M. de la Roche-Guyon was announced to her. Horatia was startled, almost
discomposed, and the vessel, which was "Wheatsheaf" Bow, narrowly
escaped destruction.
"Mr. Hungerford sent me with a note," said the young Frenchman
apologetically. "That is my excuse for deranging you so early,
Mademoiselle; you must forgive me. It is about to-night."
She took the letter and read:
"My dear Horatia,--
"I am obliged to go into Oxford this evening to meet Mr. Rose, a man
from Cambridge, at Dormer's rooms, and cannot possibly return in time
for the Charity Ball; in fact I shall have to spend the night in Oxford.
Would you and the Rector be so kind as to consider M. de la Roche-Guyon
as of your party? There is of course no need for him actually to
accompany you. It is most unfortunate that this summons should have
come just now, and that I must reluctantly forgo an evening to which I
had looked forward with so much pleasure. I shall come to dinner, if I
may, when I am at liberty, and make my apologies to you in
person.--T.H."
Miss Grenville, on reading these lines, stamped her foot.
"How tiresome, O how tiresome! Why could not Tristram have gone to
Oxford any other night!"
"You are sorry that Mr. Hungerford cannot come to the dance?" inquired
the Comte, who seemed already acquainted with the purport of the note.
"Why, of course!" flashed Horatia, out of her burst of indignation.
"Are you, then, glad of it, Monsieur?"
"In one sense, yes," replied M. de la Roche-Guyon coolly. "Because now
I can ask for the dances of your kinsman as well as for my own."
Miss Grenville saw fit to take no notice of this sentiment, continuing
along her own line of thought.
"How like Mr. Dormer! Everything must give way to what Mr. Dormer
arranges and wishes. I have no patience with it--I am sure you do not
like him either!"
"Mon Dieu, I should think I did not," replied the young man warmly,
"considering that he spoilt my evening on Saturday! He might have left
us that quarter of an hour in the drawing-room. I could almost believe
that he did it on purpose.... No, Mr. Dormer does not amuse me."
"You have seen a good deal of him," said Horatia, restored to good
humour, for she discerned a common feeling.
Armand made something of a grimace. "Mr. Hungerford has been kind
enough to take me to see him twice. I do not like priests. They know
too much."
"But Mr. Dormer is not a priest," returned Horatia, half amused.
"Well, perhaps not, mais il en a l'air, and he needs only the ... what
is it, la soutane?--the cassock, yes, and the sash that the delusion
should be complete. Besides, he has the book."
"What book?" asked Horatia, mystified.
"The priest's book, the breviary. It was lying open on his table when
we went in to see him at the college of Oriel. Almost I fancied myself
chez Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, my cousin."
"Oh, I understand!" said Horatia. "He is translating some of the hymns
from the Paris Breviary--why, I don't know. I think I remember Tristram
telling me about it in the spring. Mr. Dormer and several of the other
Fellows at Oriel are what is known as High Church, and they are always
doing queer things."
"High Church?" queried the young Frenchman, "what is that? And what
queer things is it that they do?"
"Oh, it's so boring," said Miss Grenville wearily. "They think the
Church of England is in danger; I don't know why, for it has gone on
comfortably enough all these years without them. So they meet and talk
a great deal about it--in fact, that is no doubt why Tristram has so
tiresomely to go into Oxford this evening--fresh alarums and excursions,
I expect... Papa was very much shocked when he heard Mr. Froude say that
the Reformation was a mistake, but when I told him afterwards that I
thought they had better all turn Papists, and have done with it, he
didn't like that either ... O forgive me! What have I said!" The
colour rushed over her face. "I had forgotten for the moment; of course
you are a Catholic yourself."
"But I had rather that you forgot it," exclaimed the young Frenchman,
with an expressive gesture. "I am a Catholic, it is true,
because--well, because one has to be. Royalism and the Church stand
together; but I am not devout--pray do not think so!"
Horatia hastened to assure him that she had never suspected him of this,
and they both laughed.
When he had gone she went upstairs and looked at the gown that she was
to wear that night to dance in the palace which would crumble to ruins
at daybreak.
*(2)*
The aching elbows of the fiddlers had several times been eased by
surreptitious potations; the candles were beginning to gutter,
chaperons' heads to nod sleepily. A light dust hung in the air from the
action of so many pairs of twinkling feet upon the beeswax, and the Hon.
and Rev. Stephen Grenville was distinctly conscious of a desire for his
bed. Nor did the converse in which he was entangled with an elderly
entomologist staying in the neighbourhood really reconcile him to
sitting through so many quadrilles and country dances--to hearing
selections from _La Gazza Ladra_ give place to _Basque Roads_, _Der
Freischuetz_ to _Drops of Brandy_. The Rector had no enthusiasm for
lepidoptera, and he could by no means get the collector of beetles to
listen to his own views on monoliths. Not inappropriately did the
entomologist discourse of the butterflies of Berkshire, its obscurer
moths, in this big room cleared for the Charity Ball and full of a
throng as bright and moving, but the scientific mind does not unbend to
these analogies, and it might have been conjectured that he did not even
see the fair guests had he not, during a waltz, suddenly inquired:
"Who is that extremely attractive young lady dancing with the French
count--there, in yellow--a prodigious fine dancer?"
Probably one of the Trenchard girls, thought the Rector, and looked.
But no! He pursed his lips. "That is my daughter," quoth he.
"Dear, dear," observed the entomologist, human after all, and he put on
his glasses the better to observe the phenomenon. "My dear Mr.
Grenville, I congratulate you, I do indeed. A most charming girl."
Flushed and smiling, Horatia whirled slowly past. No need to ask if she
found her partner congenial. The Rector's eyes followed the couple, and
it began to dawn upon him that he had been thus following them,
unconsciously, a good many times that evening. Was this really so?
Even as the question occurred to him, the Squire, beaming in his blue,
gilt-buttoned evening coat, appeared on his other side.
"Hallo, Rector," he said cheerfully. "Going well, ain't it? That young
French spark seems to be enjoying himself. They make a fine couple,
eh?"
"Who do?" asked Mr. Grenville rather unwisely, as the golden dress came
past again.
"Why, your girl and he, of course," said the Squire, with all the effect
of a wink. "There they go. How would you like her as Madame de--what's
the fellow's name?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Mainwaring," said the Rector rather tartly. "We
have had to be civil to the young man because he is Hungerford's friend,
and no doubt he finds my girl, who speaks French well, is easy to get on
with----"
"Yes, especially as his own English is so bad," retorted the Squire
grinning. "Well, well, we're only young once. I remember when I first
met my wife.... You're not thinking of going before it's over, Rector?"
Mr. Grenville put back his watch. "It is a good deal later than I
thought. I told Dawes to be here at twelve o'clock."
No consciousness of eyes paternal, entomological or matronly was on
Horatia during that last intoxicating waltz. She loved dancing, and she
had danced a good deal, but never with a partner like this.
The music stopped (a little out of tune).
"Are you giddy?" asked Armand tenderly.
"A little," said Horatia, with truth. "It is so hot..."
He drew her hand a little further through his arm. "Here is a doorway.
Where does it lead to? Voyons ... ah, the library, and empty. Quelle
chance! On est bien ici, n'est-ce pas? See, here is a chair; give me
your fan."
But she would not sit down.
"I must go back to Papa."
"Not yet. He will have you all the days, and I have only these so few
moments more of you."
"You are really leaving to-morrow?" asked Horatia in a conventional
tone.
"Si fait. I return to Lulworth, and thence to Paris. And you will never
think of me again."
Horatia did not answer this time, for she found she could not.
Armand stopped fanning. "I shall have only this to remember you by, for
I mean to keep it," he said, looking down at the painted ivory in his
hand. "Mais il suffira. Yes, I hear them, the violins; il faut s'en
aller: il faut se dire adieu.... Nous ne danserons plus ensemble ...
Adieu, adieu, toute belle, adieu pour jamais!"
He crushed her hands fiercely to his lips. Her head whirled a second;
then she tore them away.
"Please go ... ask Papa to come and fetch me here ... I will not go back
into the room...."
He looked at her strangely, almost wildly, but she would not meet his
eyes. "Please go," she reiterated faintly, and Armand, suddenly
dropping on one knee, put his lips to the hem of her dress--and was
gone.
And loud through the strains of _The New-Rigged Ship_, now pouring under
the archway, she heard the heartless marching beat of _Joli Tambour_.
"Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
Et ran, tan, plan!"
Mr. Grenville hurried in almost immediately, his daughter's cloak on his
arm. Horatia was lying back in a big leather chair. She looked
curiously white, but roused at once.
"Is that my cloak? Thank you, Papa, very much. It is time to go, is it
not, though it is not quite over."
"That is what I was thinking, my dear," said the Rector, putting the
swansdown over her. "I believe we have been keeping Dawes waiting.
Have you got everything--your gloves, your fan?"
"Everything I want, thank you, Papa."
The old fat horses and the careful Dawes did not devour the five miles
that lay between them and home. After a few desultory remarks, both
father and daughter relapsed into silence, each in a corner of the
barouche. But Horatia had drawn off her gloves, and in the darkness was
pulling and twisting them into a rope, endeavouring to keep down the
sobs which rose chokingly in her throat. Had anything in the world ever
hurt like this? All the while the horses' hoofs beat out the refrain,
relentless, and so horribly gay. "Et ran, tan, plan. Et ran, tan,
plan!" With all her desperate fight for composure she only succeeded in
keeping back the main violence of the storm; the smaller rain-clouds
broke despite herself, and, quietly as she wept, the Rector was aware of
it.
"My darling, what is it?" he said, putting out a hand to her.
"Nothing," replied Horatia, swallowing the tears. "I am tired ... and
stupid ... I danced too much..."
("Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies,
Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies!")
"I thought you looked tired, my love," replied Mr. Grenville,
exceedingly alarmed but (he hoped) tactful. "I heard one or two people
saying that the floor was not good. Come, child, put your head here;
perhaps you will be more comfortable; and we shall soon be home."
Whether or no he knew why she wept, Horatia could not resist the kind
voice, and all the rest of the way her elaborately dressed head lay
against her father's shoulder.
She kissed him silently when they got in. No, she did not want her
maid. Again she repeated that she was only tired; she would be all
right in the morning, and so went to her room.
Fool, fool, that he had been! But what had happened? At any rate they
had not come to an understanding; that was obvious. And, thank God, the
young man was going away to-morrow. But he could not bear to see her
suffer. Twice he went and listened shame-facedly at her door; she was
sobbing, sobbing as if her heart would break--she who never cried! At
dawn, when the birds were twittering, he went again; she was quiet. He
prayed God she slept. It was more than he could do.
*CHAPTER IX*
*(1)*
The Rector breakfasted alone next morning. Miss Horatia was very tired;
she might not be down till the afternoon; she would sleep if she could.
Recognising this as an indication that she did not wish for a visit from
him, Mr. Grenville with a heavy heart tried, in succession, to tackle
his next Sunday's sermon, to furbish up an old one, to read the violent
article on Clerical Farmers in the last number of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, to compose an answer to it, and to rearrange some of his
coins. In the afternoon he had to attend a meeting of magistrates at a
distance. He wondered if he should see Horatia before he started.
Never before had a dance kept her in bed next morning.
Just as the gig came round for him she appeared, wearing a hat and
carrying a basket. All traces of last night's emotion had vanished.
"Good morning, or rather, good afternoon, dear Papa," she said very
cheerfully, kissing him. "Am I not late? But I was so tired last
night. Where are you going to? Oh, I had forgotten. _I_ am going to
old Mrs. Dawes; and if there are any blackberries ripe I shall take her
some. She says they are good for the rheumatics. I don't believe her.
Good-bye, darling...."
The wheels of the gig grated on the drive, and Mr. Grenville turned
round to wave a farewell, but without his usual smile. He looked
worried, poor dear. How could she best efface the memory of last
night's self-betrayal from his mind? Obviously best by a cheerful, a
very cheerful demeanour, such as she had already attempted. She had
forgotten in truth that her father was going to this meeting; there was
then no need for her to leave the house this afternoon--her motive in so
doing being to gain a little respite before he should question her, as
he very well might. But since she had told him that she was going, go
she would. As well begin the usual life at once. Mrs. Dawes would
detail her symptoms at length, and that would serve as a temporary
distraction.
This indeed the old dame did with much thoroughness and repetition,
after which she seemed disposed for general conversation.
"That there French count, Miss; a likely young gentleman, I hears; he be
gone from these parts now, bain't he?"
"I believe so," said Horatia. "But you were telling me about your
grandson?"
"John, he seed him riding droo the village on Mr. 'Ungerford's 'orse,"
pursued Mrs. Dawes, not to be turned aside. "He ride proper, John says;
and he wur surprised fit to bust hisself, John wur."
"Why?"
"The Count being a foreigner, Miss, and a Papist. I don't hold with no
foreigners; a bloody-minded set, I calls 'em. Look at that Bonyparty as
cut off the 'eads of the King and Queen of France. I mind how the year
that you was born, Miss 'Oratia..."
It was nearly six o'clock when Horatia emerged from Mrs. Dawes' cottage.
She was surprised to find the invasion of twilight already begun, and an
enormous yellow moon looking at her through the tree-trunks. Yet she
was in no haste to return home, but loitered along the road, picking a
few blackberries as she went. One or two villagers passed her, and
their evening salutations rang heartily on the still air. "Rector,
he'll be having a rare treat to-morrow," was the comment of one, but
Horatia overheard Whitehead, the smith, a melancholy personage, who
passed at the same time, opine that, "them berries was mortal bad for
the innards, and did get in atween a man's teeth like so much grit."
After him there was silence; only a few far-away sounds from the village
reached her. The grass at the edge of the road was already damp. It
was time to return.
In the Rectory the lamps would be lighted; her father would be back, and
he, who always heard her step, would come out of his study and say,
"Well, my dear, and how is Mrs. Dawes?" It would be chilly enough to
have a fire after supper, and she would sit with him, and talk to him;
or, if he had not finished his letters, she would go on with the last
series of _The Tales of a Grandfather_. And Dash, on the hearthrug,
would whimper in his sleep because he had dreams of rabbits which he
never caught....
And it would be the same to-morrow, and the next day. Once she had
loved it--that other Horatia only a few days dead, who seemed so strange
to her now, had chosen it. Now ... how should she bear it! how should
she bear it!
She moved on very slowly. Strange, dim scents came out of the
hedgerows; a bird fluttered in an elder-bush. How early the moon was
rising! The sky just overhead seemed still the sky of day. It was
pain, this peace and beauty ... and it was not peace. The quiet country
lane, the pure, still sky, were all athrill with expectation.
Or was it she herself? But what had she to expect? Nothing--nothing
again, for ever.
... So they had noticed how well he rode--foolish, oddly comforting
reflection. She thought how he had passed her on Tristram's horse that
afternoon--only a fortnight ago--how he had ridden into her life, and
out of it again. That was a romantic phrase and delightful to read in a
book, but in real life it had no glamour; the fact enshrined in it was
too bitingly real. Unwanted, unsummoned, there came into her head--
"It was a' for our rightfu' King
We left fair Scotland's strand;
It was a' for our rightfu' King
We e'er saw Irish land,
My dear--
We e'er saw Irish land.
"He turn'd him right and round about
Upon the Irish shore;
And gae his bridle-reins a shake,
With, Adieu for evermore,
My dear--
With, Adieu for evermore!"
And on the heels of the lines, a mocking commentary, came floating Sir
Walter's version--
"A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green--
No more of me ye knew,
My Love!
No more of me ye knew!"
Yes, that was all she had known ... O, how foolish, foolish she was--a
silly sentimental girl of the kind that she most despised! Yet, if only
she had never seen him!
And at that moment Armand de la Roche-Guyon came round the corner of the
road.
Horatia stood still, petrified. It was as if her thoughts had taken
body, for he was gone--how could he be here ... walking rapidly towards
her like this, bareheaded--flesh and blood. Before her heart had
recovered its broken pulsations he was up to her.
"What, are you not gone?" she faltered.
"They told me you had walked this way," he said rapidly in his own
tongue. "I have been to the Rectory; you were not there. I could not
go--mon Dieu, I could not go.... Give me your basket; let us go back by
the field path; it is close here."
She gave him the basket without a word, suffocated by the tumult in her
heart, and dominated by the change in him, by the ardour and purpose
which radiated from him, making him seem taller and even more desirable.
He had the air of a young conqueror; but he was unsmiling, which was
rare. Now she knew what the night had been trying to tell her....
They came in a moment to the gap in the hedge, by the oak-tree, an
unauthorised way of attaining the field-path. It seemed right that he
should know of it, though little less than a miracle. He held aside the
twigs and brambles so that she could pass. And when she had stepped
through everything was clear to her, and she knew that in entering the
shorn September field, lit with its low yellow moon, she had come into
another country, dazzlingly strange, but her inheritance, her home. She
half turned, and was caught in Armand's arms, her lips to his; and thus,
beneath a tree, in the gloaming, like any village girl, did Horatia
Grenville, who cared not for love, give and receive her first kiss.
Behind her, for a wonder and a benediction, hung the great luminous
shield of the harvest moon, and the scattered blackberries lay among the
leaves and stubble, like a sacrifice to joys unfathomed.
*CHAPTER X*
*(1)*
The parting guest, unless he be a dear friend, is generally a persona
grata to his host. Tristram Hungerford was rather ashamed of the
sensation of relief with which he had faced his visitor at the breakfast
table this morning, for the Comte de la Roche-Guyon had proved himself
throughout his stay uniformly agreeable, lively, and anxious to please.
But the elder man was only too conscious of their slender basis of
common interests, and, though himself anything but taciturn, he was,
like most people who live alone, physically incapable of talking all day
without pause, and found the society of those persons so gifted (among
whom Armand de la Roche-Guyon appeared to be numbered) rather fatiguing.
Moreover, he had not expected to find himself facing him at all this
morning across the coffee-cups. When he had returned from Oxford
yesterday morning, the morning after the dance, expecting to speed his
guest on his way, he had been met by the young man's apologetic request
to be allowed to stay another night if convenient to his host. He had
heard from his father and there were reasons ... Tristram made the only
answer open to him, premising however that, thinking he should be alone
that night, he had unfortunately engaged himself to dine at Faringdon,
and would not be home till late. Armand would consequently, he feared,
have a solitary dinner unless indeed he were to go over to Compton
Rectory. The Comte replied that he might conceivably walk over in the
afternoon to pay his respects, but that he did not expect to be asked to
dinner. And indeed he had set off in that direction a little before
Tristram started for Faringdon.
But when Tristram returned from his dinner party, rather late in the
evening, he found that the Frenchman had already gone to bed, and being
himself tired, did not altogether regret this. And this morning,
whether from a sleepless night, or any other cause, Armand was much less
talkative than usual; he looked thoughtful and rather pale, and now,
when the after-breakfast ease of two males devoid of the cares of
housekeeping was about to descend upon them, he seemed unusually
preoccupied.
"I am afraid, La Roche-Guyon, that you had a bad night," said Tristram,
as he rose from the table. "It was remiss of me not to have asked you
earlier. You were not indisposed yesterday evening, I trust?"
"On the contrary," replied his guest somewhat cryptically. A gleam
passed over his face, but Tristram, who was hunting on the mantelpiece
for the key of the clock, did not see it. "I had the best night of my
life."
"I am glad to hear it," replied his host. "But I am extremely sorry
that I cannot drive or send you into Oxford to catch the coach. I
pretty well knocked up both my horses yesterday."
"Pray not to think of it," said Armand politely. "I have made
arrangements to post from the _Fox_. Already you have been too kind in
taking me so many times to Oxford.... And now I have to beg of you
another kindness."
"I am at your service," said Tristram, finding and inserting the key.
"Vous etes bien bon," said the Comte, his English suddenly deserting
him. "C'est que----" He broke off, walked over to the window, and
there, taking hold of the tassel of the curtain-cord, said, with more
composure:
"The fact is, that Miss Grenville has promised to marry me. And as M.
le Recteur, when I saw him yesterday evening, did not appear very much
to like the idea, I was obliged to refer him to you. I told him that
you could speak for me if you would--that you knew my family, and that I
am not a--what do you call it--impostor, as he seemed to think.... It
was that which I said to him."
He ceased, and in Tristram's head the ticks of the half-resuscitated
clock rang like gongs.
"I do not wonder that you are surprised," went on Armand, in his
pleasant voice, and in more and more shaky English. "But I am mad with
love of her since the day we meet--tiens, I have thought sometimes that
you remarked it--and she ... well, she has consented to be my wife. You
may guess if I think myself to be the most fortunate man on earth..."
He said more; Tristram did not hear it. But he at last forced himself
to turn round, and saw the speaker standing there against the window.
"When did this happen?" he asked--or someone asked.
"Yesterday evening. It was why I stayed--I must avow it to you, my
friend. First I go to the Rectory--no one is there; they tell me Miss
Grenville visits a cottage. I too go to the cottage, and meet her in
the lane----."
"What do you want me to do?"
Armand made a gesture. "To use your good offices for me with M. le
Recteur. He was not very polite. He thinks that I am not sufficient of
a parti. Mais, figurez-vous bien that on the contrary I shall have work
enough to persuade my father to a foreign marriage, even with so divine
a creature, and as well-born----"
Tristram was never to know whether he would have succeeded in keeping
indefinitely his self-command, for at that moment his housekeeper
fortunately entered to tell them that the _Fox_ had just sent to say
that they had no post-horses this morning, there having been some
mistake about the order yesterday.
Out of the maze of shock and anguish one thing was plain to Tristram,
that to have Armand's presence further inflicted upon him was
intolerable. "After all, my horses----" he began, but the Frenchman cut
him short.
"No, not for worlds! I will go round to the _Fox_ at once myself. In
these cases of 'no post-horses' it is always only a question of money.
More than ever must I now go quickly to Lulworth--to get my father's
consent," he added in French for the sole benefit of his host, and
vanished.
So _this_ was Horatia's choice! Tristram stumbled to a chair and
covered his face. Coffee-pot and empty cups witnessed the wreck of
hopes that might well have had a more tragic setting.
*(2)*
The door opening noisily brought Tristram almost immediately after to
his feet. The intruder was the Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville,
unannounced, short of breath, and angry as Tristram had never seen him.
He shut the door and looked round with positive ferocity.
"Is that young scamp here?"
Tristram regarded him dizzily. "No ... I don't think so," he answered,
as if he were not quite sure.
"Do you know what has happened?" demanded Mr. Grenville. "Yes, I can
see that you do! That foreigner of yours had the impudence to walk into
my study last night and ask for my consent to his marriage with
Horatia--Horatia!" The Rector became momentarily speechless. "This
young adventurer, who has been here a fortnight, has the audacity to say
he is going to marry my daughter!" He flung himself down in a chair.
"It was only last night, then, as he says?"
"Yes, it happened last night, but it goes further back than that. My
eyes were opened after the dance the night before last, when she gave
him I don't know how many dances, and they disappeared together at the
end. Why on earth did you choose that evening to go to Oxford? I took
her home, and then in the carriage she began to cry--said she was tired.
I didn't sleep a wink that night, but I congratulated myself that the
spark was off yesterday. Imagine my surprise when they walked in
together yesterday evening, and he tells me as cool as you please that
it is natural I should be surprised, but that you would vouch for
him!--Why can't you say something, man?"
"What does Horatia say?" asked Tristram, very white.
"Don't speak to me about Horatia!" cried the irate parent. "I ought to
have shut her up with bread and water. I have spoilt her, and this is
the outcome of it. And as for you--I can't think why you ever brought a
Frenchman about the place!"
Before Tristram could reply to this thrust the Frenchman in question
came hastily in, equipped, as was evident, for an immediate start, a
cloak over his arm, his hat in his hand.
"I regret that I have to go at once--but at once!" he said to Tristram.
"Ah! pardon, M. le Recteur, I did not observe you"--though the bound
with which Mr. Grenville had quitted his chair must have rendered him
hard to overlook.--"Excuse me that I take leave of my kind host. It
seems," he went on, turning to that individual, "that the horses I have
procured are old and slow, and that to catch the coach from Oxford I
must start immediately. So, with a thousand apologies----"
"Understand, Sir," interrupted the Rector in high wrath, "that I will
not entertain your proposal for an instant, and that I forbid you to
come near my house!"
The Comte de la Roche-Guyon transferred his attention to the angry
cleric. "Mais parfaitement, Monsieur," he responded with a bland little
bow. "I should not dream of entering your house again until I have the
consent of my father to the alliance. I go at once to Lulworth in the
hope of obtaining that consent. It was not, indeed, what I should have
wished, to speak to your daughter before approaching you, but, as I had
the honour of telling you last night, Monsieur, I did seek to ask your
permission first, but you were out, and time was short. Enfin, when I
come again I trust it will be more en regle. Meanwhile, I am your
humble servant." He made the Rector another, more formal, valedictory
bow, and advanced upon Tristram.
"I know that I leave my cause in good hands," he said gracefully. "Cher
ami, for that, as for your hospitality, I shall be your debtor for life.
But you English do not like speeches, I know, and time presses..."
As much to prevent a second ebullition of Mr. Grenville's wrath as
because time pressed the cher ami hastened with his guest from the room.
A few last directions from himself, a smile or two from Armand, a shake
of the hand, and the man who had so lightly taken his happiness from him
was gone, confident, easy, and attractive to the last.
When Tristram came back into the dining-room the Rector was still
standing thunderstruck on the hearth-rug.
"Well!" he ejaculated pregnantly, "for sheer impudence commend me to one
of that nation!"
Tristram sat wearily down without replying to this cry of the heart, and
there was silence, broken only by a sort of soliloquy on the Rector's
part, on the blindness which had been his--and Tristram's.
"Couldn't you see it coming, Tristram?" he repeated. "Although I was
such a fool, couldn't _you_ see it. But there, they say Love is blind.
It must be, or you would never have ... have..."
"Have thrown them together," finished Tristram bitterly. "Is there any
need to tell you that in my wildest moments I could never have conceived
of such a thing? I saw that he admired her and paid her compliments, as
he might any--perhaps every--woman, but to me he was ... just
negligible. He was welcome to pay court to her, if she liked it,
because ... because I could not dream that she..."
"There's nothing in that!" said the Rector briefly. "With women you
never can tell. But, of course, it is impossible that it should be
allowed to go on. You must come back with me, Tristram. You at least
have influence with her. I have never yet forbidden her anything--it
has never been my way--and I would rather she came to it of herself."
Colour shot into the younger man's face. "I would do anything to help
you, Sir, and much more to help Horatia; but I can't do that--not yet."
Mr. Grenville looked away from him. "God bless my soul, what a selfish
brute I am ... But come now, my dear boy, once he's gone it will be all
right. Horatia will settle down. It's only a passing fancy; of that I
feel certain. I have never known her other than sensible. She will see
that it's out of the question.--You don't agree with me, eh?"
"From what I know of Horatia, I am afraid that I don't."
"But you are going to propose to her yourself!" said the Rector in
accents of amazement, slewing round in his chair.
Out of his pain Tristram showed his own surprise. "No, not now; it's
impossible."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Mr. Grenville with great directness. "Then I
shall tell her myself."
"Mr. Grenville, I beg of you, I implore you not to do such a thing!"
exclaimed the young man in agitation. "It is useless; worse than
useless. It would only grieve her kind heart. How little chance could
I have ever had! She has--she must have given her love with both hands;
I do not think so meanly of her as to imagine that she could ever
transfer it ... a gift so priceless," he added to himself.
The Rector pressed his lips together and rose. "Well, I can't
understand the present generation. If I had been in your shoes I should
have been married to her any time these five years. These reticences
and delicacies are beyond me. If a man wants a girl, let him ask for
her!"
Tristram smiled a rather dreary smile, thinking that even the successful
suitor was not finding this course altogether satisfactory.
"You know I never held your views on persistent courtship, Sir. It
would have been better for me, perhaps, if I had ... But this I will do,
for Horatia's own sake: I will come over directly I can, and I will try
my best to show her that there are ... difficulties ... to take into
consideration. But I warn you that if I think it is for her happiness I
shall oppose you, Mr. Grenville. I would get her the moon if she wanted
it!"
And the sudden passion of this last utterance left Horatia's father
dumb.
*CHAPTER XI*
*(1)*
Not only the slumber proper to the Long Vacation, but the particular
drowsy calm of the afternoon hung that day in sunlight over Oriel. In
his lodge at the gate the porter dozed peaceably over _Jackson's Oxford
Journal_; and, owing to this charmed sleep, a stray black spaniel, of an
architectural turn of mind, who had now for half an hour or so been
exploring both quadrangles, was at this moment seated quietly in the
outer, in front of that porch which distinguishes Oriel from all other
colleges, appearing to meditate, in the intervals of scratching himself,
on the characteristics of Oxford Gothic, or to admire the few plants in
pots, relics of the summer term, ranked down the steps against the wall.
Across this porch the September sun cut diagonally, so that half the
statue of the Virgin above it was in shade, and one of the two Kings
beneath her, and the shadow of the gables from the gateway front lay in
sloping battlements on the gravel. Merton tower, looking down over the
long roof with its air of being part of the same building, was still in
full sunlight, like the Provost's lodgings on the north side of the
quadrangle, but, save the slowly creeping shadows, the spaniel was the
only living thing visible in the sleepy peace which no undergraduate
clamour had disturbed for three months past. Such Fellows as were in
residence were out walking or riding--all but two. The porter, if
roused, could have told an inquirer--as he was shortly to tell
Tristram--that Mr. Dormer was in his rooms; that he was working very
hard, he believed, and had not been out of college, let alone on a
horse, for three days. Up the staircase on the right--not that he gave
this unnecessary indication to Mr. Hungerford.
But at the present moment, though Tristram's friend was sitting at his
manuscript-strewn writing-table, he was not working; he was leaning back
in his tall chair, seeming not a little exhausted. Those who looked at
Charles Dormer's face only once were apt, on that first impression, to
think it refined to the point of femininity. But they never said so a
second time. Somewhat unnaturally thin for a young man of thirty, it
spoke of an early-learnt self-control, of ardour in leash and a very
sensitive endurance, the whole touched with a kind of angelic severity
and force. The eyes were kinder than the mouth, and if the expression
suggested possibilities of relentlessness, it indicated still more
clearly against whom that relentlessness would chiefly be
directed--probably for some years had already been directed--Charles
Dormer. But since to these less popular attributes the young Fellow
joined a general physical exterior of unusual distinction, he did not
meet with any marked success in his constant endeavour to make himself
out quite an ordinary person. People were only too ready to see in him
the ancestor who fell for the King at Newbury, and Tristram, when he
wished genuinely to annoy him, had merely to repeat the effusive remarks
on his appearance which he had the fortune to overhear from some fair
lips one Commemoration. Mr. Dormer of Oriel had no use for the
externals of romance.
*(2)*
Axe, going leisurely through her pastures to the sea, had known
continually, as the old century died and the new was born, the laughter
and noise of a tribe of beautiful and healthy children, who raced in her
meadows, fished in her waters, and dwelt upon the banks of her daughter
Coly. All the Axe valley, indeed, knew Mr. Dormer of Colyton, and his
handsome sons. His beautiful and delicate wife they knew less. Mr.
Dormer, genial hard-riding gentleman that he was, came of Non-juring
stock, long since conformed to the Establishment; his wife, of like
origin, had all the piety and devotion proper to a spiritual descendant
of Andrewes and Ken, coupled with a strong tendency to mysticism.
Mary Dormer, indeed, might in any other country or age have been a nun.
As it was, she had borne five children to the husband who reverenced her
as a saint, and only one quarter understood her. But as at last her
extreme and increasing delicacy shut her off from the more ordinary
family cares, she was able to lead in her seclusion a life not unlike
the cloistered. All her sons resembled their father in temperament and
shared his interests--all but one. Nature had bestowed on Mary Dormer's
youngest child a measure of her delicacy but even more of her spirit.
So when Henry, who intended to be a great soldier, like him of Blenheim
and Malplaquet, who had spent his boyhood here at Ashe House, when
Christopher, who would be a sailor, if he did not meanwhile drown
himself either in Axe or on Seaton shore, when Robert, the most
turbulent of all, who was destined for the Bar--when all these elder
brothers, brimming with spirits, set forth on some neck-breaking
expedition, little Charles was left contentedly with his mother. Mr.
Dormer would sometimes grumblingly predict that his youngest boy would
grow up a milksop, the others occasionally tease him for a mother's
darling, but since the child, when he was big enough, could sit a horse
rather better, if anything, than his elders, and was extraordinarily
lucky with a fishing-rod, his brothers were forced to render him the
tribute of a slightly grudging admiration for a prowess that cost him so
little pains.
Yet, to the mind of the child who did these things with such ease and
gaiety, the world he knew was little different from the Garden of Eden,
or from that celestial city of which the particulars were familiar to
him from the old hymn, in the faded seventeenth century writing, which
his mother read to him till he knew it by heart. But there were
disparities. "Quite through the streets, with silver sound," said the
hymn with precision, yet the Coly put a circling arm around, not through
his home. Other resemblances were more exact, their own garden, for
instance, where grew, indubitably, the pleasantest flowers that could be
seen, and where at least the long straight path between the
laurels--"the gallant walk" as he called it,--was, as in Paradise,
always green. Still it was pleasant to think that in the heavenly city
no "dampish mists" would come up from the sea to prevent his going out
whenever he had a mind to, and that David, standing harp in hand as
master of the choir, would probably sing more sweetly than his present
prototype in Colyton Church. On the other hand it was plain that since
"no spider's web, no dirt, no dust, no filth may there be seen," the
garden tool-shed and similar attractive places could have no counterpart
above.
Accompanied as the child was by his simple and joyous thoughts, it would
never have surprised him had he seen the Lord God walking in the garden
in the cool of the evening, or met an angel as he himself ran singing
through the grass and flowers on Coly's banks. Perhaps he did. And he
supposed that everybody else had the same expectations, but that
Christopher and Robert, for instance, did not speak of them because he
himself never spoke of them, save to his mother. Nor was he remarkable
for obedience. All his after-life he was to struggle with his own
masterful will. He fell into the stream by the weir, where he had been
straitly charged not to go, and was with difficulty rescued by a
brother; he would ride prohibited horses, consort occasionally with
forbidden companions; he was at once dreamy and wilful, sweet-tempered
and naughty. With all this he seemed to her who knew him best--and who
was to him, it must be confessed, more like an elder sister and
companion than a mother--such a child as Adam and Eve might have had
before the Fall, and it was almost with awe that, as he grew older, she
set about teaching him what she knew of Church doctrine, and in
particular that belief in the Real Presence which had been miraculously
preserved by the few in a materialistic age. Pathetically certain that
one day the Church would unearth her neglected treasure, she gave him
the Prayer-Book in which that treasure was enshrined, saying so
solemnly, "Never let anyone take that away from you, Charles," that for
years the boy kept it wrapped up in a silk handkerchief, and lived in
expectation of having to do battle for its retention.
Mrs. Dormer died just when Charles was ready to go to school, and at
eleven, motherless, he was plunged into the rough and tumble of Eton
life. The Garden of Eden was gone for ever, and there was scarcely a
sign-post on the way to the Heavenly City. But the child of Mary Dormer
had his own pillar of fire to lead him through the wilderness....
Towards the end of his schooldays he met his life-long friend, and
together, in 1818, they went up to Oriel.
Though at Eton Dormer was considered odd and dreamy, it was known that
he possessed powers above the average, and great things were prophesied
of his University career. A great thing indeed awaited him at
Oxford--the influence of John Keble. If Oriel had a distinguished
reputation its most brilliant member had a more distinguished. Winner
of a Double First and of two University prizes, already for seven years
Fellow of a college that worshipped intellectual attainments, Keble was
himself the herald of reaction from the Noetic philosophy to the older
school of authority and tradition. Humility and otherworldliness had
little in common with "march of mind," nor a quiet confidence in the
Divine Commission of the Church with a speculation that was eventually
to issue in free thought. All Charles Dormer's longing for "the severe
sweetness of the life divine," all his ardent conviction that better
things were to come, seemed to find their vindication in the faith and
in the practice of this young man, not ten years older than himself, and
there soon sprang up between the two an appreciation as lasting as that
which a few years later was to unite John Keble and Richard Hurrell
Froude. Eton prognostications were nevertheless fulfilled when, in
1822, the same year as Newman, Dormer, having already taken a Double
First, won the coveted prize of an Oriel Fellowship.
The new Fellow, now reading for Orders, was made welcome enough in
Common Room, but after Keble's departure from Oxford in the following
year he was rather lonely. He did not find real companionship among the
elder Fellows in residence, Hawkins, Tyler, or Dornford; with the
younger he often walked or rode, but Newman was an Evangelical, and of
the two whom he had known at Eton, Pusey was silent and depressed, Jelf
of too practical a temperament. Keble alone shared his ideals, for
though his own affection was given steadfastly to Tristram Hungerford,
the grief at Tristram's development which had haunted him through the
three years of their joint college life was sharpened rather than
assuaged when their time together was over, and Hungerford definitely
enlisted in the Latitudinarian or (in the phraseology of the day) the
Liberal camp. He had fought for his friend and lost.
But the consequences of that defeat were far-reaching. Because of his
sympathy for Tristram and for others like him, who were honest in their
difficulties, Dormer tried, for the first time, to find the intellectual
reason for his own clear faith. First-class man and Fellow of Oriel as
he was, he could not. He had at last boldly to admit that his certainty
was not gained by reason, though it was reasonable, and that the most
his unaided intellect could do was to give him high probability. If
faith was then ultimately a gift, to be won by surrender to a Divine
Person, how great was the need of a Society in living communion with
that Person, a Society strong alike in learning and in spirituality! And
what of that Church of which he was a member? Was it because she fell so
far short of what she might be that the time seemed to be coming when
she would be swept away by the tide of unbelief which, since the days of
the French Revolution, had devastated the Continent? Indeed, unless she
made haste to seek out the credentials of her Divine commission and to
reforge the links which bound her to the Church of the first ages, would
she even be worth saving from that flood?
And then the day came when Charles Dormer found that he was not alone in
these conclusions, for the same premisses were bringing together, in his
own college, a number of persons whose loyalty to the Church led them to
think not merely of defence but of reform. Dormer's rooms became
henceforward the scene of many a fervid discussion, many a stimulating
argument. In the end, even as Hurrell Froude, the youngest and most
ardent fighter of them all, had drawn in his Evangelical and Whatelyan
friend, so did Dormer insensibly win over the man for whom his affection
had first set him on this track. And to Charles Dormer, not
unnaturally, the adhesion of John Henry Newman was of vastly less
importance than that of Tristram Hungerford.
*(3)*
Dormer's pen was still between his fingers. He roused himself, turned
once more to the table, added a final sentence to the last sheet, and
laid down the pen; then he leant back again with a long sigh. He was
tired, for he had been finishing his book at high pressure; but he was
more tired than he ought to have been, and he knew it. He supposed that
he would pay for the strain by a bout of the disabling headaches, whose
increasing frequency, during the last six months, had begun to make him
uneasy.
And at this moment, just as Tristram in his need was riding towards him
up St. Aldate's, he put his head back against his chair and began to
think of him with peculiar affection. For fourteen years the bonds of
their friendship had only drawn the closer. Tristram at last had the
same cause at heart, and was about to take Orders. There was only one
thing which separated them. He himself would never marry, but Tristram
certainly would, and Dormer continually reproached himself with the
quite human regret which this reflection sometimes roused in him. With
his profound belief in the Providence of God, he felt that Tristram had
always been destined for home life, and that he belonged, or would
belong to the class of clergy who, in England at all events, seem able
to serve their people best by being one with them in actual experience
of the common life. For though Dormer would have wished that class to be
numerically the smaller, the idea of an enforced celibacy was abhorrent
to him.
And hitherto he had encouraged Tristram to hope that the time might yet
come when Horatia would listen to him. But the results of his
observations at Tristram's dinner-party last week had been most
disturbing. Was it possible that this young Frenchman was carrying off
Miss Grenville's heart--he did not say her hand--under Tristram's very
eyes? This seemed scarcely credible, yet he had of set purpose
interrupted their conversation that evening, and had felt uneasy ever
since, for a reason that he could scarcely define. But perhaps he had
been mistaken; at any rate, he hoped so...
He was at this point when a knock came at the door.
"Come in," he said, opening his eyes to see the subject of his
meditations before him. He sprang up. "My dear fellow! I am delighted
to see you. Forgive this litter."
"I hardly expected to find you in college at this hour," remarked
Tristram, glancing at the table. "I suppose this is the reason for it."
Dormer nodded, and began gathering the sheets together. "The Non-jurors
must be got out of the way as soon as possible, now that I have promised
to undertake this work on the Councils for Rose. I've just been writing
to Keble about his proposals, for, adequately carried out, they might
provide almost a lifework for the person who undertook them."
"But _you_ have promised definitely to undertake them."
"Yes, I've accepted," said Dormer sitting down again with something like
a sigh. "It's rather a daunting prospect, you know, Tristram, and yet
it may be the work for which one has been waiting. I am so glad that
you managed to see Rose the other evening; I wanted you particularly to
meet him. He is the coming man."
"Oh, is he?" replied Tristram not very enthusiastically. "Well, yes, I
was glad to meet him. He showed his sense in asking you to do this,
anyhow. But what about those headaches?"
"Suppose you leave my headaches alone," retorted Dormer smiling. "You
look rather fagged yourself. Will you have some tea, or would you rather
have a glass of ale after your ride?--I seem to have been talking a
great deal about myself."
If he had, the circumstance was so unusual--save perhaps in his present
company--as scarcely to call for apology.
"Neither, thanks," answered Tristram, who was wandering restlessly round
the room, which he knew as well as his own. "I am not tired that I know
of... I like that drawing of Cologne Cathedral. Who gave it
you--Froude?"
"No," said Dormer, watching him suddenly rather intently. "It was
Robert Wilberforce."
Tristram strayed to a bookcase. "Hallo," he remarked, "here are these
Non-juring books of yours which I am always meaning to have a look at.
What is this--'Devotions for the Canonical Hours, to be used in the
houses of the clergy and by all religious societies where there is a
priest.' Surely that is strange!"
"It always sounds to me like an eighteenth century Little Gidding,"
answered his friend. "That copy belonged to Cartwright, the Shrewsbury
apothecary, and the last Non-juring Bishop. I had an older book, called
'A Companion for the Penitent, and for Persons troubled in mind,' but I
gave it to Keble."
"I expect he was pleased with it," commented his visitor. He put back
the book and came and threw himself down in a chair. "Doesn't it seem
strange to have finished, after all this time?"
"Yes," said Dormer, looking at his papers, "and I believe I am almost
sorry. But it would have been a pity to spend longer over the
Non-jurors, for I expect very few people will so much as glance at the
book."
"When I was talking to Froude the other day he seemed to hold a
different opinion," said Tristram.
"Ah, yes, but then you see he is almost as keen about the Non-jurors as
I am myself. I have heard him say that he was beginning to think that
they were the last of English divines, and that those since were
twaddlers."
"Froude is almost too bold. He doesn't seem to care what he says."
"But," continued Dormer, leaning back in his chair, "although I know, of
course, that it will be read by a few, what I mean is that it will
appeal chiefly to those already interested. And if this remark applies
to a modern book, how much more will it apply to what I am afraid will
be a rather dull work on the first centuries.--You know, Tristram, what
we want alongside of this sort of thing is some more arresting kind of
writing, some series of short essays in a popular form that could be
circulated among the country clergy--essays to prove the continuity of
the Church for instance. In this book I've been trying to show the
direct connection between Non-jurors, the Caroline divines, the ancient
Church of England, and the primitive Church. For the next five years or
so I shall be trying to point out, by means of the history of the
principal Councils, that the doctrine of the Church of England is that
of an undivided Christendom. I don't say my volumes won't be read, but
I do say that the same thing put in a cheaper and shorter form would be
more read."
"Why shouldn't it be done, then?"
"Well, it's an idea," admitted Dormer. "It is the country clergy that
we need to get hold of, for after all they are the people who really
count. I must talk to Newman about it. I fancy it might appeal to
him."
"What might appeal to Newman?" asked a voice. The door was open, and in
the aperture stood a young man of twenty-seven or so, tall, thin to the
point of emaciation, with very bright eyes and an air of being intensely
alive. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for bursting in upon you; but the
only thing that appeals to Newman just now is his mother's furniture at
Rose Hill--at least I hope it is appealing to him, for he has gone to
Iffley with Wilberforce to inspect it."
"Oh, come in, Froude," said Dormer. "If you had been eavesdropping a
moment or two earlier you would have heard Hungerford's opinion of you."
Hurrell Froude smiled, and, shutting the door, half leant, half sat on
Dormer's writing-table. "I don't care in the least what Hungerford
thinks of me. I have just had a shock. Did you know that the first
Latitudinarians were Tories? I did not. It looks as if Whiggery has by
degrees taken up all the filth that has been secreted by human
thought--Puritanism, Latitudinarianism, Popery, infidelity, they have it
all!"
Tristram laughed. "Is that the result of your studies at Dartington
last month, Froude? I thought you were working at the English
Reformers."
"So I was," replied the intruder, "but their civilities to the smug
fellows on the Continent, added to the fact that the weather was rather
hot, stuck in my gizzard. Their odious Protestantism----"
"Ah!" interrupted Dormer like lightning. "It was too hot for work at
Dartington, was it? We've got that admission at last! Have I not
always maintained that there was no air so far up the Dart? Now at
Colyton there is always the valley breeze either up or down the Axe."
"Horrible!" ejaculated Froude, running his long thin hand through his
hair with a gesture of repulsion. "Like living in a perpetual draught!
Now at Dartington----"
"O, for Heaven's sake!" cried Tristram. The interminable feud between
the two Devonians on the merits of their respective birthplaces and
rivers was one of the standing jokes of the Common Room, and Dormer had
just scored one by Froude's careless admission.
Froude got off the table. "Out of regard for you, my dear Hungerford,
we will cease. I really came in to ask Dormer if he would ride with me
one afternoon this week. I have found a delightful little thirteenth
century church in Buckinghamshire with piscina, sedilia and all
complete, and I want him to see it."
"I'll come with pleasure. But that reminds me," said Dormer, rummaging
in a drawer and getting out a little water-colour sketch of a church
tower. "What do you think of that?"
The visitor took it and looked at it attentively for a moment.
"Charming," he pronounced. "Where is it? I sometimes think I like a
square tower better than a spire, especially when it has an elegant
lantern like this. It is nowhere near here, I am sure. Is----" He
broke off suspiciously, for Dormer was standing looking at him with a
mischievous smile.
"That is Colyton church tower which you are pleased to admire," said he.
Hurrell Froude flung down the sketch. "Villain!" he exclaimed, and
broke into a fit of coughing. "That was a traitor's trick," he said, as
soon as he could get breath. "I don't admire it at all, and I'm off.
You will end as a Whig, or something worse, if that is possible!"
"Well, I must be getting back also," said Tristram, as the door closed.
"How did Froude get that cough, I wonder? I only came in to see how you
were."
"Your guest has gone, I suppose?"
"Went this morning," responded his friend, briefly.
"Oh, I thought he was to leave yesterday."
"He stayed another night. Good-bye; I must go."
"Wait a moment," urged Dormer. "I want you to read that." And he
tossed a letter across the table.
"From Habington," remarked Tristram, taking it up. "What has he got to
say?"
"You read it and see," persisted Dormer. "I wish someone would tell
_me_ what to say. I haven't the knack of writing to people in his
interesting situation."
Tristram read the letter as desired, Dormer studying him the while.
Something _had_ happened!
"Habington engaged to be married!" exclaimed Tristram. "Well, I must
say I am surprised. I thought he was a convert to your celibate views."
"I thought so once too, but, apart from Froude, and perhaps Newman, I
intend to believe in no man's constancy in future."
"You're very fierce, Charles!"
"Well, I am disappointed. Habington was doing good work here in Oxford;
now he must give up his Fellowship at Trinity and be a family man in a
country parsonage. He will do good and be an example whereever he is,
but he cannot be what he might have been."
"Then," said Tristram slowly, "if I marry after I take Orders I shall
not be what I might have been?"
A look that few people ever saw came into Charles Dormer's eyes. He
leant forward on the table, his elbows on his scattered manuscripts.
"Tristram," he said earnestly, "you know that you have always had my
good wishes, and you have them still. You are so obviously cut out for
the charities and the humanities...." He stopped and looked down at his
papers. "I don't think I am being a sawney about you, even when I want
you to be happy."
Tristram was at the door, his hand on the handle. His voice came
jerkily. "I am afraid your good wishes are of no use to me now ... Yes,
I wanted you to know, but I can't tell you, after all ... I only hope I
shall do what is right."
He was gone, and Dormer, half-risen from his chair, was left staring at
the closed door.
But as Tristram rode over Folly Bridge, where the river ran yellow in
the sunset, he knew that his course lay plain before him.
Half way up the long hill he checked his horse, and from sheer habit
turned in the saddle. There stood the towers, orderly and lovely, in
the faint mist of the autumn day's ending. He almost fancied that he
could hear the bells of Magdalen. Many and many a time, riding into
Oxford on summer afternoons, on winter mornings, had he pretended to
himself that he was seeing the city for the first time, that its streets
were strange to him, its pinnacles a new delight. Now, without any
effort of the imagination, it seemed to him both that everything he had
ever loved lay below him, cruel and valedictory, never to greet him
again, and that it was a place in essence still unentered, an alien
city. So, by the mind's alchemy, were the town he had loved and the
woman he had lost made one, for a second, in his spirit.
But his course was plain. He rode on up the hill.
*CHAPTER XII*
*(1)*
Tristram's plain course was to lead him, and he knew it, into the waste
places of the spirit. In such a desert he wrestled, two days later,
with a radiant Horatia, himself miserably conscious both of the
interpretation that the world would put upon his action, and of the
futility of his effort, and stabbed to the heart by her transfigured
personality, to him the surest evidence of what had happened.
Yet she was the same Horatia, as kind, as generous as ever. She
listened very patiently to his exposition of the difficulties attendant
on a marriage with a man of a different race, of a different creed; she
seemed even to do homage to the motive which had prompted him to speech.
A lesser woman, so much in love as she, would, he thought, have sent him
about his business.
She smiled at him divinely when he had finished.
"Dear, dear Tristram," she said, and she put her hand on his. "You are
indeed, as you have always been, the best of friends. Everything you
say is true, and I know you have not liked to say it. But you see that
it is no good, and so I want you to be on my side in the fight I am
afraid that I am going to have with dearest Papa. Will you?"
"I have already told him," said Tristram, "that if I thought the match
was for your happiness, I should uphold it."
"_My happiness_! You cannot doubt that, can you, Tristram?"
He did not answer.
"Papa is in his study," she suggested. "Suppose you were to go now and
see what you can do with him?"
"I will try," he answered.
She came after him to the door, thanking him. He could not have borne
much more.
*(2)*
The Rector was sitting at his study table. "Well," he said, as the
envoy entered. "What does she say? You have been my last hope of
persuading her to see things sensibly."
Tristram crossed the room, and did not immediately answer. He had
already professed himself convinced of Horatia's determination, but hope
will lurk in such odd corners of the heart, that not till this moment
did he know how the frail thing had really ceased to flutter in him.
"I am afraid," he said at last, "that I have been worse than useless,
for I have promised to try to persuade _you_."
The Rector veered round in his chair to face him. "You, _you_, Tristram,
support her! Then the world has gone crazy!" He took off his glasses
and for a full half-minute gazed at the figure standing rather rigidly
before him. "You really mean to tell me that, knowing Horatia as you
do, you think I ought to take seriously this passing fancy?"
"I'm afraid I do, Sir," said Tristram steadily; "but, then, I cannot
think it a passing fancy now that I have seen her and talked to her.
Horatia does not have whims. If she changes, she changes
whole-heartedly, and I confess I have never seen anyone so altered."
His voice wavered for a moment. "She has put her whole happiness in
Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and if you thwart her, you will be taking a
very heavy responsibility."
"All the same," said the Rector stubbornly, "I shall take it. As you
probably know, under French law my consent is a very important matter,
and I shall certainly not give it. Allow my daughter to marry a
foreigner, and a Papist--a Papist, Tristram, do you realise that?"
Tristram gave a little sigh. "I do, indeed, only too well. That is
what clinched the matter for me. I mean I thought, of course, that it
would be a serious obstacle to Horatia's mind, yet when I suggested it
as a difficulty, she only said, 'But I love him, what else matters?'
For Horatia, with her upbringing and her views that means a great deal.
I confess I hardly understand it."
"Nor I," returned Mr. Grenville. "She has said the same to me, and even
when I told her that her children would have to be brought up as Roman
Catholics, she said that she did not like the idea, but she supposed
that people always had to pay for happiness. He has bewitched her! But
I shall save her from herself, Tristram. To throw herself away on the
first wandering foreigner!"
"His father is a peer of France," said Tristram very quietly, "and
Horatia will be a great lady. She is not throwing herself away in that
sense."
The Rector gave an impatient exclamation, and brought his hands down
violently on his knees. "To hear you talk, Tristram, anyone might
suppose that you had something to gain from her marriage! 'Pon my soul,
the young men of the present day are beyond me! A fortnight ago, in this
very room, you were telling me about your own feelings for Horatia, and
now here you are, as calm and cool as any lawyer, trying to argue me
into letting her marry this organ-grinder! Really I find it hard to
remember that not long ago you were a boy yourself, and a boy, too, whom
I had hoped to call my son!"
It was the final turn of the screw. Tristram left him and went over to
the window.
"I can't speak of that side of it," he said brokenly. "I have loved her
distractedly ... I still love her ... but there is her happiness to
think of, and if she ... if the Comte de la Roche-Guyon..." He could
get no further, but laid his head against the cold glass.
"My dear boy, forgive me," exclaimed Mr. Grenville remorsefully. "I am
so upset I don't know what I am saying. I'm a selfish old man, and you
put me to shame ... you put me to shame...."
Sighing heavily, he turned round his chair to the table. He felt
himself suddenly what he had often mendaciously declared himself to be,
an old man. Perhaps it was wrong to struggle against the young--to play
Providence overmuch. Yet this was Horatia's whole life at stake.
Still, the man who stood silent there at the window, in what bitter pain
he could guess, was able to see her go. He put out his hand, and took
up the brass of Allectus, lying neglected among a disarray of papers,
and, in the silence studied the galley on the reverse. At last he said
miserably:
"What do you know about this young man?"
Tristram told him about the family, while the Rector turned the coin
over and over.
"Yes, that's all right, I suppose, but what about the young man
himself?"
"Frankly, I don't know any more than you do."
"But you have your suspicions, eh? Young Frenchmen don't bear a very
good character, and you know that."
"Nor do all young Englishmen."
Mr. Grenville refused to be drawn off. "When you were in Paris, or
wherever it was, Tristram, staying with his family, surely you must have
heard something about him."
"No, not a rumour of the kind you mean."
"And yet," said the Rector, "you share my feelings about him. I know
you do!"
"We have not either of us any right to have 'feelings' about him,"
retorted Tristram from the window. "We merely do not know. I would
tell you if there had been anything. He may be a blackguard or he may
be a hero. We don't know."
"Very well, then," said the Rector judicially, laying down the coin with
precision. "I'll put it in another way. Do you consider him a fit
husband for Horatia?"
Tristram started forward. "Mr. Grenville, don't drive me mad! You are
putting me in a horrible position. Armand confides his interests to my
hands; the first thing I do is to try to persuade Horatia not to marry
him. Now you want to make me blacken his character ... I beg your
pardon, Sir!"
The Rector was on his feet. "It is for me to beg yours. My dear, dear
boy, do forgive me! I am behaving abominably; I am not only selfish but
mean--but if I do seem to have been trying to get you to say things
against a rival (as I suppose I have), remember I am also trying to save
Horatia from this ... this calamitous marriage, and you from your own
fantastic principles. It is all such a confusion, but I am really
trying for your own happiness as well as hers ... You know, Tristram,
I'm sure you could still have her if you tried, when she has forgotten
him.... But do say that you forgive me!"
The young man took his outstretched hand. "As if I had anything to
forgive, Sir!" Then he went back with him to the table and sat down
beside him, and once again reiterated his conviction that Horatia would
not forget her lover, that he himself had no chance now, probably never
had, so that the case must be considered on its own merits, and that
perhaps, after all, the two were made for each other--though here,
indeed, the conviction sounded less sincere.
"Well," said the Rector, looking at him with affection as he finished,
"however this turns out I am not likely to forget how you have behaved!
And perhaps (but don't say so to Horatia) I may have to think about the
possibility some day--but not yet ... no, not yet!"
*CHAPTER XIII*
*(1)*
The ostler of the Red Lion at Compton Regis and one of the stablemen,
who happened at the time to be conversing outside that hostelry, were
the only persons in the village privileged to behold a certain blue and
yellow postchaise draw up in front of the inn at dusk on an evening in
October. Scenting a guest of importance, and preparing to summon the
landlord, the ostler was, however, stayed by a curt inquiry from the
postilion--
"Be this the way to Little Compton?"
"Straight on, first road to the left," responded the ostler, advancing
into one of the paths of radiance cut by the lamps in the damp autumn
air. "You're no Oxford man or you'd not ask."
"Well, why should I be an Oxford man?" retorted the postilion. "I'm
from Salisbury, if you want to know, and damme, if that ain't as good as
Oxford----"
But here a head was thrust out of the far window of the chaise, and a
voice with a trace of foreign accent--the voice of a young man--demanded
what the devil they had stopped for, and, grumbling, the postilion
shouted to the steaming horses. As the chaise rolled off the ostler
caught sight of a much older face, lit by the travelling lamp within the
carriage. He stared after the receding vehicle.
"'Ere, Bill," he called, "I've seen a Dook. Strike me, but it's 'im
wot's going to stay with Mr. 'Ungerford down to Little Compton. 'Ear
the posty say 'e come from Salisbury? That the Dook, sure enough, the
old party. T'other'll be his son, the young spark wot was 'ere before."
"Dook! Wot's a furrin Dook?" queried the exclusive Bill, and spat on
the ground.
*(2)*
These worthies were quite right in their surmises, and Mr. Hungerford
down to Little Compton was at that moment awaiting, with what equanimity
he might, the visit of his all but successful rival and of his father,
to whom he had been forced to offer a hospitality which would probably
ensure that rival's complete triumph. Nor was Tristram unaware of the
ironical humour of the situation.
A week had scarcely passed since Armand's departure for Dorset--a week
in which the transfigured Horatia had seemed to tread on air--when there
came to her a letter from her lover saying that his father absolutely
refused his consent to the match. Tristram did not like to think of the
days that had followed, when Horatia went about the house dimmed and
red-eyed--though she was generally invisible when he was at the
Rectory--and when the Rector (so curiously are human beings compounded)
raged alternately against Armand for his audacity and against the Duc de
la Roche-Guyon for his prohibition. Nothing in fact could have done so
much to forward the match, in so far as the Rector was concerned, as
this obstacle: and at last, late one evening, Mr. Grenville came over to
see Tristram quite broken, reiterating pitifully, "I am being driven to
it. I can't have the child going into a decline," and ending up: "As for
this Duke, it's preposterous! Who is he, I should like to know, to
behave as if my Horatia were not good enough for his younger son? As
you know, Tristram, I detest boasting of my connections, but if it comes
to that----"
And since Mr. Grenville could indeed claim cousinship of varying degrees
with the Most Noble Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville,
Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Nugent, with the Marquis of
Chandos, and little Earl Temple, and old Lord Grenville, the Chancellor
of the University of Oxford, it was hardly surprising that he was
annoyed.
Tristram could only suggest that the Duc might come round. "It seems so
strange," complained Mr. Grenville, "that he should be so opposed to his
son's wishes, when his son is not a minor--how old is he?--twenty-five
or twenty-six, I suppose.... You don't think," he said suddenly, "that
it's just a ruse on the young man's part to get out of marrying
her--that he is repenting of it--that it was only a passing fancy on
_his_ part? For if that should be so, Tristram, if he is capable of
anything so vile, it will kill my girl." His voice shook with
agitation. Gone for ever were the days when he would have hoped that
such was the suitor's intention.
Tristram tried to reassure him, for he did not believe this to be the
case. After the Rector, somewhat comforted, had gone, there was nothing
left for him to do but to pray convulsively for Horatia's happiness.
And when, two days later, he got a letter from Armand, saying that as
the King was moving to Holyrood in mid-October he had prevailed on his
father to break the journey northward and come with him to Compton
Regis, and that he, Armand, had hopes ... it was with real relief as
well as with repugnance that Tristram did what Armand obviously hoped he
would do, and invited his father and him to honour his roof during their
sojourn. And if anything could have nerved him this evening to endure
the position in which he had placed himself, it was the brief sight
which he had of Horatia that day when he went over to tell the Rector
that everything was arranged--of Horatia as she turned on him a sort of
rainbow look of gratitude.
That was this morning. Now he was out in the dark and the damp to
welcome his guests, exchanging suitable greetings with the elder and
submitting to Armand's embrace.
"Ah, mon cher, how amiable of you to receive us thus! We have had a dog
of a journey. Mon pere, enter then, while I pay the postilion; you
should not expose yourself thus to the damp."
"No, indeed," said Tristram. "If you will come in, M. le Duc..."
In the hall, the face of M. le Duc de la Roche-Guyon appeared above the
high collar of his full cloak, old, pale, rather bleached-looking. He
was beginning a stately little speech when his son appeared, full of
solicitude and hurried him upstairs. And Armand in person reappeared
alone before dinner in order to get a few words with his host. Tristram
had been preparing himself for this. The young man professed profound
gratitude, was sure that if his father once saw the lady of his choice,
all would be well. He himself was more hopeful than he had been for
weeks past.
"In fact," he went on, his eyes sparkling, "I believe the day is already
won. My grandmother supports me--and that will turn the scale. My
father has great respect for her wishes. Her letter arrived, praise the
saints, just before we left Lulworth."
Tristram now remembered to have heard something of an autocratic old
Dowager Duchess, the Duke's mother.
"She says--mais n'importe," went on the Comte. "Now, with your
permission, and if my father does not appear too tired, I will leave you
after dinner to yourselves."
"You are trusting me with a good deal, La Roche-Guyon," Tristram was
moved to remark.
"Parbleu, are you not my friend!" retorted the Frenchman. "Besides, you
are one of those people whom it is natural to trust."
Although the Duc, when he appeared, was very plainly, if immaculately
attired, he somehow radiated from his person an air of courts and of
diplomacy very foreign to Tristram's dining-room and its solid British
furniture. He was grand seigneur to his finger-tips, polished,
melancholy, affable, and perfectly simple in his address; but it
required no effort to imagine the absent cordon bleu and stars on his
breast. Armand behaved towards him with a mingled air of deference and
affection which, while it amused Tristram--so far as he was capable of
being amused by anything--did not displease him, for it appeared genuine
and habitual. Apparently the young man considered the paternal health
equal to a discussion, for after one glass of port he very
unembarrassedly excused himself, and left the others still seated with
their wineglasses at the polished mahogany.
The Duc looked after him with a little smile of amusement and affection
flitting across his delicate bloodless lips.
"That is the signal for us to begin our 'conversations,' Monsieur. You
have plenipotentiary powers, I think?"
"I--not in the least!" said Tristram, somewhat alarmed. "I have no--no
official position at all in the matter. It will be between yourself, M.
le Duc, and the lady's father. Anything that I can arrange, in the way
of a meeting between you, I shall be happy to do, and any information I
have is at your service. Beyond that I cannot go."
The older man bowed. "You are a kinsman, I think, Monsieur?"
"Distant," said Tristram. "I rather count myself an old friend."
"Of M. Grenville or of Mademoiselle?"
"Of both."
"And--pardon me if I ask an impertinent question, but we must know where
we stand--as a kinsman and as an old friend, you have yourself no
objection to this alliance?"
"I am solely desirous of Miss Grenville's happiness," responded
Tristram, his eyes on the foot of his wineglass.
"And you think that the match with my son will ensure it?"
"How can I possibly say? But I hope that it may take place."
"Merci, Monsieur, for your courtesy," said the Duc, very courteously
himself. "Now I in my turn must make my position clear to you. I had
other views for my son--in fact I thought he ... had other views for
himself. I am, however, convinced that he is passionately in love with
this lady, whom I doubt not I shall find to be all and more than all
that he represents. But you know, Monsieur, that we French people do not
look with favour upon marriages of love. We prefer that love should
come after marriage. We find it better so. Then there is the
difference of race. To these young people that seems nothing now, but
it tells, Monsieur, it tells more and more through life. This objection
naturally applies on your side also; not so the former, for you are more
sentimental than we are." He was arranging two little groups of almonds
with fingers as blanched as they.
"I seem to remember," commented Tristram, "that the Comte de Flahault,
coming over to England, fell in love with an English lady and married
her, and that they are living happily in Paris at this very moment."
"Quite true," said the Duc, with the air of one acknowledging a point,
and he added another almond to the smaller pile. "But I cannot wholly
allow the parallel. M. de Flahault was an Imperialist--an aide-de-camp
of Napoleon in fact; he is now an Orleanist, and the lady, she was
titree, noble in her own right, I believe, the Baroness Keats, or Keat,
il me semble."
"Keith," said Tristram. "But surely I do not need to remind M. le Duc,
who has, I understand, lived much in England, that many of the members
of our best families bear no titles, that with us the grandson of an
earl, not being the heir, is plain Mr. So-and-so, and that some of the
oldest families have never had titles at all--have, indeed, refused
them."
"That I know," conceded M. de la Roche-Guyon. "But it is not generally
understood in France."
Tristram pushed away his wineglass. "You must not suspect me of
flattery, Sir, if I say that I should have thought your own ancient and
illustrious name capable of covering any disparity in station between
the parties, did such exist. But I should wish to remind you that Mr.
Grenville is by no means the ordinary country parson that you have
perhaps imagined. He is himself the younger son of a noble family; he
has connections among the highest of our English nobility, and he is no
pauper. I can sketch you his family tree if you wish.... As for the
lady herself, she would grace the most exalted rank, and, as a kinsman
and an old friend, I think I have the right to say that the man who wins
her is to be congratulated indeed."
The Duc lifted his eyes from the almonds and shot him a keen, rather
disconcerting glance. "Ah, yes. You, Monsieur, the accredited
ambassador, have espoused the match with warmth. How is it that M.
Grenville then refused, in no uncertain terms, to entertain the thought
of it; indeed, so far as I could gather, forbade my son the house?"
For a second Tristram was taken aback by this pertinent inquiry, for he
had really forgotten the Rector's one time vehement opposition.
"I think," he said, "that you will find Mr. Grenville ... in short, that
that difficulty does not now exist."
The Duc leant back in his chair. "Will you permit me, Monsieur, to say
(since I am a man so much older than you) that there is something in
you, I know not what, which pleases me very much. I will be franker
with you than I had meant to be. My mother, the Dowager Duchess, to
whose judgment I pay great deference, is in favour of this match. I
have learnt the fact but this morning. I own that I am surprised, but
Armand is her favourite grandson. There are reasons, with which I need
not trouble you, why her wishes should have great weight with me. I am,
therefore, little likely when I see this lady, by all accounts so
charming, to find her unsuitable. But what of M. son pere? It will not
consort very well with my dignity (to which you must permit me to hold)
if I approve my son's choice only to find that M. Grenville does not
approve his daughter's."
And in the gaze which he directed upon Tristram, in the tones of his
thin, well-bred voice, there peeped out something of the arrogance of an
ancient race.
The younger man smiled. He felt suddenly very weary.
"You need not apprehend anything on that score, I can assure you, Sir.
I saw Mr. Grenville this morning. When your son first asked for his
daughter's hand he was startled, greatly startled, and surprised. He
probably spoke words which he would have recalled afterwards. You will
find him, I think, more than reconciled to the idea."
The Duke seemed to have fallen into a short reverie.
"It is well to be young," he said at last, and there was faint regret in
his tone. "The fire of youth--who shall give us that again? When I
married my first wife, Emmanuel's mother, I was only twenty--but that
was a mariage de convenance. Armand's mother was very beautiful; I
loved her as Armand loves this lady, but he has the advantage of me ...
he has the advantage of me ... for then I was no longer young." He
sighed, and passed his handkerchief over his lips, and his face, deeply
marked, seemed to wither and grow older than its sixty-five years. "But
why am I talking thus to you, Monsieur, who still have that inestimable
gift of youth? Mais tout passe, tout lasse ... I will do myself the
honour of calling upon Mr. Grenville to-morrow morning at eleven, if you
think that hour will be convenient to him."
And he flicked with one long, polished nail at the two heaps of almonds,
scattering them.
*(3)*
Not being present next morning at the momentous interview between the
Duc and Mr. Grenville, Tristram could only guess at what happened.
Armand, on fire with restlessness, spent the time walking round and
round the not very extensive garden like a caged animal, and when
Tristram went out to say that his father had returned and would like to
see him in the study, he found the young man slashing with a stick at
his rose trees.
"Oh, pardon if I have hurt them!" he exclaimed. "Mon Dieu, que je suis
enerve! Yes, I will go at once. I had better have borrowed one of your
horses and gone for a gallop.--He is in the study, you say, this good
father of mine?"
The irony of Tristram's own position oppressed him the more in
proportion as his anxiety about Armand's intentions was relieved.
Neither the Duc nor his son said much when they emerged from their
conference, only the elder man informed his host that he was to dine
alone at the Rectory that evening, and that he hoped then to make the
acquaintance of Miss Grenville. As good luck so ordered, a colleague of
Tristram's on the bench turned up at dinner time and had to be asked to
stay. Never had Tristram so blessed his boring but steady flow of
conversation, nor so welcomed his presence, which effectually prevented
Armand from pouring out his own hopes and fears.
There was no one, however, to save Tristram from the Duke's really
enthusiastic praises of Miss Grenville when he returned from the
Rectory, and expatiated on the gifts of heart and mind and person which
he discerned in her.
"I shall keep that young rascal on tenterhooks a little longer," he
declared. "Another sleepless night will not do him any harm, if he has
had as many as he asserts. Besides, it is not absolutely arranged. With
your permission, Mr. Grenville will come over here to-morrow morning to
discuss matters with me. I will send Armand out; no doubt, even in this
misty weather, his flame will keep him warm."
He kept his word, and next morning the Comte, refusing a horse, went
soberly off on foot in the direction of the Downs. Mr. Grenville
arrived; Tristram was unable, and did not indeed particularly desire, to
make an opportunity of seeing him alone before he left him and the Duc
to their discussion. The whole thing was getting dreamlike to him now,
losing the outlines of its reality as the Downs had lost theirs with the
death of summer. He would be glad when this whirl of conferences was
over, the result--already certain--announced, and Armand de la
Roche-Guyon no longer under his roof--not that he minded even his
presence very much. How he should get on afterwards, from day to day,
he did not know, but at present he seemed to himself a being without
passions, energy, or desires--a mere leaf whirled on the engulfing
stream of destiny, and the future was hardly worth speculating about.
He walked in his little orchard, for it was a morning gilded with the
mellow brilliance of October, and noted the fallen apples. After a
while, turning, he saw the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, his son and the Rector
all coming over the grass towards him, conversing with an amiability
which could have only one meaning. And dream-enveloped though he felt
himself, leaf on the tide of fate though he might be, for a second
Tristram saw nothing at all, neither figures, nor grass, nor sky, nor
the bricks of his house; he was conscious only of a surging wave of
rebellion that blotted them all out. Then they reappeared, and Armand,
coming forward with both hands outstretched, said, in a voice of radiant
happiness:
"Congratulate me, mon ami! And ah, how much I owe it to you!"
Next evening it was observed in Oriel Common Room that Dormer was
unusually quiet. He withdrew earlier even than his wont, and while
Newman and Hurrell Froude, going up their staircase, were commenting on
the absence of light from his windows on the other side of the
quadrangle, he was sitting by the fire, Tristram's read and re-read
letter on his knee, and the half-bitter postscript of it running in his
head, "Henceforward your fanatical ideas will easily carry the day with
me. I shall never marry now." What he had dreamed of had come to
pass--and his heart within him was desolate with pity.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*(1)*
Morning on the Downs, with the clean, the thrilling wind, intoxicating
even in autumn, the air that gives the sensation of a draught of the
barest and intensest life, the air of the world's morning. Add to this
youth, a good horse beneath you, and by your side, never henceforth to
leave it, that one person who to you sums up the spirit of all these
other things. What can Heaven give more?
So, flashingly, thought Horatia, as she and Armand finished their
gallop, and her green veil, outstreaming from her tall hat, fell to a
position a little more composed. Laughing, a trifle breathless, "O, I
should like to ride like this for ever!" she exclaimed, as the horses
fell to a walk. "It was glorious!"
Armand de la Roche-Guyon, sitting his big brown mare with the ease of
the born rider--a lover of whom any girl might be proud--bent on her a
long and smiling look. "We shall often ride in Brittany," he said. "If
the peasants know mythology--which I doubt--they will take you for Diane
chasseresse."
Moving on, they came to the edge of the Downs, the great wind still
blowing steadily upon them.
"There is Compton Regis, and there is Compton Parva," observed Horatia,
pointing with her whip. "Do they not seem low from here? And--do you
see?--that looks like Papa and Robin, deserting us and making off home."
For the Rector, having ridden with the affianced couple, for propriety's
sake, as far as the Downs, had refused to come any further. The
protestations which his action had drawn forth had been singularly
lacking in fervour.
"I think," went on Horatia, "that before we have another gallop, you had
better tighten my girth for me, if you will.... But what are you
looking at, down there?"
"I was trying to distinguish the road on which you first came to me,
like an angel of mercy," said the young man, swinging off. "And the
spot where Mr. Hungerford's horse so inexplicably cast a shoe! By the
way," he went on, pulling at the girth, "speaking of your cousin, ma
toute belle, reminds me that I have long wanted to ask you----"
"My cousin!" broke in Horatia, laughing. "Whom do you mean?--That is
tight enough, I think."
"Mais ce bon Tristram. He is your kinsman ... or have you all been
deceiving me?"
"Certainly he is my kinsman, but a very distant one. His mother was my
mother's third cousin, or something of the sort. I never think of him
as a cousin, exactly; rather as a brother."
"Not in any other capacity?" inquired Armand, his eyes mocking her as he
leant against her horse's neck. "I have no right to ask you,
perhaps--si, I think I have the right." He laughed. "If he were never
in love with you, he ought to have been."
Horatia looked away from his amused, lazily penetrating glance. "To
tell you the truth," she said, flushing a little, "he was once--years
ago. But that is all over, and the proof is, that we have been very
good friends ever since."
"Ah, I wondered. I am glad he had the good taste to be a soupirant
once. Were you very cruel to him? He is an original; but I am very
grateful to him. Had he been a rival I should have found things much
more difficult."
"No, you would not," said Horatia suddenly. "He would have behaved just
the same, when he found that I really loved you."
The Comte lifted his expressive eyebrows. "Forgive me, my angel, but I
am totally unable to follow you there. Men don't do those things
nowadays; we are not in the pages of Scudery. You have a soul of the
most romantic, my Horatia, in spite of your Greek and Latin; but romance
is not in harmony with facts. Your 'cousin' is a capital fellow, but if
I believed him capable of that sort of thing, ma foi, I should be
inclined to recommend him for a madhouse. As it is, shall we ask him to
stay with us one day?"
"If you like," said Horatia, looking at her horse's ears. There was a
vague trouble in her voice.
"If _I_ like! But yes, that is perhaps what it comes to. I warn you, I
shall be like a tiger for jealousy, and you will turn every man's head
who sees you.... Par exemple, I am sure you must have had many more
victims than you will acknowledge. Passe Mr. Hungerford, but what of
that so dear friend of his at the college of Oriel?"
Horatia looked absolutely horrified. "Mr. Dormer!"
"Eh bien, why not? You shrink, my angel, as if I had suggested a thing
improper, as though he were a priest--one of our priests. But he is
not, and you must have met sometimes, and he is bel homme too, for all
that austere air of his. Why, now I come to think of it in Mr.
Hungerford's very drawing-room----"
"I cannot conceive why he talked to me that evening," said Horatia. "I
have often thought of it since.... But I will not be catechised about
such absurdities. And suppose I were to insist on knowing how many fair
ladies have been in love with you, Monsieur?"
"And pray, Mademoiselle, what would you think of me if I answered that
question?" asked her betrothed, regaining his saddle. "Ask me how many
I have admired, and some day--perhaps--I will tell you."
They rode on, talking of the--to French eyes--daring honeymoon that they
were to spend, alone, at the Breton chateau, which had come to Armand
through his mother. For, since they were to be married in England,
nobody could prevent their going straight to Brittany after the tying,
by civil as well as by double religious rites, of the triple knot which
should, as Armand said, make the most beautiful hand in the world so
very securely his.
*(2)*
Horatia was to stay in London with her aunt for some weeks previous to
her marriage. The day before her departure, Tristram rode over to say
good-bye. She was out when he arrived, but he was told that she would
return shortly, and he went, he did not quite know why, into the garden,
where he had so often sat and walked with her, where they had had so
many discussions, where--to go back into a life that now scarcely seemed
his own--he had run shouting as a boy, glad to escape from his lessons.
Nothing remained of the glory of the summer, not even the corpses of the
hollyhocks and the great sunflowers. All had been tidily removed for
burial. It would have been more consonant with the wintry misery in his
heart that those flowers which had witnessed his happiness should have
been there still, black and withered, like his hopes. But the past
seemed to have been neatly obliterated, for the Rector's gardener was
very sedulous; the whole place had cast off its last guest and was ready
for a new--the winter. To welcome this a bush or two of Michaelmas
daisies was in flower, and a robin was singing. And it came into
Tristram's mind, a reminiscence of his year abroad, that in foreign
countries they would be keeping the festival of the dead, for it was the
second of November.
The garden was intolerable to him, yet he stayed there, walking up and
down in the chilly twilight, because he was afraid that if he went in he
would find that she had returned, and the moment of farewell would be
upon him. For though he had promised her that he would be at her
wedding--her threefold wedding--in London, this was to him the real
parting. The other could not hurt after this.
At last he saw the comfortable form of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, Horatia's
maid, coming towards him.
"Miss Horatia has just come in, Sir; she's in the drawing-room."
"Thank you," said Tristram. "By the way, you are going to France with
her, Mrs. Kemblet, are you not?"
"Indeed I am, Sir," responded the faithful retainer with emphasis. She
had been nurserymaid in the days of Horatia's childhood, had returned to
the Rectory on her husband's death, and had successfully compassed the
airs of the old family nurse. "My lamb shall have someone English about
her in the midst of them jabbering foreigners." Evidently Mrs. Kemblet
was not a fervent of the French marriage.
After all, their parting was unimaginably short. Perhaps he would not
have had it otherwise.
She was standing in the drawing-room, when he got in, turning up a
newly-lit lamp.
"Oh, my dear Tristram," she said, in a tone too matter-of-fact to be
natural. "I am afraid that you have been here a long time, waiting. I
am so sorry."
"I was in the garden," he answered. "I could well wait..."
"I shall see you in London?" asked Horatia needlessly, turning to the
lamp again.
"Yes, without fail. But you will be so occupied then that I must tell
you now what I want to say. It is only this ... I want you to remember
that if ever, at any time, you need me to ... to do anything for you, I
am always ... I shall always..." Firmly as he had begun, he could not
finish.
"You do not need to say that to me, Tristram," came her voice, very soft
and moved. She still had her back half turned to him; the lamplight
glanced through her hair. "I know it ... I am not worthy of it.... You
have been a friend more kind..." Then she too stopped, and put her
hands over her face.
Tristram stood like a stone. He could not trust himself to go nearer.
Moreover, the dark room, with its island of light and her at the heart
of it, was threatening to turn round. Seconds passed; then he said more
steadily, "I should very much like a memento of you--something you have
worn. Is there anything you could spare?"
He saw her drop her hands to her throat and unfasten
something--something which, still half turned away, she held out to him
without a word. He went forward to take it, and, dropping on one knee,
kissed the hand that gave it to him, the hand lost to him for ever.
Then he found himself outside the room, and in his palm, warm from her
throat, the little gold fibula, saucer-shaped and delicately worked,
which she habitually wore. A thousand years ago it had clasped the
cloak over the breast of a woman as beloved, perhaps, as she, but the
heart that had once beat under it was not now more dust and ashes than
his own.
*BOOK II*
*BOOK II*
*GARISH DAY*
*CHAPTER I*
*(1)*
A great deal of wind made its entry with Armand and Horatia, and two dry
leaves, scurrying gleefully over the polished floor, hurled themselves
into oblivion under a chest. Roland the deerhound paced, very
dignified, across the hall, and let himself down in front of the fire
with a sigh. But his master and mistress lingered at the door, and when
the tails of old Jean's livery had disappeared, Armand took Horatia into
his arms and kissed her three times without a word. Then, hand in hand,
like lovers and like children, they also crossed the hall to the fire.
"How I love coming in!" whispered Horatia. "Everyday it is different.
Yesterday it was not so dark, but the portraits looked rather
forbidding. To-day they are more friendly. Are they getting more used
to me, do you think?" Her eyes ran along the row of observers.
"They are getting more jealous of you, I am afraid," said the young man,
devouring her face, all aglow from the wind. "Unfasten your furs--let
me do it. Not one of them was ever as beautiful as you." His hands
shook a little as he unclasped the pelerine of marten skins. "How could
they help but be jealous?"
The heavy furs slipped to the ground. "Am I beautiful?" asked Horatia,
slim and straight and smiling. "I never used to be." She sat down in
the great carved chair in front of the fire, and pulled off her gloves.
"Tell me about them; tell me about her." She indicated the portrait
over the hearth--the lady in flowing draperies, half reclining in a
sylvan landscape, a Louis Quinze Diana, the goddess's crescent moon
shining in her close-dressed powdered hair, and on her lips a narrow
riddle of a smile that already haunted the newcomer.
"Another day," answered Armand, kneeling beside her. "She is not lucky,
my great-great-grandmother. I think I will have her removed from here.
Besides, there is only one thing that I can possibly tell you--that I
love you, I love you ... and that none of them was ever loved so much!"
And, prisoning her hands, he kissed her.
Ancestors and ancestresses round the half-dusk hall looked on unruffled,
having seen something like this not once nor twice in the centuries of
their vigils, having most of them enacted it themselves--except that
young man in wig and cuirass, faintly resembling Armand himself, who
fell at Fontenoy before he could bring home his bride. But Roland was
disturbed by something outside his comprehension, and getting up, he
tried to thrust his nose between the two.
"O, Armand, he is licking me--he is eating me!" protested Horatia, who
could not lift a hand to keep off the intruder. "Let me go, dearest; I
must change my dress."
"But I like you in your furs," answered Armand, raising his head. His
dark blue eyes sparkled. "I thought when we were walking together just
now that you should always wear them. They do something--I don't know
what--to that incomparable hair of yours." He touched it. "Will you
always wear your furs, to please me?"
"Silly boy!" retorted his wife. "And only two or three years ago there
was such an outcry against the danger of wearing even cloth dresses
instead of muslins indoors! What is more foolish than a man?"
"Nothing, indeed, but a woman," replied the Comte, gazing at her.
"Well, I shall at least come and prescribe what you are to wear for me
to-night."
"For you, Monsieur!" exclaimed Horatia. "Learn that I dress entirely to
please myself! Adieu. Bring my furs." And slipping cleverly from her
chair she was round it before he could get from his knees. If she did
not actually run full-paced up the great staircase, at any rate she
flitted up it with little of the dignity of a new-made wife. Armand,
snatching up the pelerine, overtook her three stairs at a time.
*(2)*
That was part of the charm of those wonderful days, that Horatia found
she could be a child, playing with another child. Armand was not only
the most fervent of lovers; he was an enchanting playmate as well. It
seemed to come naturally to him, like all he did, and Horatia was amazed
to find how naturally it came to her also, who had never played much in
her childhood, and who judged herself now, at twenty-four, so much too
old for such high spirits. But there was no one of their own condition
to witness them, and most of the servants were old and indulgent.
And not Armand only, but the house itself seemed to conspire against
Horatia's gravity. Had her imagination been nourished, like that of
most of her contemporaries, on the pseudo-Gothic poetry of the Annuals,
on the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ or the _Tales of Terror and Wonder_, she
might have been disappointed to find, in the chateau of Kerfontaine,
neither drawbridge, portcullis, nor moat, neither battlements from which
the heroine could espy the approach of her chosen knight, nor dungeons
where a hero could languish, but only a residence of the time of Louis
XIII, symmetrical, many windowed, tall-chimneyed, steep-roofed, with an
atmosphere entirely unsuited to visors, palfreys, distressed damsels,
falchions, or jongleurs. But the history she knew was different; and
here, in this house which had its own harmony, she could place the
people who had really lived in it--ladies of the time of her admired
Arthenice, and of Madame de Sevigne, and men who had rhymed in Paris
with Voiture and fought with the great Conde at Rocroi. She was
enchanted with the odd nests of tiny rooms, dressing-rooms, powdering
closets, which squired all the bedrooms; with the tall white doors, with
the old pre-Revolution furniture, with the absence of carpets, with the
long narrow gallery hung with armour; with old Jean the butler, and
young Francoise the laundry-maid, with the dinner service of St. Cloud,
with the yellowed books on heraldry and hawking, with the thousand and
one things which Armand showed her when they explored their domain. And
she knew not whether she were most pleased to sit by the flaming
log-fire in the hall, or in the salon, which opened out by a double
flight of curving stone steps on to the lawn, a walk of cut lime-trees,
and a carefully contrived view of the little piece d'eau, or whether she
preferred to walk in the garden, all dank and flowerless as it was, and
watch the leaves sailing on the surface of the water, the three decrepit
Tritons blowing their soundless horns, and the little Florentine boy in
the fountain pressing the captive dolphin which had not spouted for so
many years.
And it was all hers, to do as she liked with. Sometimes she and Armand
planned alterations, chiefly for the pleasure of the planning alone, for
she would not rearrange even the drawing-room under the eyes--though
they were so like Armand's--of that beautiful mother of his who smiled
above the spinet, looking down over her shoulder in her yellow Empire
gown. And Armand promised her new furniture; but she did not want it.
There was indeed only one thing on earth that he would not promise her
at present, and that was, not to go wolf-hunting. When first she heard
a rumour of the existence of this sport in Brittany she did not believe
it; surely there were no wolves nowadays, and if there were, he would
not be so unkind as to go after them and leave her. But she was doubly
mistaken; there were wolves, and savage wolves, as she discovered from
questioning not only him, but the servants, and her entreaties quite
failed to move him. He went... It was a day of long-drawn agony, and
she was almost speechless with apprehension when at nightfall he
returned, dirty, dishevelled, bloodstained, and full of the joyous
fatigue of the successful hunter. Sobbing and clinging to him she
reproached him with his cruelty to her; he only laughed and kissed her,
and next day she was able to admire his courage.
*(3)*