A sinner,' he said, smoothing her tears away with his fingertips. 'That's nothing so terrible, I promise you. There are plenty of us in this world.'
Some time later, a voice rose in what sounded like, but was not, a theatrical prelude to a sneeze, followed by what sounded like, but was not, a long cry of grief. 'Blessed Lord Jesus,' said Margaret Anvil without much clarity. 'What happened to me then?'
Holding her in his arms on the bed, Lyall made an instant deduction, one that called for no great cleverness or insight, merely for some experience of married women of the higher social condition. 'It was love,' he said.
'Love? But love is what we...'
He put his mouth on hers. They lay there a few more minutes in the dim light from the lowered gas-lamp. The tower clock struck eleven.
'Father, something troubles me.'
'I see no bar to your calling me Matthew now.'
'Yes, Matthew. Something troubles me.'
'Don't begin to repent just yet. Have your sin out. It will have lasted such a short time.'
'It isn't the sin,' she said urgently, pulling away from him. 'God will take care of that. What you think of me is important too.'
