‘Ah, but that’s a different thing’ and ‘That’s just what I say’ broke simultaneously from Elizabeth and Janet.
‘To force ideas or conduct on another,’ went on the minister, ‘is egoism; but to influence another, if it’s done in – in love,’ he stumbled over the word, ‘is surely the highest altruism?’
‘Altruism my hat!’ retorted Elizabeth, to Aunt Janet’s horror. ‘How can it be altruism if we influence other people without knowing it.’
‘I should have said rather that we influence other people more than we know.’
‘Then we can’t take much credit for it, can we?’
‘Perhaps there’s something in that.’ The minister was thoughtful. ‘We all transmit rays of which we know very little. Or, rather, they are transmitted through us.’
‘I agree with you there,’ said Elizabeth unexpectedly. ‘And that’s just why we shouldn’t interfere with them.’
‘But if there were no interference, if we allowed the unknown influences free play, would you not agree that the world might be flooded with – with love?’
Again the minister stumbled over the word.
‘In that case, I should look out for a Noah’s Ark.’
Aunt Janet looked from one to the other in bewilderment.
Elizabeth laughed.
‘I feel contradictious,’ she said. ‘I think we might dilute our arguments with tea.’
She wondered, with an inward chuckle, as she pulled the old-fashioned handle which jangled a bell in the kitchen, whether the minister too had come to condole. But that wasn’t like him, she decided; and in that she did him justice.
Mabel Shand, however, who was then on her way towards number twenty-six High Street, was coming expressly to gloat – which is another form of condolence. She thought that Hector would certainly be at home, and that she would have an opportunity to pay off old scores. She promised herself she would not leave him a leg to stand on.
‘Where’s Hector?’ was her first question when she was shown in. She was surprised to see the minister; he seemed to be very chummy with Elizabeth, she noted. Aunt Janet there too, of course, waiting to enfold the sinner in her benevolent arms. Elizabeth was almost indecently gay; she did not seem to care a rap.
‘Hector? Oh, he’s out at the football match.’
‘Is it safe, do you think, to let him go out to football matches?’
‘He won’t scrag anybody, if that’s what you mean.’
Mabel’s dislike of Elizabeth was beginning to be returned.
‘But that, it seems, is just what he does do,’ murmured Mabel.
‘My husband nearly killed a man last night,’ said Elizabeth gravely addressing the minister. ‘At least, that’s what people seem to think. Should I keep him forcibly in the house to prevent him from committing murder in the high streets?’
The minister was embarrassed. He recollected that Sarah had spoken to him of some scandal concerning Hector Shand. But Mrs Hector, for all her gravity, still had a twinkle in her eye; she was obviously dangling bait in front of him. Yet he could not rise to it with the lightheartedness he had felt before Mrs John Shand came in.
He murmured something about his argument in favour of influence.
Mabel laughed a little.
Elizabeth turned her back on her sister-in-law.
‘I was only teasing,’ she said. ‘It’s not so bad as that. Will you have some more tea? Is that my Maeterlinck you’ve brought back? What do you think of Wisdom and Destiny? I had an idea it would appeal to you.’
‘Yes, yes.’ His embarrassment still persisted. ‘I like some of it very much.’
He could not discuss the book just then.
The real reason of his embarrassment was that the presence of any lady member of his congregation reminded him that he was the minister. In speaking to Elizabeth he quite forgot the minister in the man, an experience so unusual that he found it delightful. But his present constraint brought back his formal vocabulary and he said:
‘I really came to ask you to take a stall at the Christmas sale of work, which is run by the ladies of the congregation.’
‘What?’ said Elizabeth, open-mouthed. ‘Me?’
Mabel laughed again. ‘You’re one of the ladies of the congregation, Elizabeth, although you don’t seem to know it.’
‘Yes,’ said the minister. ‘Mrs John Shand is kindly taking over the sweet stall, and I thought – I imagined a gift-book stall would be very suitable for you.’
‘That’s the very thing for her, Mr Murray,’ said Aunt Janet heartily. She was glad to see that Elizabeth’s pertness had not offended the minister, and it pleased her to think of Hector’s wife taking a dignified place at a church function.
‘Oh, Aunt Janet,’ interrupted Mabel, ‘that reminds me, you’ll give me some jam for my stall, won’t you?’
Mabel and Janet began a lively exchange of confidences about jam and marzipan sweets, under cover of which Elizabeth said to the minister in a low tone:
‘I couldn’t possibly do it. I wish you wouldn’t ask me. I’m no good at things of that kind.’
William Murray got up to put his teacup on the table, and remained standing beside her. His constraint vanished.
‘I wish you would try,’ he urged, bending down.
‘I don’t feel like a lady of the congregation.’
‘It’s not really in that sense that I ask you to come; it would be a great pleasure to me to have you there.’
The yearly sale of work made him feel nervous and distracted. Elizabeth’s presence would in some way be a support to him. ‘I’m no good at things of that kind either,’ he added, ‘and we should help each other out.’
Elizabeth smiled up to him as he bent confidentially nearer to make this confession.
‘If you put it like that,’ she said.
It was at this moment that Hector Shand, having let himself in, walked into the drawing-room.
In spite of the fresh air with which Calderwick was liberally supplied he did not feel much the better of his afternoon’s outing. He was already dissatisfied with himself when he went out to the football match, and neither the weather nor the bad play of the local team had relieved his dissatisfaction.
At the close of play, mindful of his promise to Elizabeth, he had refused the invitation of several friends to ‘have one’ at the Clubhouse, and as the men of Calderwick were as self-conscious about their drinks as about their women there had been a considerable amount of chaffing when he said with attempted heartiness: ‘No, I promised the wife.’
All the way home his grievances harassed him. John had jumped down his throat that morning. Calderwick was a one-horse town where a man couldn’t enjoy himself without everybody kicking up a fuss. Damn it all, a fellow had to go on the loose sometimes. A fellow couldn’t be mollycoddling about his own fireside all the time. All very well for Elizabeth; she had her books; but it gave him a pain in the neck when he tried to read a book.
His head ached and there was an evil taste on the back of his tongue. As his physical misery increased his dissatisfaction with himself, his sense of failure threatened to overwhelm him completely. The one thing he needed was to lay his head on Elizabeth’s bosom, as he had done to his comfort in the small hours of the morning. He hurried on, and almost burst into the drawing-room.
His