Mona felt life powerful and transcendent within the shell of her own body, and she wanted to make Stanley Gunther aware that he possessed it too, but she had no words. As a vehicle of expression, the human vocabulary was useless when it came to things of the spirit.
‘What can I say?’ she wondered, and then a way seemed to be shown to her.
She must forget his calling as he had forgotten it himself. For the moment his priesthood was laid aside. The same weakness that had made him subservient to his wife, was not apparent in the frailty of his own faith. He was just a man crying out for help in his agony and she could reach him only by setting aside all his thoughts of his vocation, remembering only that he was drowning in the depths, and she, however strange it might seem, could throw him a lifeline.
Drastic methods were needed to save him, as one who would shake a yelling child or slap the face of someone hysterical.
“I thought you were a Christian,” Mona said provocatively. Stanley Gunther looked at her in astonishment, yet before he could speak, she went on,
“As a Christian you believe in after life. Wherever your wife is now, she will understand more fully the purpose of suffering and the difficulties that we encounter here in this world. As such, we can assume quite safely that she does, or will understand. But for you, there are much better and greater things to do than giving way to melancholy.”
“Better and greater things?” Stanley Gunther echoed bitterly. “I’m a failure.”
“Aren’t we all?” Mona asked.
She talked on, speaking with a sincerity that came from the depths of her being, thinking at times more of herself than the man she was trying to comfort, yet noting, almost dispassionately, how the danger of collapse had passed.
Stanley Gunther had stiffened both physically and mentally. He was listening to what she said, and the blue tinge had faded from his lips. Finally, as her voice died away, he said quietly,
“You make me ashamed of myself.”
“Nonsense,” Mona replied. “There is only one thing you need regret.”
“What’s that?”
“Having wasted opportunities in the past. I’m going to be very frank with you, Vicar. I remember years ago what fun it used to be in Little Cobble because you were always arranging some sort of amusement for us all. There used to be dances, children’s parties, cricket matches, and even skating parties when there was enough frost.
“There was always some very worthy cause behind all these entertainments but I’m afraid we forgot about that and just enjoyed ourselves and found a great deal of happiness and a feeling of real comradeship in joining together to make those things a success.”
“They were fun, weren’t they?” Stanley Gunther said wistfully.
“Why don’t you start them again?” Mona asked. “Wouldn’t such simple pleasures unite this village again, disperse some of the antagonisms, the quarrels, the hatreds that have grown up in the last few years?”
At first, she thought he was going to be shocked at her suggesting entertainments at such a moment, and then he held out his hand.
“I understand all you are trying to express,” he said. “I can only say ‘thank you’ and promise that everything you have said has some meaning for me.”
Mona put her hand in his, then feeling slightly embarrassed she jumped up and rang the bell.
“I’m going to ask for something to eat,” she said. “I’m sure you didn’t have a proper breakfast.”
“They brought me some, but I couldn’t touch anything.”
“Well, you’re going to have some now. Our hostess, I hear, is in bed, so we will see what the house can provide.”
Ten minutes later, Arthur and Michael came into the study to find the Vicar making a good breakfast while Mona sat and chatted to him. The doctor gave her a quick glance of approval. The Vicar already looked better. He still showed signs of the night’s strain, but the look of despair had gone, and in its place was one of resignation and hope.
“What about letting the Major drive you home, Vicar?” the doctor asked. “I’ve got a patient the other side of the county whom I must see before luncheon.”
“If it isn’t any trouble?”
“None at all,” Michael replied.
“Well, I’ll say goodbye to you then,” Arthur Howlett said. “I will be in to see you Vicar, sometime during the afternoon. I don’t suppose you’ll be going out?”
“Oh, no.”
“Good. Well expect me when you see me. Goodbye, Mona.”
He pressed her shoulder in passing, and Mona knew that he was grateful for her help.
Michael drove slowly down to the Vicarage and only for a moment, as the neared the house, did the Vicar seem to shrink from all that must remind him so forcibly of his wife. Mona, sitting beside him in the back of the car, slipped her hand into his.
“I know what you are feeling,” she said very quietly, “but remember it is like a sort of nightmare and one comes through it somehow.”
She was thinking as she spoke of her last contact with death, that moment when, quite without reason or warning, she had known that Lionel was dead. She had been walking down the street looking into the shop windows and, although at the back of her mind there had been that little nagging worry about him, she had never for one moment anticipated that the operation would be anything but successful. Lionel had been in pain at various times during the past two or three months and then the last night he had been with her, he had told her he had decided to have an operation for appendicitis.
They both thought it quite a trivial matter. Mona had had her appendix out when she was sixteen and could remember it being only a tiresome time of convalescence during which she must take things easy.
“It’s a nuisance,” Lionel had said, “but I might as well get it over with. Things are fairly slack at the moment and the doctors seem to think that the sooner it’s done the better.”
Mona had hated the thought of him being in hospital where she could not see him, but he promised to telephone her as soon as he was well enough, and she had been content with that. In Washington, as everywhere else, they had to be terribly careful not to be seen together or to get their names connected in any way whatsoever, but it was a joy to have an apartment of her own, instead of living in some second-rate hotel.
Lionel would come to her whenever he could get an opportunity, and the night before his operation they had been together until the early hours of the morning. It was three days later that Mona suddenly knew what had happened. She could not explain how she was so certain that Lionel was dead. She had no vision, no spirit stood beside her, no voices brought her the news. It was just a sudden and complete conviction, so strong that she broke their strictest rule by going into the nearest drug store and telephoning the hospital.
She could remember as if it was engraved on her mind, that moment of putting the nickels into the machine, waiting while the porter put through her call to the nurse, thinking that if Lionel were alive, he would be annoyed at what she was doing. It was some moments before the nurse came and she felt her heart beating in terrified apprehension.
Perhaps she was crazy. Perhaps it was just one of those ridiculous premonitions to which all women in love are subject and which in nine cases out of ten, prove false. Then the nurse had told her. She had heard the smooth voice hesitate, heard the sentence that began,
