nightingales after the reddened swamps of Le Chene--it was like a dream.
For he, too, had been through his baptism of fire, and bore the singe of
it, to make him for the moment to the woman by his side what he had
never been before--stronger than she.
"You are at the shooting-box, then?" she said at last. "It is well
provisioned? I gave orders."
"It wants only one thing."
"What is that?"
"You."
"I cannot come there," said Madame de Vigerie. "Not now, I know. I
would not ask it. But to-morrow ... in the afternoon, when the sun is
getting low, you will come...?"
She did not answer, but he could feel her tremble.
"I am starving, Laurence. If anyone should see you, it is easy to
explain. I am a fugitive--you are a conspirator, too."
"I was not counting _that_ cost," she said in a low voice. "O Armand,
Armand, why will you not go away and leave me in peace!"
"Because, at last, you love me."
And she made no denial, but breaking from his hold, stood in the midst
of the roses with her face in her hands.
"There is the nightingale," said Armand softly. "It sings for us.
There are no nightingales in the forest, nor roses. But if you came to
me there, Laurence, in the little hut, it would not lack either. O my
world, my rose ... I have waited so long, so patiently! ... Has not
death itself spared us for this...?"
Half an hour later he was groping his way across the hut. It was
foolish to strike a light, so, wrapping himself in his cloak, he lay
down in the dark on the settle. But his brain was on fire, and
phantasmagoric figures danced before his eyes--Charette, and the little
princess in her boy's clothes, and he heard himself saying, as he had
said to Marie-Caroline, when he had kissed that royal, adventurous hand,
"I would gladly die for you, Madame." But in the half-dream Madame had
the face of Laurence de Vigerie.
He came back from it. The settle was confoundedly hard, as hard as a
coffin. Then he remembered having seen, lying dead on a couch just like
this, in a peasant's cottage at Le Chene, before the engagement began, a
young man shot by an Orleanist patrol. He had been sorry for him then;
he was sorrier now, for perhaps the blood had once raced and pounded in
his veins as now in his own, and he, too, had thought, perhaps,
"To-morrow! to-morrow...."
*(2)*
That night, the last of her journey, the cloud of apprehension lifted
from Horatia's mind, and sitting by her window in the inn at Ploermel,
she had a clear conviction that Armand was alive, and had escaped from
Vendee. She would not be too late. She would forgive him; she would
even ask him to forgive her the hardness she had shown him. And--who
knew--they might perhaps take up their life together again where it had
been broken off, for she had experience now.
But who knows when the cup of experience is fully drained?
When Kerfontaine came in sight next morning she could hardly control
herself. Would he have had any word of her approach; was he there at
all? ...
"Yes, we know for certain that M. le Comte has escaped from Vendee,
praise the saints," said old Jean to Horatia and Emmanuel. "But he has
not been here, and we think he is probably in hiding in the wood for a
day or two. Then he will come here. It was arranged so."
"He might come any time--to-day even?"
"Yes, Madame la Comtesse, any time, when it is safe. And M. le Comte
was never one to be over-cautious."
"But there are no soldiers about here, surely?" asked Emmanuel.
"We have not seen any, Monsieur le Marquis, but there are reported to be
some in Pontivy."
Emmanuel drew his sister-in-law aside. "I think I will ride over to
Pontivy," he said, "and see if I can get any information. I am not
known in these parts, and I may be able to find out something."
So, after dejeuner, he set out. The afternoon crawled slowly on.
Horatia went over the chateau, most of which was shut up. The nurseries
were still unfurnished, and behind the screen which she and
Claude-Edmond had made a year ago she found a heap of dusty pictures and
a pot with dried relics of paste. After supper she sat in the salon.
The suspense was beginning to tell on her--not the suspense about
Armand's safety, for as he had succeeded in getting away from Vendee he
must be out of danger now--but the suspense about his entrance. At any
moment he might come in. Would he be surprised to see her there? She
could not picture their meeting; she would not try to; she must trust
that with the moment would come the right words.
About nine o'clock she wandered out into the hall. What time would
Emmanuel be back? The sardonic smile of the ancestress over the hearth
followed her, as on that night when Armand had lain there, his head on
her knee, and she had hoped to be the first to die. Nothing now could
ever restore the perfume of that rapture; but the broken vase, which
once held it, might yet be pieced together....
... Surely that was a horse's hoofs in the avenue, the hoofs of a horse
approaching at breakneck pace. If it was Emmanuel he evidently had
important news. Horatia ran to the door and opened it herself. A
mounted man was tearing up between the trees, had flung himself off his
panting horse and dashed up the steps, a little square of white in his
hand.
"For Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon," he said, thrusting it into
her hold. "Give it to her at once!" And she was aware that he wore
Madame de Vigerie's livery. How strange; she had not known that she was
here!
She read the letter in the hall. It was very short. When she had done
so she put her hands over her eyes, read it again, and hurried to the
bell-pull.
"Jean," she said, "order the carriage at once! I am going to St. Clair.
There is not a moment to lose.... Give this letter to Monsieur le
Marquis directly he returns."
*(3)*
It was six o'clock in the evening of the longest day that Armand de la
Roche-Guyon had ever spent. He had hardly slept all night; at dawn he
had risen and gone out, but since that time he had been a
self-constituted prisoner. If, at any time, there was risk in his being
seen--which he could not bring himself to believe--that risk was much
greater in the day-time. Besides, he had Laurence to think of.
So he sat before the fireless hearth, he paced up and down, he flung
himself on the settle, he examined over and over again all the heads of
beasts upon the walls, the only ornaments of the place. The hut was
very tidy, but he could not deck it as befitted the guest. He had told
her last night that there were no roses, but it now occurred to him that
he might at least have gathered this morning a branch of something green
and living--a branch, for instance, of the flowering elder just outside.
Thinking of these bushes, but without any intention of going out to
rifle them, his restless feet carried him to the little half-shuttered
window. Yes, there they stood, with their broad flat masses of blossom.
How strong the scent had been last night! She would smell it as she
came; she would hear the birds beginning their vespers. This golden sun
would shine on her; would she ride or walk?
Leaning idly by the window, Armand looked at his watch. Half an hour
still. He glanced at the elder-bushes again ... and suddenly even
Laurence was forgotten, and the little trees were everything in the
world to him. For among the leaves he had caught sight of a leaf of
other kind, thin and shining. It was a bayonet.
Armand stood a moment incapable of thought or movement. Then the truth
stabbed him with a cold and sickening pang. He looked again. Further
along they had scarcely troubled to take cover; he could see the
uniforms among the tree-trunks. He went a little white round the mouth,
and moving away sank into a chair by the table and hid his face in his
hands.
What he had thought so absurd, so incredible, had happened! He had been
tracked or betrayed, and they were waiting to shoot him as he came out.
They did not mean to force an entrance, that was obvious, or they would
have done so by now. They had no intention, the careful Philippistes,
of running any risks. They would wait there in ambush until he came
out....
... Or till he came in. It might be that they were watching for his
entrance, not knowing that he was there already. And that was, after
all, a more likely explanation of their present inaction. More than
that, it gave him a chance, a feeble glimmering chance, for his life.
It was just conceivable that, seeing no one enter, they would go away
without searching the hut. It was a chance, a chance ... O God! it was a
chance....
But even as his mind caught at that slender hope, embracing it fiercely,
the very heart in his body stopped beating. _Seeing no one enter_!
Why, in half an hour Laurence would come along the clearing, and then
... He heard the report, saw her writhing on the ground... Why should
they hesitate because she was a woman the men who could shoot a girl of
sixteen in cold blood. She was a Carliste. It might even be she that
they were expecting.
Armand raised his face, grown old and haggard. On him lay the burden of
her coming there; it was for him to avert, if by any means he could, so
horrible a thing. They must be sent away before she came. And there was
only one way of doing that. It might not be successful. That he would
never know. But he had to do it; he had to do it.
He pressed his hands tightly round his head, where the whirling thoughts
drove like bees, and where the remembrance of Horatia, and his
courtship, and Maurice, and the consciousness of the sunshine outside,
the knowledge that in an incredibly short space of time he would lie out
in it and neither feel nor see it, clear and vehement in themselves,
were all subordinated to a vision of Laurence coming along the forest
path. He looked once more at his watch. Twenty-five minutes--not a
second to lose, since they must be gone some distance before she came,
and they would probably spend some time in searching his body and the
hut before they left. His brain had suddenly become as clear as ice.
He stood up, turned out his pockets, put his money and watch on the
table, took up his pistols, which were loaded; then laid them down
again. It would waste time, and be quite useless. For a moment more he
stood looking round the room which had been so irradiated by the thought
of her presence, where--it was his last prayer--she would never come
now.
And then, since with whatever of less worthy commingled, there ran in
his veins the blood of a long line that had never stayed for mortal
peril, Armand de la Roche-Guyon set his teeth, and, opening the door,
walked out to death.
* * * * *
The two wood pigeons on the roof, who had been frightened away by the
noise of the volley, had returned, and their sleepy, liquid notes melted
into the peace of the summer afternoon as Madame de Vigerie came riding
in her green amazone through the wood. As the hut came into sight she
dropped into a walk. At first she merely noticed, though with an
instant surprise, that the door stood open.
But her horse knew, before she did, and stopped, trembling. Laurence de
Vigerie gave a broken scream, and put her hands instinctively over her
eyes. The next moment she had slid to the ground, and catching up the
folds of her long habit, was running to him.
Armand lay face downwards on the woodland grass, about ten paces from
the open door, in an attitude not wholly unlike a sleeper's. Except by
one shoulder, there was little sign of blood, till, tugging at him, she
had turned him over. But his head, when she raised it, fell back inert
on her arm, the face uninjured, but of a mortal greyness, the half open
eyes rolled upwards almost out of sight. A thin scarlet stream had
trickled down from one corner of his mouth; his right hand clutched a
tuft of grass. Three or four patches of wet blood on his clothes, his
left sleeve, soaked from shoulder to wrist--the arm was broken and the
hand shot through--and the one pool on the ground which was already
crimsoning her habit, were more than enough to show her what had
happened. Yet she tore off his neck-cloth and unfastened his coat and
shirt before she knew, shuddering, that here was ruin beyond human
repairing, And she caught the riddled body in her arms, crying to him,
kissing him, while the pigeons cooed in the sun, and, to windward of the
evidence of slaughter, her horse grazed reassured.
*CHAPTER XXII*
*(1)*
The brilliance of the hall at St. Clair dazzled Horatia. Someone took
her gently by the arm, and led her up the great staircase into a little
room full of books. Not till she got there did she realise even the sex
of the person, and found that her conductor was a grey-haired man.
"Madame," he said, "I am the surgeon, and I must tell you the truth ...
if you are strong enough to bear it?"
"I am strong enough," said Horatia.
"Your husband is dying. He was shot by the Philippistes in the forest
about six this evening; he was found an hour later unconscious but
alive, and brought here as soon as possible. But--I should be doing you
a great injury to deceive you--he cannot live till morning.... Will you
see him now?"
"Can't you do _anything_?" asked Horatia, passionately.
He shook his head. "It is a miracle that he is still alive,
Madame--with eight bullet wounds. Madame de Vigerie did not know that
you were here; as soon as she heard she sent for you." He paused at the
door, and looking at her with the same stern pity, said, "Remember,
Madame, if he talks wildly, that he is still in great pain. I have
given him what opiates I dared, but they have little effect, I fear. He
will know you now, but later on he may become delirious, so that you
should see him at once. There is nothing to do; only do not lift him
up. I shall be outside the door, within call." He preceded her out of
the room.
A priest was going down the stairs--the old cure who had given them his
blessing. Where was Madame de Vigerie?
She forgot to think of her when she was inside. Was that really Armand?
All the shadows in the big, lofty room seemed centred in his face, so
sharp and incredibly grey against the white of the bed-linen. He lay on
his back in the great sculptured bed; one pillow only out of its many
supported him; the rest had been thrown in a heap on the floor. His
eyes were closed; he had only a sheet over him, and under it his
motionless body had a sinister rigidity. A table with basins, with
cloths and lint trailing over it had been pushed, only half out of
sight, behind a curtain, and a chair near it bore his blood-soaked
clothes, cast there just as they had been cut off him.
She saw all these details, grasped their full meaning, but had thought
only for one thing, and going round the foot of the bed, entered the
sanctuary of the screen that kept off the candle-light. Armand's right
hand, the fingers twitching a little, lay on the edge of the bed.
Horatia fell on her knees beside him.
And Armand opened dark, misty eyes upon her. He seemed to consider for
a moment, and then there came about his ashen lips a phantom of the
smile that had once charmed her, and he lifted his hand a little way,
pointing.
"Your hair ... makes a light," he said faintly. The candles were behind
her.
"Armand----" she began, choking.
"Yes," he said with more strength, "I know. It is ... a long business,
it seems. They do not shoot very straight, the Orleanists ... I should
like to see you better ... if you would move a candle ... Merci." He
relapsed into French. "My dear, you would make a beautiful angel, you
who believe in the angels. I shall not see a fairer ... Oh, do not be
anxious; M. le Cure ... has arranged all that."
She saw now that he was in deadly pain, and the bantering words went
past her in a passion of pity and remorse. Her scalding tears fell on
his cold hand, and on her own, that clasped it.
"Armand, Armand, forgive me!"
"Ma chere, for what? I thought it was to be ... the other way." A
little tortured laugh came from him. "You, to make the ... the
conventional death-bed scene! Was that why ... you came all this
distance?"
"I came when I heard that the rising had failed ... when I thought ... O
Armand, cannot _something_ be done!"
"You were really too kind, mon amie. It is such a long way ... Did you
have a ... good journey?"
"Armand, for God's sake!" cried Horatia, agonised at the tone. But he
had closed his eyes again; perhaps he did not even hear her. And lying
there helpless, broken, ghastly, he was suddenly once more all that he
had ever been to her--the lover, triumphant and adorable, who had kissed
her in the field of stubble, the married lover of those days in Brittany
... But it was too late now, she saw that; not only too late to save his
body, but to make any appeal to the spirit that was leaving it. The
time for that was past.
He spoke again, without opening his eyes, very faintly but just as
politely. "That glass on the table ... if I might trouble you..." When
she stooped over him with it she remembered the doctor's injunction,
and, slipping her hand with all possible precaution under his head,
raised it only a little way. Even at that movement a contraction passed
over his face, and he shut his teeth on a groan. Then he drank, and she
lowered his head to the pillow. She longed to touch his hair again, and
dared not.
"Thank you," said Armand, and lay silent for a moment, the sweat
gathering on his forehead. Then, with an effort, he began again. "I
should like, ... while I can ... to speak about the boy.... Perhaps ...
an English school ... I believe I put that ... in my will the other day
... but I cannot remember.... He will be like ... you ... when he grows
up."
"Oh, I hope not!" was torn, in a whisper, from Horatia.
The expressive eyebrows lifted a fraction. "Mais ... you surely ... do
not wish him ... like ... me ... And you ... will marry again, ma chere
... you might marry ce bon Tristan..."
Another pause; and his voice had grown almost inaudible when he added,
"I would give you my ... benediction, the benediction ... of a ghost ...
It is not long ago ... you told me I ... I did not exist ... you had the
gift ... of prophecy..."
This time the pause was longer still. At the foot of the bed, where his
last speech had cast her, Horatia was pressing a handful of the sheet
against her mouth, lest she should cry out in her own pain. She did not
know whether she was saying anything; only she was aware of the thought
that these were perhaps the last words she should ever hear from him...
Suddenly, however, quite changed in tone, the voice said--and she was
not sure whether it was addressing her or someone else, "Mais,
voyez-vous, I am not at all content to be a ghost ... at my age ...
except that it is the only way ... to be rid of these damnable bullets
... But if the cure tells you that I was resigned ... do not believe
him..."
And with these words, in which youth and strength and the soul which had
so lightly companioned them, made their last protest against the
wrecking of their habitation, Armand de la Roche-Guyon's head rolled
slowly over to one side.
*(2)*
The next thing that Horatia knew was that, somehow the surgeon was in
the room again, bending over the bed. "I expected this," she heard him
mutter. Then he turned to her abruptly.
"He has only fainted," he said. "He must have tried to move. I shall
not revive him, Madame; it is cruel kindness." He stood a moment
looking down at the unconscious face. "Poor boy," he added to himself,
"he will not die easily.... Now, Madame, I think you had better come
away. He will not know you again, I think, and I will stay with him."
"No, no!" exclaimed Horatia, clinging to the pillar of the bed as if she
feared to be removed by force. "I will stay--I insist--it is my right!
He is quite quiet; I will call you if I need you. Be outside the door!
I must stay!"
So he went, and, sitting there, Horatia began her vigil. It was very
still. Breaths of the scented June night, poignant of jasmine, came now
and then through the open windows, and stirred the candle-flames. For a
long time Armand lay without moving; she could only hear his difficult
breathing. The screen by the bed was worked with landscapes in silk,
autumn scenes of bright brown, amber and gold, like the trees under
which they had first met ... But between that first meeting and this----
How could it be that life was so shorn across? She had pictured long
years of estrangement, or, perhaps, years when after forgiving him she
had tried with a heavy heart to do her duty--and there was this instead.
O, if God would only give her those imagined years! And
forgiveness--what had that word to do here....
And suddenly in the garden a nightingale began to sing, and that magic
voice, with all its thrilling burden of pain and passion, the voice
which can never be heard without a stirring of the heart, pierced her
like a sword. Crouching down in the chair, her arms across her face to
stifle the sound, she wept.
She did not weep for long. As if the bird, or her sobs, had roused him,
Armand was drifting back to consciousness; she heard him moan. She
sprang up. She would have given everything in the world to speak to him
again, but she did not want him to come back to bodily anguish.
"Armand, do not wake!" she whispered, the tears streaming down her face.
"Sleep, my darling, sleep; do not wake again!" With all her will she
strove to push him back; and since he was hers more certainly in
unconsciousness, since he could not look at her now with eyes that held
mockery and too much remembrance, she bent and kissed him many times,
and her tears fell on his hair.
It was vain, for another phantom was flitting before him in the mists of
death, drawing him from peace. In a little she knew it. "Laurence, why
do you not come?" he began restlessly, and went on begging her at one
moment to disregard her scruples, at another not to leave him to die
alone, since he had give his life for her. And Horatia, kneeling,
frozen, by the bed, learnt from the broken, pregnant sentences all the
truth. Whatever his desires, he had never been Laurence's lover. She
had to believe him now. Her own name was mingled in the stream.
"Horatia does not believe me," said the failing voice. "Leave your
scruples, Laurence; she does not believe me." And again, "Why do you
send for Horatia? She would not care ... I am nothing to her now ...
she told me so."
But chiefly, and with a growing and dangerous agitation, he implored
Laurence to come to him, seeming to imagine that he was lying in the
wood, that it was dark, and that she would not come. Hardly knowing
what she said, stunned by the revelations which at the moment she was
not able fully to grasp, Horatia tried to soothe him, calling upon him
by all the names of their brief happiness; but to all her efforts he
merely responded by crying more insistently for Laurence, Laurence,
Laurence, till the name seemed to eat into her brain in letters of fire.
At last, at the end of endurance, she got up from the bedside and went
dizzily towards a window, towards the air. That Madame de Vigerie's
presence might really have power to quiet him never occurred to her; she
was too agonised for thought.
Until that moment Armand had not betrayed the slightest consciousness of
her, looking always with haunted eyes beyond her for the figure which
was not there. But directly she moved away a change came over him, and
he seemed suddenly enveloped by a cloud from the past thicker than those
in which he wandered. He began to struggle.
"Let me go to her--she is dying ... they have shut the door and will not
let me in. Let me go, Emmanuel! I tell you she is dying ... and she
was wearing my flowers..."
He tried, ineffectually, to raise himself in the bed, and as Horatia
hurried towards him there sprang out on the white sheet, just over his
breast, a little crimson patch. For the second or two that she stared
at it, terrified, it grew larger, bright and menacing. Gasping, she ran
to the door and flung it open, expecting to find the surgeon outside.
There was no one there.
To get help, from any quarter, was the sole clamorous idea in Horatia's
brain. Opposite her was a door; light streamed from beneath it. In an
instant she was across the landing, and had opened it. Only then did
she realise whose room she had entered.
Madame de Vigerie was sitting motionless, relaxed, in a chair by the
elaborate bed. She had the air of having sat thus for hours. She was
still in her riding-habit, stiff, in one place, with Armand's blood; her
head was thrown back against the rose-coloured satin of the hangings.
"You must come at once!" cried Horatia. "He is dying!"
Madame de Vigerie rose stiffly, as if she were cramped; her face was
absolutely colourless and almost without expression.
"Go back," she said dully. "It is your place. I have no right there."
Horatia fell on her knees, sobbing out, "For God's sake, come! You do
not understand--I implore you, I, his wife ... I think a wound has
opened ... blood..."
A noisy darkness came down on her; she sank sideways to the floor.
* * * * *
Did it really happen, or was it a vision? She seemed to be back in the
room where Armand had taken his farewell of life. It was very quiet
now. The oasis of candle-light at the far side of the bed was beginning
to be flooded out by the cold waves of dawn; the first birds were
already chirping. Armand was where he had craved to be, for Madame de
Vigerie had him in her arms. She had lifted him away from the pillow,
and his head was lying back on her shoulder. Laurence de Vigerie's own
head was bent; she did not move either, but there was that in her
attitude which was piercingly maternal--the mother, not the lover, with
her dead. For that Armand was gone Horatia was instinctively sure.
Billows of mist broke over her, and she seemed to fall...
*(3)*
Long, long afterwards--and yet she knew that it was only next
morning--Horatia stood by Emmanuel's side and looked down at what had
been Armand. She had shrunk a little from going in, remembering the
gloomy catafalque at St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and fearing the sable
French palls besprinkled with tears and skulls. It was hard to
associate things like that with Armand. She need not have been afraid.
The windows were closely curtained, and there were great candles burning
at the foot of the bed, and between them a prie-dieu, but nothing of
gloom. Even the conventional white flowers were not there; for Horatia
slowly realised, with an under-current of wonder, that the spotless
drapery of the bed was splashed with trails and mounds of crimson roses.
And Armand lay in the midst of them indifferent and serene, all the
traces of his difficult dying smoothed away, the shadow of a smile round
his mouth--but as far removed from the lover and husband she had known
as from the tortured stranger of last night. The fingers of his
uninjured right hand, which alone lay on his breast, held, not the usual
crucifix, but a tiny sprig of laurel. Only she who had put it there,
and she who now gazed at it, knew why.
The candles were blurred in tears. Emmanuel stooped and kissed the
tranquillised dead face.
"Sleep well, my brother," he whispered, using the words he had uttered,
with a different thought, not long ago.
Horatia slipped to her knees, and her head sank forward among the roses.
*BOOK III*
*BOOK III*
*LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT*
*CHAPTER I*
*(1)*
The strains of the violin lingered and died away in the October
twilight, and the musician, sitting on the deep window-seat of Dormer's
rooms at Oriel, took the instrument from under his chin.
"Go on," said his listener, who lay full length on the sofa. But the
player shook his head.
"Music is the worst trade under the sun in a blow-up," he observed.
"The lyre is only heard in feasts."
Dormer moved. "My dear fellow, you sound gloomy! The present is not a
feast, granted, but neither is it a blow-up."
John Henry Newman said nothing, but, with a little sigh, laid the violin
and the bow carefully on the window-seat. The fading light gleamed for
a moment on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and threw up, as he
turned, the great nose and the rather prominent underlip of his lean
face.
"I could wish, after all," he said, "that I had not fallen in with the
Froudes' plan. I do not really want to leave England just now. I
grudge the time, the expense, the trouble. Then suppose I were to fall
ill, too. It is quite enough that Hurrell should be an invalid. And
yet I suppose it may be a duty to consult for one's health, to enlarge
one's ideas, to break one's studies, and to have the name of a travelled
man."
"Yet a few weeks ago," commented Dormer, undisturbed, "you seemed
pleased about it."
"So I was; in fact, the prospect fairly unsettled me. I remember feeling
quite ashamed to be so excited, for it showed me how little real
stability of mind I had yet attained.--But I shall go, of course, when
term is over."
"It will do you good, now that the Arians are off your hands," said
Dormer--"provided that you don't meet with a mishap like mine. Still
more, must we hope, will it do Froude good."
"Indeed, we must hope that," answered Froude's friend very gravely, and
in the darkening room the shadow of a great apprehension seemed to float
for a moment between the two men.
"I wish I were not going to be away from England when the Reformed
Parliament meets," resumed the silver-clear voice. "Reform apparently
connoting nowadays change at any price, without regard to its direction,
we need have no delusions that the threats against the Church which have
been dinned into our ears for so long will not be put into execution. I
know that Keble is preaching the duty of passivity for us clergy until
the Liturgy itself is actually attacked, but if that is what he is
waiting for, I don't think he will have to wait long. Revenues to-day,
creeds to-morrow. I really incline to the hope that the Whig spirit
will keep in, and the Church be set adrift. If this were the case we
should be so very independent of things temporal, for we only, as
individuals, should suffer."
"You will probably be confirmed in that hope, then," remarked his
friend, "when you get abroad and see with your own eyes, as I did, the
whole Western Catholic world suffering from the same lack of power
because it has compromised with the State for the sake of its
endowments."
"That was what struck you in Italy?"
"That, and the infidelity of most of the thinking laity."
"It seems sometimes," said Newman despondently, "as if the gift of truth
once lost was lost for ever, and that, with so much infidelity and
profaneness, the whole world is tending towards some dreadful crisis."
"Yes," said Dormer, "one is rather tempted to think so sometimes. But
perhaps that feeling is an incentive, if we needed one, to set our own
house in order."
Newman sighed. "I do believe what you say, in my heart, but there are
times, as you know, when it looks as if the Almighty had forsaken His
habitation."
Dormer got off the sofa, and came and sat down by him on the
window-seat. "You know that you do not really think that, Neander. You
are only tired and overworked. I will show you that you don't think it.
What was it that you wrote to me in July when the cholera was at its
worst here? You said, if I remember rightly, that one's time had come,
or it had not come, and that in your case you were sure that it had not,
because you felt you were destined for some work which you had not yet
accomplished. Do you remember writing that?"
Looking at him, Newman seemed to rouse himself. "I do remember. It was
a strong impression that I had just after the fatal case of cholera at
Littlemore. I know that a strong impression is not a good argument, yet
I have the feeling still at times. But why do you ask me?"
"Because what you feel about yourself--and feel, I am convinced, most
rightly--I feel about the English Church. I think that God, instead of
leaving His sanctuary, is about to come into it with power. I think
that this will mean purgation and suffering for all of us, but that we
have deserved. Do you remember the profession of faith that Bishop Ken
made in his will?"
"No, I was not brought up on Ken; as I know you were."
"Well, I know it by heart," said Dormer. "'I die in the Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Faith, professed by the whole Church before the disunion
of East and West, more particularly I die in the communion of the Church
of England as it stands distinguished from all papal and puritan
innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.' That
seems to me to be not only a profession of belief, but a vision of what
the Church of England might be if she awoke to the knowledge of what it
is really to possess the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith."
"Yes, it is a vision, and a 'vision splendid,'" assented Newman,
"but--since I have used the phrase--you know how Mr. Wordsworth
continues, how--
'At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day.'"
"It has not really faded; it cannot fade. It is our eyes that have
forgotten how to look at it. No," went on Dormer with a sudden smile,
"I would rather think that the vision seems to have faded because its
guardians have shrouded it up, and then gone to sleep."
"You think, then," said Newman, with an answering smile, "that it is for
us to wake them up?"
"Yes," confessed his friend, "or, if that is impossible, to break
through ourselves and unveil the vision."
"Sometimes you remind me of Froude," said Newman musingly, "except that
he has more of the schoolboy about him.... I think you have the real
light, and I only a glimmer that comes and goes, and gives me just
enough guidance for the day's journey and no more.... But as to these
slumbering guardians," he continued, rousing himself from his own
reflections, "have you ever thought any more about that idea of yours,
the publishing something in a cheap short form--a sort of tracts--to
stir people up?"
"No," said Dormer, "I made a present of it to you. In fact I have been
wondering if you had thought of it again. It's not in my line, you
know."
"My dear fellow, what nonsense! Yes, it did occur to me the other day
how it would be exactly the kind of thing that a group of friends like
ourselves might manage very well--sharpshooting, as it were. I will
talk seriously of it to Froude when we meet. I have another scheme,
however, that is more feasible at present. Now that Rose has started
the 'British Magazine' I thought we might have a poetical section in it
to rouse people to realise that there is a crisis. I am going to look
for recruits. We will get Keble to write for it, of course, and you and
I, and Isaac Williams, and I shall enlist Rogers if I can--and what
about your friend Hungerford?"
"Tristram may have his faults," said Dormer, laughing, "but of the crime
of writing verses he is, so far as I know, absolutely guiltless."
"Oh, anybody can write verses," pronounced Newman cheerfully, taking up
his violin.
When Newman had gone Dormer lit a lamp and sat down to his translation
of Andrewes (having the habit of forcing himself, regardless of his own
inclinations, to work at stated hours). But he had not got very far
before he suddenly pushed books and papers away, and flinging out his
arms on the table, buried his face in them. How dared he think that he
was worthy to set his hand to the unveiling of that shrouded vision! And
yet, and yet...
Later, he was standing looking out of the window across the dark
quadrangle, where, against a clear sky already pierced with one or two
stars, Merton tower lifted its crown of pinnacles. He felt rather
lonely, and wished that Tristram would come in. But Tristram was in
London. Then he remembered, with pleasure, that they would meet
to-morrow at Compton, where he himself was going over to preach for Mr.
Grenville, and where Tristram also had arranged to spend a couple of
nights on his homeward journey to Oxford.
He went back to his writing-table, but he was still thinking of the same
person. Since Tristram, having yielded to Keble's and Newman's wish
that he should not leave Oxford, was working in the parish of S.
Thomas's he had taken his place naturally among the little group of
Oriel friends. Yet, in spite of all this, Dormer felt that somehow or
other he knew less about him. He could not but observe that he seemed
happier and more settled, and when, after the death of Horatia's
husband, he heard him discussing with Froude the idea of a college of
unmarried priests he was not so very greatly surprised. He wished that
Tristram would talk sometimes about his own affairs, but he would
comfort himself with the thought that Tristram could always now, if he
desired it, have access to that guide and inspiration of them all, John
Keble.
*CHAPTER II*
*(1)*
A sort of holiday feeling not very difficult to account for enveloped
Tristram Hungerford as he walked over the Downs this September afternoon
with his face set towards Compton Regis. His short sojourn in London
with relatives of his father's had made him feel, as usual, the gulf
between himself and these good and pious people, which had sprung into
existence when he was sent to a public school, had widened when he went
to Oxford, and was fairly yawning now that he had become a High
Churchman. It was not unnatural that he should look forward to his
stay, with Dormer, in a more congenial atmosphere, rather as a schoolboy
looks forward to an exeat, and it chimed with his mood that he must
leave the coach at Lambourn and walk to Compton over the Downs. It was
good to have the short springy grass once more underfoot, to breathe
again that light intoxicating air, to see the great rolling distances
which had been his inheritance since boyhood. Oxford and work were
good, but this was good too.
Tristram had been rather happy these last months, for Keble had told him
that, contrary to what he himself felt, he had much to offer, and so at
his ordination as deacon he at last took the step from which only an
obstinate humility had been holding him back, and, in his own mind,
dedicated himself to the single life.
He had also been very busy. St. Thomas's, the most populous and the
most degraded parish in Oxford, lay, a beggar full of sores, almost at
the gates of Christ Church, in whose gift was the living. Its
incumbent, who was also precentor of the Cathedral, did not reside in
the parish; indeed it would have been hard to find, in that huddle of
old houses, a suitable dwelling. Dirt, squalor, and vice reigned
everywhere. The little twelfth century church, dedicated to St. Thomas
of Canterbury, was damp and in ill-repair, though it had recently been
repewed; during the flood its aisle was often under water. It was
opened only for service on Sundays. Tristram Hungerford resolved that
there should be a parson in the parish, and, letting his house at
Compton Parva, he took rooms in Hollybush Row, undismayed by the open
ditch which ran along in front of his window. His coming was not looked
upon with favour in a district given over to thieves and prostitutes.
It was not without considerable personal risk that he visited the narrow
winding passages between the dirty old seventeenth century houses; the
men who lurked there regarded him as a spy, the women screamed abuse.
He was more than once warned of plans to set on him some dark night.
The warning had only the effect of making him more determined to remain
where he was; he had no objection at all to the idea of a scuffle, and
it may have been this evident readiness, joined to the appearance which
he bore of being a man of his hands, which secured him against actual
molestation.
He had also another ally, the cholera, which, starting in June with two
fatal cases at the Castle gaol, in the parish of St. Thomas's itself,
swept the south-west quarter of Oxford before it migrated to the
north-west, and the suburb of St. Clement's. For the lost three months
Tristram had been to the district doctor, nurse--and friend.
And was it, he sometimes wondered, because he moved daily in activity
and peril, or was he so profoundly changed that the news of Armand's
death--amazing in its sudden tragedy--had so little effect upon him? He
was indeed deeply grieved for Horatia. He thought of her as
heart-broken. For after he had seen her in Paris he had come definitely
to the conclusion, already dawning on him there, that the change in her
was not due in any way to Armand, but to her new relatives. He still
had an uneasiness for which he could not account, but Mr. Grenville
having, by the exercise of great discretion and self-restraint, kept
Horatia's secret, there was nothing to make him suspect the real state
of affairs. Hence when, only about a fortnight ago, the Rector had
suddenly told him most of the truth about Armand he was divided between
anger and pity, but the revelation did not seem to affect him
personally. He was curiously absorbed in his work; since his services
during the cholera he had been very differently received in the dens of
St. Thomas's, and had even had a transient success when, (encouraged by
the fact that during the epidemic the Senior Proctor had provided daily
Morning and Evening Prayer in the House of Observation in St. Aldate's),
he began to read it in the church, hoping that it might attract those
who had escaped or recovered from the scourge. At first he had a
sprinkling of people, then two or three, then he read the service in an
echoing silence, but, having begun, he continued to read it.
He nourished indeed a hope that one day this little fast-closed church,
named for an English saint and so typically English with its quiet
graveyard and its ancient yew, might mean something to those who lived
round it, that it might be a home to them, like the always-open churches
he had seen in Italy. More, having now a practical experience of the
bitter spiritual needs of the poor in a small neglected town parish, he
indulged sometimes in what he felt to be an almost chimerical vision, of
a church, spacious and beautiful as it might be, set in some great
manufacturing town where life was thickly pent and had no hope or
outlet--a church for the poor, served by the poor. When he was tired,
which was not unseldom, he used to think of this dream structure of his,
even picturing some of its architectural details. Of late he had
admitted Dormer to the same occupation, and though to the latter the
grimy surroundings of the imaginary fabric were clearly not an
attraction, as they were to its original designer, the idea gained
substance from his participation in it. Having ruled out galleries,
family pews and the Royal arms, settled that the holy table should not
only be fenced off from desecration, but that it should be restored to
the position at present usurped by the pulpit, they--or rather
Dormer--had even gone so far as to decide on the dedication. Hence at
this very moment, while his eyes were fixed on a great white bastion of
cloud rising exultant over the sky-line, Tristram was thinking that if
his dining-room table at Compton, relic of the solid hospitality of
Clapham days, was to be used in the refectory of the attached college of
priests, the said college would have to be built on a more generous
scale than Dormer seemed to think necessary; he should tell him so this
evening. It would be a waste to sell that table.
He began to walk faster, exulting in the wind that resisted him, in the
song of the larks above him, in the great cloud, in the wonderful
feeling both of loneliness and of life at the highest pitch. Scraps of
that incomparable Te Deum, the hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, came into
his mind--"Praise the Lord upon earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire
and hail, snow and vapours; wind and storm, fulfilling his word;
mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars..."
At this point he perceived, rather to his astonishment, that he was not
alone upon the Downs. About a quarter of a mile off two people had
emerged upon the smooth curve of the hill that rose before him, walking
swiftly, a sheep-dog heralding their way. They must have come up by the
old track in the hollow to have remained hidden until that moment,
thought Tristram as he idly watched them. They were too far off for him
to see anything distinctive; he could make no guess at their identity,
only, by their movements, they were young, and they were man and woman.
But as he looked a curious interest seized upon him. It seemed to him
almost as if the pulsing life around had centred in these two figures,
instinct with joy and youth.
They reached the summit of the hill. A lark rose in the sky, a tiny
speck against the cloud; the wind fluttered the woman's dress. Suddenly
they stopped, turned, and kissed each other. There was no trace of
courting or of timidity in the action; it was beautiful and fitting, as
though the sun and wind had met together and praised God for the fulness
of joy. The dog leapt round them barking. In another instant they were
walking on as quickly as before, till they were swallowed up in a dip of
the Downs.
Tristram had stopped too. In less time than it takes a pebble to fall
from a cliff, the sun, the wind, the clouds, the very grass were clothed
in a new significance. This, the close of the great Psalm, this was the
highest thing that existence had to offer, and he was putting it by--he
was putting by deliberately, with the hand of a madman, the draught
which it was no longer sin to contemplate. Those two figures! He flung
himself down on the ground, the lark's song beating in his brain, and
prayed passionately to know the same joy before life was done.
*(2)*
Two hours later, as he drew near Compton Rectory, he saw down the long
road a horseman cantering towards him on the wayside grass. In all his
life Tristram had known only two men who sat a horse with so supreme an
ease; one was his friend, the other his rival. And at that moment he
could have wished it were Armand risen, from his bloody grave.
Dormer came on; drew rein and bent down. "I thought it was you," he
said as they shook hands. "I guess that you left the coach at Lambourn
and walked over the Downs."
"I did," answered Tristram.
"That must have been delightful," remarked the other, and Tristram,
without answering, opened the Rectory gate and watched him pass in.
There was no denying that the Rector had aged during the past year, but
to-night he was quite rejuvenated.
"I am really not without hopes of having Horatia home for Christmas," he
announced, as they sat down to dinner. "Of course you know, Mr. Dormer,
that I lost my son-in-law last June under very tragic circumstances. He
took part in the rising organised by that misguided woman the Duchesse
de Berry, and was shot, poor boy, by the soldiers of the Government. A
dreadful business; he died in my daughter's arms. The shock completely
prostrated her, as you may imagine; she was ill for some time, then
there were endless legal formalities, and it is only now that she talks
of being able to come over and pay me a long visit at Christmas."
"Does she not intend to make her home in England?" asked Dormer.
"She wishes to, naturally," replied Mr. Grenville, "and by French law
she can do as she likes, but whether poor Armand's relatives will bring
pressure to bear to keep her in France I don't know. I try not to meet
trouble half-way. At any rate she will be here for Christmas. There
will be a child in the house again; Christmas seems to demand that. And
to think that you have both seen my grandson since I have!"
Neither of the young men waxed communicative on the subject of the
infant; Dormer, indeed, had suddenly become rather thoughtful.
"Tristram, you will have to come over here at Christmas-time," went on
the Rector. "We must hang up a stocking for Maurice. They don't keep
Christmas in France, I understand."
Tristram murmured something about being busy at Christmas, and that he
would be taking his priest's orders just before that festival.
"Oh, I daresay you'll be able to manage it," said the Rector easily. "A
few days in the country now and then would set you up, living as you do
in that plague-spot. By the way, I hear you exposed yourself very
unnecessarily in the cholera there--most laudable of course, but you
young men are so rash. It's just the same with this foolish and
shocking idea of throwing over the supremacy of the State which you have
got into your heads. Church and State, to any right-thinking mind, are
as inseparable as body and soul, and it will be a black day for England
if they are ever torn apart. How you, Mr. Dormer, with your ultra-Tory
ancestry ... but there, I suppose it is just because they _were_
Non-jurors that the idea is not as repugnant to you as it ought to be."
"Dormer's not a Tory, Rector," remarked Tristram. "He's a Radical, like
me, now."
"Oh, indeed," returned Mr. Grenville, not much perturbed. "Well, I
won't upset your convictions; but, Tories or Radicals, I don't fancy you
will welcome this new Parliament of ours when we get it."
"Why not, Mr. Grenville?" asked Dormer.
"Because, if ever there was a middle-class measure, it is this Reform
Act! You mark my words, it will be worse, not better, for the poor man
now than under the old state of things."
"I fully agree with you," observed Dormer.
"It is quite pathetic," pursued the Rector, "to see how every class
thinks the Millennium is coming because of the extension of the
franchise. Wages are going to rise, and the price of corn is going to
fall.... No, what is really wanted is Poor Law reform. Am I not right,
Tristram?"
Tristram wearily agreed. It seemed to him that the evening would never
end. He only desired one thing, to be alone. In the study after dinner
the Rector rallied him once or twice on his silence, and he was half
afraid to meet Dormer's eyes, which always saw so much. Yet when at
last Mr. Grenville, taking up his own candlestick, had said paternally,
"Now don't you young men stay talking here till the small hours," and
himself departed to bed, Tristram sat down again by the fire, lest the
abrupt exit which he longed to make should either wound his friend or
give him cause for speculation. And he then embarked on such an
unnecessarily detailed account of the pressing need of better drainage,
not only in the parish of St. Thomas's but also in St. Clement's, in
fact throughout the whole of Oxford, that his somewhat unresponsive
listener came to the conclusion that he was thoroughly overdone oy the
cholera, and suggested of his own accord that they should go to bed.
*CHAPTER III*
*(1)*
Great things were vouchsafed on Saturday, the 14th of December, 1832, to
Mrs. Polly White, sister and correspondent of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, for,
it being the day on which she went to "do" at the Rectory, she was
enabled to combine the fine drawing of a tablecloth (an art in which she
was proficient) with the sight of the arrival of Miss Horatia and the
Rector, the precious babe and her own sister. Mr. Grenville had gone to
Dover to meet the packet, and the party was expected from Oxford, by
chaise, some time in the afternoon.
The village was all agog about Horatia's return, and some spirits,
lacking delicacy rather than enthusiasm, had entertained the idea of an
evergreen arch across the Rectory gate, to bear the words "Welcome
Home," and to be adorned with such decorations as had survived from the
Coronation festivities fifteen months before. The impropriety of so
receiving a newly-made widow having been pointed out, gossip had then
spent itself in speculations as to how Miss 'Ratia would look, not only
in her weeds, poor dear, but in the status of a French countess, or
whatever she was, for it was felt that in some way she would be a
different person from the Miss 'Ratia they had known. One old man,
however, dratting them all, announced his unalterable intention of
putting a couple of lighted candles in his window, for if his darter had
taken and married a Frenchy, and had come home again after so disastrous
a step, widder or no widder, he should consider it a clear case of "This
my darter wur dead, and be alive again; and wur lost and be found."
Such was indeed the general feeling in Compton Regis, where only a few
impressionable damsels were found to remark that Miss 'Ratia's husband
had been a proper young man, and that 'twas a gurt pity he had been
killed in them foreign wars.
Mrs. White deplored all this chatter though she would fain have
contributed to it. When, therefore, about four o'clock, Ellen rushed
into the room where she was working to say that the chaise was turning
in at the gate, she flew with the rest of the domestics to the front
door. And thus, curtseying like them, she was privileged to see the
black and yellow post-chaise from the _Angel_ at Oxford draw up at the
steps, to behold the Rector emerge and assist to alight, first a lady in
the deepest mourning, a long crape veil such as Mrs. White had never
seen covering her from head to foot, secondly, a foreign-looking nurse
or nursemaid (disliked by Mrs. White on the spot, though bearing a
priceless burden), and lastly her own dear comfortable, capable sister,
not changed a bit. And she saw the Comtesse put back her long veil, and
come up the steps on her father's arm, looking that sweet, but so sad!
The Rector, poor dear gentleman, seemed moved, as who wouldn't be. Miss
'Ratia, when you saw her in the light, was older, a little, and thin in
the cheeks, but the weeds set off her hair and complexion beautiful. As
for the lovely infant, he was asleep, and Mrs. White preferred in any
case to view him when Martha could act as show-woman. And so, as the
party mounted the stairs, she returned to her napery, hoping that her
sister would shortly appear.
But Martha was indeed unchanged, and it was not until things were "to
her liking," the nurse properly installed, the child in bed, her
mistress's trunks unpacked, and her mistress at table with his
Reverence, that she permitted herself to seek out and to embrace her
sister. Then, due greeting and inquiries having passed, Mrs. Kemblet,
seated in a restful chair, began her desired narration.
"I wish I could have got my lamb to go to bed at once, and have her
dinner there. However, she's a sight stronger than she was, and has
stood the journey wonderful, considering. Rough it was, too, and the
packet rolling something horrible. But here we all are safely, thanks
to One Above, and the infant none the worse, though a trifle fractious,
bless his heart!"
"Ah, but what _she_ must have been through, Martha!" said Mrs. White
feelingly.
This was a whip to a willing horse. "You may well say that, Polly,"
responded her sister. "What with being fetched like that all sudden at
night, to find the poor young gentleman weltering in an agony--for he
was shot something terrible, they said--and him dying in her arms (all
unprepared, too, I'm afraid), and then going back to Paris with his
body, and the household off their heads, and the funeral--I don't know
what we should have done without the elder one, the Marquis as they call
him..."
"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. White, as the narrator paused for breath.
"And where was the poor young man buried, then?"
"At the grand family place where we was during the cholera time....
Well, to go back to the dreadful occurrence" (impossible to deny that
there was relish in Mrs. Kemblet's tone over these words) "when Miss
Horatia gets this letter and rushes off to this place, St. Clair,
without even telling me where she was going, we couldn't none of us do
anything till the Marquis comes back next morning early. Off he goes
then to St. Clair; then he comes back and says his brother is lying dead
in the big house there, having been shot in the wood by the Government
soldiers, and that he is going to have him brought away, and to fetch
Miss Horatia too. And, by and by, they brought him, carrying him on a
bier with a flag over him, not that red, white, and blue thing they use
now in France, but the old one, the white one. And they laid him in the
chapel at his own place, where we was, with candles all burning; hardly
Christian in a way, not being in a coffin, but I must say he looked
beautiful, and when I went in to see him, I cried like a baby; for
though I always begrudged him having Miss Horatia, and never trusted
him, it did seem dreadful him being cut off like that, so young; and I
daresay he would have settled down if he had been spared."
Mrs. White wiped her sympathetic eyes, but caught at the last words.
"He wasn't what you'd call a good husband to Miss Horatia then?"
"I don't say that," returned Martha, slightly stiffening. "All them
young men over there are wild," she explained, with an air of profound
acquaintance with Gallic youth. "The less said about it the better,
that's my motto. And really I begun to wonder if I'd not been mistook,
seeing the state my poor lamb was in after he was killed. For weeks
after we got back to Paris she could not sleep without I was in the
little room off hers--always seeing him in her dreams she was, and
calling out that he was bleeding to death, and begging him to forgive
her--the Lord knows why--and imploring someone to go to him. She
fainted on the day of the funeral; a grand funeral it was, with a Bishop
to bury him, and a sermon saying he was a martyr for the altar and the
throne, whatever that meant. The old Madam nearly went out of her mind
over it all, she was that fond of the Count. Then when she--the old
one--was quieted down a bit nothing would serve but she must be having
the child up in her nasty stuffy bedroom at all hours of the day, saying
it was all that was left her, and things like that."
"But surely Miss Horatia had something to say to that?"
Martha leant forward very impressively. "You mark my words, Polly,
there's going to be a tussle over that child! You and me thinks he's
English, bless him, because he's Miss Horatia's, but by law he's French,
and belongs over there, and you wouldn't believe the difficulty there's
been about our leaving Paris. I've not been told, and it's not for me
to ask, whether we're coming here on long visits, or whether my Lady
will make her home here. But this I do say, they've got their eye on
him, the poor innocent, and it'll be worse as he grows up."
"What a shame!" said Mrs. White indignantly. "And he no older than my
Harriet's Willy!"
Mrs. Kemblet rose with majesty, and with majesty she replied, "That's as
it may be, but I don't think you realise, Polly, that when the old Duke
and his son dies, there'll be only one life between the Count asleep
upstairs and the dukedom."
"Lor!" ejaculated Mrs. White.
And by the child upstairs there stood his grandfather and his mother,
looking down at him in his rosy abandonment of slumber.
"Papa, he was very fond of him," said Horatia at last, and turning, she
threw herself weeping into her father's arms.
*CHAPTER IV*
*(1)*
All through the falling of the leaves--the creeper leaves that dropped
slowly, resplendent in death, from college walls, the narrow willow
leaves that were whirled floating on to the streams, the leaves that
made a carpet, the leaves that were like rain, the leaves that laughed
as they fell, the leaves that fluttered to the ground like wounded
birds--Tristram wrestled with the angel of bewilderment.
Not even Dormer could help him. He had known that from the night at the
Rectory. The matter was too intimately between himself and God; he must
struggle through alone. And though, when he was back in Oxford, Dormer
had come and sought him out in his lodgings, in order to tell him that
he thought he was overworking, and ought to spare himself a little more,
Tristram merely said that he was quite well, and let him go without a
sign.
He was in a mist of anguish and perplexity. If he could only see the
path, he told himself, he was ready to follow it, however sharp its
flints. But where lay his road? If that reawakened desire of his,
hidden from his own eyes till the wind of the Downs had rent the
curtain, were sin, then he would cut it from him, at whatever cost. For
even then the self that prayed with such intensity for happiness was so
much the captive of a surrendered will that at the last it had struggled
towards obedience with _Non voluntas mea_....
But how could his desire be sin? He was not a Roman Catholic priest; he
was a member of a body where marriage was almost expected. Even if, at
his ordination, his intention had been plain to himself, he had taken no
formal vow of celibacy. Newman, in spite of his ascetic views, thought
that vows were foolish, and showed a lack of trust in Providence.
Moreover, might not Horatia's sudden liberation be a sign that she was
meant for him after all? And how could she hinder him in his work?--she
would be a help to any man. He thought of what she might be as a
companion, as an inspiration. And he wanted her for herself; he wanted
the warm and ordered joys of home. Was that wrong? How could such
desires be wrong, when God Himself had implanted them? Had not Jeremy
Taylor called marriage "the nursery of heaven?"
But he knew now that this very exaltation of marriage by the Christian
Church was only the other side of her exaltation of virginity. This
lost truth, the heart of early asceticism--positive offence though it
was even to persons who prided themselves on taking literally every
other Gospel precept--he had learnt unwillingly enough. He too had
found it a hard saying, but like his friends at Oriel, having once
admitted it, he could not conveniently forget it. And though these men,
because of their intense belief in the Divine plan for every individual
life, would never presume to demand from him that he should not marry,
yet, with their severe ideals, they would certainly expect that he
should not go back on a line once chosen. And he had chosen; no use to
deny that. He knew, if no other human being knew, how deeply he was
committed to the idea of the life without ties. It was impossible for
him to blink the fact that, had Horatia not become free, he would have
gone on in the direction in which his mind was set. This present
hesitation meant, then, that when, in his heart, he had made a
dedication of his life to God, it was only because the one woman he
wanted had been taken from him--an offering, as he had always felt, but
little worth, though the best that he could bring. But now, now that
the offering was to cost him more dear, he was desirous of taking it
back again. And he reflected how such conduct would appear in worldly
matters. It did not seem to him that its transference to another plane
of values would render it any the more creditable.
Yes, said another voice, but you cannot set your relations with the
Almighty on a sort of business footing. Do you imagine that the
Architect of the Universe keeps a strict ledger account with the dust he
has called into being, that he does not know the weak and childish heart
of it, and accept its poor offerings, not like a merchant, but like a
king?
To and fro went the warring armies in his soul, while his body carried
him about his business among the poor of St. Thomas's. But all the time
the tide of combat was setting in one direction, and at last he knew it.
There was a certain old woman in one of the courts to whom he used to
read every day. Though dirty and illiterate she was methodical and
self-willed, and, oblivious of the lessons of the day, selected what
book of the Bible she pleased to be read straight through to her. In
this way, after a course of Deuteronomy, she had pitched upon St. Mark.
"You was reading yesterday, Sir, how we should cut off our 'ands and
feet and cast them into 'ell fire," she observed one morning as Tristram
sat down in her little room. "It seems a 'ard thing to be told to do,
don't it?"
Scarcely encouraged by this result of his ministrations, Tristram
promptly turned to the end of the ninth chapter and re-read the passage,
trying to explain as simply as possible its meaning. But the attitude
of the old dame was that of one taking her stand on the rock of the
Word--"the Good Book says so, and it don't become us to say
otherwise"--and after a while, seeing that his exegesis was making no
impression, he desisted, and went on to the tenth chapter. He was
reading it, truth to tell, without attending much to the words, his mind
occupied half unconsciously with the eternal conflict, when he found
that he was in the midst of the story of the young ruler, and that his
lips were repeating the familiar words, "One thing thou lackest ... sell
whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ... and come, take up the
cross, and follow Me."
All the rest of the day the story kept running in his head. He could
not quite think why, except that it was one of those scenes in the
Gospel, dealing with an individual, which had always interested him.
With his mother's charity he had often hoped that the young ruler came
back after all. He remembered once having a talk with Dormer, who said
that there was some sort of tradition that he returned, but that he,
Dormer, thought there was very little ground for such a hope. On the
same occasion he had enunciated a theory which Tristram had thought
rather austere--that certain people, often good people, who had kept the
commandments from their youth up, could only be saved at all by enduring
hardness. Such people were constantly asked to make decisions involving
sacrifice, and whereas others seemed able to compass the heavenly ascent
by a tolerably easy road, they, if they were to reach the same summit,
must climb by a very different path.
And somehow Tristram began to apply these conditions to himself. He had
kept the commandments, he had great possessions--friends, enough to live
upon, perhaps the possession that he had coveted all these years. What
if he were in the position of the young ruler, although he had already
begun to obey the command. He had thought that God was perhaps calling
him to the single life because he could serve the poor better in that
state. He had found how happy he could be at St. Thomas's, and
experience had convinced him that for such work a man must be single.
It was not just the fact of marrying Horatia. He would have
responsibilities which would clash with what he hoped to do. He could
not take her to live in the midst of dirt and poverty to risk her
health, and the health of their children. If he married her he would be
turning his back on his work. According to Dormer's theory he might be
turning his back on Christ.
And so, in no romantic surroundings but among the trying adornments of
his little room in Hollybush Row--the waxen bouquets springing from
woolwork mats and shrined under domes of glass, the very bad engraving
of the entry of the Allies into Paris, the lustre jugs, the framed
announcement of the Oxford coaches and the wall-paper that oppressed the
very soul--he fought his way through to the conclusion that Horatia was
not for him now any more than she had been two years ago. He must take
the harder path, he must go on as he had begun.
The stuffed parrot in the centre of his mantelpiece, at which,
unknowing, he had been staring fixedly for the last hour, regarded him
with a cynical and leering eye. "_So this is religion!_" it seemed to
say. "_And this is a man!_"
Tristram, though appreciating the taunt, got up and put the critic
outside the door.
*(2)*
Three weeks later, at two o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he
was stepping into the post-chaise which was to take him out to Compton
Regis to see Horatia for the first time since her return. He had been
ordained priest only yesterday. The Rector had been in the Cathedral,
and Tristram, touched by his presence, had accepted his urgent
invitation to come over to Compton on the morrow, Christmas Eve though
it was. For this summons he had, indeed, been preparing himself, since
whatever course he should afterwards decide upon, he must at least go
out and see Horatia once.
Yesterday afternoon, amid the frightful Christmas bustle outside the
_Mitre_, in the clamour of departing coaches laden with geese and
turkeys, he had said farewell to Dormer, who had stayed thus late in
Oxford for his sake, and was posting to Whitchurch, where he would catch
the London and Exeter mail in the morning. Even so his expectant
nephews and nieces at Colyton would all be in bed long before he reached
his brother's house on Christmas Eve. Tristram had deprecated this
sacrifice, but Dormer had insisted on staying to see him ordained.
Down past the front of Christ Church went the chaise, over the river,
and towards the hill--ways so familiar. But the self that travelled them
to-day was different. The tortures of indecision were over. Yesterday
had put the seal on his dedication. Wonderfully, unbelievably, the
choice had been offered to him after all--the reality of sacrifice, not
mere acquiescence in past suffering, and because his attitude was no
more that of a loveless obedience, he almost longed to feel the pain
which he knew was before him. And, even if there was combat to come, he
would know now on which side he fought, he would not go away sorrowful.
The drawing-room at Compton Rectory was not empty, as he had at first
thought, for in a chair before the fire, with her back to him, was
seated Horatia herself. On a fold of her black dress lay some immature
woolly object which he could not identify, and in the crook of her right
arm rested a little motionless head clothed, none too thickly, with
curling rings of bronze-gold hair.
Tristram stopped in his advance. And at that she lifted her head and
spoke.
"Tristram! Is that you already? He is asleep. Come round here, if you
will." He came to her other side, and his lips met the wedding ring on
the hand which she tendered to him, smiling.
"Dear Tristram!" she said, in the same soft tones of welcome, looking up
at him. "How kind of you to come! Will you get yourself a chair?"
He obeyed, still rather speechless, and when he had sat down she asked
him if he had ridden or driven, whether the Rector knew that he was
there, all in a quiet and unembarrassed manner. Then she suddenly bent
her head and said, "Maurice, it is time that you woke up and spoke to
this gentleman."
Long lashes as black as night lay on the cheeks of
Maurice-Victor-Stanislas de la Roche-Guyon, and one hand grasped firmly
a string of jet beads hanging from his mother's neck. His slumber was
profound and determined. Tristram gazed at him, his mind in something
of a whirl.
"He got tired, playing with his lamb," vouchsafed Horatia, and as she
looked down at the sleeping child a most divine little smile came over
her face.
The revelation of that look, and the presence of her son somehow almost
deprived Tristram of the power to ask her the thousand questions about
herself that were on his lips. He got out a few, in a lowered tone, and
then, with little warning but a sudden drowsy stretching, Maurice awoke,
and out of Armand's eyes: but bluer and more innocent, looked up
straight at the visitor.
The effect was disconcerting to both. Tristram disguised his feelings,
but the younger person, giving way to whatever emotion he may have felt,
silently buried his head in his mother's arm.
Horatia smiled that new smile of hers, and put a kiss on the curls.
"I was so sorry that I could not come to your ordination yesterday,
Tristram," she was beginning. "Papa would not let me take the long
drive, but I wished very much to come..."
But just then the Rector entered, and the talk became general, even, on
Horatia's side, rather disjointed, for the Comte de la Roche-Guyon,
demanding to be put down, crawled meanwhile with an extraordinary
rapidity about the floor, addressing in obscure terms every object that
he encountered on his route, footstools, hearthrug, even the flora of
the carpet. Finally he embraced with fervour one of Tristram's legs,
and Tristram, after a moment or two, stooped and lifted him on to his
knee. After all, he might as well accustom himself to children, though
he would rather have gone to school with the child of someone else.
Maurice smiled.
"Up!" he observed pertinently, and kicked out his feet with happy
vigour, somewhat endangering his balance.
"He doesn't often take to people like that!" observed his mother and
grandfather simultaneously, and with the usual amount of truth...
It was over. And as the post-chaise jolted him back in the darkness to
Oxford, Tristram's whole heart was so swamped with the thought of
Horatia, what she must have gone through, how miraculously she had
changed, that there was little room for the contemplation of himself.
She had now what she wanted; he was sure of it; she held it in her arms.
The great surprise of it, after Paris, only made him the more convinced.
God had given her compensation for what she had suffered. Yet the more
he thought, with all a man's touch of sentiment, about the little group
in the firelight, the more that it seemed to him wonderful, beautiful,
and, for Horatia, consummatory, the more did he realise the cost of
selling that great possession which he might have had. Just as he had
stood and looked on at mother and child this evening, so must he always
stand now and look on--no more--at the sanctities of home.
And he had a sudden vision, too, of Dormer, surrounded to-morrow in
church by the fair heads of his brother's many children, kneeling in the
midst of a bevy who were none of his. He had once told Tristram of the
whispered communications that were wont to be made to him in
service-time, of the happy terror in the eyes that would follow the
small pointing finger up "Little Choke-a-bone Alley" to the tomb of the
girl of royal lineage choked, hundreds of years ago, "by a fish-bone,
Uncle Charles!"--to the effigy which had thrilled him himself as a
boy.... There are veils which the hand of a close friend is the last to
touch, and whether Dormer had ever suffered as he had suffered, or
whether the vision which he had always followed shone with a light so
effulgent that no other joys had radiance, Tristram could never pity
him. But, remembering his long patience and hope, he desired suddenly
to give him a Christmas gift, and though the letter could not reach him
on the feast itself, and though it cost him something to do it, he sat
down, when he got back, and told him what he had kept from him
yesterday, that he had indeed, at last, sold whatsoever he had.
And, when he offered the Eucharist for the first time on Christmas
morning, he made his own oblation, mingled of pain and joy.
*CHAPTER V*
*(1)*
The Rector had just closed the door of his study on the retreating form
of Mary Straker, a blushing village damsel who had come to impart to him
the news of approaching matrimony. Mr. Grenville had a peculiar
interest in the announcement, for some three years previously he had
intervened to shield her inamorato from the consequences of a poaching
adventure, and had emigrated him up to Yorkshire as a groom. The
grateful swain had now written to his betrothed to inform her that he
had saved enough money to marry upon, and that he intended to return
this spring for the ceremony, and would Mary please tell his Reverence
so, and he hoped, with his best respects, as his Reverence would say the
words over them come Easter.
Mr. Grenville was pleased, and went smiling to the window. Drumming on
the pane a moment, he looked out at the young green of March, and hoped
Tom Hollings and little Polly would be happy. In his parish the Rector
was something of a matchmaker. He had an obscure conviction that one
had only to put two people together and they would hit it off somehow;
in fact he had always taken a rosy view of marriage--until the marriage
of his own daughter. He thought of that now, and, suddenly sighing,
came away from the window.
He was really worried about Horatia, in spite of the fact that she
looked distinctly better since her return three months ago. But she
seemed sometimes as if she would never recover from her sadness. She
had lost her habit of teasing him; she was, for her, rather too sweetly
reasonable. And yet he could not help her. Poor darling! he could not
bear to think that she knew so much of evil, and had grown so much older
in such a short time. In some ways the thing that he most resented in
the whole unhappy affair was the smirching of her innocence. While he
was in Paris he had been really shocked at the Duchesse's broad views
when, with her accustomed frankness, she had laid before him the reason
for his grandson's premature arrival, emphasising the fact that she was
annoyed not with Armand's conduct in itself, but with his carelessness.
And though he was half unwilling to listen to Martha, there were things
which she insisted on telling him, prefacing them with "And I think you
ought to know, Sir."
But because Armand was dead he thought of him now as "that poor young
man," and, to his mind, his tragic removal somehow whitewashed his
conduct and made it "better not to think of it." At the same time he
did not fail, in his inmost heart, to feel that removal a direct work of
Providence, and was deeply ashamed of this feeling, especially when he
considered Maurice's fatherless condition. Often, indeed, watching him
with his mother, was Mr. Grenville struck with the pathos of the
situation. He loved to see them together, especially when Horatia did
not know that he was looking at them; she seemed to him so beautifully
maternal, and he could hardly believe that there had been a time when
she did not care for the child.
Mr. Grenville began to pace up and down, his hands behind his back, and
not for the first time did he wonder whether the comfort which he was
powerless to give Horatia might not, after all, come from another
quarter. He had, for his part, a distinct objection to second marriages,
and had acted on it in his own case, but he would be easier to Horatia
than he had been to himself. Horatia was still so young, the fatherless
Maurice so tiny, her married life--her unhappy married life--had been so
short ... eighteen months! Then the presence of Tristram, still
unmarried and, as far as he knew, unchanged in his feelings towards
Horatia, seemed to him almost providential. Tristram Hungerford indeed
was steadfastness incarnate; he could not conceive of his changing.
But, of course, he did not know what Tristram thought of second
marriages. In any case, however, his present attitude was very proper,
not intruding upon Horatia's grief. Besides, he was probably waiting
till he had a living. Yet, second marriages...
Mr. Grenville stopped in his promenade, and with a look on his face as
of one about to drink medicine, took down Jeremy Taylor from a shelf and
turned over the pages till he came to that divine's remarks on the
widowed state. Tightening his lips, he shut up the book after a moment
with something like a bang, and replaced it. Yes, second marriages ...
But, after all, he was going on rather fast.
*(2)*
When the Rector returned, late that afternoon, from visiting his
parishioners, he was rather surprised to find Horatia sitting on a stool
in front of his study fire, which had only just been lit. As soon as he
had sat down beside her she put her head on his knee, and said, with the
directness of a child,
"Papa, dear, I want to talk to you. I am so unhappy! I must talk to
someone."
The Rector put his hand on her hair, half alarmed, half pleased that she
had come to him. "What is it, my love?" he said tenderly. "Only this
morning I was thinking of you and wishing I could comfort you."
"O Papa, I can't say it to you. I am so wicked!" And she began to cry.
"My dearest child," said the Rector, astonished, "what do you mean? How
can you have been wicked? Come, then, tell me all about it. There is
nothing you cannot say to me. I can understand how you loved him in
spite--in spite of many things."
"But that is just it," answered Horatia, sobbing. "I did not really love
him." Then she went on in an outburst, "You think now that I'm grieving
for him because I loved him. It isn't true. I'm grieving just because
I didn't love him. I want to say to people, Don't be sorry for me,
don't look at my black dress! I am a wicked woman, I did not love my
husband. I did not even do my duty."
Mr. Grenville put an arm round his daughter's shoulders and bent over
her. "My child, you mustn't talk like this. We know that poor Armand
was not all that he might have been to you, and I daresay I know more
than you think. You married him for better or for worse, and in some
ways ... for although he is dead we must face facts ... I have little
doubt it was for worse. It was a shock to your innocence to find out
much that you ought never to have known. I ought to have warned you
more, to have told you more. My darling child, your old father has been
greatly to blame. If only your dear mother had been alive!"
"Papa, you did warn me," she said, drying her eyes. "I was very wilful;
I thought I knew best. But it seemed then as if Armand came and opened
a new world to me, and I thought it was love ... but it could not have
been ... and then I began to hear things ... and before Maurice was
born..."
"I know, my dear," said the Rector, smoothing her hair.
"And Maurice, the darling, I was so wicked I would not look at him ...
and as for Armand, I believe I almost hated him ... and I told him he
was dead to me ... and now he is dead really ... and how can I say I
loved him!"
The Rector reflected a little before replying.
"I would not think too much, Horatia, of whether you loved him or did
not love him. I understand that you are trying to be honest with
yourself, but now you have told me do not fret about that part of it.
You made mistakes, and it is all very sad, but try to remember that we
are in the hands of a merciful Creator. 'He knoweth whereof we are made;
He remembereth that we are but dust."
"If only I could be like you, Papa, and could have your trust! It
frightens me to think about him."
"Tell me, my dear."
"O, he did not want to die. He was so young, and he loved life. He
said one thing that I shall never forget: 'If they tell you that I was
resigned, do not believe them.'"
"Poor boy, poor boy!" murmured the Rector huskily.
"And the way he died was so dreadful! I had never seen anyone die
before, and I did not know how awful it could be. O, I have been so
frightened!" said Horatia, now almost incoherent. "I see him always
with the blood spreading through the linen, and I hear him always
calling in that terrible voice, 'Laurence, Laurence! ..."
"Ah!" said the Rector, compressing his lips. He made an effort to
control himself. "Don't go on, Horatia; don't distress yourself! I
know all about it. We must try not to judge the dead--and may God have
mercy on us all!"
There was a pause, during which Mr. Grenville blew his nose violently.
"Dear, dear," he resumed at length, "you ought never to have suffered
this--and to think of your being alone at such a time! I have been much
to blame, much to blame! ... There, there, my child, you will stay with
me, now, and you are young, and in time you will forget----"
"Never, never!" exclaimed Horatia, raising her head.
"No; well, perhaps, I should not say that, but the old know that we must
forget even if we do not want to, and as I said, you are young, and
there is Maurice. He can help you more than anyone else.--You will stay
with me, Horatia?"
She flung her arms tightly round his neck. "Oh, yes. Papa, if you will
keep me. Two or three months every year I must go back to France, but
for the rest there is no reason why I should not stay with you if you
will have me." She sat still for a moment, leaning against her father's
knee, and when she was a little calmer, went on, "You remember that I
wrote and told you about the will, that Armand wished Maurice to go to
an English school. He was very fond of him, Papa."
"Yes, my dear."
A pause.
"The more I think of it, Horatia," began Mr. Grenville solemnly, "the
more I believe that you ought to find your comfort in this provision of
your husband's will. It seems to me to prove that, far from doubting
your affection, he felt that he owed something to you, and that this was
the way he tried to make up to you. Poor young man, there was much good
in him! Try to think of this, my love, and say your prayers and do your
duty--and now, dear me, it is nearly dinner-time!"
*CHAPTER VI*
*(1)*
"Want!" observed the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, stretching out a fat hand
from his wheeled bassinette towards the huge red poppy nodding in the
flowerbed beside him. "Want, want, want!" he repeated beating with the
same member upon the satin coverlet.
Grimes the gardener, clipping the hedge near by, looked round. "And so
you shall, my pretty!" quoth he. Turning, he broke off the object of
Maurice's desires, and presented it to him, and Maurice, after tearing
off the flaming petals, inserted the fascinating remainder into his
mouth.
He had not time, however, to try his newest teeth upon the green dainty
before it was torn from him and flung whirling into the bed as
Martha--who had but left her charge for a moment--emptied the vials of
her wrath upon the luckless donor. "And you a married man not to know
better than that! You might have poisoned the precious child under his
mother's very eyes! Come away, my beautiful ... now don't cry after the
nasty thing!"
As the hand of indignation wheeled Maurice away from the vicinity of the
unworthy Grimes it removed him also out of Horatia's field of vision,
where she sat under the acacia tree on the lawn, a book on her lap and a
workbasket by her side. Horatia flew something of her old colour in her
cheeks. Her father, after her outburst in the spring, had told her to
say her prayers and to do her duty. To do her duty, or what she knew
that her father would conceive to be her duty, was easy--anything was
easy that served to take her mind off herself. She did all she could
for Maurice, and was unaware that Martha generally did it all over
again. She paid visits and went to local shows, proceedings that before
her marriage had been very distasteful to her. The Rector thought her
so brave, and wonderfully softened, for now she seemed to suffer fools
gladly. She did, for any company was better than her own.
But to say her prayers was a different matter, for though she repeated a
form of words she could not pray, and she hated being in church, for
there her mind invariably became clear, and all that she had shut away
in a box marked "Paris" would emerge, and be, not a dream of the past,
but a present reality. At any moment this box was not over-securely
fastened. Inside were remorse and hatred. Every letter from France
shook the lid--though such letters were not very frequent--one or two
melancholy epistles from the Duc, a few kind notes from Emmanuel, some,
not so benevolent, from the Dowager, and one malicious communication
from the Marquise de Beaulieu, informing her that Madame de Vigerie had
not been seen in society this year, and that every one was wondering
why.... How she hated the Vicomtesse! It was she who had cast the
first poisoned fruit into their Eden, it was she who had deceived her
with a show of friendship, she who had caused her to condemn Armand
innocent, she who had lured him on--lured him on to his death. Merely
to think of her was to revive, in its fadeless colours, that picture or
dream of him, lying dead in her arms....
Better than saying her prayers or doing her duty were Tristram's visits.
She did not take them as a matter of course, but looked forward to them
almost eagerly, comparing them with the many times he had come in old
days. She was changed, she knew, but so was he. The fact of his
becoming a clergyman might have been expected to make him more sedate,
but it had had the opposite effect. At times he was quite lighthearted
and full of hope, and seemed to find no little enjoyment in the prospect
of a fight to come. The hope and the joy of battle were for the Church,
for the Church was in danger, and yet Horatia no longer wanted to laugh
at him or to tease him. He would tell her that he and his friends at
Oriel were conspirators, and that one day the conspiracy would break
out, that Oxford was going to lead another hope, and not a forlorn one.
In July he had said that they only waited for Newman to come back from
Italy, that Froude was full of fire, and that if Keble could only be got
to move he would be more potent than anyone.
Horatia had watched eagerly to see what the Reformed Parliament would
do, and, when the bill for the suppression of the Irish bishoprics was
introduced, she was pleasurably thrilled at the thought then presented
to her that perhaps an era of persecution had really begun. She was
full of elation when Mr. Keble preached his stirring Assize sermon in
July and of regret that she herself had not heard it. In August she
felt the futility of the meeting at Hadleigh, and she was as convinced
as Tristram could have wished that no great movement was ever
successfully conducted by an association; she was sure that it must be
the work of individuals. And now she was waiting for the appearance of
the first-fruits of that idea--the projected series of Tracts.
It was like an exciting game, for Horatia's interest was, after all,
purely intellectual. And her instinct told her that even if Mr. Froude
could speak jestingly of a conspiracy, and the friends could use, out of
reverence for holy things, a "little language" which to the outsider
appeared merely flippant, there was within them a spirit which made her
shrink. She knew that they had a profound belief in Providence, that
they believed they had a work to do, and were but tools for its
execution. This alone was a disturbing thought. And she perceived in
them a moral force, a severity and a relentlessness which she had never
met before. If, as people said, they wished to copy the Roman Catholics,
she was at a loss to know where in that body, as she knew it, they had
found their exemplar, for not even in Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon,
reputed and sincerely believed by her to be a saint, had she seen any
trace of this spirit. But it was to be found, no doubt, in the
religious orders. It also occurred to Horatia that this reformation of
the Church for which Tristram's friends were so eager would mean a
change in the lives of the clergy. It would mean the disappearance of
the hunting parson, of the prosperous rector of the "three-bottle
school," even, she supposed, of the fashionable Evangelical preacher.
But it might mean, too, a change in the people who were taught by the
clergy.... She much preferred not to hear about this sort of thing from
Tristram, and yet he was so eager, when once set on to talk, that she
often started him for the mere pleasure of watching him. She could
laugh at its absurdity, yet she felt a lurking sympathy with Lord
Melbourne's plaint, that things were coming to a pretty pass if religion
was to invade the affairs of daily life, for thought hovering round this
connection was apt to become personal in its application, and that which
served generally as a diversion would end by making her conscience still
more uneasy.
Tristram might come any day now in his round of distributing these new
Tracts. As Maurice was wheeled away Horatia took up the August number
of the "British Magazine" on her knee to look at the "Lyra Apostolica"
for that month, which she had not yet read. It would be interesting to
see whether she could guess the authorship of each of these unsigned
poems, and to tell Tristram her surmise. She suspected Mr. Newman, who
edited them, of writing most of them himself.
There were only three poems under that heading last month, she found,
and they all referred in some way or other to "the Golden Keys." The
first, short and somewhat cryptic, was called "The Three Absolutions."
What were the three absolutions? Two she knew of; a little note said
that the third was to be found in the Office for the Visitation of the
Sick. She must look it up one day.... Then, suddenly remembering that
there was an old Prayer Book somewhere in her workbasket, she stopped
and found it, and, turning up the place, suffered considerable
amazement....
She looked again at the poem--
"Full of the past, all shuddering thought,
Man waits his hour with upward eye--
The Golden Keys in love are brought
That he may hold by them and die."
In her own Church then she could have Absolution if she were dying. She
felt that when she came to die she would like to have it, and remembered
that there had been a time when she had thought that, if she were to go
on living, she must have it, a time when she had not excused herself,
but when, in the first weeks of horror and misery, she had taken all the
blame, had been too much overwhelmed with self-accusation and remorse
even to taste perfectly her hatred of Madame de Vigerie.
And with the thought the gates opened, and the whole tide of memory
burst upon her, full-waved, bearing her out of the safe and quiet
English garden to a little church in Paris, holding a warm
incense-burdened air, and flooded with a soft dusk in which the winking
light before the altar seemed doubly alive and significant, and the
irregular concourse of candles by the statue of the Madonna burnt with a
speaking radiance. And she was kneeling in a rush-bottomed
kneeling-chair, weighed down by her deep mourning, unable to pray, her
mind a maze of inarticulate pain, not knowing how or why she had strayed
into this place, except that it was peaceful. A few persons scattered
about among the disordered chairs got up one by one, moved away, and
after a while knelt down again, and there was a murmur of voices. In a
moment or two Horatia realised that they were making their confessions,
an idea which had once been full of a fascinated horror. Now it
suddenly seemed reasonable. That woman, for instance, a widow like
herself, coming back from the confessional to her place, what had she
been saying, what had she been told to do, what was she feeling like
now? Supposing it had been she herself ... for no one could say hard
enough things to her, nor could any penance equal the anguish that it
would be to put her self-accusation into words, and to acknowledge her
wrongdoing. Yet anguish she would have welcomed. Had she been of the
faith of these people she could have comfort too.... But that was
impossible.
And there came for the hundredth time the vision of Armand going in
bitterness and agony down the slope to death, with the ironic little
smile on his wryed mouth, the livid circles round the eyes which once
had held for her all the light in the world. For she knew now--and the
knowledge was only an added pang--that the reawakened feeling of that
terrible night was only a transient emotion. She buried her face in her
hands, and the heartrending pity of it surged over her, the horror and
the tragedy of death, of his death, young and reluctant. Kneeling
there, her face hidden, every voice of her soul went out suddenly to
plead for him, though she knew not what to plead... "O God, it was my
doing! The blame was not his, not his, O God.... He was kind to me,
always. Have mercy, have mercy...."
So, after many days, had she prayed--but not for herself.
Horatia came back as one wakens from a painful dream, and, as sometimes
in such an awakening, there were tears on her cheeks. She sprang up
wildly from her chair. No, it was past, and here was reality, and
comfort, and things of the safe, ordinary life--the sound of the
gardener's shears, the smell of cut box, a horse trotting along the
road, someone opening a window in an upper storey, the voice of Dash in
the kitchen garden yelping after a bird. She drew a long breath, and
put out a hand to touch something palpable and present, the rough trunk
of the acacia-tree.
"Please, ma'am, Reverend 'Ungerford," said the voice of Ellen behind
her.
"Ask him to come out here," said Horatia. Going back to her chair she
passed her handkerchief quickly over her eyes, and snatched a small
garment and needle and thread from her basket.
And Tristram, looking unusually elated, almost boyish, and also rather
hot, approached her over the grass pulling something from a wallet.
"I'm too dusty to come near you," he said, coming nevertheless. "This
is the sixth parsonage I've descended on this afternoon. I think I may
say without vanity that 'the dun deer's hide on fleeter foot was never
tied'--except that the foot in question belongs to a livery stable." He
almost threw into her lap a small bundle of pamphlets, and crossed the
lawn to get another chair.
Horatia looked at his back with a curious expression, but when he turned
her gaze was on the uppermost Tract.
"_Fellow-Labourers_," began the first of its four small pages, "_I am
but one of yourselves--a Presbyter...._"
"Newman's," said Tristram, sitting down beside her. "We're going to
make a row in the world at last!"
*(2)*
For the next six weeks or so, while various persons, clerical and lay,
of the same opinions as Tristram Hungerford were riding about the
country to the same end, or packing up for distribution large parcels of
the new _Tracts for the Times by Residents in Oxford_, while the clergy
thus bombarded were recovering from the shock of being told by "A
Presbyter" of their apostolical descent, while Hurrell Froude, ordered
to Barbados in the vain pursuit of health, was showing, as usual, his
daring spirit by urging Newman to break an impossible alliance with the
conservative High Church--while all these portents were taking place
Horatia de la Roche-Guyon was paying a number of visits. Though sorry
to leave the neighbourhood of Oxford just as the fiery cross was going
round, she did not altogether regret the change of scene, for she was
beginning to wonder whither these pleasant conversations with Tristram
were leading, and she thought that absence might enable her to gain a
clearer view of the situation.
By the end of October she found herself staying with her friend Emilia
Strangways (whom once she had declared she would not go to see again for
seven years) at the house in Devonshire to which her husband had
succeeded on the death of an uncle. Only one more visit remained, a
short sojourn with the Puseys at Oxford on her way home. Maurice, who
had accompanied her on her first visits nearer Compton, had not been
brought so far, but, with or without her son, Horatia was now able to
bear an honoured part in the continual and detailed conversations on the
uprearing of children (Emilia being by now the parent of a boy and girl)
and threw herself with zest into discussions on the dangers of teething
and the proper thickness of infantile winter clothing, feeling sure,
with something of her old insight, that Mrs. Strangways commented to her
husband upon "the improvement in dear Horatia." On the wheels of these
domestic conferences the visit passed away, uneventful until its last
day, when Henry Strangways descended to breakfast with a set face, and a
saucer upon which reposed a minute fleck of something flabby and green.
"In my shaving water, Emilia," he said in a tense voice. "I have
questioned the servants most closely. They are positive that it did not
occur in the kitchen. So that means it has all begun again!"
Emilia rose with concern from behind the coffee cups, while Horatia
lightly asked the nature of the intruder.
"I think," replied her host very seriously, bringing round the saucer
for her inspection, "that it is cabbage. At least I fear that it is
cabbage. Having in the first place been cooked, and having also been a
long time in the water, it is not readily distinguishable. Whatever it
is fever will probably come of it. And the Mother Superior promised me
most solemnly that it should not happen again."
Horatia lifted puzzled eyes from the sodden speck.
"The nuns up at the Manor, dear," explained Emilia. "Our water comes
through the Manor grounds, and they will throw things from the kitchen
into it. Henry has written twice; at last he went himself and had an
interview with the Mother Superior. Since then it has been better."
"I think I shall see the Lord Lieutenant about it," said Mr. Strangways.
"That I and my family should succumb to fever because these misguided
women--foreigners, too, most of them--have been brought up without the
most elementary notions of sanitation is preposterous. The whole thing
is preposterous, that they should be established in this country at all,
polluting at once our water supply and the faith of the villagers!"
"But you will write again, Henry, will you not?" urged his wife. "Or
perhaps you would go again and see the Mother?"
"No, I shall not consent to another interview of that kind," returned
Mr. Strangways. "I shall now put the matter in the hands of the proper
authorities. _Mother_, indeed! But I shall certainly write as well, and
at once. I think I shall enclose this ... this vegetable matter. Would
it not be rather to the point, Emilia, if I sent up the saucer with my
compliments, and nothing else?"
Horatia burst out laughing, and then perceived that she had done the
wrong thing. Her host did not mean to be funny; he never did. Finally
it was settled that he should write a letter of protestation, and that,
instead of its being sent by a menial hand, Emilia and her guest should
walk up with it.
"I thought you might like to see the outside of the Manor," said Mrs.
Strangways, as they started out over the fallen leaves. "You see, it
once belonged to Henry's uncle, and he most unfortunately sold it, at
the time of the French Revolution, to these nuns. As Henry says, he
ought not to have been allowed to do it. The grounds are rather fine,
much better than ours, and I don't know what they can want with them,
for they never go out, and it is really very terrible to feel that they
are throwing all sorts of refuse into the water, and might any day
poison the children."
"But the convents I have seen in France were so very clean," objected
Horatia. "And these are French nuns, you say? Why do they not go
back?"
"I don't know," replied her informant. "I suppose they find themselves
better off here. Besides, it may not be clean inside; nobody knows, for
no one is allowed further than the parlour. I daresay awful things go
on, for they are said to be a very severe order. I have heard that they
sleep on plank beds, and hardly ever speak, and live on bread and
water...."
"And cabbage!"
"Yes, I suppose so. Anyhow it is a fact that no meat ever goes in
there. And they do nothing but pray--I mean, they don't embroider, or
make lace, or anything useful, but just pray all day long. But Henry
says it isn't tedious to them because, of course, after a few months of
it, they go out of their minds."
"What do they pray for?" asked Horatia.
A shade of enjoyable horror appeared on the fair face under the beaver
bonnet. "They call it Perpetual Intercession. That means praying for
wicked people. I know they pray for the dead too--think of that,
Horatia! Henry says it's worse than idolatry."
And on this theological dictum of Mr. Strangways they turned through a
wide gateway and saw before them, through a fading glory of beech-trees,
a large Elizabethan house of mellowed brick. To its left stood the
chapel, an incongruous late Georgian building, and up to the main
entrance led an ugly covered way of still more modern construction,
topped by a statue of the Virgin and Child. Along this way Emilia
preceded her guest, for it was barred only by a low oaken gate, which at
the moment stood open, perhaps because a novice was scrubbing the stone
floor within. Horatia glanced curiously as she passed at the grey-clad
figure on its hands and knees, noticing that the hands in question were
very small and white, and seemed to have had no past connection with
bristles or soapsuds. She would rather have liked to see what sort of a
face went with those hands.
The aged portress who took the note from Emilia revealed, as she opened
the door, a glimpse of the square Tudor hall that had once known song
and carousing but was now lamentably bare and empty. Facing all who
entered, and stretching up from the floor against the whitewashed
panelling, was a gigantic crucifix in relief, rather more than
life-size, of the most startling realism, a realism that had gone so far
as to suggest that the base of the cross was sunk in the floor of the
hall, for it appeared to be fixed there with large wedges. A skull lay
at its foot.
"Is it not horrible?" whispered Emilia as the door shut once more. "The
first time I saw it I had nightmare.... I think it is so _wrong_ to
remind oneself like that ... Oh, merci, ma soeur!"
For the novice, who had now reached the middle of the passage had risen
from her knees, and, removing her bucket out of their way, stood aside
with downcast eyes for them to pass. And so Horatia's idle wish was
gratified, and she saw her face--the face of Laurence de Vigerie.
*CHAPTER VII*
*(1)*
"More particularly am I bound to pray for the good estate of Oriel
College, and herein for the Reverend the Provost, Fellows, Clerks, and
all other members of that society...."
It was not the first time that Horatia had listened to the bidding
prayer which prefaces a sermon before the University of Oxford, nor even
the first time that she had heard mentioned therein "the munificence of
founders and benefactors, such as were King Edward the Second, the
Founder of Oriel College, Adam de Brome, his almoner, and other
benefactors of the same." But it was the first occasion on which she
had heard the prayer from the lips of the preacher who, two mornings
afterwards, occupied the pulpit of St. Mary-the-Virgin. And as she sat
down by Mrs. Pusey's side, behind the Heads and Doctors in their scarlet
and crimson, and looked up at Charles Dormer, she felt a curious
accession of interest, as though she had never seen him before. In the
black gown and bands he seemed, she thought, absurdly young to be
addressing that august assembly. Then she remembered that, being just
Tristram's age, he must be a year older than the Vicar of St. Mary's,
who so often addressed them. But he did not look it.
The congregation settled down in the peculiarly arranged nave, and in
rather a low voice Dormer gave out his text, "Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God."
And Horatia's momentarily excited interest sank again. She felt that
she knew the kind of sermon which would be preached on that text, and
she did not want to hear it. She wished with all her heart that she
were not in church at all. She had not wanted to come to hear Mr.
Dormer; she had only done so to fulfil a promise made to Tristram. If
it had been Mr. Newman now--or Mr. Keble preaching his Assize
sermon--she would have listened.... Laurence de Vigerie scrubbing a
stone floor.... In the coach, at the Puseys at Christ Church, here now
in St. Mary's--Laurence, the shapeless figure, the veil, the rough
dress....
A miracle had happened to Horatia, and she hardly knew it for a miracle.
What religion and conscience could not bring about, human feeling and
Protestant indignation had accomplished. That one moment's contact with
a--to her--shocking reality had swept away, on a flood of horrified
pity, not only her hatred but even the thought of forgiveness as a duty.
She knew nothing of either now, only that her heart (preparing as it was
to welcome a happiness of its own) was aching with compassion. Why was
Laurence doing this awful thing? It was not right to punish herself
like that, why had she not spoken to her! "_Laurence, I am so sorry.
It was more his fault than yours; I know it. Don't, don't make yourself
so unhappy. It is all wrong ... all a mistake...._"
Her brain worked on, and the tears came hot into her eyes. She must
concentrate her mind on something else, or she would really cry.
Definite words in a clear voice came to her, and she remembered that she
was supposed to be listening to Mr. Dormer, and that he must be three
parts through by now. She looked up at him again, over the
distinguished heads in front of her, this man not so very much older
than herself, who was Tristram's greatest friend, and whom she had never
liked, as he stood, using no gestures, in the new wooden pulpit that
reared itself up against a slender column of nave, the rows of Masters
of Arts below. A pillar in front of her, somewhat to her left, and the
edge of the north gallery for undergraduates, beneath which she sat,
made two sides of a square to frame him, as if for herself alone. She
listened.
"What is a pure heart? A German mystic has said that it is a heart
which finds its whole and only satisfaction in God, whose thoughts and
intents are ever occupied with God, which makes all joys and griefs, all
outward cares and anxieties work together for the glory of God.
"How far does such a temper of mind seem to be from all of us who call
ourselves Christians! and yet our Lord has definitely contemplated a
class of persons who are capable of this peculiar consecration, and to
whom is as definitely promised the vision of Him Whom the saints desire
to see. This same teacher, taking St. John as the type of the pure in
heart, would seem to indicate that all Christians are given the
opportunity of making by degrees a gradual and more perfect response to
the Divine Call, and that, as our Lord revealed Himself to the beloved
disciple in a threefold manner, as His Master, his Friend, and his God,
so He still shows Himself to those who surrender themselves, not only to
the joy of His friendship but also to the fellowship of His sufferings.
"As our Lord thus called St. John, He calls us out of the world. And,
like His beloved disciple, the darlings of His love, sheltered in the
life of the Church, hear a gracious invitation, and so abide with Him
that day and many days. But there are others with the same capacity for
purity of heart, who, in sin or unbelief, have wandered far from their
true home, and for these a different call is needed.
"In the frustration of hopes and ambitions, in the sudden fear that for
us life has no meaning, in the realisation that death is coming, and
after death the judgment, God is calling to us. We have gone on for a
long way in our loves and hates, our vanities and pleasures, our
imaginations and our sins, and one day the road crumbles beneath us.
The beloved is dead, youth is dead, pleasure is dead. Nothing matters
now. Why plan for the morrow, when the only reality is death?"
Dormer paused, moved a little, and said, still more quietly, "It is true
that for us this is the only reality--the death of the soul."
There was no doubt about Horatia's interest now. How was it that he knew
the very horror that gripped her, the fear of death, the fear of life?
She held her hands tightly together in her muff, wishing with all her
heart that she had listened earlier. He went on, speaking of the ways
that God uses to save a soul from death, but, because of her very
anxiety to hear, his utterance, exquisite as it was, dulled for a moment
or two to a mere buzz in her ears. Then her senses cleared, and she
heard him say: