The Case of Richard Meynell
by
Mrs. Humphry Ward
Part 1 out of 9
Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland,
Mary Meehan and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE CASE OF RICHARD MEYNELL
BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
1911
TO THE MEMORY OF A BELOVED CHILD
A FOREWORD
May I ask those of my American readers who are not intimately acquainted
with the conditions of English rural and religious life to remember that
the dominant factor in it--the factor on which the story of Richard
Meynell depends--is the existence of the State Church, of the great
ecclesiastical corporation, the direct heir of the pre-Reformation
Church, which owns the cathedrals and the parish churches, which
by right of law speaks for the nation on all national occasions, which
crowns and marries and buries the Kings of England, and, through her
bishops in the House of Lords, exercises a constant and important
influence on the lawmaking of the country? This Church possesses half the
elementary schools, and is the legal religion of the great public schools
which shape the ruling upper class. She is surrounded with the prestige
of centuries, and it is probable that in many directions she was never so
active or so well served by her members as she is at present.
At the same time, there are great forces of change ahead. Outside the
Anglican Church stands quite half the nation, gathered in the various
non-conformist bodies--Wesleyan, Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian,
and so on. Between them and the Church exists a perpetual warfare,
partly of opinion, partly of social difference and jealousy. In every
village and small town this warfare exists. The non-conformist desires to
deprive the Church of her worldly and political privileges; the churchman
talks of the sin of schism, or draws up schemes of reunion which drop
still-born. Meanwhile, alike in the Church, in non-conformity, and in the
neutral world which owes formal allegiance to neither, vast movements of
thought have developed in the last hundred years, years as pregnant with
the germs of new life as the wonderful hundred years that followed the
birth of Christ. Whether the old bottles can be adjusted to the new wine,
whether further division or a new Christian unity is to emerge from the
strife of tongues, whether the ideas of modernism; rife in all forms of
Christianity, can be accommodated to the ancient practices and given a
share in the great material possessions of a State Church; how individual
lives are affected in the passionate struggle of spiritual faiths and
practical interests involved in such an attempt; how conscience may be
enriched by its success or sterilized by its failure; how the fight
itself, ably waged, may strengthen the spiritual elements, the power of
living and suffering in men and women--it is with such themes that this
story attempts to deal. Twenty-two years ago I tried a similar subject in
"Robert Elsmere." Since then the movement of ideas in religion and
philosophy has been increasingly rapid and fruitful. I am deeply
conscious how little I may be able to express it. But those who twenty
years ago welcomed the earlier book--and how can I ever forget its
reception in America!--may perhaps be drawn once again to some of the old
themes in their new dress.
MARY A. WARD
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES E. BROCK
"'My dear fellow! No woman ought to marry under nineteen or twenty'"
The Rectory
"Meynell, as he hesitatingly advanced, became the spectator of a scene
not intended for his eyes"
"He shook hands with the Dean"
"'I wonder whether she's ever had any real joy--a week's--a
day's--happiness--in her life?'"
"The old shepherd looked after her doubtfully"
BOOK I
MEYNELL
"Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time."
CHAPTER I
"Hullo, Preston! don't trouble to go in."
The postman, just guiding his bicycle into the Rectory drive, turned at
the summons and dismounted. The Rector approached him from the road, and
the postman, diving into his letter-bag and into the box of his bicycle,
brought out a variety of letters and packages, which he placed in the
Rector's hands.
The recipient smiled.
"My word, what a post! I say, Preston, I add to your burdens pretty
considerably."
"It don't matter, sir, I'm sure," said the postman civilly. "There's not
a deal of letters delivered in this village."
"No, we don't trouble pen and ink much in Upcote," said the Rector; "and
it's my belief that half the boys and girls that do learn to read and
write at school make a point of forgetting it as soon as they can--for
all practical purposes, anyway."
"Well, there's a deal of newspapers read now, sir, compared to what there
was."
"Newspapers? Yes, I do see a _Reynolds_ or a _People_ or two about on
Sunday. Do you think anybody reads much else than the betting and the
police news, eh, Preston?"
Preston looked a little vacant. His expression seemed to say, "And why
should they?" The Rector, with his arms full of the post, smiled again
and turned away, looking back, however, to say:
"Wife all right again?"
"Pretty near, sir; but she's had an awful bad time, and the doctor--he
makes her go careful."
"Quite right. Has Miss Puttenham been looking after her?"
"She's been most kind, sir, most attentive, she have," said the postman
warmly, his long hatchet face breaking into animation.
"Lucky for you!" said the Rector, walking away. "When she cuts in, she's
worth a regiment of doctors. Good-day!"
The speaker passed on through the gate of the Rectory, pausing as he did
so with a rueful look at the iron gate itself, which was off its hinges
and sorely in want of a coat of new paint.
"Disgraceful!" he said to himself; "must have a go at it to-morrow. And
at the garden, too," he added, looking round him. "Never saw such a
wilderness!"
[Illustration: The Rectory]
He was advancing toward a small gabled house of an Early Victorian type,
built about 1840 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners on the site of an
old clergy house, of which all traces had been ruthlessly effaced. The
front garden lying before it was a tangle of old and for the most part
ugly trees; elms from which heavy, decayed branches had recently fallen;
acacias choked by the ivy which had overgrown them; and a crowded
thicket of thorns and hazels, mingled with three or four large and
vigorous though very ancient yews, which seemed to have drunk up for
themselves all that life from the soil which should have gone to maintain
the ragged or sickly shrubbery. The trees also had gradually encroached
upon the house, and darkened all the windows on the porch side. On a
summer afternoon, the deep shade they made was welcome enough; but on a
rainy day the Rector's front-garden, with its coarse grass, its few
straggling rose-bushes, and its pushing throng of half-dead or funereal
trees, shed a dank and dripping gloom upon the visitor approaching his
front door. Of this, however, the Rector himself was rarely conscious;
and to-day, as he with difficulty gathered all the letters and packets
taken from the postman into one hand, while he opened his front door with
the other, his face showed that the state of his garden had already
ceased to trouble him.
He had no sooner turned the handle of the door than a joyous uproar of
dogs arose within, and before he had well stepped over the threshold a
leaping trio were upon him--two Irish terriers and a graceful young
collie, whose rough caresses nearly made him drop his letters.
"Down, Jack! Be quiet, you rascals! I say--Anne!"
A woman's voice answered his call.
"I'm just bringing the tea, sir."
"Any letter for me this afternoon?"
"There's a note on the hall-table, sir."
The Rector hurried into the sitting-room to the right of the hall,
deposited the letters and packets which he held on a small, tumble-down
sofa already littered with books and papers, and returned to the
hall-table for the letter. He tore it open, read it with slightly
frowning brows and a mouth that worked unconsciously, then thrust it into
his pocket and returned to his sitting-room.
"All right!" he said to himself. "He's got an odd list of 'aggrieved
parishioners!'"
The tidings, however, which the letter contained did not seem to distress
him. On the contrary, his aspect expressed a singular and cheerful
energy, as he sat a few moments on the sofa, softly whistling to himself
and staring at the floor. That he was a person extravagantly beloved by
his dogs was clearly shown meanwhile by the exuberant attentions and
caresses with which they were now loading him.
He shook them off at last with a friendly kick or two, that he might turn
to his letters, which he sorted and turned over, much as an epicure
studies his _menu_ at the Ritz, and with an equally keen sense of
pleasure to come.
A letter from Jena, and another from Berlin, addressed in small German
handwriting and signed by names familiar to students throughout the
world; two or three German reviews, copies of the _Revue Critique_ and
the _Revue Chrétienne_, a book by Solomon Reinach, and three or four
French letters, one of them shown by the cross preceding the signature to
be the letter of a bishop; a long letter from Oxford, enclosing the proof
of an article in a theological review; and, finally, a letter sealed with
red wax and signed "F. Marcoburg" in a corner of the envelope, which the
Rector twirled in his hands a moment without opening.
"After tea," he said at last, with the sudden breaking of a smile. And he
put it on the sofa beside him.
As he spoke the door opened to admit his housekeeper with the tray,
to the accompaniment of another orgie of barks. A stout woman in a
sun-bonnet, with a broad face and no features to speak of, entered.
"I'll be bound you've had no dinner," she said sulkily, as she placed the
tea before him on a chair cleared with difficulty from some of the
student's litter that filled the room.
"All the more reason for tea," said Meynell, seizing thirstily on the
teapot. "And you're quite mistaken, Anne. I had a magnificent bath-bun at
the station."
"Much good you'll get out of that!" was the scornful reply. "You know
what Doctor Shaw told you about that sort o' goin' on."
"Never you mind, Anne. What about that painter chap?"
"Gone home for the week-end." Mrs. Wellin retreated a foot or two and
crossed her arms, bare to the elbow, in front of her.
The Rector stared.
"I thought I had taken him on by the week to paint my house," he said at
last.
"So you did. But he said he must see his missus and hear how his little
girl had done in her music exam."
Mrs. Wellin delivered this piece of news very fast and with evident
gusto. It might have been thought she enjoyed inflicting it on her
master.
The Rector laughed out.
"And this was a man sent me a week ago by the Birmingham Distress
Committee--nine weeks out of work--family in the workhouse--everything up
the spout. Goodness gracious, Anne, how did he get the money? Return
fare, Birmingham, three-and-ten."
"Don't ask me, sir," said the woman in the sun-bonnet. "I don't go pryin'
into such trash!"
"Is he coming back? Is my house to be painted?" asked the Rector
helplessly.
"Thought he might," said Anne, briefly.
"How kind of him! Music exam! Lord save us! And three-and-ten thrown into
the gutter on a week-end ticket--with seven children to keep--and all
your possessions gone to 'my uncle.' And it isn't as though you'd been
starving him, Anne!"
"I wish I hadn't dinnered him as I have been doin'!" the woman broke out.
"But he'll know the difference next week! And now, sir, I suppose you'll
be goin' to that place again to-night?"
Anne jerked her thumb behind her over her left shoulder.
"Suppose so, Anne. Can't afford a night-nurse, and the wife won't look
after him."
"Why don't some one make her?" said Anne, frowning.
The Rector's face changed.
"Better not talk about it, Anne. When a woman's been in hell for years,
you needn't expect her to come out an angel. She won't forgive him, and
she won't nurse him--that's flat."
"No reason why she should shovel him off on other people as wants their
night's rest. It's takin' advantage--that's what it is."
"I say, Anne, I must read my letters. And just light me a bit of fire,
there's a good woman. July!--ugh!--it might be February!"
In a few minutes a bit of fire was blazing in the grate, though the
windows were still wide open, and the Rector, who had had a long journey
that day to take a funeral for a friend, lay back in sybaritic ease, now
sipping his tea and now cutting open letters and parcels. The letter
signed "F. Marcoburg" in the corner had been placed, still unopened, on
the mantelpiece now facing him.
The Rector looked at it from time to time; it might have been said by a
close observer that he never forgot it; but, all the same, he went on
dipping into books and reviews, or puzzling--with muttered imprecations
on the German tongue--over some of his letters.
"By Jove! this apocalyptic Messianic business is getting interesting.
Soon we shall know where all the Pauline ideas came from--every single
one of them! And what matter? Who's the worse? Is it any less wonderful
when we do know? The new wine found its bottles ready--that's all."
As he sat there he had the aspect of a man enjoying apparently the
comfort of his own fireside. Yet, now that the face was at rest, certain
cavernous hollows under the eyes, and certain lines on the forehead and
at the corners of the mouth, as though graven by some long fatigue,
showed themselves disfiguringly. The personality, however, on which this
fatigue had stamped itself was clearly one of remarkable vigour, physical
and mental. A massive head covered with strong black hair, curly at the
brows; eyes grayish-blue, small, with some shade of expression in them
which made them arresting, commanding, even; a large nose and irregular
mouth, the lips flexible and kind, the chin firm--one might have made
some such catalogue of Meynell's characteristics; adding to them the
strength of a broad-chested, loose-limbed frame, made rather, one would
have thought, for country labours than for the vigils of the scholar. But
the hands were those of a man of letters--bony and long-fingered, but
refined, touching things with care and gentleness, like one accustomed to
the small tools of the writer.
At last the Rector threw himself back in his chair, while some of the
litter on his lap fell to the floor, temporarily dislodging one of the
terriers, who sat up and looked at him with reproach.
"Now then!" he said, and reached out for the letter on the mantelpiece.
He turned it over a moment in his hand and opened it.
It was long, and the reader gave it a close attention. When he had
finished it he put it down and thought a while, then stretched out his
hand for it again and reread the last paragraph:
"You will, I am sure, realize from all I have said, my dear Meynell, that
the last thing I personally wish to do is to interfere with the parochial
work of a man for whom I have so warm a respect as I have for you. I have
given you all the latitude I could, but my duty is now plain. Let me have
your assurance that you will refrain from such sermons as that to which I
have drawn your attention, and that you will stop at once the
extraordinary innovations in the services of which the parishioners
have complained, and I shall know how to answer Mr. Barron and to compose
this whole difficult matter. Do not, I entreat you, jeopardize the noble
work you are doing for the sake of opinions and views which you hold
to-day, but which you may have abandoned tomorrow. Can you possibly put
what you call 'the results of criticism'--and, remember, these results
differ for you, for me, and for a dozen others I could name--in
comparison with that work for souls God has given you to do, and in which
He has so clearly blessed you? A Christian pastor is not his own master,
and cannot act with the freedom of other men. He belongs by his own act
to the Church and to the flock of Christ; he must always have in view the
'little ones' whom he dare not offend. Take time for thought, my dear
Meynell--and time, above all, for prayer--and then let me hear from you.
You will realize how much and how anxiously I think of you.
"Yours always sincerely in Christ,
"F. MARCOBURG."
"Good man--true bishop!" said the Rector to himself, as he again put down
the letter; but even as he spoke the softness in his face passed into
resolution. He sank once more into reverie.
The stillness, however, was soon broken up. A step was heard outside, and
the dogs sprang up in excitement. Amid a pandemonium of noise, the Rector
put his head out of window.
"Is that you, Barron? Come in, old fellow; come in!"
A slender figure in a long coat passed the window, the front door opened,
and a young man entered the study. He was dressed in orthodox clerical
garb, and carried a couple of books under his arm.
"I came to return these," he said, placing them beside the Rector; "and
also--can you give me twenty minutes?"
"Forty, if you want them. Sit down."
The newcomer turned out various French and German books from a
dilapidated armchair, and obeyed. He was a fresh-coloured, handsome
youth, some fifteen years younger than Meynell, the typical public-school
boy in appearance. But his expression was scarcely less harassed than the
Rector's.
"I expect you have heard from my father," he said abruptly.
"I found a letter waiting for me," said Meynell, holding up the note he
had taken from the hall-table on coming in. But he pursued the subject no
further.
The young man fidgeted a moment.
"All one can say is"--he broke out at last--"that if it had not been my
father, it would have been some one else--the Archdeacon probably. The
fight was bound to come."
"Of course it was!" The Rector sprang to his feet, and, with his hands
under his coat-tails and his back to the fire, faced his visitor. "That's
what we're all driving at. Don't be miserable about it, dear fellow. I
bear your father no grudge whatever. He is under orders, as I am. The
parleying time is done. It has lasted two generations. And now comes
war--honourable, necessary war!"
The speaker threw back his head with emphasis, even with passion. But
almost immediately the smile, which was the only positive beauty of the
face, obliterated the passion.
"And don't look so tragic over it! If your father wins--and as the law
stands he can scarcely fail to win--I shall be driven out of Upcote. But
there will always be a corner somewhere for me and my books, and a pulpit
of some sort to prate from."
"Yes, but what about _us?_" said the newcomer, slowly.
"Ah!" The Rector's voice took a dry intonation. "Yes--well!-you
Liberals will have to take your part, and fire your shot some day, of
course--fathers or no fathers."
"I didn't mean that. I shall fire my shot, of course. But aren't you
exposing yourself prematurely--unnecessarily?" said the young man, with
vivacity. "It is not a general's part to do that."
"You're wrong, Stephen. When my father was going out to the campaign
in which he was killed, my mother said to him, as though she were
half asking a question, half pleading--I can hear her now, poor
darling!--'John, it's _right_ for a general to keep out of danger?' and
he smiled and said, 'Yes, when it isn't right for him to go into it, head
over ears.' However, that's nonsense. It doesn't apply to me. I'm no
general. And I'm not going to be killed!"
Young Barron was silent, while the Rector prepared a pipe, and began upon
it; but his face showed his dissatisfaction.
"I've not said much to father yet about my own position," he resumed;
"but, of course, he guesses. It will be a blow to him," he added,
reluctantly.
The Rector nodded, but without showing any particular concern, though his
eyes rested kindly on his companion.
"We have come to the fighting," he repeated, "and fighting means blows.
Moreover, the fight is beginning to be equal. Twenty years ago--in
Elsmere's time--a man who held his views or mine could only go. Voysey,
of course, had to go; Jowett, I am inclined to think, ought to have gone.
But the distribution of the forces, the lie of the field, is now
altogether changed. _I_ am not going till I am turned out; and there will
be others with me. The world wants a heresy trial, and it is going to get
one this time."
A laugh--a laugh of excitement and discomfort--escaped the younger man.
"You talk as though the prospect was a pleasant one!"
"No--but it is inevitable."
"It will be a hateful business," Baron went on, impetuously. "My father
has a horribly strong will. And he will think every means legitimate."
"I know. In the Roman Church, what the Curia could not do by argument
they have done again and again--well, no use to inquire how! One must be
prepared. All I can say is, I know of no skeletons in the cupboard at
present. Anybody may have my keys!"
He laughed as he spoke, spreading his hands to the blaze, and looking
round at his companion. Barron's face in response was a face of
hero-worship, undisguised. Here plainly were leader and disciple;
pioneering will and docile faith. But it might have been observed that
Meynell did nothing to emphasize the personal relation; that, on the
contrary, he shrank from it, and often tried to put it aside.
After a few more words, indeed, he resolutely closed the personal
discussion. They fell into talk about certain recent developments of
philosophy in England and France--talk which showed them as familiar
comrades in the intellectual field, in spite of their difference of age.
Barron, a Fellow of King's, had but lately left Cambridge for a small
College living. Meynell--an old Balliol scholar--bore the marks of Jowett
and Caird still deep upon him, except, perhaps, for a certain deliberate
throwing over, here and there, of the typical Oxford tradition--its
measure and reticence, its scholarly balancing of this against that. A
tone as of one driven to extremities--a deep yet never personal
exasperation--the poised quiet of a man turning to look a hostile host in
the face--again and again these made themselves felt through his chat
about new influences in the world of thought--Bergson or James, Eucken or
Tyrell.
And to this under-note, inflections or phrases in the talk of the other
seemed to respond. It was as though behind the spoken conversation they
carried on another unheard.
And the unheard presently broke in upon the heard.
"You mentioned Elsmere just now," said Barron, in a moment's pause, and
with apparent irrelevance. "Did you know that his widow is now staying
within a mile of this place? Some people called Flaxman have taken
Maudeley End, and Mrs. Flaxman is a sister of Mrs. Elsmere. Mrs. Elsmere
and her daughter are going to settle for the summer in the cottage near
Forkéd Pond. Mrs. Elsmere seems to have been ill for the first time in
her life, and has had to give up some of her work."
"Mrs. Elsmere!" said Meynell, raising his eyebrows. "I saw her once
twenty years ago at the New Brotherhood, and have never forgotten the
vision of her face. She must be almost an old woman."
"Miss Puttenham says she is quite beautiful still, in a wonderful, severe
way. I think she never shared Elsmere's opinions?"
"Never."
The two fell silent, both minds occupied with the same story and the same
secret comparisons. Robert Elsmere, the Rector of Murewell, in Surrey,
had made a scandal in the Church, when Meynell was still a lad, by
throwing up his orders under the pressure of New Testament criticism, and
founding a religious brotherhood among London workingmen for the
promotion of a simple and commemorative form of Christianity.
Elsmere, a man of delicate physique, had died prematurely, worn out by
the struggle to find new foothold for himself and others; but something
in his personality, and in the nature of his effort--some brilliant,
tender note--had kept his memory alive in many hearts. There were many
now, however, who thrilled to it, who could never speak of him without
emotion, who yet felt very little positive agreement with him. What he
had done or tried to do made a kind of landmark in the past; but in the
course of time it had begun to seem irrelevant to the present.
"To-day--would he have thrown up?--or would he have held on?" Meynell
presently said, in a tone of reverie, amid the cloud of smoke that
enveloped him. Then, in another voice, "What do you hear of the
daughter? I remember her as a little reddish-haired thing at her mother's
side."
"Miss Puttenham has taken a great fancy to her. Hester Fox-Wilton told me
she had seen her there. She liked her."
"H'm!" said the Rector. "Well, if she pleased Hester--critical little
minx!"
"You may be sure she'll please _me_!" said Barron suddenly, flushing
deeply.
The Rector looked up, startled.
"I say?"
Barron cleared his throat.
"I'd better tell you at once, Rector. I got Hester's leave yesterday
to tell you, when an opportunity occurred--you know how fond she is
of you? Well, I'm in love with her--head over ears in love with her--I
believe I have been since she was a little girl in the schoolroom. And
yesterday--she said--she'd marry me some day."
The young voice betrayed a natural tremor. Meanwhile, a strange look--a
close observer would have called it a look of consternation--had rushed
into Meynell's face. He stared at Barron, made one or two attempts to
speak, and, a last, said abruptly:
"That'll never do, Stephen--that'll never do! You shouldn't have spoken."
Barron's face showed the wound.
"But, Rector--"
"She's too young," said Meynell, with increased harshness, "much too
young! Hester is only seventeen. No girl ought to be pledged so early.
She ought to have more time--time to look round her. Promise me, my
dear boy, that there shall be nothing irrevocable--no engagement! I
should strongly oppose it."
The eyes of the two men met. Barron was evidently dumb with surprise; but
the vivacity and urgency of Meynell's expression drove him into speech.
"We thought you would have sympathized," he stammered. "After all, what
is there so much against it? Hester is, you know, not very happy at home.
I have my living, and some income of my own, independent of my father.
Supposing he should object--"
"He would object," said Meynell quickly. "And Lady Fox-Wilton would
certainly object. And so should I. And, as you know, I am co-guardian of
the children with her."
Then, as the lover quivered under these barbs, Meynell suddenly recovered
himself.
"My dear fellow! No woman ought to marry under twenty-one. And every girl
ought to have time to look round her. It's not right; it's not just--it
isn't, indeed! Put this thing by for a while. You'll lose nothing by it.
We'll talk of it again in two years."
And, drawing his chair nearer to his companion, Meynell fell into a
strain of earnest and affectionate entreaty, which presently had a marked
effect on the younger man. His chivalry was appealed to--his
consideration for the girl he loved; and his aspect began to show the
force of the attack. At last he said gravely:
"I'll tell Hester what you say--of course I'll tell her. Naturally we
can't marry without your consent and her mother's. But if Hester persists
in wishing we should be engaged?"
"Long engagements are the deuce!" said the Rector hotly. "You would be
engaged for three years. Madness!--with such a temperament as Hester's.
My dear Stephen, be advised--for her and yourself. There is no one who
wishes your good more earnestly than I. But don't let there be any talk
of an engagement for at least two years to come. Leave her free--even
if you consider yourself bound. It is folly to suppose that a girl of
such marked character knows her own mind at seventeen. She has all her
development to come."
Barron had dropped his head on his hands.
"I couldn't see anybody else courting her--without--"
"Without cutting in. I daresay not," said Meynell, with a rather forced
laugh. "I'd forgive you that. But now, look here."
The two heads drew together again, and Meynell resumed conversation,
talking rapidly, in a kind, persuasive voice, putting the common sense of
the situation--holding out distant hopes. The young man's face gradually
cleared. He was of a docile, open temper, and deeply attached to his
mentor.
At last the Rector sprang up, consulting his watch.
"I must send you off, and go to sleep. But we'll talk of this again."
"Sleep!" exclaimed Barron, astonished. "It's just seven o'clock. What are
you up to now?"
"There's a drunken fellow in the village--dying--and his wife won't look
after him. So I have to put in an appearance to-night. Be off with you!"
"I shouldn't wonder if the Flaxmans were of some use to you in the
village," said Stephen, taking up his hat. "They're rich, and, they say,
very generous."
"Well, if they'll give me a parish nurse, I'll crawl to them," said the
Rector, settling himself in his chair and putting an old shawl over his
knees. "And as you go out, just tell Anne, will you, to keep herself to
herself for an hour and not to disturb me?"
Stephen Barron moved to the door, and as he opened it he turned back a
moment to look at the man in the chair, and the room in which he sat. It
was as though he asked himself by what manner of man he had been
thus gripped and coerced, in a matter so intimate, and, to himself, so
vital.
Meynell's eyes were already shut. The dogs had gathered round him, the
collie's nose laid against his knee, the other two guarding his feet. All
round, the walls were laden with books, so were the floor and the
furniture. A carpenter's bench filled the further end of the room.
Carving tools were scattered on it, and a large piece of wood-carving,
half finished, was standing propped against it. It was part of some choir
decoration that Meynell and a class of village boys were making for the
church, where the Rector had already carved with his own hand many of the
available surfaces, whether of stone or wood. The carving, which was
elaborate and rich, was technically faulty, as an Italian primitive is
faulty, but _mutatis mutandis_ it had much of the same charm that belongs
to Italian primitive work: the same joyous sincerity, the same passionate
love of natural things, leaves and flowers and birds.
For the rest, the furniture of the room was shabby and ugly. The pictures
on the walls were mostly faded Oxford photographs, or outlines by
Overbeck and Retsch, which had belonged to Meynell's parents and were
tenderly cherished by him. There were none of the pretty, artistic
trifles, the signs of travel and easy culture, which many a small country
vicarage possesses in abundance. Meynell, in spite of his scholar's
mastery of half-a-dozen languages, had never crossed the Channel. Barron,
lingering at the door, with his eyes on the form by the fire, knew why.
The Rector had always been too poor. He had been left an orphan while
still at Balliol, and had to bring up his two younger brothers. He had
done it. They were both in Canada now and prospering. But the signs of
the struggle were on this shabby house, and on this shabby, frugal,
powerfully built man. Yet now he might have been more at ease; the
living, though small, was by no means among the worst in the diocese.
Ah, well! Anne, the housekeeper and only servant, knew how the money
went--and didn't go, and she had passed on some of her grievances to
Barron. They two knew--though Barron would never have dared to show his
knowledge--what a wrestle it meant to get the Rector to spend what was
decently necessary on his own food and clothes; and Anne spent hours of
the night in indignantly guessing at what he spent on the clothes and
food of other people--mostly, in her opinion, "varmints."
These things flitted vaguely through the young man's sore mind. Then in a
flash they were absorbed in a perception of a wholly different kind. The
room seemed to him transfigured; a kind of temple. He thought of the
intellectual life which had been lived there; the passion for truth which
had burnt in it; the sermons and books that had been written on those
crowded tables; the personality and influence that had been gradually
built up within it, so that to him, as to many others, the dingy study
was a place of pilgrimage, breathing inspiration; and his heart went out,
first in discipleship, and then in a pain that was not for himself. For
over his friend's head he saw the gathering of clouds not now to be
scattered or dispersed; and who could foretell the course of the storm?
The young man gently closed the door and went his
way. He need not have left the house so quietly. The
Rector got no sleep that evening.
CHAPTER II
The church clock of Upcote Minor was just striking nine o'clock as
Richard Meynell, a few hours later than the conversation just recorded,
shut the Rectory gate behind him, and took his way up the village.
The night was cold and gusty. The summer this year had forgotten to be
balmy, and Meynell, who was an ardent sun-lover, shivered as he walked
along, buttoning a much-worn parson's coat against the sharp air. Before
him lay the long, straggling street, with its cottages and small shops,
its post-office, and public-houses, and its occasional gentlefolks'
dwellings, now with a Georgian front plumb on the street, and now hidden
behind walls and trees. It was evidently a large village, almost a
country town, with a considerable variety of life. At this hour of the
evening most of the houses were dark, for the labourers had gone to bed.
But behind the drawn blinds of the little shops there were still lights
here and there, and in the houses of the gentility.
The Rector passed the fine perpendicular church standing back from the
road, with its churchyard about it; and just beyond it, he turned, his
pace involuntarily slackening, to look at a small gabled house,
surrounded by a garden, and overhung by a splendid lime tree. Suddenly,
as he approached it, the night burst into fragrance, for a gust of wind
shook the lime-blossom, and flung the scent in Meynell's face; while at
the same time the dim masses of roses in the garden sent out their
sweetness to the passers-by.
A feeling of pleasure, quick, involuntary, passed through his mind;
pleasure in the thought of what these flowers meant to the owner of them.
He had a vision of a tall and slender woman, no longer young, with a
delicate and plaintive face, moving among the rose-beds she loved, her
light dress trailing on the grass. The recollection stirred in him
affection, and an impulse of sympathy, stronger than the mere thought of
the flowers, and the woman's tending of them, could explain. It passed
indeed immediately into something else--a touch of new and sharp anxiety.
"And she's been very peaceful of late," he said to himself ruefully, "as
far at least as Hester ever lets her be. Preston's wife was a godsend.
Perhaps now she'll come out of her shell and go more among the people. It
would help her. Anyway, we can't have everything rooted up again just
yet--before the time."
He walked on, and as the farther corner of the house came into view, he
saw a thinly curtained window with a light inside it, and it seemed to
him that he distinguished a figure within.
"Reading?--or embroidering? Probably, at her work. She had that
commission to finish. Busy woman!"
He fell to imagining the little room, the embroidery frame, the books,
and the brindled cat on the rug, of no particular race or beauty; for use
not for show; but sensitive and gentle like its mistress, and like her,
not to be readily made friends with.
"How wise of her," he thought, "not to accept her sister's offer since
Ralph's death--to insist on keeping her little house and her
independence. Imagine her!--prisoned in that house, with that family.
Except for Hester--except for Hester!"
He smiled sadly to himself, threw a last troubled look at the little
house, and left it behind him. Before him, the village street, with its
green and its pond, widened under the scudding sky. Far ahead, about a
quarter of a mile away, among surrounding trees, certain outlines were
visible through the July twilight. The accustomed eye knew them for the
chimneys of the Fox-Wiltons' house, owned now, since the recent death
of its master, Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton, by his widow, the sister of the lady
with the cat and the embroidery, and mother of many children, for the
most part an unattractive brood, peevish and slow-minded like their
father. Hester was the bright, particular star in that house, as Stephen
Barron had now found out.
Alack!--alack! The Rector's face resumed for a moment the expression of
painful or brooding perplexity it had worn during his conversation of the
afternoon with young Barron, on the subject of Hester Fox-Wilton.
Another light in a window--and a sound of shouting and singing. The
"Cowroast," a "public" mostly frequented by the miners who inhabited the
northern end of the village, was evidently doing trade. The Rector did
not look up as he passed it; but in general he turned an indulgent eye
upon it. Before entering upon the living, he had himself worked for a
month as an ordinary miner, in the colliery whose tall chimneys could be
seen to the east above the village roofs. His body still vividly retained
the physical memory of those days--of the aching muscles, and the
gargantuan thirsts.
At last the rows of new-built cottages attached to the colliery came
in view on the left; to the right, a steep hillside heavily wooded,
and at the top of it, in the distance, the glimmering of a large white
house--stately and separate--dominating the village, the church, the
collieries, and the Fox-Wiltons' plantations.
The Rector threw a glance at it. It was from that house had come the
letter he had found on his hall-table that afternoon; a letter in a
handwriting large and impressive like the dim house on the hill. The
handwriting of a man accustomed to command, whether his own ancestral
estate, or the collieries which had been carved out of its fringe, or the
village spreading humbly at his feet, or the church into which he walked
on Sunday with heavy tread, and upright carriage, conscious of his
threefold dignity--as squire, magistrate, and churchwarden.
"It's my business to fight him!" Meynell thought, looking at the house,
and squaring his broad shoulders unconsciously. "It's not my business to
hate him--not at all--rather to respect and sympathize with him. I
provoke the fight--and I may be thankful to have lit on a strong
antagonist. What's Stephen afraid of? What can they do? Let 'em try!"
A smile--contemptuous and good-humoured--crossed the Rector's face. Any
angry bigot determined to rid his parish of a heretical parson might no
doubt be tempted to use other than legal and theological weapons, if he
could get them. A heretic with unpaid bills and some hidden vice is
scarcely in a position to make much of his heresy. But the Rector's smile
showed him humorously conscious of an almost excessive innocence of
private life. The thought of how little an enemy could find to lay hold
on in his history or present existence seemed almost to bring with it a
kind of shamefacedness--as for experience irrevocably foregone, warm,
tumultuous, human experience, among the sinners and sufferers of the
world. For there are odd, mingled moments in the lives of most scholars
and saints--like Renan in his queer envy of Théophile Gautier--when such
men inevitably ask themselves whether they have not missed something
irreplaceable, the student, by his learning--the saint even, by his
goodness.
Here now was "Miners' Row." As the Rector approached the cottage of which
he was in search the clouds lightened in the east, and a pale moonshine,
suffusing the dusk, showed in the far distance beyond the village, the
hills of Fitton Chase, rounded, heathy hills, crowned by giant firs.
Meynell looked at them with longing, and a sudden realization of his own
weariness. A day or two, perhaps a week or two, among the fells, with
their winds and scents about him, and their streams in his ears--he must
allow himself that, before the fight began.
No. 8. A dim light showed in the upper window. The Rector knocked at the
door. A woman opened--a young and sweet-looking nurse in her bonnet and
long cloak.
"You look pretty done!" exclaimed the Rector. "Has he been giving
trouble?"
"Oh, no, sir, not more than usual. It's the two of them."
"She won't go to her sister's?"
"She won't stir a foot, sir."
"Where is she?" The nurse pointed to the living-room on her left.
"She scarcely eats anything--a sup of tea sometimes. And I doubt whether
she sleeps at all."
"And she won't go to him?"
"If he were dying, and she alone with him in the house, I don't believe
she'd go near him."
The Rector stepped in and asked a few questions as to arrangements for
the night. The patient, it seemed, was asleep, in consequence of a
morphia injection, and likely to remain so for an hour or two. He was
dying of an internal injury inflicted by a fall of rock in the mine
some ten days before. Surgery had done what it could, but signs of
blood-poisoning had appeared, and the man's days were numbered.
The doctor had left written instructions, which the nurse handed over to
Meynell. If certain symptoms appeared, the doctor was to be summoned. But
in all probability the man's fine constitution, injured though it had
been by drink, would enable him to hold out another day or two. And the
hideous pain of the first week had now ceased; mortification had almost
certainly set in, and all that could be done was to wait the slow and
sure failure of the heart.
The nurse took leave. Meynell was hanging up his hat in the little
passageway, when the door of the front parlour opened, after being
unlocked.
Meynell looked round.
"Good evening, Mrs. Bateson. You are coming upstairs, I hope, with me?"
He spoke gently, but with a quiet authority.
The woman in the doorway shook her head. She was thin and narrow-chested.
Her hair was already gray, though she could not have been more than
thirty-five, and youth and comeliness had been long since battered
from her face, partly by misery of mind, partly by direct ill usage of
which there were evident traces. She looked steadily at the Rector.
"I'm not going," she said. "He's nowt to me. But I'd like to know what
the doctor was thinkin' of him."
"The doctor thinks he may live through to-night and to-morrow night--not
much more. He is your husband, Mrs. Bateson, and whatever you have
against him, you'll be very sorry afterward if you don't give him help
and comfort in his death. Come up now, I beg of you, and watch with me.
He might die at any moment."
And Meynell put out his hand kindly toward the woman standing in the
shadow, as though to lead her.
But she stepped backward.
"I know what I'm about," she said, breathing quick. "He made a fule o' me
wi' that wanton Lizzie Short, and he near killt me the last morning afore
he went. And I'd been a good wife to him for fifteen year, and never
a word between us till that huzzy came along. And she's got a child by
him, and he must go and throw it in my face that I'd never given him one.
And he struck and cursed me that last morning--he wished me dead, he
said. And I sat and prayed God to punish him. An' He did. The roof came
down on him. And now he mun die. I've done wi' him--and she's done wi'
him. He's made his bed, and he mun lig on it."
The Rector put up his hand sternly.
"Don't! Mrs. Bateson. Those are words you'll repent when you yourself
come to die. He has sinned toward you--but remember!--he's a young man
still--in the prime of life. He has suffered horribly--and he has only a
few hours or days to live. He has asked for you already to-day, he is
sure to ask for you to-night. Forgive him!--ask God to help him to die in
peace!"
While he spoke she stood motionless, impassive. Meynell's voice had
beautiful inflections, and he spoke with strong feeling. Few persons whom
he so addressed could have remained unmoved. But Mrs. Bateson only
retreated farther into the dreary little parlour, with its wool mats and
antimacassars, and a tray of untasted tea on the table. She passed her
tongue round her dry lips to moisten them before she spoke, quite calmly:
"Thank you, sir. Thank you. You mean well. But we must all judge for
ourselves. If there's anything you want I can get for you, you knock
twice on the floor--I shall hear you. But I'm not comin' up."
Meynell turned away discouraged, and went upstairs. In the room above lay
the dying man--breathing quickly and shallowly under the influence of the
drug that had been given him. The nurse had raised him on his pillows,
and the window near him was open. His powerful chest was uncovered, and
he seemed even in his sleep to be fighting for air. In the twelve hours
that had elapsed since Meynell had last seen him he had travelled with
terrible rapidity toward the end. He looked years older than in the
morning; it was as though some sinister hand had been at work on the
face, expanding here, contracting there, substituting chaos and
nothingness for the living man.
The Rector sat down beside him. The room was small and bare--a little
strip of carpet on the boards, a few chairs, and a little table with food
and nourishment beside the bed. On the mantelpiece was a large printed
card containing the football fixtures of the winter before. Bateson had
once been a fine player. Of late years, however, his interest had been
confined to betting heavily on the various local and county matches, and
it was to his ill-luck as a gambler no less than to the influence of the
flimsy little woman who had led him astray that his moral break-up might
be traced.
A common tale!--yet more tragic than usual. For the bedroom contained
other testimonies to the habits of a ruined man. There was a hanging
bookcase on the wall, and the Rector sitting by the bed could just make
out the titles of the books in the dim light.
Mill, Huxley, a reprint of Tom Paine, various books by Blatchford, the
sixpenny editions of "Literature and Dogma," and Renan's "Life of
Christ," some popular science volumes of Browning and Ruskin, and a group
of well-thumbed books on the birds of Mercia--the little collection,
hardly earned, and, to judge from its appearance, diligently read, showed
that its owner had been a man of intelligence. The Rector looked from it
to the figure in the bed with a pang at his heart.
All was still in the little cottage. Through the open window the Rector
could see fold after fold of the Chase stretching north and west above
the village. The moorland ridges shone clear under the moon, now bare, or
scantily plumed by gaunt trees, and now clothed in a dense blackness of
wood. Meynell, who knew every yard of the great heath and loved it well,
felt himself lifted there in spirit as he looked. The "bunchberries" must
just be ripening on the high ground--nestling scarlet and white amid
their glossy leaves. And among them and beside them, the taller, slender
bilberries, golden green; the exquisite grasses of the heath, pale pink,
and silver, and purple, swaying in the winds, clothing acre after acre
with a beauty beyond the looms of men; the purple heather and the ling
flushing toward its bloom: and the free-limbed scattered birch trees,
strongly scrawled against the sky. The scurry of the clouds over the
purple sweeps of moor, the beat of the wind, and then suddenly, pools of
fragrant air sun-steeped--he drew in the thought of it all, as he might
have drunk the moorland breeze itself, with a thrill of pleasure, which
passed at once into a movement of soul.
"_My God--my God_!"
No other words imagined or needed. Only a leap of the heart, natural,
habitual, instinctive, from the imagined beauty of the heath, to the
"Eternal Fountain" of all beauty.
The hand of the dying man made a faint rustling with the sheet. Meynell,
checked, rebuked almost, by the slight sound, bent his eyes again on the
sleeper, and leaning forward tried to meditate and pray. But to-night he
found it hard. He realized anew his physical and mental fatigue, and a
certain confused clamour of thought, strangely persistent behind the more
external experience alike of body and mind; like the murmur of a distant
sea heard from far inland, as the bond and background of all lesser
sounds.
The phrases of the letter he had found on the hall-table recurred to him
whether he would or no. They were mainly legal and technical, intimating
that an application had been made to the Bishop of Markborough to issue a
Commission of Inquiry into certain charges made by parishioners of Upcote
Minor against the Rector of the parish. The writer of the letter was one
of the applicants, and gave notice of his intention to prosecute the
charges named, with the utmost vigour through all the stages prescribed
by ecclesiastical law.
But it was, rather, some earlier letters from the same hand--letters more
familiar, intimate, and discursive--that ultimately held the Rector's
thoughts as he kept his watch. For in those letters were contained almost
all the objections that a sensitive mind and heart had had to grapple
with before determining on the course to which the Rector of Upcote was
now committed. They were the voice of the "adversary," the "accuser."
Crude or conventional, as the form of the argument might be, it yet
represented the "powers and principalities" to be reckoned with. If the
Rector's conscience could not sustain him against it, he was henceforth a
dishonest and unhappy man; and when his lawyers had failed to protect him
against its practical result--as they must no doubt fail--he would be a
dispossessed priest:
"What discipline in life or what comfort in death can such a faith as
yours bring to any human soul? Do, I beg of you, ask yourself this
question. If the great miracles of the Creed are not true, what have you
to give the wretched and the sinful? Ought you not in common human
charity to make way for one who can offer the consolations, utter the
warnings, or hold out the heavenly hopes from which you are debarred?"
* * * * *
The Rector fixed his gaze upon the sick man. It was as though the
question of the letter were put to him through those parched lips. And as
he looked, Bateson opened his eyes.
"Be that you, Rector?" he said, in a clear voice.
"I've been sitting up with you, Bateson. Can you take a little brandy and
milk, do you think?"
The patient submitted, and the Rector, with a tender and skilful touch,
made him comfortable on his pillows and smoothed the bedclothes.
"Where's my wife?" he said presently, looking round the room.
"She's sleeping downstairs."
"I want her to come up."
"Better not ask her. She seems ill and tired."
The sick man smiled--a slight and scornful smile.
"She'll ha' time enough presently to be tired. You goa an' ask her."
"I'd rather not leave you, Bateson. You're very ill."
"Then take that stick then, an' rap on the floor. She'll hear tha fast
enough."
The Rector hesitated, but only for a moment. He took the stick and
rapped.
Almost immediately the sound of a turning key was heard through the small
thinly built cottage. The door below opened and footsteps came up the
stairs. But before they reached the landing the sound ceased. The two men
listened in vain.
"You goa an' tell her as I'm sorry I knocked her aboot," said Bateson,
eagerly. "An' she can see for hersen as I can't aggravate her no more wi'
the other woman." He raised himself on his elbow, staring into the
Rector's face. "I'm done for--tell her that."
"Shall I tell her also, that you love her?--and you want her love?"
"Aye," said Bateson, nodding, with the same bright stare into Meynell's
eyes. "Aye!"
Meynell made him drink a little more brandy, and then he went out to the
person standing motionless on the stairs.
"What did you want, sir?" said Mrs. Bateson, under her breath.
"Mrs. Bateson--he begs you to come to him! He's sorry for his conduct--he
says you can see for yourself that he can't wrong you any more. Come--and
be merciful!"
The woman paused. The Rector could see the shiver of her thin shoulders
under her print dress. Then she turned and quietly descended the cottage
stairway. Half way down she looked up.
"Tell him I should do him nowt but harm. I"--her voice trembled for the
first time--"I doan't bear him malice; I hope he'll not suffer. But I'm
not comin'."
"Wait a moment, Mrs. Bateson! I was to tell you that in spite of all, he
loved you--and he wanted your love."
She shook her head.
"It's no good talkin' that way. It'll mebbe use up his strength. Tell him
I'd have got Lizzie Short to come an' nurse 'im, if I could. It's her
place. But he knows as she an' her man flitted a fortnight sen, an'
theer's no address."
And she disappeared. But at the foot of the stairs--standing unseen--she
said in her usual tone:
"If there was a cup o' tea, I could bring you, sir--or anythin'?"
Meynell, distressed and indignant, did not answer. He returned to the
sick-room. Bateson looked up as the Rector bent once more over the bed.
"She'll not coom?" he said, in a faint voice of surprise. "Well, that's a
queer thing. She wasn't used to be a tough 'un. I could most make her do
what I wanted. Well, never mind, Rector, never mind. Sit tha down--mebbe
you'd be wanting to say a prayer. You're welcome. I reckon it'll do me no
harm."
His lips parted in a smile--a smile of satire. But his brows frowned, and
his eyes were still alive and bright, only now, as the watcher thought,
with anger.
Meynell hesitated.
"I will say the church prayers, if you wish it, Bateson. Of course I will
say them."
"But I doan't believe in 'em," said the sick man, smiling again, "an' you
doan't believe in 'em, noather, if folk say true! Don't tha be vexed--I'm
not saying it to cheek tha. But Mr. Barron, ee says ee'll make tha give
up. Ee's been goin' roun' the village, talkin' to folk. I doan't care
about that--an' I've never been one o' your men--not pious enough, be a
long way--but I'd like to hear--now as I can't do tha no harm, Rector,
now as I'm goin', an' you cawn't deny me--what tha does really believe.
Will tha tell me?"
He turned, open-eyed, impulsive, intelligent, as he had always been in
life.
The Rector started. The inward challenge had taken voice.
"Certainly I will tell you, if it will help you--if you're strong
enough."
Bateson waved his hand contemptuously.
"I feel as strong as onything. That sup o' brandy has put some grit in
me. Give me some more. Thank tha ... Does tha believe in God, Rector?"
His whimsical, half-teasing, yet, at bottom, anxious look touched Meynell
strangely.
"With all my life--and with all my strength!"
Meynell's gaze was fixed intently on his questioner. The night-light in
the basin on the farther side of the room threw the strong features into
shadowy relief, illumining the yearning kindliness of the eyes.
"What made tha believe in Him?"
"My own life--my own struggles--and sins--and sufferings," said
Meynell, stooping toward the sick man, and speaking each word with an
intensity behind which lay much that could never be known to his
questioner. "A good man, Bateson, put it once in this way, 'There is
something in me that asks something of me.' That's easy to understand,
isn't it? If a man wants to be filthy, or drunken, or cruel, there is
always a voice within--it may be weak or it may be strong--that asks of
him to be--instead--pure and sober and kind. And perhaps he denies the
Voice, refuses it--talks it down--again and again. Then the joy in his
life dies out bit by bit, and the world turns to dust and ashes. Every
time that he says No to the Voice he is less happy--he has less power of
being happy. And the voice itself dies away--and death comes. But now,
suppose he turns to the Voice and says 'Lead me--I follow!' And suppose
he obeys, like a child stumbling. Then every time he stretches and bends
his poor weak will so as to give _It_ what it asks, his heart is happy;
and strength comes--the strength to do more and do better. _It_ asks him
to love--to love men and women, not with lust, but with pure love; and as
he obeys, as he loves--he _knows_--he knows that it is God asking, and
that God has come to him and abides with him. So when death overtakes him
he trusts himself to God as he would to his best friend."
"Tha'rt talkin' riddles, Rector!"
"No. Ask yourself. When you fell into sin with that woman, did nothing
speak to you, nothing try to stop you?"
The bright half-mocking eyes below Meynell's wandered a little--wavered
in expression.
"It was the hot blood in me--aye, an' in her too. Yo cawn't help them
things."
"Can't you? When your wife suffered, didn't that touch you? Wouldn't you
undo it now if you could?"
"Aye--because I'm goin'--doctor says I'm done for."
"No--well or ill--wouldn't you undo it--wouldn't you undo the blows you
gave your wife--the misery you caused her?"
"Mebbe. But I cawn't."
"No--not in my sense or yours. But in God's sense you can. Turn your
heart--ask Him to give you love--love to Him, who has been pleading with
you all your life--love to your wife, and your fellow men--love--and
repentance--and faith."
Meynell's voice shook. He was in an anguish at what seemed to him the
weakness, the ineffectiveness, of his pleading.
A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed.
"Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr. Barron, he calls tha an
infidel. But he hasn't read the books you an' I have read, I'll uphold
yer!"
The dying man raised his hand to the bookshelves beside him with a proud
gesture.
The Rector slowly raised himself. An expression as of some passion
within, trying at once to check and to utter itself, became visible on
his face in the half light.
"It's not books that settle it, Jim. I'll try and put it to you--just as
I see it myself--just in the way it comes to me."
He paused a moment, frowning under the effort of simplification. The
hidden need of the dying man seemed to be mysteriously conveyed to
him--the pang of lonely anguish that death brings with it; the craving
for comfort beneath the apparent scorn of faith; the human cry expressed
in this strange catechism.
"Stop me if I tire you," he said at last. "I don't know if I can make it
plain--but to me, Bateson, there are two worlds that every man is
concerned with. There is this world of everyday life--work and business,
sleeping and talking, eating and drinking--that you and I have been
living in; and there is another world, within it, and alongside of it,
that we know when we are quiet--when we listen to our own hearts, and
follow that voice I spoke of just now. Jesus Christ called that other
world the Kingdom of God--and those who dwell in it, the children of God.
Love is the king of that world, and the law of it--Love, which _is_ God.
But different men--different races of men--give different names to that
Love--see it under different shapes. To us--to you and to me--it speaks
under the name and form of Jesus Christ. And so I come to say--so all
Christians come to say--_'I believe--in Jesus Christ our Lord_'. For it
is His life and His death that still to-day--as they have done for
hundreds of years--draw men and women into the Kingdom--the Kingdom of
Love--and so to God. He draws us to love--and so to God. And in God alone
is the soul of man satisfied; _satisfied--and at rest_."
The last words were but just breathed--yet they carried with them the
whole force of a man.
"That's all very well, Rector. But tha's given up th' Athanasian Creed,
and there's mony as says tha doesn't hold by tother Creeds. Wilt tha tell
_me_, as Jesus were born of a virgin?--or that a got up out o' the grave
on the third day?"
The Rector's face, through all its harass, softened tenderly.
"If you were a well man, Bateson, we'd talk of that. But there's only one
thing that matters to you now--it's to feel God with you--to be giving
your soul to God."
The two men gazed at each other.
"What are tha nursin' me for, Rector?" said Bateson, abruptly--"I'm nowt
to you."
"For the love of Christ," said Meynell, steadily, taking his hand--"and
of you, in Christ. But you mustn't talk. Rest a while."
There was a silence. The July night was beginning to pale into dawn.
Outside, beyond the nearer fields, the wheels and sheds and the two great
chimneys of the colliery were becoming plain; the tints and substance of
the hills were changing. Dim forms of cattle moved in the newly shorn
grass; the sound of their chewing could be faintly heard.
Suddenly the dying man raised himself in bed.
"I want my wife!" he said imperiously. "I tell tha, I want my wife!"
It was as though the last energy of being had thrown itself into the
cry--indignant, passionate, protesting.
Meynell rose.
"I will bring her."
Bateson gripped his hand.
"Tell her to mind that cottage at Morden End--and the night we came home
there first--as married folk. Tell her I'm goin'--goin' fast."
He fell back, panting. Meynell gave him food and medicine. Then he went
quickly downstairs, and knocked at the parlour door. After an interval of
evident hesitation on the part of the occupant of the room, it was
reluctantly unlocked. Meynell pushed it open wide.
"Mrs. Bateson--come to your husband--he is dying!"
The woman, deadly white, threw back her head proudly. But Meynell laid a
peremptory hand on her arm.
"I command you--in God's name. Come!"
A struggle shook her. She yielded suddenly--and began to cry. Meynell
patted her on the shoulder as he might have patted a child, said kind,
soothing things, gave her her husband's message, and finally drew her
from the room.
She went upstairs, Meynell following, anxious about the physical result
of the meeting, and ready to go for the doctor at a moment's notice.
The door at the top of the stairs was open. The dying man lay on his
side, gazing toward it, and gauntly illumined by the rising light.
The woman went slowly forward, drawn by the eyes directed upon her.
"I thowt tha'd come!" said Bateson, with a smile.
She sat down upon the bed, crouching, emaciated; at first motionless
and voiceless; a spectacle little less piteous, little less deathlike,
than the man on the pillows. He still smiled at her, in a kind of
triumph; also silent, but his lips trembled. Then, groping, she put out
her hand--her disfigured, toil-worn hand--and took his, raising it to her
lips. The touch of his flesh seemed to loosen in her the fountains of the
great deep. She slid to her knees and kissed him--enfolding him with her
arms, the two murmuring together.
Meynell went out into the dawn. His mystical sense had beheld the Lord in
that small upper room; had seen as it were the sacred hands breaking to
those two poor creatures the sacrament of love. His own mind was for the
time being tranquillized. It was as though he said to himself, "I know
that trouble will come back--I know that doubts and fears will pursue me
again; but this hour--this blessing--is from God!"...
The sun was high in a dewy world, already busy with its first labours of
field and mine, when Meynell left the cottage. The church clock was on
the stroke of eight.
He passed down the village street, and reached again the little gabled
house which he had passed the night before. As he approached, there was a
movement in the garden. A lady, who was walking among the roses, holding
up her gray dress from the dew, turned and hastened toward the gate.
"Please come in! You must be tired out. The gardener told me he'd seen
you about. We've got some coffee ready for you."
Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment.
"What are you up for at this hour?"
"Why shouldn't I be up? Look how lovely it is! I have a friend with me,
and I want to introduce you."
Miss Puttenham opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her
among the roses Meynell perceived another lady--a girl, with bright
reddish hair.
"Mary!" said Miss Puttenham.
The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and
reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy. But the
unconscious dignity of bearing showed that the shyness was the shyness of
strong character, rather than of mere youth and innocence.
"This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You've heard they're at Forkéd
Pond?" Alice Puttenham said, smiling, as she slipped her arm round the
girl. "I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I
want you to know each other."
"Elsmere's daughter!" thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the
two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room,
where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young
face.
CHAPTER III
"I am in love with the house--I adore the Chase--I like heretics--and I
don't think I'm ever going home again!"
Mrs. Flaxman as she spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis
Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin
iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache,
and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A
shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom
conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of
doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off.
Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young
and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in
the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion
was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were
excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society.
Mr. Manvers overlooked a certain challenge that Mrs. Flaxman had thrown
out, took the tea provided, and merely inquired how long the rebuilding
of the Flaxmans' own house would take. For it appeared that they were
only tenants of Maudeley House--furnished--for a year.
Mrs. Flaxman replied that only the British workman knew. But she looked
upon herself as homeless for two years, and found the prospect as
pleasant as her husband found it annoying.
"As if life was long enough to spend it in one county, and one house
and park! I have shaken all my duties from me like old rags. No more
school-treats, no more bean-feasts, no more hospital committees, for two
whole years! Think of it! Hugh, poor wretch, is still Chairman of the
County Council. That's why we took this place--it is within fifty miles.
He has to motor over occasionally. But I shall make him resign that, next
year. Then we are going for six months to Berlin--that's for music--_my_
show! Then we take a friend's house in British East Africa, where you can
see a lion kill from the front windows, and zebras stub up your kitchen
garden. That's Hugh's show. Then of course there'll be Japan--and by that
time there'll be airships to the North Pole, and we can take it on our
way home!"
"Souvent femme varie!" Mr. Manvers raised a pair of surprisingly shrewd
eyes from the carpet. "I remember the years when I used to try and dig
you and Hugh out of Bagley, and drive you abroad--without the smallest
success."
"Those were the years when one was moral and well-behaved! But everybody
who is worth anything goes a little mad at forty. I was forty last
week"--Rose Flaxman gave an involuntary sigh--"I can't get over it."
"Ah, well, it's quite time you were a little nipped by the years," said
Manvers dryly. "Why should you be so much younger than anybody else in
the world? When you grow old there'll be no more youth!"
Mrs. Flaxman's eyes, of a bright greenish-gray, shone gayly into his;
then their owner made a displeased mouth. "You may pay me compliments as
much as you like. They will not prevent me from telling you that you are
one of the most slow-minded people I have ever met!"
"H'm?" said Mr. Manvers, with mild interrogation.
Rose Flaxman repeated her remark, emphasizing with a little tattoo of her
teaspoon on the Chippendale tea-tray before her. Manvers studied her,
smiling.
"I am entirely ignorant of the grounds of this attack."
"Oh, what hypocrisy!" cried his companion hotly. "I throw out the most
tempting of all possible flies, and you absolutely refuse to rise to it."
Manvers considered.
"You expected me to rise to the word 'heretic?'"
"Of course I did! On the same principle as 'sweets to the sweet.' Who--I
should like to know--should be interested in heretics if not you?"
"It entirely depends on the species," said her companion cautiously.
"There couldn't be a more exciting species," declared Mrs. Flaxman.
"Here you have a Rector of a parish simply setting up another Church
of England--services, doctrines and all--off his own bat, so to
speak--without a 'with your leave or by your leave'; his parishioners
backing him up; his Bishop in a frightful taking and not the least
knowing what to do; the fagots all gathering to make a bonfire of him,
and a great black six-foot-two Inquisitor ready to apply the match--and
yet--I can't get you to take the smallest interest in it! I assure you,
Hugh is _thrilled_."
Manvers laid the finger-tips of two long brown hands lightly against each
other.
"Very sorry--but it leaves me quite cold. Heresy in the Church of England
comes to nothing. Our heretics are never violent enough. They forget the
excellent text about the Kingdom of Heaven! Now the heretics in the
Church of Rome are violent. That is what makes them so far more
interesting."
"This man seems to be drastic enough!"
"Oh, no!" said the other, gently but firmly incredulous. "Believe me--he
will resign, or apologize--they always do."
"Believe _me_!--you don't--excuse me!--know anything about it. In
the first place, Mr. Meynell has got his parishioners--all except a
handful--behind him--"
"So had Voysey," interjected Manvers, softly.
Mrs. Flaxman took no notice.
"--And he has hundreds of other supporters--thousands perhaps--and some
of them parsons--in this diocese, and outside it. And they are all
convinced that they must fight--fight to the death--and _not_ give in.
That, you see, is what makes the difference! My brother-in-law"--the
voice speaking changed and softened--"died twenty years ago. I remember
how sad it was. He seemed to be walking alone in a world that hardly
troubled to consider him--so far as the Church was concerned, I mean.
There seemed to be nothing else to do but to give up his living. But the
strain of doing it killed him."
"The strain of giving up your living may be severe--but, I assure you,
your man will find the strain of keeping it a good deal worse."
"It all depends upon his backing. How do you know there isn't a world
behind him?" Mrs. Flaxman persisted, as the man beside her slowly shook
his head. "Well, now, listen! Hugh and I went to church here last Sunday.
I never was so bewildered. First, it was crowded from end to end, and
there were scores of people from other villages and towns--a kind of
demonstration. Then, as to the service--neither of us could find our way
about. Instead of saying the Lord's Prayer four times, we said it once;
we left out half the psalms for the day, the Rector explaining from the
chancel steps that they were not fit to be read in a Christian church; we
altered this prayer and that prayer; we listened to an extempore prayer
for the widows and orphans of some poor fellows who have been killed in a
mine ten miles from here, which made me cry like baby; and, most amazing
of all, when it came to the Creeds--"
Manvers suddenly threw back his head, his face for the first time
sharpening into attention. "Ah! Well--what about the Creeds?"
Mrs. Flaxman bent forward, triumphing in the capture of her companion.
"We had both the Creeds. The Rector read them--turning to the
congregation--and with just a word of preface--'Here follows the Creed,
commonly called the Apostles' Creed,'--or 'Here follows the Nicene
Creed.' And we all stood and listened--and nobody said a word. It was the
strangest moment! You know--I'm not a serious person--but I just held my
breath."
"As though you heard behind the veil the awful Voices--'_Let us depart
hence_?'" said Manvers, after a pause. His expression had gradually
changed. Those who knew him best might have seen in it a slight and
passing trace of conflicts long since silenced and resolutely forgotten.
"If you mean by that that the church was irreverent--or disrespectful--or
hostile--well, you are quite wrong!" cried Mrs. Flaxman impetuously. "It
was like a moment of new birth--I can't describe it--as though a Spirit
entered in. And when the Rector finished--there was a kind of breath
through the church--like the rustling of new leaves--and I thought of
the wind blowing where it listed.... And then the Rector preached on the
Creeds--how they grew up and why. Fascinating!--why aren't the clergy
always telling us such things? And he brought it all round to impressing
upon us that some day _we_ might be worthy of another Christian creed--by
being faithful--that it would flower again out of our lives and souls--as
the old had done.... I wonder what it all meant!" she said abruptly, her
light voice dropping.
Manvers smiled. His emotion had quite passed away.
"Ah! but I forgot"--she resumed hurriedly--"we left out several of the
Commandments--and we chanted the Beatitudes--and then I found there was a
little service paper in the seat, and everybody in the church but Hugh
and me knew all about it beforehand!"
"A queer performance," said Manvers, "and of course childishly illegal.
Your man will be soon got rid of. I expect you might have applied to
him the remark of the Bishop of Cork on the Dean of Cork--'Excellent
sermon!--eloquent, clever, argumentative!--and not enough gospel in it to
save a tom-tit!"'
Mrs. Flaxman looked at him oddly.
"Well, but--the extraordinary thing was that Hugh made me stay for the
second service, and it was as Ritualistic as you like!"
Manvers fell back in his chair, the vivacity on his face relaxing.
"Ah!--is that all?"
"Oh! but you don't understand," said his companion, eagerly. "Of course
Ritualistic is the wrong word. Should I have said 'sacramental'? I only
meant that it was full of symbolism. There were lights--and flowers, and
music, but there was nothing priestly--or superstitious"--she frowned in
her effort to explain. "It was all poetic--and mystical--and yet
practical. There were a good many things changed in the Service,--but
I hardly noticed--I was so absorbed in watching the people. Almost every
one stayed for the second service. It was quite short--so was the first
service. And a great many communicated. But the spirit of it was the
wonderful thing. It had all that--that magic--that mystery--that one gets
out of Catholicism, even simple Catholicism, in a village church--say at
Benediction; and yet one had a sense of having come out into fresh air;
of saying things that were true--true at least to you, and to the people
that were saying them; things that you did believe, or could believe,
instead of things that you only pretended to believe, or couldn't
possibly believe! I haven't got over it yet, and as for Hugh, I have
never seen him so moved since--since Robert died."
Manvers was aware of Mrs. Flaxman's affection for her brother-in-law's
memory; and it seemed to him natural and womanly that she should be
touched--artist and wordling though she was--by this fresh effort in
a similar direction. For himself, he was touched in another way: with
pity, or a kindly scorn. He did not believe in patching up the Christian
tradition. Either accept it--or put it aside. Newman had disposed of
"neo-Christianity" once for all.
"Well, of course all this means a row," he said at length, with a smile.
"What is the Bishop doing?"
"Oh, the Bishop will have to prosecute, Hugh says; of course he must! And
if he didn't, Mr. Barron would do it for him."
"The gentleman who lives in the White House?"
"Precisely. Ah!" cried Mrs. Flaxman, suddenly, rising to her feet and
looking through the open window beside her. "What do you think we've
done? We have evoked him! _Parlez du diable_, etc. How stupid of us! But
there's his carriage trotting up the drive--I know the horses. And that's
his deaf daughter--poor, downtrodden thing!--sitting beside him. Now
then--shall we be at home? Quick!"
Mrs. Flaxman flew to the bell, but retreated with a little grimace.
"We must! It's inevitable. But Hugh says I can't be rude to new people.
Why can't I? It's so simple."
She sat down, however, though rebellion and a little malice quickened the
colour in her fair skin. Manvers looked longingly at the door leading to
the garden.
"Shall I disappear?--or must I support you?"
"It all depends on what value you set on my good opinion," said Mrs.
Flaxman, laughing.
Manvers resettled himself in his chair.
"I stay--but first, a little information. The gentleman owns land here?"
"Acres and acres. But he only came into it about three years ago. He is
on the same railway board where Hugh is Chairman. He doesn't like Hugh,
and he certainly won't like me. But you see he's bound to be civil to us.
Hugh says he's always making quarrels on the board--in a kind of
magnificent, superior way. He never loses his temper--whereas the others
would often like to flay him alive. Now then"--Mrs. Flaxman laid a finger
on her mouth--"'Papa, potatoes, prunes, and prism'!"
Steps were heard in the hall, and the butler announced "Mr. and Miss
Barron."
A tall man, with an iron-gray moustache and a determined carriage,
entered the room, followed by a timid and stooping lady of uncertain age.
Mrs. Flaxman, transformed at once into the courteous hostess, greeted the
newcomers with her sweetest smiles, set the deaf daughter down on the
hearing side of Mr. Manvers, ordered tea, and herself took charge of Mr.
Barron.
* * * * *
The task was not apparently a heavy one. Mrs. Flaxman saw beside her a
portly man of fifty-five, with a penetrating look, and a composed manner;
well dressed, yet with no undue display. Louis Manvers, struggling with
an habitual plague of shyness, and all but silenced by the discovery that
his neighbour was even deafer than himself, watched the "six-foot-two
Inquisitor" with curiosity, but could find nothing lurid nor torturous in
his aspect. There was indeed something about him which displeased a
rationalist scholar and ascetic. But his information and ability, his
apparent adequacy to any company, were immediately evident. It seemed to
Manvers that he had very quickly disarmed Mrs. Flaxman's vague prejudice
against him. At any rate she was soon picking his brains diligently on
the subject of the neighbourhood and the neighbours, and apparently
enjoying the result, to judge from her smiles and her questions.
Mr. Barron indeed had everything that could be expected of him to say on
the subject of the district and its population. He descanted on the
beauty of the three or four famous parks, which in the eighteenth century
had been carved out of the wild heath lands; he showed an intimate
knowledge of the persons who owned the parks, and of their families,
"though I myself am only a newcomer here, being by rights a Devonshire
man"; he talked of the local superstitions with indulgence, and a proper
sense of the picturesque; and of the colliers who believed the
superstitions he spoke in a tone of general good humour, tempered by
regret that "agitators" should so often lead them into folly. The
architecture of the district came in, of course, for proper notice. There
were certain fine old houses near that Mrs. Flaxman ought to visit;
everything of course would be open to her and her husband.
"Oh, tell me," said Mrs. Flaxman, suddenly interrupting him, "how far is
Sandford Abbey from here?"
Her visitor paused a moment before replying.
"Sandford Abbey is about five miles from you--across the park. The two
estates meet. Do you know--Sir Philip Meryon?"
Rose Flaxman shrugged her shoulders.
"We know something of him--at least Hugh does. His mother was a very old
friend of Hugh's family."
Mr. Barron was silent.
"Is he such a scamp?" said Mrs. Flaxman, raising her fine eyes, with a
laugh in them. "You make me quite anxious to see him!"
Mr. Barron echoed the laugh, stiffly.
"I doubt whether your husband will wish to bring him here. He gathers
some strange company at the Abbey. He is there now for the fishing."
Manvers inquired who this gentleman might be; and Mrs. Flaxman gave him a
lightly touched account. A young man of wealth and family, it seemed, but
spoilt from his earliest days, and left fatherless at nineteen, with only
an adoring but quite ineffectual mother to take account of. Some
notorious love affairs at home and abroad; a wild practical joke or two,
played on prominent people, and largely advertised in the newspapers; an
audacious novel, and a censored play--he had achieved all these things by
the age of thirty, and was now almost penniless, and still unmarried.
"Hugh says that the Abbey is falling into ruin--and that the young man
has about a hundred a year left out of his fortune. On this he keeps
apparently an army of servants and a couple of hunters! The strange
thing is--Hugh discovered it when he went to call on the Rector the other
day--that this preposterous young man is a first cousin of Mr. Meynell's.
His mother, Lady Meryon, and the Rector's mother were sisters. The
Rector, however, seems to have dropped him long ago."
Mr. Barron still sat silent.
"Is he really too bad to talk about?" cried Mrs. Flaxman, impatiently.
"I think I had rather not discuss him," said her visitor, with decision;
and she, protesting that Philip Meryon was now endowed with all the
charms, both of villainy and mystery, let the subject drop.
Mr. Barron returned, as though with relief, to architecture, talked
agreeably of the glories of a famous Tudor house on the west side,
and an equally famous Queen Anne house on the east side of the Chase.
But the churches of the district, according to him, were on the whole
disappointing--inferior to those of other districts within reach.
Here, indeed, he showed himself an expert; and a far too minute
discourse on the relative merits of the church architecture of two or
three of the midland counties flowed on and on through Mrs. Flaxman's
tea-making, while the deaf daughter became entirely speechless; and
Manvers--disillusioned--gradually assumed an aspect of profound
melancholy, which merely meant that his wits were wool gathering.
"Well, I thought Upcote Minor church a very pretty church," said
Rose Flaxman at last, with a touch of revolt. "The old screen is
beautiful--and who on earth has done all that carving of the
pulpit--and the reredos?"
Mr. Barron's expression changed. He bent toward his hostess, striking one
hand sharply and deliberately with the glove which he held in the other.
"You were at church last Sunday?"
"I was." Mrs. Flaxman's eyes as she turned them upon him had recovered
their animation.
"You were present then," said Mr. Barron with passionate energy, "at a
scandalous performance! I feel that I ought to apologize to you and Mr.
Flaxman in the name of our village and parish."
The speaker's aspect glowed with what was clearly a genuine fire. The
slight pomposity of look and manner had disappeared.
Mrs. Flaxman hesitated. Then she said gravely: "It was certainly very
astonishing. I never saw anything like it. But my husband and I liked Mr.
Meynell. We thought he was absolutely sincere."
"He may be. But so long as he remains clergyman of this parish it is
impossible for him to be honest!"
Mrs. Flaxman slowly poured out another cup of tea for Mr. Manvers, who
was standing before her in a drooping attitude, like some long crumpled
fly, apparently deaf and blind to what was going on, his hair falling
forward over his eyes. At last she said evasively:
"There are a good many people in the parish who seem to agree with him.
Except yourself--and a gaunt woman in black who was pointed out to
me--everybody in the church appeared to us to be enjoying what the Rector
was doing--to be entering into it heart and soul."
Mr. Barron flushed.
"We do not deny that he has got a hold upon the people. That makes it all
the worse. When I came here three years ago he had not yet done any of
these things--publicly; these perfectly monstrous things. Up to last
Sunday, indeed, he kept within certain bounds as to the services; though
frequent complaints of his teaching had been made to the Bishop, and
proceedings even had been begun--it might have been difficult to touch
him. But last Sunday!--" He stopped with a little sad gesture of the hand
as though the recollection were too painful to pursue. "I saw, however,
within six months of my coming here--he and I were great friends at
first--what his teaching was, and whither it was tending. He has taught
the people systematic infidelity for years. Now we have the results!"
"He also seems to have looked after their bodies," said Mrs. Flaxman, in
a skirmishing tone that simply meant she was not to be brought to close
quarters. "I am told that it was he brought the water-supply here; and
that he has forced the owners to rebuild some of the worst cottages."
Mr. Barron looked attentively at his hostess. It was as though he were
for the first time really occupied with her--endeavouring to place her,
and himself with regard to her. His face stiffened.
"That's all very well--excellent, of course. Only, let me remind you, he
was not asked to take vows about the water-supply! But he did promise and
vow at his ordination to hold the Faith--to 'banish and drive away
strange doctrines'!"
"What are 'strange doctrines' nowadays?" said a mild, falsetto voice in
the distance.
Barron turned to the speaker--the long-haired dishevelled person whose
name he had not caught distinctly as Mrs. Flaxman introduced him. His
manner unconsciously assumed a note of patronage.
"No need to define them, I think--for a Christian. The Church has her
Creeds."
"Of course. But while this gentleman shelves them--no doubt a
revolutionary proceeding--are there not excesses on the other side? May
there not be too much--as well as too little?"
And with an astonishing command of ecclesiastical detail Manvers gave an
account--gently ironic here and there--of some neo-Catholic functions of
which he had lately been a witness.
Barron fidgeted.
"Deplorable, I admit--quite deplorable! I would put that kind of thing
down, just as firmly as the other."
Manvers smiled.
"But who are '_you_'? if I may ask it philosophically and without
offence? The man here does not agree with you--the people I have been
describing would scout you. Where's your authority? What _is_ the
authority in the English Church?"
"Well, of course we have our answer to that question," said Barron, after
a moment.
Manvers gave a pleasant little laugh. "Have you?"
Barron hesitated again, then evidently found the controversial temptation
too strong. He plunged headlong into a great gulf of cloudy argument,
with the big word "authority" for theme. But he could find no foothold
in the maze. Manvers drove him delicately from point to point,
involving him in his own contradictions, rolling him in his own
ambiguities, till--suddenly--vague recollections began to stir in the
victim's mind. _Manvers_? Was that the name? It began to recall to
him certain articles in the reviews, the Church papers. Was there not a
well-known writer--a Dublin man--a man who had once been a clergyman, and
had resigned his orders?
He drew himself together with dignity, and retreated in as good order as
he could. Turning to Mrs. Flaxman, who was endeavouring to make a few
commonplaces audible to Miss Barron, while throwing occasional sly
glances toward the field of battle, he somewhat curtly asked for his
carriage.
Mrs. Flaxman's hand was on the bell, when the drawing-room door opened to
admit a gentleman.
"Mr. Meynell!" said the butler.
And at the same moment a young girl slipped in through the open French
window, and with a smiling nod to Mrs. Flaxman and Mr. Manvers went up to
the tea-table and began to replenish the teapot and relight the kettle.
Mr. Barron made an involuntary movement of annoyance as the Rector
entered. But a few minutes of waiting before the appearance of his
carriage was inevitable. He stood motionless therefore in his place, a
handsome, impressive figure, while Meynell paid his respects to Mrs.
Flaxman, whose quick colour betrayed a moment's nervousness.
"How are you, Barron?" said the Rector from a distance with a friendly
nod. Then, as he turned to Manvers, his face lit up.
"I _am_ glad to make your acquaintance!" he said cordially.
Manvers took the outstretched hand with a few mumbled words, but an
evident look of pleasure.
"I have just read your Bishop Butler article in the _Quarterly_," said
Meynell eagerly. "Splendid! Have you seen it?" He turned to his hostess,
with one of the rapid movements that expressed the constant energy of the
man.
Mrs. Flaxman shook her head.
"I am an ignoramus--except about music. I make Mr. Manvers talk to me."
"Oh, but you must read it! I hope you won't mind my quoting a long bit
from it?" The speaker turned to Manvers again. "There is a clerical
conference at Markborough next week, at which I am reading a paper.
I want to make 'em all read you! What? Tea? I should think so!" Then, to
his hostess: "Will you mind if I drink a good deal? I have just been down
a pit--and the dust was pretty bad."
"Not an accident, I hope?" said Mrs. Flaxman, as she handed him his cup.
"No. But a man had a stroke in the pit while he was at work. They thought
he was going to die--he was a great friend of mine--and they sent for me.
We got him up with difficulty. He has a bedridden wife--daughters all
away, married. Nobody to nurse him as usual. I say!"--he bent forward,
looking into his hostess's face with his small, vivacious eyes--"how
long are you going to be here--at Maudeley?"
"We have taken the house for a year," said Rose, surprised.
"Will you give me a parish nurse for that time? It won't cost much, and
it will do a lot of good," said the Rector earnestly. "The people here
are awfully good to each other--but they don't know anything--poor
souls--and I can't get the sick folk properly looked after. Will you?"
Mrs. Flaxman's manner showed embarrassment. Within a few feet of her sat
the squire of the parish, silent and impassive. Common report made Henry
Barron a wealthy man. He could, no doubt, have provided half a dozen
nurses for Upcote Minor if he had so chosen. Yet here was she, the
newcomer of a few weeks, appealed to instead! It seemed to her that the
Rector was not exactly showing tact.
"Won't Mr. Barron help?" She threw a smiling appeal toward him.
Barron, conscious of an irritation and discomfort he had some difficulty
in controlling, endeavoured nevertheless to strike the same easy note as
the rest. He gave his reasons for thinking that a parish nurse was not
really required in Upcote, the women in the village being in his opinion
quite capable of nursing their husbands and sons.
But all the time that he was speaking he was chafing for his carriage.
His conversation with Mrs. Flaxman was still hot in his ears. It was all
very well for Meynell to show this levity, this callous indifference to
the situation. But he, Barron, could not forget it. That very week, the
first steps had been taken which were to drive this heretical and
audacious priest from the office and benefice he had no right to hold,
and had so criminally misused. If he submitted and went quietly, well and
good. But of course he would do nothing of the kind. There was a
lamentable amount of disloyalty and infidelity in the diocese, and he
would be supported. An ugly struggle was inevitable--a struggle for the
honour of Christ and his Church. It would go down to the roots of things
and was not to be settled or smoothed over by a false and superficial
courtesy. The days of friendship, of ordinary social intercourse, were
over. Barron did not intend to receive the Rector again within his own
doors, intimate as they had been at one time; and it was awkward and
undesirable that they should be meeting in other people's drawing-rooms.
All these feelings were running through his mind while aloud he was
laboriously giving Mrs. Flaxman his reasons for thinking a parish nurse
unnecessary in Upcote Minor. When he came to the end of them, Meynell
looked at him with amused exasperation.
"Well, all I know is that in the last case of typhoid we had here--a poor
lad on Reynolds's farm--his mother got him up every day while she made
his bed, and fed him--whatever we could say--on suet dumpling and cheese.
He died, of course--what could he do? And as for the pneumonia patients,
I believe they mostly eat their poultices--I can't make out what else
they do with them--unless I stay and see them put on. Ah, well, never
mind. I shall have to get Mrs. Flaxman alone, and see what can be done.
Now tell me"--he turned again with alacrity to Manvers--"what's that new
German book you quote about Butler? Some uncommonly fine things in it!
That bit about the Sermons--admirable!"
He bent forward, his hands on his knees, staring at Manvers. Yet
the eyes for all their intensity looked out from a face furrowed and
pale--overshadowed by physical and mental strain. The girl sitting at the
tea-table could scarcely take her eyes from it. It appealed at once to
her heart and her intelligence. And yet there were other feelings in her
which resisted the appeal. Once or twice she looked wistfully at Barron.
She would gladly have found in him a more attractive champion of a
majestic cause.
"What can my coachman be about?" said Barron impatiently. "Might I
trouble you, Mrs. Flaxman, to ring again? I really ought to go home."
Back to Full Books
|