An image comes into Arthur's head, an image from decades earlier. Night-time at Stonyhurst, with a Jesuit quietly patrolling the dormitories to prevent beastliness among the boys. It worked. And what he needs now, and for all the time he can foresee, is his own patrolling Jesuit. What happened in that room must never happen again. As a doctor, he might find such a moment of weakness explicable; as an English gentleman, he finds it shameful and perturbing. He does not know whom he has betrayed the most: Jean, Touie or himself. All three to some degree, certainly. And it must never happen again.
It is the suddenness which has undone him; also, the gap between dream and reality. In chivalric romance, the knight loves an impossible object – the wife of his lord, for instance – and performs courageous actions in her name; his valour is matched by his purity. But Jean is less than an impossible object, and Arthur is no obscure gallant or unattached knight. Rather, he is a married man whose chasteness has been imposed upon him for the last three years by physician's orders. He is fifteen – no, sixteen – stone, fit and energetic; and yesterday he discharged into his underlinen.
But now that the dilemma has manifested itself in full clarity and awfulness, Arthur is able to address it. His brain begins to work on the practicalities of love as once it worked on the practicalities of illness. He defines the problem – the problem! the aching, wracking joy and torment! – thus. It is impossible for him not to love Jean; and for her not to love him. It is impossible for him to divorce Touie, the mother of his children, whom he still regards with affection and respect; besides, only a cad would abandon an invalid. Finally, it is impossible to turn the affair into an intrigue by making Jean his mistress. Each of the three parties has his or her honour, even if Touie does not know hers is being considered in absentia. For that is an essential condition: Touie must not know.
The next time he and Jean meet, he takes charge. He must do so: he is the man, he is older; she is a young woman, possibly impetuous, whose reputation must not be tarnished. At first she appears anxious, as if he is going to dismiss her; but when it becomes clear that he is merely organizing the terms of their relationship, she relaxes, and at times appears almost not to be listening. She becomes anxious again when he is stressing how careful they must be.
'But we are allowed to kiss one another?' she asks, as if verifying the terms of a contract she has signed while happily blindfolded.
Her tone makes his heart melt and his brain blur. As confirmation of the contract they kiss. She likes to peck at him rather, with eyes open, in birdlike attacks; he prefers the long adhesion of the lips, with eyes closed. He cannot believe he is kissing someone again, let alone her. He tries to stop himself thinking in what ways it is different from kissing Touie. After a while, however, the perturbance starts up again, and he pulls back.
They are to meet; they are to be alone together for limited periods; they are allowed to kiss; they are not to become carried away. Their situation is intensely dangerous. But again she appears to be only half-listening.
'It is time I left home,' she says. 'I can share a flat with other women. Then you may come and see me freely.'
She is so different from Touie: direct, frank, open-minded. She has treated him from the start as an equal. And she is an equal in terms of their love, of course. But he has the responsibility for them, and for her. He must see that her straightforwardness does not lead her into dishonour.
There are times, in the following weeks, when he even begins to wonder if she was not expecting him to make her his mistress. The eagerness of her kisses, the disappointment at his drawing back; the way she presses herself against him, the sense he sometimes has that she knows precisely what is going through him. And yet he cannot think this. She is not that sort of woman; her lack of false modesty is a sign that she trusts him entirely, and would trust him even if he were not the man of principle that he is.
But it is not enough to solve the practical difficulties of their relationship; he also needs moral approval. Arthur takes the Leeds train from St Pancras in a state of trepidation. The Mam remains his final arbiter. She reads every word he writes before it is published; and she has done the equivalent for his emotional life. Only the Mam can confirm that the course of action he proposes is correct.
At Leeds he takes the Carnforth train, changing at Clapham for Ingleton. She is waiting at the station in her wickerwork pony-and-dog cart; she wears a red coat and the white cotton cap she has taken to affecting in recent years. The two ambling miles in the cart seem interminable to Arthur. The Mam defers constantly to her pony, which is called Mooi, and has its eccentricities, such as a refusal to go past steam engines. This means that roadworks have to be avoided, and each whim of equine inattention flattered. At last, they are inside Masongill Cottage. Arthur immediately tells the Mam everything. Everything, at least, that counts. Everything necessary for her to give him advice on this high and heaven-sent love of his. Everything about the sudden wonder and sudden impossibility of his life. Everything about his feelings, his sense of honour and his sense of guilt. Everything about Jean, her sweetly direct nature, her incisive intelligence, her virtue. Everything. Almost everything.
He backtracks; he starts again; he goes into different detail. He stresses Jean's ancestry, her Scottishness, a lineage designed to seduce any amateur genealogist. Her descent from Malise de Leggy in the thirteenth century, and by another line from Rob Roy himself. Her present condition, living with wealthy parents in Blackheath. The Leckie family, respectable and religious, who made their money in tea. Her age, twenty-one. Her fine mezzo voice, trained in Dresden and soon to be perfected in Florence. Her supreme ability as a horsewoman, which he has yet to witness. Her quickness of sympathy, her sincerity and strength of character. And then her personal appearance, which sends Arthur into rapturous mode. Her slender frame, small hands and feet, dark gold hair, hazel-green eyes, gently elongated face, delicate white complexion.
'You paint a photograph, Arthur.'
'I wish I had one. I asked her, but she says she takes a poor picture. She is reluctant to smile for the camera, because she is self-conscious about her teeth. She told me quite straightforwardly. She considers them oversized. Of course they are nothing of the sort. She is such an angel.'
The Mam, listening to her son's account, does not fail to observe the strange parallel that life has thrown up. For years she was married to a man whom society politely chose to regard as an invalid, whether he was being brought home by cadging cabmen or locked away under the disguise of an epileptic. In his absence and incapacity, she had found comfort in the presence of Bryan Waller. Back then, her sulky, aggressive son had dared to criticize; at times, by silence, almost to impugn her honour. And now her favourite, her most adored child, has in turn discovered that the complications of life do not end at the altar; some might say that this is where they begin.
The Mam listens; she understands; and she condones. What Arthur has done is correct, and consistent with honour. And she would like to know Miss Leckie.
They meet; and the Mam approves, as she approved of Touie back in Southsea days. This is not an unthinking endorsement of an indulged son. In the Mam's view, Touie, pliant and agreeable, was exactly the right wife for an ambitious yet confused young doctor needing acceptance in the kind of society that would provide him with patients. But were Arthur to marry now, he would need someone like Jean, someone with capabilities of her own, and with a clear, forthright nature which at times reminds the Mam a little of herself. Privately, she notes that this is the first intimate woman friend to whom her son has not given a nickname.