Poor Caroline (44 page)

She felt a sense of quiet emptiness and desolation. She
had plans, but no spirit yet to change them into action. The
Christian Cinema Company was dead; but from the ashes
of the commercial failure a phoenix of idealism should arise.
Caroline was meeting Father Mortimer that evening to ask him to join her new Board of Idealists. She had done with the taint of profiteering. If the new company made their
fortunes, well and good. It was time that fortune favoured
them. But this time there should be no ambiguity about her object. The C.C.C. was to be at last a pioneer association of idealists. Their one reward should be the consciousness of doing good. They were to challenge the enthroned and evil
power of the Commercial Cinema by organizing a huge
national demand for clean and healthy entertainment. No
more Isenbaums, out for social advancement. No more
Johnsons, or St. Denises, or Macafees. She would ask Father Mortimer to lend his lofty spirit to her enterprise. She would
run the straight race by God's good grace this time.

She found the way round to the vestry door after the
service, and saw Father Mortimer, very tall and remote
in his long black cassock, talking to the vicar. He started
when the verger announced that a Miss Denton-Smyth was
waiting for him, as though he had forgotten the appoint
ment. Then his face relaxed into its rare and charming
smile.

He introduced her to the vicar:

'Miss Denton-Smyth's a gallant crusader for a higher
standard of cinema entertainments,' he explained. 'Nobody but a very brave woman I think would dare to challenge the
vested interest of the film world.'

'Cinemas? Never go. Loathe the things,' said the vicar,
and hurried off with abrupt farewells to his Sunday supper.

'Now you must come and have supper with me,' said Father Mortimer. 'I won't take you to the Clergy House
because we shall be late and our housekeeper has a short
way with late comers. I should hate to offer you nothing but one pickled onion.'

Caroline laughed. It was wonderful to be walking beside
her friend in the mild spring evening.

'How's your foot?' she asked. 'You still limp a good deal.'

'Oh, it's doing famously. I'm going to start swimming
again next week. I have three pupils going in for a schoolboys' competition and I've neglected them horribly. Look.
This is the place. One can get quite a respectable meal
here.'

They entered a small restaurant of the 2
s.
6
d.
Table
d'hote supper - open Sundays' type. The tables were cov
ered with green and orange cloths. A couple of Indian
students were eating cold fish mayonnaise in a corner, and
a large cream-coloured cat occupied the third chair at the
table to which Roger Mortimer conducted Caroline. He
fondled the cat with expert attention, running the tips of
two long fingers down her vertebrae from her forehead to
her tail.

Caroline waited for the waitress to take her order. She
noticed that Father Mortimer treated the girl with the same
serious and attentive consideration that he offered the cat.
When he had asked for soup and pressed beef and salad, Caroline said:

'That's a wonderful text you chose from Ezekiel.'

'Yes. But what a rotten sermon I preached on it.'

She smiled. 'I'm going to pay you the compliment of not pretending I think it's the best you can do, because I always
say that there's no compliment like candour. You know, I don't know why you don't let yourself go a bit more. You
could if you liked. After all, the things that trouble people most are quite
simple
things - sickness and death and not
having enough money. And the beautiful things are quite
simple too, like truth and courage and love.'

'Is love simple?'

'Why-yes.' Caroline opened her eyes very wide and
looked at him. Her pity and tenderness and admiration
overwhelmed her. She loved him so much then that she
wanted to smooth with her fingers his
quizzical mocking
eyebrows, to stroke his dear cheeks, to take his head into her
arms. 'Why, yes - isn't it? Isn't it the only really glorious thing?' she said.

'I can't say that I've found it particularly glorious,' said
he. 'I know, of course, that it should be. It may be true that
perfect love casteth out fear, but imperfect love can play the
very devil. How can I preach about what you call simple things when I don't see them simply?'

She did not quite know what to say. Her anger against
Eleanor raged in her heart. He sat so quietly, speaking with
mild conversational amiability about love, and she found
herself thinking, 'Eleanor's broken his heart. The little
beast. The little selfish careerist.'

'But you could preach so
beautifully.
You can be so helpful,
so understanding.'

'Well, that's very nice of you. I wish I could think so. But
in any case it doesn't much matter. I've just accepted a
mission job in Bermondsey where I shall have very little
preaching to do, thank goodness.'

Bermondsey? Fear chilled her. She thought wildly of the Christian Cinema Company and of all her hopes for his cooperation.

'I've got a curacy there. The sort of job I really like. Lots
of parish work and visiting and boys' clubs and things. It
will do me good. Shake me up a bit.'

'But that's right across the river!'

'That depends how you look at it. It's across the river
from one point of view. But it's on its own side of the river.
It thinks of us as in the benighted North across the river."

'But you can't go. You see - you can't.' Bermondsey for
all practical purposes was as far away as Yorkshire or Berlin
or Labrador. He must not go. She began to tell him her
plans for the Christian Cinema Company, how it was to be
reorganized entirely on a basis of idealism, and how much
she counted on his help.

He shook his head slowly.

'I'm awfully sorry. And it's nice of you to want me. But
it's no good. That sort of thing isn't really my line at all. And I shan't be able to belong to committees and things much outside the parish. I shall have to stick to my job
rather closely at first. I've still got a lot to learn.'

'Oh, but you can't bury yourself down there.'

'I shan't be buried."

'I can't do without you.'

'Why of course you can. You'll do splendidly. Look how
you did before you knew me.'

'It's Eleanor,' cried Caroline in the bitterness of her loss.
'She's driving you away.'

His smile froze.

'What do you mean, Miss Denton-Smyth?'

'Oh, don't pretend. Don't draw away like that, it isn't as
if I didn't know. I'm your friend, my dear boy, you mustn't
mind my calling you that, because I'm nearly old enough
to be your mother, and in any case I'm her nearest living
relative at least in London, and I think she's a blind and selfish little thing. She's not good enough for you. She's one of these hard selfish modern girls who only cares about her
career.'

He was looking down at his plate, and the hand crumbling
his bread roll was still. Then he looked up, suddenly, and
he was smiling cheerfully again. 'Do you know, I think I'd
rather not discuss it, even with you?' he said, quite easily and
pleasantly, as though he were asking her to pass the butter.
'But, of course, it isn't anything to do with Miss de la Roux -
at least' - his instinct for truth urged him to definition - 'at
least, nothing she can help.'

But Caroline would not stop. 'Of course she
could
help it.
My dear boy,
of course
she could. She told me so. She told
me all about it.'

That had roused him. He stared at her with wide aston
ished eyes.

'She told me all those ideas about marriage you both have
and not living together and all that. Of course she
says
she
loves you, and she
says
she would hate to spoil your career.
But I told her that she hasn't begun to understand the first
thing
about love, because if she had she'd know perfectly well that none of her own silly little ideas about business
would matter at all.'

'Oh, but they do matter. I think they matter tre
mendously.'

It was Caroline's turn to stare.

'I couldn't endure a wife who was prepared to "give up
all" for me,' said Father Mortimer with vigour. 'I can't
imagine a more humiliating situation. Think of the strain it would impose upon the husband, having to live up to some
sort of ideal of value which would compensate to his wife for
everything that she had missed. Good heavens! Just think
of it, Miss Denton-Smyth. One would never have a minute's
peace in life again, nor an undivided mind. One would
never be able to enjoy advancement or work or achievement
or anything. Why, one would come to loathe the woman!"

'Roger!' She had never said it before. Hardly even in her
thoughts had she dared to call him that; but the shock of
this revelation of his feelings called it out of her. She was
dazed, shocked and disquieted beyond expression.

He laughed. 'Why of course one would. The ideal thing, I suppose, would be some sort of arrangement whereby
neither husband nor wife need sacrifice their own work.
And I believe it could be done. But one has no business to
turn a wife into a laboratory experiment - and - well, in
any case - that phase is all over and done with. But there's
something I wish you would do. I wish you would try to
persuade her to accept that American offer if she gets it. It
would be a great chance for her to get really into the
business. I want her to do it. I want her to do something that no woman has done before, but - I don't particularly want to see her again just now."

'I can't bear it,' cried Caroline suddenly. 'Everything's
breaking up. Eleanor's going and you're going, and the
company's almost gone. I can't face it all alone. I'm too
old.'

'Oh, no, you're not. You've got real youth and spirit.
You've got all the courage you always had. You'll make a
fine thing out of life somehow, and I shall look to you to
cheer me on when I'm losing a grip on things, and we'll
meet once a year and toast Eleanor's success while she's
making fortunes in America.'