The Lost Virtue

by Suzie J. K.

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I

What is virtue?

Is it the mere opposite of vice, a social charm or a quality that is morally desirable in a human being?

No one, however, would surmise that virtue may be associated with a rebel, and yet in a time when everyone is a rebel, one is left alone with the question of what rebellion truly is.

Toronto, 1923

Tess Kearney was going to the newspaper office that afternoon to submit her piece on the similarities between twenties’ flappers and Regency bucks. She was an ambitious young writer who fitted somewhere in between the black and white opinions of society.

In appearance she was a tall, athletic young woman of nineteen with a frizzy web of shoulder-length hair the taint of oatmeal, a profile in the style of Dorothy Dene, and a pair of defined green eyes that were set rather low on her face and that reminded the observer of a pair of glossy lima beans.

She was a cultured and charming critic of others as well as herself, was impulsively defensive and dynamic in arguments, and she was bold and imaginative, astonishing everyone she met with her unusual blend of frank charm and rigid feminism. She might not have been easily recognised as a rebel in all her grave smiles and placid looks, but underneath her shell of aloofness, she was fiery and purposeful, and was often provoked into exhibiting her true colours by one sharp innuendo or vexatious stock phrase in regard to women.

Now, to resume. As soon as Tess strolled into the main office – a dusky room that admitted but little natural light from the drawn shutters, where the atmosphere was that of ceaseless rush, as though everyone there was darting from one point to the other without pausing to think – Joseph Duds, alias Duds, junior editor of the Toronto Star, accosted her with his customary apologies.

“Tess, about your piece,” he faltered, casting pathetically beseeching looks on her. “We can’t put it in just yet. It’s… well, it’s—”

“Too opinionated?” she offered crossly. “I know. But that’s what newspapers are for, no? Tell me, Duds, where’s Emmy? I’d like to discuss this with her.” Emmy was her cousin, but most importantly she was the Chief Editor’s daughter. As it happens, Emmy was just then strolling in her dreamy way from one office to the other, doubtless visiting her father and his friends. Tess rushed frantically to her side. She grasped her elbow, all the while knowing that force was not one of the ways into Emmeline Ginnery’s heart.

“Emmy, do explain to me why my article isn’t going to be published. It’s all bosh, right?”

Emmy was a young woman of undefined looks – that is, it was hard to define her appearance, for though her startling green-blue eyes were lovely, her nose was aquiline, her lips sucked in, her hair an aggressive red colour, and her face spontaneously sprinkled with freckles. She had a muscular build in the feminine sense of the word, and conformed to the era’s ideal only thus far. Like her willowy cousin, she kept her hair long, loose and free.

“Darling,” she said not with the jaded, gaping look that was then fashionable, but with her unusual look of tender, poetic distance. “Dad told me that it was well written, but that the subject was too offensive.”

“Well written,” she repeated with subdued scorn. “Well written indeed!” And Tess Kearney walked out of the newspaper office looking grimly disenchanted; angry with herself for having fancied that day so ideal when it had proved to be the direct opposite.

***

“Well, I don’t see what could be so offensive in that,” said Mrs. Kearney that evening when Tess had asked everyone to the family room to hear her article and ‘judge for themselves.’ The Kearney mansion was an ‘old Victorian thing,’ as the family called it, with walls mantled with vines, white-shuttered windows and a glossy red door to seal them indefinitely in. It overlooked the lake, which was the pleasantest part of living there.

“Let me finish, mummy,” she cleared her throat, readjusting the papers in her hands. Emmy Ginnery smiled with secret sympathy at her ambitious cousin. “ ‘Today’s good girl is the rebel – you know her; she does not swear, she does not practice sex as a sport, and she dresses modestly. The bad girl, her rival, is the people-pleaser. She is emotionally repressed, publicly sexual, satisfied with being mean to other women, and is walking entertainment for men. I am naturally referring to our unfortunate era’s flappers. They willingly degrade themselves to gratify men’s pleasures, but most of us fail to see it because we have grown so accustomed to it.

“ ‘Men, I must venture to remark, once had to prove that they were worthy of women before getting involved with them. But things seem to have changed for the worse. The bad girl norm is unhealthy for young women. She is cynical, crude, and phony. In taking away the good girl people ironically preserved the people-pleaser. Being nice does not mean allowing people to walk all over you. It is being wise, patient and creative – this does not repress her: it makes her strong and great. Is it silly to dream of a life where you are your own mistress, and live only to please yourself – not your selfish lover? I am not silly, by wanting more than a ‘friend with benefits.’ I am simply not interested in sex as a recreational sport. Young women! You think you are being empowered, when you are in point of fact being oppressed.

“ ‘For those of you who have had the pleasure of reading Pride and Prejudice, do you recall that women in the style of Caroline Bingley do not go far in society, with their cattiness towards other women and submissiveness towards men? Why should women be like men, and men be like women? Would the first feminists have wanted this? They argued that women ought to be allowed to own property and to vote, but never to mimic men. They desired their moral perspectives to improve society. I am modest, not prudish, because I have got class and dignity, and know how to be feminine without being promiscuous.’”

By then everyone assembled was exchanging looks of understanding discomfort, not because they disagreed, but because Tess’s opinion was so aggressively presented, and minutes afterwards, when she had finally finished her noble speech, her father, Winston Kearney, asked what she meant by writing so personal a piece and meaning to publish it in a newspaper like the Toronto Star.

“I was under the impression that young women only scribbled such things in their journals.”

Her face fell. “None of you understand,” she sobbed, throwing the article furiously upon the ground and trampling it with grounded teeth. She then flew out of the room, but returned moments later to claim her abused article. The family members passed on expectant looks to one another as she stormed out.

“Someone has got to go and talk her out of her misery,” said Mr. Kearney, sinking serenely into his armchair and beginning to smoke his pipe. He never dealt with such matters, so he left it to the women to decide.

“I’ll go,” said Mrs. Joyce Kearney, but as soon as she had risen her niece preceded her by blurting, “I’ll go,” and by darting after her cousin presently.

***

Tess had not locked her bedroom door with the thought that someone would eventually come up and console her. Though everyone is naturally in need of human sympathy, she had an uncommon appetite for it, and when she heard Emmy’s soft steps coming towards her, her heart lifted with relief.

She was slouched in her upholstered armchair at the bay window, her hands drooping lifelessly from the armrests while her head tipped to the side in a despondent manner.

“Tess,” said Emmy, kneeling down beside her and squeezing her right hand. “Don’t be angry with them. They believe in you – they even agree with everything you just said – but your parents care too much – well, we all do – for your reputation, and the image you reflect of yourself through such a controversial piece is downright unflattering. Aunt Joyce speaks of your marrying Edward Allen. What would he think of you, Tessy, after reading that?”

“Don’t talk to me of Edward Allen,” she said between her teeth, glancing away from her with acid aloofness. “He is nobody. The only reason why mummy wants me to marry him is because he’s got dough to spare, the poor, handsome boy. But she doesn’t understand that I can make my own money – with precisely that which she despises in me! My goddamn scribbling!”

“You are the only person,” she said with a timorous chuckle, “that is sarcastic towards her own self.”

“And how!” she said lifting herself out of her armchair and rolling the papers in her hands up and down her left arm. She seemed to be considering things in serene sorrow with her drooping lips and heavy eyes. “Can you leave me for now, Emmy? I’d like to be by myself for a while.”

“Of course, Tess,” she offered a compassionate smile, kissing her on the cheek and then leaving her to herself. After she had left, Tess wedged her article into a drawer in her bed-stand, her clear eyes then wandering to the lifeless city sky. It was going to rain.

***

The Kearneys had immigrated to Toronto, then known as York, during the Great Irish Famine, which made them part of the limited group of Catholics then inhabiting the great city. In those days, Toronto was called the ‘Belfast of Canada,’ because the Orange Order had become a great force in the city. Winston Kearney was an influential and powerful Irishman who owned one of the three Irish built hospitals, and like his city he had a tolerant character and though strangers considered his manner distant, those who knew him swore that he was a friendly and generous gentleman of frank traditionalism.

Summer never slowly crept over Toronto the way it did in milder European cities, for the change was always abrupt, but the month of May was fast progressing, and the sun began shining more brightly as the air became scented with flowers and freshly mowed lawns.

The Kearneys promenaded up and down the beaches after mass whenever the weather was fine, and that Sunday they took their customary stroll, Tess and her kid brother going so far as whipping their coats off and prancing wildly over the sand barefoot. It was on that sunny morning that Mr. Ginnery, whose quiet family likewise practised the pleasant custom, announced to his brother-in-law’s family that his English cousin, Sir Cecil Fanshaw, had sent him an invitation to his manor house in Canterbury, and that he had been encouraged to bring one of the Kearneys with him in addition to his wife and daughter. They had rooms to spare, and more company meant more merriment.

“Of course Tess must go,” affirmed Mr. Kearney, without a moment’s thought.

“Thanks, dad,” she grinned with boyish delight, circling her cousin’s waist and plunging into a conversation with her about the English landscape and society, subjects she was well versed in owing to her unfeminine interest in history, travel and serious literature. “We’ll have a ball, Emmy, you may depend on it. Did you know that Europeans are monstrous fond of alcohol? Yes! They even allow their children to drink it provided that it’s diluted with water.”

“But we like wine, Tess. I daresay we even understand it, eh.”

“Yes, suppose we are. Ten to one they put on airs.”

“Oh, don’t suppose such things, Tess! They might be the most charming people we poor Canadian girls are ever to meet.”

“Oh yes, their English charm is sure to stagger us. By the end of our stay, Emmy, we’ll have got crushes on everyone – even their miserable domestics!”

***

Tess was glad to leave Toronto believing in her heart of hearts that Canterbury held more respectable pleasures, the kind that were to be crossed in imaginary places like Emma or Cranford. Toronto had not much good society, and even the handsomest of men lacked charm to woo her.

She had a very whimsical, singularly feminine loveliness about herself. The day of their departure, her complexion could only be described as ripe, her thick biscuit coloured hair was pulled behind in a streaming, lion-like ponytail, and she wore a black velvet headband over her hair. She sported a flowing green polyester dress to her ankles that was cinched at the hip, wore black stockings with cream Mary Jane shoes, had a white jacket over this modest ensemble, and a string of pearls dangled from her elongated neck.

There was nothing she and her cousin Emmy liked better than promenading up and down the decks, and of introducing themselves to passing strangers, agreeable or not, Canadian or British, black or white. The first evening onboard the vessel that was to take them across the Atlantic in five days was spent lounging and eating. The Ginnerys were very fond of eating, though no one might have guessed it from their outward appearances. After dinner, they withdrew into the drawing room, where a jazz band was playing and couples were dancing.

“Girls,” said Mr. Ginnery, whose red beard was quite a trademark. Everyone recognised him by it. “Will you take tea with Bertha and I?”

“Certainly, dad,” said Emmy, with poetic languor. “I have no desire for dancing at the moment.”

“Neither do I,” seconded Tess, perceiving a couple of American flappers slinking unto the dance-floor with their hands clasped behind each other’s backs.

***

The next three days were spoiled by a sullen storm, and Tess found herself and her cousin the only two ladies impervious to its nauseating effects. When the waves tossed them about less violently than during most hours, the girls would set up a couple of lawn chairs on the deck and sit bundled up in coats and shawls, conversing languidly with one another.

“Mummy says she won’t live through another hour,” said Emmy, in her own tenderly plaintive way. “And dad continues to insist on being brought brandy in bed. You see what sort of loonies you’ve consented to follow to England, Tessy?” Tess smiled gravely.

“Four more days, Emmy, you’ll have to endure four more days.”

By the end of the fourth the storm had already subsided.

“Look!” cried Tess as the vessel approached land. She pointed to the green coastline of England. The girls and their guardians were leaning over the rails with anticipation tingling their bones like coursing ants.

“How are we getting there, by the way?” inquired Tess as Mr. Ginnery exhaled sloppy puffs of smoke into the breezy air. “I mean, to this gentleman’s seat in Canterbury?”

“A car’s going to be waiting for us, I think,” Emmy explained, glancing inquiringly up at her father who agreed with a gruff nod.

“I do wonder what they’re like,” she replied, eyeing the horizon with her eyes narrowed to constricted slits. “I mean, the English gentry. He is a baronet, I suppose? Or a knight?”

“I believe that he is a baronet. Dad, isn’t Uncle Cecil a baronet?”

“Yes – Sir Cecil, they call him.”

“How heavenly!” Tess whispered excitedly. “I would awfully like it to be his daughter!”

“That could be nice. But I don’t understand what interests you so much in the English gentility. I mean, certainly they have wealth and consequence, but are you so influenced by power and position?”

“Maybe I am, Emmy, or maybe it’s something else, but until I realise it myself I beg you not to be such a spoil sport.”

“Oh, very well.”

And the party looked on in quiet meditation until one by one they broke away, bored by the unchanging scene before them.

***

The trip was a rather tedious one, chiefly on account of the grim weather.

“England is too green and grey,” Tess observed surreptitiously as they alighted from the car that had driven them to the Fanshaw Clinton Manor House. It was not in the least what Tess had expected to see. It was a moated, mottled thirteenth century manor house that might have been a nunnery once in the course of its long life, and though it was shrouded by colourful wildlife that shone even in that dismal lighting, its walls were a murky mixture of grey and purple and red, like a battered old woman, and it looked more like a monastery than a fashionable country house owned by a living baronet and his wife.

It was tucked into a forest of ancient pines, and was chiefly surrounded by farmland. And yet the manor house had an atmosphere of its own, and appeared unchanged from the time it had been built in the Elizabethan era. There was a garden with stew ponds; a delightful lake walk and nature walk in its gardens. But on that first morning the visitors could only see its defects.

The car had stopped at the moat, and the driver and Mr. Ginnery were unloading their boxes and suitcases from the roof, dropping them into their owner’s hands one by one. The ladies waited with timid uncertainty at the arched, Gothic doors after having boldly crossed the moat by themselves, and then waited for Mr. Ginnery to ring the doorbell, as they were too undecided to do it themselves. In a moment, their ring was answered and a dusty old butler with the face of a cartoon character showed them into the house. However, as they entered, they were astonished by the brilliance and sheer freshness of the inside of Fanshaw Clinton.

Sir Cecil Fanshaw had remodelled the house to suit his family’s more modern tastes, and along with the panelling and the chimneypieces he had introduced electricity as well as other contemporary comforts that they could not have been without. The house was embellished with stained glass and heraldry, and though the decorations had remained exclusively Elizabethan, there was something enchantingly fresh about them, as though the house had never aged from its erection.

“Harold, is that you?” a male voice echoed from one of the rooms on the ground floor. A gentleman, tall and lean, stepped out of a room. His smile broadened as he beheld the baffled party of Canadians standing in the front hall, whose expressions were like this owing to the maids who had attacked them from all sides and were removing their coats for them.

“Cecil, what a pleasure!” he laughed, his eyes hooking onto every impressive object or decoration in the hall on the way to his cousin. The long lost cousins clasped each other’s hands with brotherly amiability, and then after exchanging frank expressions of excitement Mr. Ginnery turned to his family, and introduced them in brief.

“Here they are, then,” he said, placing a large freckled hand on his wife’s shoulder and another on Emmy’s back. But Sir Cecil was more cultured, and he bowed to the ladies, asking them for their names. Mr. Ginnery took it upon himself to answer for them.

“Oh, well this is my wife Bertha, my daughter Emmeline and my niece Tess. We call my girl Emmy, and her girl Tess. Ha! Ha!”

“All of you must be excessively fagged out by your trip across the Atlantic,” said Sir Cecil, addressing the whole travelling party with an understanding smile. “Come, Fallston (to the cartoon-faced butler) you must show the ladies to their rooms. Harold! I must show you my smoking-room. It is decorated in the Arabian style, and has ‘Allah is the only God,’ scrawled somewhere upon one of the walls.”

“How fascinating!” Tess murmured as they followed the butler up the uncarpeted wooden stairs, the driver lugging their things up behind them. “An Arabian smoking-room. I’d like to see it someday.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Emmy, glancing with smiling contempt at her wayward cousin. She would be difficult to manage in this house, and in the society they were to enter into.

***

Until noon the next day, the house was still with sleep.

Between Toronto and Canterbury, it was roughly a five-hour difference in time, and they were indescribably shattered after crossing so many time zones at once. Tess was the first to have woken up, and after fitting herself into one of her dresses and brushing the knots out of her hair; she pranced downstairs, and began her brazen exploration of the house.

She did not go far, however, because as she was peeking into the library someone’s voice startled her back into the hallway. The day was a fresh, sunny one and the crisp light illuminated her host’s hooked but pleasant features as he stood facing her with his hands clasped behind his back. His greying blonde hair was slicked smoothly across his large forehead, and though his hollow cheeks were permanently stained pink, and the blue of his eyes was nearly translucent, he cut a fine figure of a man, and his slim white suit only accentuated the erectness of his frame.

“Good morning, Miss Kearney,” he grinned, revealing a row of straight white teeth. “Or should I say good afternoon?”

“That’s right, I slept so long!” she laughed, her grave grey-green eyes sizing him up with loose curiosity. “Is my uncle up and about yet?”

“No – Harold retired to bed something like three hours ago. We stayed up the entire night talking of old times, and of his new and settled life in Toronto.” Mr. Ginnery had travelled a good deal in his youth – he was a restless, curious being.

“Well, I’m glad he didn’t talk to you about me,” she snorted, tossing her gaze in the direction of the library. “Could you tell me, Sir Cecil, if that room’s haunted? I mean, if you have seen any ghosts in it before?”

“Ghosts? Goodness no! But I daresay you’d like to see the courtyard, Miss Kearney. Every young lady likes it.”

“That sounds swell. Yes, why don’t you take me there?”

The courtyard was one of those carefully planned gardens with stone walks framing it, and flawlessly cut hedges placed strategically on the sides. The north wall of the courtyard was overgrown with dark vines, and it blocked one’s view from the brown water encompassing the manor house. Tess ran boisterously to the wall, and body slamming against it, she snuck a look over it, swallowing the scene of summer greenery with girlish greed.

Sir Cecil laughed melodiously, joining her thence at his own languid pace. She glanced enthusiastically at him as the midday sun bounced sharply off his milky suit. “It’s so nice, Sir Cecil. I wonder I didn’t like it the morning we first came.”

“You are looking at the church walk, Miss Kearney,” he said stationing himself beside her and following the direction of her gaze. The sparkling scenery had an untamed individuality about it that was virtually inimitable. “It is a delicious, five minute walk to our nineteenth century chapel.”

“But you are Catholics, aren’t you?” she asked with aggressive interest, though she was not a self-taught meddler like her mother was.

“Certainly we are. Do you think your uncle and I would like each other half so much if we were Protestants?”

“Oh, yes!” she tittered, stepping away from the wall. “I suppose you’d hate each other. Look, Sir Cecil!” she said pointing to a latticed window on the edge of the wall facing them. “That’s my bedroom window. I can spy on whoever is taking a stroll in the courtyard.”

“And have you seen anything of interest yet?” he asked as they walked leisurely back to the hallway-like entrance.

“I’m afraid not,” she said pausing at the arched entryway. “Oh, daffodils!” she cried, pouncing on a bush of flowers growing by the wall, beneath a ground floor window. “May I have one, Sir Cecil?” she inquired with a quirky smile. He was quite taken by her frank charm.

“By all means, Miss Kearney,” he nodded, scratching his thin moustache with a thoughtful smile. The young woman then tucked the yellow daffodil behind her ear, and smiled placidly on her companion.

“How do I look, sir?”

“I’d paint you if I could,” he said, leading her into the entrance and then turning towards the mahogany door on the left.

“Can’t you, Sir Cecil?”

“No,” he raised his brows, turning the knob and then holding the door ajar for her. “But my youngest son Christopher paints like a young Rembrandt. He is away for the moment, doing whatever he does at Oxford.”

“He is a genius, I suppose?”

“Some say that he is,” he said pensively. “But he hasn’t got the determination to be near as successful. That is his mother’s fault, you know. She never did an ambitious thing in her life, and he has inherited her indifference to the world, poor chap.”

“Will I meet her soon, Sir Cecil?”

“I think so, my dear Miss Kearney, though I hope only later. She is very dull in the morning.”

“So am I!” she burst out, a smile spreading across her glowing face and revealing the pink gums at the corners of her lips.