nothing beyond this.
‘She can’t forgive him, you know.’ Lucy tipped her letters into the pillar-box as she said this, and turned to look the vicar straight in the eyes.
‘But whatever for?’ Oliver, Mr Greengrave recalled, had not as a young man been of unblemished moral character, but he had always supposed Lady Dromio to bear if anything too broad a mind in matters of that sort.
Lucy raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, what is it that a mother can’t forgive her son? That son’s father, I suppose.’
Very seriously, Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘My dear, gobbets of the new psychology do none of us any good. It is an infant science, full of half-truths dangerous to our faith and happiness. After that fatal fire nothing was left to Lady Dromio but this one baby son. She must have been devoted to him.’
‘Not a bit of it. She showed how she felt about her Dromio son by first waiting to have a good look at him and then adopting a non-Dromio daughter. And what I say isn’t just a gobbet from an infant science. You’ll find it in your own textbook as well, Mr Greengrave.’
‘My textbook?’
‘Yes. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children to the–’
‘Lucy, this is bad – very bad, indeed. We know nothing about Sir Romeo’s sins.’
‘Don’t we know that he died quite mad because of something dreadful he had done?’
‘We know that rural communities are always full of evil gossip.’ Mr Greengrave raised his stick and pointed down the little village street before them. ‘You see those cottages – so picturesque, so peaceful, so suggestive of the comfortableness of calendars and Christmas cards? There is scarcely one about which some foul story is not current among its neighbours. And about the gentry they have all sorts of extraordinary beliefs. But our own minds surely we should keep clear of such stuff.’
The vicar’s brow had darkened as he spoke and his words had come with unusual energy. Lucy seemed impressed and anxious to make herself understood.
‘You think me cynical and ungrateful. It all isn’t easy to explain. But this waiting for Oliver during the past few weeks is only an intensification of something that has been going on for years. There is a queer perpetual expectation about mama, and it spreads to Oliver and myself without our at all understanding it. We’re like Mr Micawber – always expecting something to turn up. Not Dickens’ cheerful Mr Micawber, of course. If you can imagine a Micawber invented by Chekhov and given touches by Dostoievski–’
Mr Greengrave frowned; he disapproved of serious conversation being given these literary embellishments. ‘Beneath Lady Dromio’s placidity,’ he said, ‘I have more than once felt something of the sort. I confess that I have hoped that it might be a scarcely recognized craving for deeper spiritual experience.’
‘Well, it isn’t just that she became very early a widow and obscurely feels that she has always been cheated of something.’ Lucy delivered this by way of concession. ‘Rather it has been a constant muted expectation of some definitive event, as of somebody coming in at the door or – or of a skeleton coming out of a cupboard. I have always had the feeling that I was brought in just to pass the time until something happened – and that I fell down on the job. Mama stroked my little curls in a very becoming way and we were the admiration of visitors. But her eyes were on that cupboard all the time. They are on it still. And I almost believe that she has lately done something to – well, to make the door give a preliminary creak.’
‘Lucy, my dear, this is mere mystery-mongering.’ But the vicar’s voice lacked confidence. ‘We must find better things to think about.’
‘I don’t agree. If one could think – but can one? – this would be a very useful thing to think about. It ought to be cleared up. I should be less of a mess – more of a credit to you as a parishioner, Mr