“And these quackeries do not,” Grandmama finished her sentence to herself, not wishing to be discouraging.
“Not always,” Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning that religion did not always last.
“No,” Grandmama agreed. “Unfortunately not always. Particularly when it is High Church. There was your uncle Bruce, of course. …”
Mrs. Hilary’s uncle Bruce, who had been High Church for a season, and had even taken Orders in the year 1860, but whose faith had wilted in the heat and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic barrister, took Grandmama back through the last century, and she became reminiscent over the Tractarian movement, and, later, the Ritualists.
“The Queen never could abide them,” said Grandmama. “Nor could Lord Beaconsfield, nor your father, though he was always kind and tolerant. I remember when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked about it. … Ah well, they’ve become very prominent since then, and done a great deal of good work, and there are many very able, excellent men and women among them. … But they’re not High Church any longer, they tell me. They’re Catholics in these days. I don’t know enough of them to judge them, but I don’t think they can have the dignity of the old High Church party, for if they had I can’t imagine that Gilbert’s wife, for instance, would have joined them, even for so short a time as she did. … Well, it suits some people, and psychoanalysis obviously suits others. Only I do hope you will try to keep moderate and balanced, my child, and not believe all this young man tells you. Parts of it do sound so very strange.”
(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeating to Grandmama the strangest parts of all.)
“I feel a new woman,” she said, fervently, and Grandmama smiled, well pleased, thinking that it certainly did seem rather like the old evangelical conversions of her youth. (Which, of course, did not always last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.)
All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly caution, which came however less from age than from having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three years, was “Well, well, we must see.”
III
And then Rosalind’s letter came. It came by the afternoon post—the big, mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly monographed across one corner.
“Gilbert’s wife,” pronounced Grandmama, non-committally from her easy chair, and, said in that tone, it was quite sufficient comment. “Another cup of tea, please, Emily.”
Mrs. Hilary gave it to her, then began to read aloud the letter from Gilbert’s wife. Gilbert’s wife was one of the topics upon which she and Grandmama were in perfect accord, only that Mrs. Hilary was irritated when Grandmama pushed the responsibility for the relationship onto her by calling Rosalind “your daughter-in-law.”
Mrs. Hilary began to read the letter in the tone used by well-bred women when they would, if in a slightly lower social stratum, say “Fancy that now! Did you ever, the brazen hussy!” Grandmama listened, cynically disapproving, prepared to be disgusted yet entertained. On the whole she thoroughly enjoyed letters from Gilbert’s wife. She settled down comfortably in her chair with her second cup of tea, while Mrs. Hilary read two pages of what Grandmama called “foolish chitchat.” Rosalind’s letters were really like the gossipping imbecilities written by Eve of the Tatler, or the other ladies who enliven our shinier-paper weeklies with their bright personal babble. She did not often waste one of them on her mother-in-law; only when she had something to say which might annoy her.
“Do you hear from Nan?” the third page of the letter began. “I hear from the Bramertons, who are wintering in Rome—the Charlie Bramertons, you know, great friends of mine and Gilbert’s (he won a pot of money on the Derby this year and they’ve a dinky flat in some palace out there—), and they meet Nan about, and she’s always with Stephen Lumley, the painter (rotten painter, if you ask me, but he’s somehow diddled London into admiring him, don’t expect you’ve heard of him down at the seaside). Well, they’re quite simply always together, and the Brams say that everyone out there says it isn’t in the least an ambiguous case—no two ways about it. He doesn’t live with his wife, you know. You’ll excuse me passing this on to you, but it does seem you ought to know. I mentioned it to Neville the other day, just before the poor old dear went down with the plague, but you know what Neville is, she always sticks up for Nan and doesn’t care what she does, or what people say. People are talking; beasts, aren’t they! But that’s the way of this wicked old world, we all do it. Gilbert’s quite upset about it, says Nan ought to manage her affairs more quietly. But after all and between you and me it’s not the first time Nan’s been a Town Topic, is it.
“How’s the psycho going? Isn’t Cradock rather a priceless pearl? You’re over head and ears with him by now, of course, we all are. Psycho wouldn’t do you any good if you weren’t, that’s the truth. Cradock told me himself once that transference can’t be effected without the patient being a little bit smitten.
