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.I was curious about the “serious purposes”, and Udal smiled.But he was neither diffident nor coy.He meant to spend this one day a week in preparing himself for the mystical contemplation.One day a week for spiritual knowledge: it sounded fantastically businesslike.I said as much, and Udal smiled indifferently.“I told Roy about it,” he said.“It’s the only time I’ve ever shocked him.”It struck me as so odd that I spoke to Roy when we met in the inner drawing-room before dinner.I said that I had heard Udal’s time-table.“It’s dreadful,” said Roy.“It makes everything nice and hygienic, doesn’t it?” He was speaking with a dash of mockery, with hurt and bitter feeling.He shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Oh, he may as well be left to it.”Just then Lady Muriel entered and caught the phrase.She gave me a formal, perfunctory greeting: then she turned to Roy and demanded to know whom he was discussing.Her solid arms were folded over her black dress, as I had seen them in the Lodge: my last glimpse of her after the funeral, when she kept erect only by courage and training, was swept aside: she was formidable and active again.Yet I felt she depended more on Roy than ever.Roy put his preoccupations behind him, and talked lightly of Udal.“You must remember him, Lady Mu.You’ll like him.” He added: “You’ll approve of him too.He doesn’t stay at expensive hotels.”Lady Muriel did not take the reference, but she continued to talk of Udal as we sat at dinner in the “painted room”.The table was a vast circle, under the painted Italianate ceiling, and there were only six of us spread round it, the Boscastles, Lady Muriel and Joan, Roy and I.Lady Muriel’s boom seemed the natural way to speak across such spaces.“I consider,” she told her brother, “that you should support the new vicar.”Lord Boscastle was drinking his soup.The butler was experimenting with some device for reheating it in the actual dining-room, but it was still rather cold.“What are you trying to get me to do now, Muriel?” he said crossly.“I consider that you should attend service occasionally.” She looked accusingly at her sister-in-law.“I have always regarded going to service as one of the responsibilities of our position.I am sorry to see that it has not been kept up.”“I refuse to be jockeyed into doing anything of the kind,” said Lord Boscastle with irritation.I guessed that, as Lady Muriel recovered her energies, he was not being left undisturbed.“I did not object to putting this fellow in to oblige Roy.But I strongly object if Muriel uses the fellow to jockey me with.I don’t propose to attend ceremonies with which I haven’t the slightest sympathy.I don’t see what good it does me or anyone else.”“It was different for you in college, Muriel,” said Lady Boscastle gently.“You had to consider other people’s opinions, didn’t you?”“I regarded it as the proper thing to do,” said Lady Muriel, her neck stiff with fury.She could think of no retort punishing enough for her sister-in-law, and so pounded on at Lord Boscastle.“I should like to remind you, Hugh, that the Budes have never missed a Sunday service since they came into the title.”The Budes were the nearest aristocratic neighbours, whom even Lord Boscastle could not pretend were social inferiors.But that night, pleased by his wife’s counter-attack, he reverted to his manner of judicial consideration, elaborate, apparently tentative and tired, in reality full of triumphant contempt.“Ah yes, the Budes.I forgot you knew them, Muriel.I suppose you must have done before you went off to your various new circles.Yes, the Budes.” His voice trailed tiredly away.“I should have thought they were somewhat rustic, shouldn’t you have thought?”Revived, Lord Boscastle proceeded to dispose of Udal.“I wish someone would tell him,” he said in his dismissive tone, “not to give the appearance of blessing me from such an enormous height.”“He’s a very big man,” said Roy, defending Udal out of habit.“I’m a rather short one,” said Lord Boscastle promptly.“And I strongly object to being condescended to from an enormous height.”But, despite the familiar repartees, there was tension through the party that night.One source was Joan: for she sat, speaking very little, sometimes, when the rest of us were talking, letting her gaze rest broodingly on Roy.There was violence, reproach, a secret between them.Roy was subdued, as the Boscastles had never seen him, although he put in a word when Lady Muriel was causing too much friction [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]