"And, to save us from this death, it may be that God will use, as His

last weapon, loneliness. In loneliness He asks us, 'What seek ye?' In

loneliness we confess that we do not know His dwelling-place; in

loneliness, at last, we can no longer escape the challenge of His

merciful displeasure that bids us 'Come and see.' If still we hesitate,

it may be our very honesty that makes us afraid to go and see where He

dwells, for if we go with Him we must admit His claim, we must

acknowledge our fault, we must forgive the friend who has done us

irreparable wrong, we can never be as we were before.

"But if in the Divine mercy we yield ourselves captives to His love, and

loosed from sin we know Him in Whom we have believed, yet we may not

rest in this, the first sight of Jesus, for, like St. John, we are

called to a yet more intimate knowledge--the friendship of the Lord.

And here sincerity that is to become purity will pass into singleness of

heart. For if the surrender of ourselves to the Divine Will has to be

made over and over again before God can be glorified in us, still our

intention must be pure, our purpose must be sincere. He calls us,

indeed, to communion with Himself in sacrament and prayer while as yet

the work of transformation is hardly begun. And those who live with Him

day by day may still be a prey to resentment and to pride, to jealousy

and to ambition, and those who rest on His heart may fail to watch with

Him, may even forsake Him when wicked men lay hold on Him. But if, like

St. John, greatly, though dimly, desiring the Beatific Vision, they

grasp the cup of His Passion, crying out that they are able to drink of

it, our Lord, it may be, will take them at their word, and the power of

His Cross shall do for them what the joy of His Presence could never do.

"Who are the pure in heart, and whence came they? These are they which

came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them

white in the Blood of the Lamb."

*(2)*

Horatia emerged with her hostess between the twisted pillars of the

porch into the High, to a crowd of people, and the prospect of an Oxford

Sunday such as she loved. But she would have given anything to go back,

alone, into the emptying church, to pray to this new Christ, who had

called her--_her_--and to Whom she had not come. But she would come,

she would come, if only she could find the way.... "Where dwellest

Thou?"

"Excuse me a moment," said Mrs. Pusey, stopping to speak to someone, and

Horatia, waiting in the momentary press, heard one gentleman commoner

say to another, "Couldn't make anything of the sermon. Are all your

Fellows as unintelligible as that?" To which his companion, evidently

an Oriel man, responded, "I don't often hear them. But I can stand

'Mercy and Judgment' because he is at least short.--By Gad, there he is,

with Mr. Denison!" And he capped the two Fellows as they crossed the

street. Dormer was smiling as he returned the salute.

Horatia followed them with her eyes. Did he then know the friendship of

the Lord, walking in sober academic garb along an Oxford street? Could

people other than those in stained glass windows, dressed in reds and

blues against a background of palm-tree and lake, hear His call, know

His friendship, carry His cross? ...

"Pray forgive me!" said Mrs. Pusey's voice at her side. "Shall we go

past Oriel; it is shortest. No doubt we shall encounter Edward on his

way to meet us, if Cathedral is over, as I should guess it to be. Then

we might perhaps take a turn in the Broad Walk. It will do Edward good,

for his health is so precarious just now that I do not know how he is to

get on to the end of term."

As Horatia murmured her sympathy the two gowns disappeared under Oriel

gateway.

"Where dwellest Thou?" All through the remainder of the day the

question persisted, wrecking everything she did in the pleasant,

dignified atmosphere of Mr. Pusey's house. Were these kind, learned

people who sat round the Sunday dinner-table, were they the captives of

His love; had they been loosed from sin? She wished that Tristram could

have been there, sitting opposite to her. His familiar presence would

have steadied her. Even if he knew the meaning of all these phrases

there was nothing disturbing about him.

Later in the afternoon she watched Mr. Newman, the friend of the family,

sitting with the two elder children on his knee, while he put his

spectacles on their noses, or told them a story. What would happen if

she suddenly interrupted the story with her insistent question--"Do

_you_ know where He dwells?"

The interminable day came to an end at last, and she was alone in her

room. Without waiting to undress she flung herself down beside the bed.

"Where dwellest Thou, where dwellest Thou?" There was no one to answer,

nothing to see, only the rose and jasmine of the wall-paper, distorted

through the rain of tears.

She woke next morning in a very different frame of mind, more than a

little ashamed of her emotion of the day before. She might have been a

Methodist! It was not for her, this enthusiasm, and she ought not to

have been so discomposed. To have been carried away, against her will,

by the words of a man whom she disliked! She disliked, too, some of

what he had said, now that more of it came back to her. Life was made

for happiness; though sorrow intruded it was an incident to be

forgotten, not to be dwelt upon. Comfortably eating her breakfast in

her well-appointed room she felt sure of this, and knew that she, who

was certainly not ignorant of suffering, did not approve of its

glorification. What did Mr. Dormer know about it?

And yet ... she knew that she should not forget St. Mary's.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*(1)*

Mr. Dormer of Oriel was accustomed to assert that he felt no ill effects

from his Italian carriage accident, but, as a matter of fact, he never

went up or down any prolonged flight of stairs without being reminded of

the slight muscular weakness which it had left. So that when, about six

weeks after his sermon at St. Mary's, he came rather fast down the

sixty-five steps of the Bodleian library, and at the end of every group

of five arrived with some force upon his injured leg, he was so

reminded.

Outside, in the archway facing the Radcliffe and St. Mary's, their gowns

blown about by the wind which commonly sweeps through that passage, he

came on Newman and his curate, Isaac Williams, in converse with Mr.

Pusey.

"Wait a minute, Dormer," exclaimed the first-named, catching at him as

he was about to pass. "We are having a most interesting conversation."

"I was just saying to Mr. Newman," said the Canon, smiling and wrapping

his gown round him after a habit he had, "that I think you are all too

hard upon the Evangelicals. You should conciliate the Peculiars, as you

would call them. I am thinking of writing a letter myself for that

purpose."

"Were you!" exclaimed Newman. "Well, suppose you let us have that for

one of the Tracts?"

The young Regius Professor smiled his particularly sweet smile. "Oh,

no!" he replied, "I will not be one of you!" and they all moved out of

the archway together, Dormer taking the opportunity to ask Isaac

Williams for news of Keble.

Meanwhile Newman seemed to be arguing with his friend, and at last, as

they stood on the steps, he could be heard saying, "Suppose you let us

have that letter of yours, which you intend writing, and attach your own

name or signature to it? You would then not be mixed up with us, or be

in any way responsible for the Tracts."

"Well," said Pusey after a little hesitation, "if you will let me do

that I will."

He gave them a smiling farewell, and went off, in his usual rather

abstracted fashion, down Brasenose Lane.

"Come out with me to Littlemore, Dormer," urged Newman. "It is a

beautiful day. Isaac has some business of his own, I don't know what,

in Oxford. Come along, and we will sing paeans of thanksgiving for the

great victory obtained by the Apostolicals over the Regius Professor of

Hebrew."

And he set out with his curious swift gait, as if walking in heelless

slippers, along the side of All Souls, where two years ago a daring hand

had painted "No Bristol Riots."

"I must write to Froude at once," he continued. "How I wish we dared

take his advice and throw the Establishment men overboard! I am sure

that if he knew the trouble I have had with that good Palmer, on the

question of continuing the Tracts, he would pity me."

"If Pusey should end by casting in his lot with us," observed Dormer

thoughtfully, "it might make a difference."

"You mean that if we had him we could venture to row our own little

boat, because he could be all that Rose might be?"

"Well, yes, with his influence and his easy relations with the

University authorities.--Excuse me a moment, there's Mr. Grenville of

Compton Regis. I must just go across."

For they had by this time come abreast of the Angel in High Street,

where an elderly cleric was about to enter a post-chaise.

"Ah, Mr. Dormer," said the Rector heartily, "That's very kind of you to

come and speak to an old man. I'm just returned from a jaunt, I suppose

you may call it, to London, to my sister-in-law's. Oxford is looking

its best this morning. Yes, thanks, I'm very well, too, although I am

so bombarded with these Tracts--rather a turning of the tables, you

know, for we clergy are more accustomed to distributing than to

receiving such things. And I ought to obtain a meed of praise from you,

too, for I have just arranged a meeting next week, to get signatures to

the address to the Archbishops--though I think it rather a

milk-and-water thing myself ... Well, good-day."

"I hope Madame de la Roche-Guyon is well," observed Dormer, in the tones

of convention, as he opened the chaise door for him.

"Yes, quite well, thank you," replied the Rector, his foot on the step.

He hesitated, withdrew that member, and glancing round lowered his voice

to a confidential tone: "When I see how she welcomes _our friend's_

visits, I really begin to hope that it will all come right in the end!

So perhaps what has happened has been for the best!" His face beamed.

"How little we trust in Providence, Mr. Dormer! But there, I mustn't

keep you. Good-day!"

John Henry Newman had a rather silent companion on his walk to

Littlemore.

*(2)*

The chaise conveying Mr. Grenville from Oxford to Compton was, unknown

to Tristram, but a few miles in advance of him as he trotted along the

frosty Berkshire lanes that afternoon, revolving in his mind the points

in his tract on "The Church the Home of the Poor," of which he had left

the proofs with Horatia--proofs which he was going to reclaim before he

left next week for a "missionary tour" in Northamptonshire on business

connected with the Tracts.

Last Christmas, when he had come to think over his afternoon at Compton,

he knew that he would rather not see Horatia often. And a gradual

abstention would have been possible, though a little awkward, but the

Rector had insisted so much on the cheering effect of his visits, and

the necessity for Horatia of some outside interest that, as always where

she was concerned, he allowed his own feelings to be overridden. This

was not the time to consider himself, when she was in a situation so

poignantly pathetic, and when, for the first time in his life, he was

really able to be of some use to her. That there should be any talk in

the neighbourhood about his going to the Rectory seemed very unlikely,

seeing that it had been a second home to him since boyhood. Had he

suddenly kept away, there might have been something to talk about. And

that there should be any wrong impression left upon her mind was quite

unthinkable after he had once seen her. Never, in her teasing days, had

she seemed so remote as now in her kindness, and her sadness and her

motherhood. Nearly always, when he got back to Oxford, one or other of

the different strands of pain would ache almost unbearably, but since

the call to arms in July, and still more since the forging of weapons

was begun in September, this great interest which she shared with him

had made things easier for him. His going out there was no longer an

emotional strain, but almost a soldier's visit to a comrade at an

outpost, woman though she was. And this was indeed the spirit in which

he rode out to her to-day to reclaim his proofs.

But Mr. Grenville, blowing his nose very hard, met him in the hall.

"Horatia is greatly distressed," he said huskily. "She has had sad news

from France. I've only just got back myself and heard it. That

child--but there, I think you had better go in to her."

In the dining-room, her head on the table, which was strewn with sewing

materials, Horatia was crying as if her heart would break.

"It is poor little Claude-Edmond," she said between her sobs. "He's

dead ... poor darling ... poor dear little boy..." And she broke into

fresh weeping.

"Dead!" exclaimed Tristram horrified. "Emmanuel's son--that little

fellow! How..."

She could give him no answer for a moment, and in that pause, rent with

sobbing, he knew without acknowledging it that the sight of her grief

meant immeasurably more to him than its cause. He could not bear to see

her cry!

After a moment she raised her head and dabbed at her eyes, and lifted

them, all reddened and swollen, to his.

"You remember him, Tristram--such a dear little boy, so solemn and

polite? He was riding in the Bois de Boulogne a few days ago when his

horse took fright, and he was thrown--against a tree ... He only lived a

few hours.... O Tristram, when I think ... and he was such a comfort to

me once ... and they say he asked for me ... I can't bear it!"

And during this short recital of that almost intolerable tragedy, a

child's death, every vestige of colour ebbed from Tristram's face.

Before she had ended he had turned it from her.

"And does this ... this very sad news ... will it make any difference to

you, Horatia?"

"Any difference?" repeated she, not catching his real meaning, so

completely was she absorbed in thoughts of the dead boy. "Oh, you mean

Maurice being the heir now." Utterance failed her and she began to cry

again. "O, I can't bear to think of it!"

"Yes," said Tristram's voice, curiously insistent and toneless, "but

will it make any difference to you personally ... will you have to go

away--to live in France? I thought perhaps..."

"No, O, no, I don't think so." She sighed heavily. "I can do as I

please, I think. I suppose I shall be there more often, perhaps ... O

Tristram, why is God so cruel?"

He did not take up the challenge, but he looked at her very gravely.

"I do not know," he said. "I ... I must go back and write to poor

Emmanuel. I will come for those proofs again, or you can send them. I

am going away next week ... when I come back, perhaps..."

The Oxford road saw that evening the return of a man who, in all good

faith, had attempted a task beyond his strength, and who was now paying

bitterly enough for the discovery.

*CHAPTER IX*

*(1)*

From the bottom of Maurice's crib, wherein he lay fast asleep, his

favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against the rails, stared at him

reproachfully, for the little boy had taken to bed with him, against all

precedent, an old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose

hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his own. The rag

soldier probably felt his world tumbling around him.

And, indeed, the whole night-nursery was rather topsy-turvy. Maurice's

bath things were not cleared away, though the water was long cold, and

in the midst of downflung towels, soap, sponge and powder-puffs, sat his

mother herself, doing nothing. It was she who was responsible for the

disorder, for that dislocation in fact of the whole day which had been

so pleasant to Maurice. He was certainly not likely to complain when,

after breakfast, Mamma had sent Martha away and announced that she was

going to have him to herself, for a special reason. The reason was less

than nothing to Maurice, but the fact was delightful, implying a free

hand with the coal-box, while Mamma, instead of wanting to change his

frock, kept herself quiet with a piece of paper covered with black

marks, on which she from time to time let fall those tears which Maurice

himself could produce, though seldom so silently. The culmination of

being bathed by Mamma had led to a great deal of splashing, and to the

exhibition, which Martha would never let him complete, of his powers of

drinking water from his sponge. That his mother was quite incapable of

clearing up the mess which he and she had made together was not likely

to trouble him either, indeed he fell asleep too soon to realise this

deficiency.

And Horatia sat in the midst of the confusion, her eyes full of tears,

her chin on her hand, watching the sleeping child. She could not get

poor little Claude-Edmond out of her head. Most clearly of all she

remembered him at Plaisance, confiding to her his desire to resemble

Armand, to be able to ride, to fence.... Now they would neither of them

ever ride again.... And the death of the little boy had thrown across

her own life a shadow not only of regret, but of menace. For in her lap

lay the testimony to the triumph of the indomitable spirit of an old

lady over the Code Napoleon, under whose aegis Horatia had fondly

imagined herself and Maurice to be sheltering.

The letter had come yesterday morning, the third day after her interview

with Tristram. It was quite simple. The Duchesse's lawyer wrote that

his venerable client was about to make her will for the last time, a

course necessitated by the recent unfortunate death of the little heir.

As Madame la Comtesse was no doubt aware, the ancient and noble family

of La Roche-Guyon was extremely impoverished. Nothing indeed but the

great private fortune of the Dowager Duchess had enabled it to keep up

the appearance due to its rank. The bulk of this fortune the Duchesse

was now proposing to settle upon the child of her late dearly-beloved

younger grandson--on one condition. Madame la Comtesse must renounce

entirely her plan of bringing him up in England; with or without her he

must return to France by the time he was five--though in deference to

the last wishes of her dear grandson he should be allowed to pass some

years at an English school. But he must be brought up as a Frenchman,

as the heir of the family which he would one day represent, and Madame

la Comtesse was to signify her willingness to return to Paris for three

or four months as early as possible in the New Year. If she refused to

comply with these conditions the Duchesse's money, after the deaths of

her son and elder grandson, would be left to distant relatives of her

own family, and the future Duc de la Roche-Guyon would find himself the

almost penniless inheritor of his great name and position.

Stunning though this ultimatum was, it had not taken Horatia long to

decide that Maurice must go. She could not be the means of beggaring her

child. He must go--but was she to go too? It was true that the Duchesse

had not had the brutality to suggest an immediate separation from his

mother, but the two years and ten months which lay between him and his

fifth birthday would soon pass. If she went, good-bye to all her old

home life, taken up again and found so peaceful and so dear; good-bye to

her father who had recovered her with so much joy.

And good-bye to Tristram.....

But if she stayed, good-bye to that head of curls on the pillow. O no,

no, she could never do that! She slipped to her knees and clutched at

the cot rails. "My darling! I could not! I could not!"

And yet, on the other side of the crib seemed to stand Tristram, looking

at her as he had looked three mornings ago, his voice fallen to that

strange tone, "Will it make any difference to you, Horatia?" the only

real evidence that she had of his wanting her--since his visits and his

obvious pleasure in them could all be accounted for by their long

friendship--but evidence enough. Yes, it had actually come to the

choice, all unforeseen, between her child and the man ... she loved.

The issue must be decided, too, within a week, for the Duchesse insisted

on an immediate answer. This was why she had spent the day with Maurice,

"to help her to decide"--a proceeding not free from the charge of

indulgence in sentiment.

*(2)*

And yet she had not made up her mind when she heard her father, who had

been out all day, coming heavily up the nursery stairs.

"My dear," he said, astonished, "why are you up here alone? Martha is

wandering about outside waiting to come in to you. It is too much for

you to do all this for the child by yourself, and why should you?"

To which his daughter responded, in an appealing tone not far from

tears, "O Papa, I can't leave him, I can't leave him!"

"Well, my dear," remarked Mr. Grenville, approaching the crib, "you can

leave him now, at any rate, for he is fast asleep, and Martha can sit

with him instead of catching cold on the landing. Come, come, we will

go down into the library and leave her to clear up. Yes, come in!" And

as Martha entered and fell to work on the disorder he put Horatia's hand

through his arm and led her out.

In the library she settled down in her favourite attitude on a stool at

his feet, and for a time nothing much was said, except that the Rector,

as he stroked her hair, would mutter, "It is very hard, very difficult,

my love," and, at intervals, "I should never have expected it of them,

never!"

At last Horatia broke out passionately, "I can't let Maurice be a

pauper! He will have to go, and I--I think I must go with him." With

that she escaped from her father's caress, and putting her head in her

hands began to cry.

The Rector got up, found a box of Prometheans, went successfully through

the process of pinching out the sulphuric acid, at the end, on to the

chlorate of potash and sugar (in which he generally burnt his fingers),

obtained a flame and lit a couple of candles. Then he sighed heavily,

sat down again, and drawing his chair up close to Horatia took hold of a

hand and made her rest her head on his knee.

"Now, my dearest child," he began, "I am going to speak very plainly to

you. I do not think these tears are for me. No, don't say anything

about that! It's all quite right. I should not wish them to be. I

think Tristram is at the bottom of this."

For answer he saw her getting crimson behind the ears, and heard her

murmur faintly, "O Papa!"

"Well, my dear, it's very right and natural, and nothing to be ashamed

of. I have thought that I have seen signs, for some time, and I have

been very thankful, very thankful. He is the right husband for you."

"I thought, Papa," came a stifled voice, "that you did not approve of

second marriages."

"Perhaps not," replied the Rector, "but this is different, and Tristram

has wanted you all his life."

"But how do I know that he wants me now?"

"That," said the Rector with conviction, "is very apparent; in fact, I

was on the verge of speaking to him about it last week."

"Papa!" ejaculated his daughter, sitting up.

"Yes, we understand one another," went on Mr. Grenville, smiling, for

there was unmistakably more pleasure than horror in her protest. "I

have known more about all this, my dear, than you have. You never knew,

because Tristram would not allow me to tell you, but he was going to

propose to you, the very week that poor Armand came to visit him."

"Tristram was going to propose to me again," said Horatia slowly, "and

yet he made the way easy for me to marry Armand!"

"One of his extraordinary notions, my dear. 'If she wanted the moon, I

would get it for her,' he said. I have often thought that it was not

for nothing that he had a fanatic for a father. He is one in a

thousand, but of course, before now, he has seemed to me unnecessarily

quixotic. I have meant to tell you this, Horatia, but I thought things

were best without my interference. Still it is but right, now that the

crisis has come, for you to know all that I do. It is my belief that

Tristram is only hindered at this very moment from speaking by some idea

of propriety. Or perhaps he feels that his prospects are not yet

assured. Still, it is clear that he must declare himself in the near

future, unless he wants to lose you altogether. If only it were

possible to give him a little encouragement!"

"_I_ couldn't give him encouragement!" exclaimed Horatia in a tone of

horror.

"I was not suggesting such a thing for a moment, my love. I was only

saying if it were possible. I feel something could be done, ought to be

done ... Let me see, how much time have we?"

Horatia had twisted round on her footstool and was now facing him with

flushed cheeks. "A week. And, O Papa, even if he did ... if he wanted

me to marry him, how could I let Maurice go without me?"

The Rector bent forward. He had the air of thorough and pleasurable

mastery of the situation.

"My dear, let us be quite clear about that anyhow! I'm as fond of the

boy as if he were my own, but I think you would do very wrong to deprive

him of a stepfather like Tristram. After all, if you take him to France

for a few months next year you may keep him until he is five years old.

It was the Jesuits who said, 'Give us a child until he is five and we

will make anything of him.' (No, now I come to think of it, it is

'until he is seven,' but no matter.) Very well then, until that age you

and Tristram can bring him up, and you see already how he takes to

Tristram. After that the parting will be hard for you, I do not doubt,

but the time will soon come for him to return to England to school, and,

if you agree in the main to the conditions, the Duchesse is not likely

to wish to drive such a hard bargain that you cannot occasionally have

him for his holidays ... Besides, we may hope that you will have other

children."

"Papa, do you really mean all this?" asked Horatia thoughtfully. "I

have never looked at it in that light."

"I do indeed mean it, but the question is, what is to be done? There is

not too much time," said the Rector, pursing his lips. "This needs

careful consideration." And, apparently, he considered, and Horatia

too. At any rate she was silent, looking into the fire.

Finally Mr. Grenville gave an exclamation. "I have it! Did you not

say, my dear, that you had to send back a proof of Tristram's to him?

What more natural than to enclose the letter from the Duchesse's lawyer,

and say that you would value his advice, or something of the sort?"

Horatia turned over and over the locket with the little curl of

Maurice's hair that she wore.

Then she said, very quietly, "Yes, I will do it."

*(3)*

"My dear Horatia,

"I feel with you very much in the difficulty of the decision. It will

be hard for the Rector to part with you again so soon, but I know you

both too well to imagine that you can hesitate for long where Maurice's

interests are concerned.

"For myself, I need not say how, after this year of renewed friendship,

I shall miss your help and sympathy, but I have come to feel that my

life is not my own. Wherever you go, whatever you do, may God bless you

always!--T.H."

This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast four mornings

later, and which lay in her pocket all through that meal and for some

time afterwards, not because she did not wish her father to see it,

since he was away for the night, but because she dared not open it. In

her own room, the door locked, she read it at last, once not

understanding, the second time unbelieving, the third time understanding

too well.

Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to hide the scorching

blush that, though she was alone, spread itself from the nape of her

neck to the roots of her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of

fire over her whole body. He had refused her! Under the guise of

asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la Roche-Guyon--Horatia

Grenville--had, practically, offered herself to a man, and he had

refused her! And this man was Tristram!

After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took up the letter

again, and, reading it for the fourth time, she received yet a new

impression. This did not seem to be Tristram at all who wrote to her;

it was like the voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a

veil hung between her and the man who had penned those words--words

which, as she could see, had been chosen to spare her, words which made

no reference to what the writer must have known was in her mind. But

they were final enough, in all conscience!

She put the letter down on her dressing-table. Yes, that was what it

was like--a dictated letter, a letter which another person had made him

write....

There was something that she did not understand. She got up and began to

walk about the room, the first biting shame of the repulse a little

blunted by contact with her own imperious temper and by a certain

bewilderment. She had a feeling that there was, somewhere, what her

father would have called "hokey-pokey." And, as she arrived at that

conclusion, she saw it all in a flash, and wondered how she could have

been so stupid. Tristram had of course been "got hold of" by the Oriel

people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on celibacy. That was

what he meant by writing that he had come to feel his life not his own.

That was, no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had

taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable glorification of

suffering as a part of Christianity at which her whole soul revolted.

Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger. Illogically enough, though

she had endured many qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his

refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram himself wanted to

marry her, that "they" were preventing him. Well, they should see!

She carried this fighting mood about with her for an hour or so while

she ordered the household and visited Maurice, who this morning was

greatly intrigued by the presence of frost on the window-pane, a

phenomenon, like many others, still strange to him. But all the while

she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was slowly slipping away

from her. At half-past ten she returned to her room, took out the

letter and read it again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.

No, it was not so simple. Something much more was here than the

combatting of the influence of others. One thing, if one alone in life,

the most ardent fighter should shrink from lifting sword against, a

man's conscience. Had she not recently felt the reawakened stirrings of

her own? And in this matter, however it came there, was some deep

conviction of Tristram's. He could not, otherwise, have written so.

And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking of him whom she

knew so well, she began to realise what he must be suffering at having

to answer her thus. She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and

thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion, that would do

anything in the world for her, so as it was not against his conscience.

Could not she, then, who had never, perhaps, been anything but a source

of pain to him, could not she do something for him--take the disturbing

element of herself out of his life, because, for his real happiness, she

would be better gone, and go, without an attempt to hold him, to that

other life where duty was calling her? ... The way was open, if she were

strong enough to follow it.

But she must be sure that such a renunciation would be for Tristram's

happiness. She must be sure that he really had this conviction. In her

present mood she could almost have gone and asked Tristram himself, had

she not known that he was away from Oxford. And the time was drawing

very near when she must answer the Duchesse's letter.

But there was one person who could probably tell her as well as Tristram

himself--Mr. Dormer, if he had not gone down. She could not write to

him on such a matter. She would have to go and see him. The unusualness

of the step gave her only a momentary pause. Even though it were not

proper for her, a young woman--if a widow--to go and call on an

unmarried man in his College rooms she did not care. At the worst she

could get the Puseys to ask him to Christ Church and she could talk to

him there. But she knew that only the most direct method would really

satisfy her. The matter was too pressing and too desperate to admit of

considering the proprieties.

Nevertheless, some three hours later, as she followed the porter across

the quadrangle at Oriel, she was already regretting her precipitancy,

and it was with a throbbing heart that she heard him announce her name

in the mangled fashion to which she was becoming accustomed in England.

But the room was empty. It was undeniable relief, and had the porter,

apologising for his mistake, not adjured her to take a seat, as Mr.

Dormer could not be long, she would have brought out the words of excuse

already on her lips and fled. But that everyday form--its visage not

untouched by curiosity--was a barrier to escape more effectual than any

sword-girt angel, and she obeyed.

So she was left, with a sulky little fire for company, to wait. For

some time she was too restless to sit down, and wandered between the

fireplace and the window. The room did not strike her as uncomfortable,

and it was very orderly, except for the big table in the middle, which

was strewn with books and papers, as if the occupant had been

interrupted in his work. There was a good deal of old furniture, some

of it beautiful, and the walls could not look bare, for they were almost

completely lined with books. Indeed the only picture that she noticed

was an engraving over the hearth of Velasquez' Christ on the Cross,

straight and stark against its background of more than night, the face

shadowed by the falling hair. Horatia felt suddenly afraid, she knew

not of what, and going as far as possible from the print, sat down by

the window.

The only thing that comforted her was the sight of some Christmas roses

in a saucer, standing among the books and papers, close to their owner's

chair.

*CHAPTER X*

*(1)*

Dormer, in academical dress, was entering under Oriel gateway when the

porter accosted him.

"If you please, Sir, there's a lady waiting to see you in your rooms.

She asked for you, and thinking you was there I showed her up. A French

name, I fancy."

The young Fellow mechanically took the card held out to him. "A French

name" could announce only one lady. But on what errand had she come?

For the first time in his life he was afraid. Then he set his face like

a flint and crossed the quadrangle towards his staircase.

And in his sitting-room, in the low chair by the window where, in his

time at least, no woman had ever sat, very pale, clad in black but

wearing costly furs, with the light on her hair, was the woman who had

wasted Tristram's years, and whose happiness was always to be bought at

the cost of his.

"I must apologise for keeping you waiting, Madam," he said coldly, as he

closed the door. "Please do not move! The porter told me you were

here." He laid his cap on the table. "There is something particular

that you wish to see me about?"

"Yes," said Horatia, "there is something that I have come to ask you."

She turned her head and glanced out of the window, and then looked again

at her host, standing with exceeding stiffness in his gown and hood.

"But now that I am here I hardly know how to put it into words."

"If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate," observed Dormer

with icy politeness, and then, seeing that she did not speak, he sat

down by the side of his big table and looked away. He felt miserably

sure that she had come to say something about Tristram, but that, being

a lady, she would not reach the point for another half-hour or so. He

was therefore entirely taken by surprise when he heard her say, after a

moment:

"I am going to ask you a very extraordinary question, Mr. Dormer. I

want you to tell me if Tristram--if Mr. Hungerford has come to think

that it is better for the clergy not to marry?"

Startled though he was, Dormer fell instantly on guard. "Is not that a

question, Madam," he returned, "which it would be better for you to ask

Mr. Hungerford himself?"

"Could I bring myself to that," assented Horatia, "it would be better."

"He is not in Oxford at present, I know," suggested Dormer, "but he will

be back by the sixteenth."

"I must know before that," said Horatia gravely.

And Dormer had a sudden temptation. He felt more sure than ever that

Tristram had got himself into a tangle. Here and now he could probably

cut it for him. But he would not play Providence. It was one thing to

warn Tristram, quite another to extricate him behind his back and

without his consent ... So his tone was even colder than before as he

said, "If the matter is urgent I regret that I cannot help you, but I

think you can understand that I am unwilling to discuss my friend's

affairs, even with another of his friends." And he rose, as if to

intimate that the interview was over.

But his visitor did not rise. On the contrary she said, with warmth,

"Yes, I quite see that, but..." She bit her lip. "If you knew, you

would not be so punctilious, Mr. Dormer. Will you not let me tell you?"

"Really," said Dormer, hesitating a trifle, "I hardly know what to say,

but I would much rather not be the recipient of any confidences.

Surely, Madam, the matter is not so pressing but that you can wait for

Tristram's return."

Horatia laughed rather bitterly.

"Mr. Dormer, you need not be so much afraid. We will not speak of

Tristram then. If you will tell me your own views on the subject it

will be quite enough. It is not easy for me to come to you--you must

know that! I only do it because ... O, well, that does not matter."

Dormer sat down with a resigned sigh by the side of the table, and said

briefly, "Please tell me anything you wish."

"Thank you," said Horatia; collected herself and started. "I am afraid

I must trouble you with some personal details. You probably know that a

good many years ago Tristram asked me to marry him. I was singularly

young and foolish, and I refused him. You may also know that, as I have

learnt quite recently, he was on the verge of asking me again in the

autumn of 1830." Dormer inclined his head. "What my answer would have

been I do not know. But shortly afterwards I married my late husband.

Our marriage was an unhappy one."

Here she came to a full stop, and got no help from her listener, who was

looking down at an ink-pot.

"It was largely my own fault, but I have suffered, and if ever anyone

wanted to forget the past I have wanted to forget it." For a second her

voice trembled, then it recovered. "In my old home again, with my

father, it seemed sometimes as if I should succeed. And although

Tristram was changed, yet he was the same, and latterly it has seemed to

me that he was indeed the same, and that ... it is very difficult for me

to tell you..."

Dormer looked up. "I think I can understand," he said, with something

different in his voice.

"Thank you. I was right ... and I was wrong. I cannot explain it, but

I must just ask you to believe that I was not utterly blinded by vanity,

and on the other hand that Tristram did and said nothing that could not

be accounted for by his long and extraordinary friendship."

"That is quite easy for me to believe," replied Dormer; but he seemed to

have a slight difficulty in speaking.

"The end came a week ago," pursued Horatia. And she explained, as

shortly as she could, the bombshell which the Dowager Duchesse had cast

into her plans, finishing by saying, "I felt almost confident that

Tristram only waited for some sign from me ... and yet I could not bring

myself to give it. But time was pressing, and I must decide about the

boy. My father urged me to send the letter I had received to Tristram,

and to ask his advice. It ... it was ... unusual, I know ... but I did

so--and this morning I received his answer. I think you had better read

it."

Dormer got up and took with obvious reluctance the paper which she held

out to him. He read it, flushed violently, and became very pale.

"I don't want you to say anything," said Horatia hurriedly. "When I got

this letter this morning I saw it all in a flash. It has only needed

your hesitation to make me quite sure that I was right. From time to

time I have heard the views of his friends here at Oriel about the

marriage of the clergy, but somehow--it was stupid of me--it never

occurred to me that he shared them. But that of course is the key to

the situation. He is bound by some vow not to marry."

Her hearer during this speech had stationed himself by the fire, his

head bent, with a hand on the high mantelshelf; his arm, in consequence,

hid his face. She could not even see it now, as he said, in a voice

noticeably less hostile. "There I think you are wrong. As I see now

that it is quite unnecessary for me to keep anything from you, I can

tell you that, to my knowledge, he has never taken any kind of vow, but

that, even before his ordination as priest, he had a solemn intention to

embrace the life of sacrifice to the glory of God. But it was a solemn

intention, not a vow."

"Intention or vow," returned Horatia, "it would be all the same to

Tristram. And please do not speak to me of sacrifice and the glory of

God! I do not believe that the Creator is glorified by the

self-inflicted suffering of His creatures. But if you speak to me of

Tristram's happiness, or of his conscience, which is more than happiness

to him, then I can understand you."

"You are right about Tristram's conscience," said Tristram's friend.

"Yet I believe that I can still bring him back to me if I choose to,"

said Horatia rather defiantly. The challenge drew from Charles Dormer a

bow which was more eloquent than many words.

"But I do not mean to try," she finished. "I am quite sure that

Tristram is deluded, yet if this delusion has become a matter of

conscience with him, he would not long remain happy with me. What I

want to find out is how firmly he is fixed in this idea, and how he

would look at his action later on if he married me. This is where you

can help me, Mr. Dormer, for I know that you are his second self. In

the end he would come to think as you think now. I want you to tell me,

first, if in your opinion it would ever be right to go back upon what

you call a solemn intention?"

Dormer saw now that he was being forced into the position which he had a

short time ago rejected almost with regret--that of an executioner.

Now, strangely enough, he hated it.

"Yes," he said, "from our point of view it would be right ... under

certain circumstances."

"And would you think," asked Horatia, looking down and hesitating,

"would you consider the fact that I have become a widow since his

resolve was taken an exceptional circumstance?"

"I am afraid," replied Dormer reluctantly, "that it would entirely

depend on how far Tristram had committed himself already to the idea of

the single life. You see it is impossible for me to discuss this from

any but what I am sure you would call a fanatical standpoint." He

smiled fleetingly, without mirth.

"But supposing he was committed very far ... would it be right to ... to

go back?"

It had to be done. "No," said Dormer in a low voice. "No, I am afraid

it would not."

*(2)*

Across the silence there came a faint clattering sound, probably a tray

from the buttery being taken to someone's rooms. Stillness fell again.

Then the voice of an undergraduate not yet gone down was heard inquiring

in a shout what that ass Simpson had done with his carpet bag. Horatia

got up from her chair and began to pull down her veil.

"I do not think you need be afraid of me any longer," she said with a

sort of smile. "There is only one way for me to answer the Duchesse's

letter. Thank you for speaking so plainly to me. You have been very

patient, and I am more than grateful. Would you have the goodness to

send to see if my carriage is at the gate?"

She stooped for her muff, which had slipped to the floor, but, hearing

no movement, glanced round and saw Dormer still standing between the

table and the hearth, blocking her exit, his eyes fixed on her. And as

with a faint surprise she gazed at him he seemed to alter. The

sternness had gone from his face; it looked, if possible, still more

sad, but she could hardly believe that this was the man against whom,

for the last half-hour, she had been fighting. And she heard him say,

with singular gentleness--

"'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for

his friends.' May our Lord of His great mercy comfort you!"

"Don't, don't say that sort of thing to me!" exclaimed Horatia. "I am

doing nothing at all heroic. It is only necessity. It has nothing to

do with God or religion, or because I believe for one moment in

Tristram's foolish ideas--it is because ... because..." It was

impossible to go on, for his voice had touched some secret spring in

her, some deep-buried self which, suddenly released, was struggling to

respond--as once before, at the same voice, it had struggled in St.

Mary's. She sat down again and hid her face in her hands.

"Because," said Dormer, still more gently, "you have found out the

secret of love--the willingness to go without the beloved for the

beloved's sake."

"I do not know what I have found out," said Horatia after a moment,

passing her handkerchief over her eyes. "I am only following an

instinct. I mean to go back to France, and after that ... I don't care

much what happens." She paused again. "With Tristram I should have

been safe. He was my hope. I know I have done wrong, very wrong, but

am I never to be forgiven, never to be allowed to forget the past?--O!"

she broke out passionately, "your God is a cruel God! He is cruel to

Tristram and to me. I don't believe what you said in your sermon about

suffering--I can't believe it and I won't believe it! ... Why are you

making me talk to you?"

"Because I want to help you. Will you not let me try--for Tristram's

sake?"

Horatia looked at him for a moment, then she rose and went to the

window. When she turned round again, some three minutes later, the

buried self had won, and, not ungenerous in victory, had given her

composure for its purpose.

"You are the only person who could help me," she said very simply. "But

it is such a long story, and I ought not to take up your time."

"I have plenty of time," replied Dormer with equal simplicity. "If you

will sit down, and tell me what you can, I daresay I can fill in the

gaps."

"I thought my marriage was the ... the 'vision splendid,'" began Horatia

after a little, "I was mistaken; but there was still something

remaining, only I was exacting and foolish, and refused to make the best

of what I had ... At last I heard two miserable women speaking of the

infidelity of my husband, and the name coupled with his was ... that of

my greatest friend. There were proofs with which I need not trouble you

... I taxed him with it, but he denied it. I would not believe him. I

told him I hated him and his child. It was then that Maurice was born.

For many weeks I visited my hatred of my husband on the child. For a

long time I would not let them bring my baby near me ... and I

definitely refused to believe my husband, who still protested his

innocence, or to have anything more to do with him. I"--her voice began

to falter--"practically drove him from me to do the very thing of which

I had falsely accused him.... I think I lost all faith in God, and I

believe that I wished to die."

"It would be at that time," asked Dormer, to help her, "that Tristram

and I came to see you?"

"Yes ... and that was somehow ... a turning point for me. During the

cholera I was away with Maurice, and it was then that I began to be a

little sorry. I think I meant to take Armand back into favour by

degrees. But when I returned to Paris he had already left for Vendee.

Soon afterwards I heard that the rising had proved a failure, and that

he was in hiding. I followed as quickly as I could to our house in the

country ... and it was there that the news was brought to me that he had

been shot."

"By the Orleanists?"

"Yes." Horatia hesitated. "He ... he was shot in saving the life of

that lady ... who was never what I thought her. His death prevented

that."

"How do you know this?"

"Because in his delirium I heard everything."

"You were with him when he died?"

Horatia made a great effort. "Yes. My friend ... whom he loved ...

whom he would have married had he not met me ... took him dying to her

house ... and sent for me to be with him at the last."

"Yes?" said Dormer.

And Horatia went on, more and more agitated. "I shall see him lying in

that bed fighting with death until I die ... and it was I who sent him

to his death ... it was my hardness that drove him to someone who really

loved him.... And ... and," she choked down a sob, "it was for her that

he died ... not for me."

She came to a full stop.

"Yes, I see," said the priest, but in the tone of one who thinks there

is more to come.

Horatia went on again, almost inaudibly. "I hear him crying out, in the

night when I wake, 'Leave your scruples, Laurence, she does not believe

me,' and then again, 'Why do you send for Horatia ... she would not care

... I am nothing to her now; she told me so.'"

Her listener had himself put his hand over his eyes, but he gave no

sign, and at last Horatia finished.

"He would not forgive me ... he said there was nothing to forgive ...

and I have felt--I still feel--that God has not forgiven me, that He has

punished me, and that He will go on punishing me."

She had been speaking in a very low voice, and there was now hardly a

sound outside. Inside the room there was the sort of silence that could

be cut. It might have been lasting for centuries or for

seconds--Horatia could not tell--when Dormer broke it.

"I will not ask you if you have been able to forgive that unhappy lady,

who you say was once your friend, but are you able sometimes to feel

compassion for her?"

"I doubt if I know what you mean by forgiveness," answered Horatia. "I

only know that once, perhaps, I hoped that she might suffer, because I

had suffered so much, and that now I cannot bear to think of what she is

doing at this moment."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I did not tell you. I was staying some weeks ago with a friend in

Devonshire, and we had to take a letter to a convent near, a convent of

French nuns. There was a novice scrubbing some flags; she did not see

me, but I saw her, and it was Laurence, Laurence whom I had not seen

since ... since..."

"I understand."

"Laurence," went on Horatia fiercely, "who was more sinned against than

sinning.... Yes, I know that now! I have always known it, but I tried

to excuse my husband. Laurence was rich and admired, and could have

everything she wanted, and now she has not enough to eat, and she does

menial work, and spends hours in prayer--and all for Armand's soul. It

is an order of perpetual intercession. And I who was his wife--I am

feeling that life holds very little for me because I cannot marry

Tristram! What is there to forgive now!"

"I should not be quite prepared to say that," replied Dormer, looking

rather staggered, "but I am quite certain of one thing. If you have

been able to forgive so wholeheartedly the irreparable injury done to

you, I do not think that you will have long to wait for the assurance of

your own forgiveness." He hesitated, as if he were not sure whether he

should say more, and taking up one of the Christmas roses from the

saucer, looked at it intently for a moment. Then he went on, "You

understand, do you not, that the power of the keys is in the Church of

England, and that those who cannot quiet their own consciences (as the

Exhortation says) have a right to avail themselves of it. I think you

should do so. That God has forgiven you I have no doubt, but even if

after absolution you should have to wait for that conviction, you will

be able to take it as your penance, remembering that the forgiven soul

does not want to escape, it longs for the cleansing fires which alone

can fit it for the presence of its Lord."

"I should deserve to wait for the feeling of forgiveness, but am I to

think that this also is the penalty of sin, that God is pursuing me and

tracking me down? He is taking Tristram from me; what more does He

want?"

Dormer leant forward, and spoke very quietly, but with great intensity.

"It is you yourself that He wants. He is stripping you of everything

because by love or by fear He will save you. From all eternity you have

belonged to the God Who died for you. Everything in your life and in

your circumstances has existed in order to bring you nearer to Him.

Even now, when you have misused His gifts, your sin and your suffering

can be turned by His mercy into the means of bringing you back to Him.

But it is on one condition. You must submit. You must give up your

will to Him."

"But how can I give up my will, when all my life I have followed my own

way?"

"Our Lord will show you how, if you ask Him. He will teach you by

degrees, do not doubt that."

"I think I hardly understand what you mean," said Horatia with great

hesitation, "but if I pray to be able to do this, will He--will our Lord

save me from myself, and shall I in the end find rest?"

Dormer did not answer at once. He looked up (it seemed to Horatia

unconsciously) at the print over the hearth, and she heard him sigh.

"Yes, He will save you, but it will be by the Cross; for it is only in

the Cross that there is safety, and in the Cross that there is rest. If

you go back to France, and bring up your son in the best traditions of

his family, your life will be full, and not empty. That is where you

must look for comfort. Think of what it means to have a child, your own

child, to give back to God. It is a high vocation and peace waits for

you. I think God has sent you a child to show you where to find it."

As he went to open the door for her she said, "Mr. Dormer, there is

something else ... I should like you to feel that you can say

anything--I mean that you can tell Tristram anything about me which you

think can help him. It is worse for him than for me. I shall write to

him, of course, but you will know what to say.... He will be so ... so

hurt."

*CHAPTER XI*

*(1)*

The stone-rimmed basin in the old Physic Garden, fringed with a few

yellowing reeds, held water that seemed as black as night, water that

reflected, clear and blacker still, the bare interlaced boughs of a

great tree beside it. And in this dark net, like a silver fish

entangled in waterweeds, lay the shining half-moon, brilliant already,

though it was only half-past four of a December afternoon. It was an

afternoon, too, of extraordinary radiance, as if to mark that herald day

of Christmas when the longing of the Church, no more to be suppressed,

bursts through the monitory thoughts of Advent, in pure joy and

expectation, with the first of the great antiphons of Magnificat, and

hails as the Eternal Wisdom the Child so soon to come.

But there was nothing of this in the heart of the man who sat, his head

in his hands, on a seat by the little pond. Reading, an hour ago, in

his lodgings, the letter which he had just returned from

Northamptonshire to find, he had felt that he must get out,

away--anywhere--and pushing up the narrow, screaming High Street of St.

Thomas's, past the Castle keep, had come, through St. Ebbe's, full on to

the front of Christ Church, looking, in the golden light, like the

battlements of an ethereal city. But he had gone blindly forward, and

found himself, at last, in the old walled garden which had seen so many

generations of flower and seed.

Horatia's letter had been quite ordinary, speaking of the child, of his

future, the necessity of her care, the joy that he was to her. But, of

course, she understood ... And three years ago he would willingly have

died for her; now he could not even live for her! As for his own letter

of last week, he could not think how he had ever brought himself to

write it--and yet were it to write again, he must have said the same.

He belonged, now, body and soul, to a force whose demands on some lives

were so exorbitant as to come into mortal conflict even with the best

and holiest human claims.

He ought never to have gone to Compton; he ought to have left Oxford, at

whatever cost of unkindness. He could not say that it had been only pain

to go and see her, and since he could not even now accuse himself of

having done or said anything amiss, it must have been that his pleasure

was visible.... He felt an outcast, a pariah. How deeply he had sinned

against God he could not fathom, but he had sinned, it seemed to him

irretrievably, against the code in which he had been brought up. For if

he was a Christian and a priest he was a gentleman, too ... or had been.

The thought of Dormer came into his mind as he sat there. Dormer would

understand--he would despise him, no doubt, but he would understand. He

could never tell him. He was sitting among his books in that well-known

room scarcely a quarter of a mile away, yet a thousand miles might be

between them. He could never tell him, because of Horatia. Besides, he

had lost the habit of close intercourse.

And in his misery he did not know that Dormer was at that moment

standing on the other side of the basin, looking at him, across the

drowned moon, with the profoundest tenderness, wondering whether he

could speak to him now. Only, after a while, he was conscious of

someone on the seat beside him, and felt an arm laid across his

shoulders.

"Tristram, Tristram, don't sit here in the cold like this.... Come to

my rooms.... I know all about it--she has told me; I have seen her and

she wants me to tell you that she understands.... You must not take it

so hardly; it is all quite simple, and ... and wonderful, it seems to

me.... My dear, dear fellow, I don't want to pester you, but if you

would only come away..." Dormer's voice, ordinarily so cool and

restrained, broke suddenly.

There was a silence; Tristram did not move. A London coach rolled over

the bridge; the chimes of Magdalen struck a quarter to five. Dormer

slowly took away his arm.

And at that Tristram removed one of his hands from his face, and put it

out gropingly towards him.

"Carissime..."

*(2)*

The actual writing of the letter to Tristram had not cost Horatia the

effort that she had anticipated. She hardly felt, indeed, what she was

renouncing, for everything was swallowed up in the sense of rest, a

feeling that was partly a physical reaction, due to the intensity of the

emotional strain of her interview with Dormer. She seemed to be floating

in a sea of such mental and spiritual relief as she had not known for

years. Such peace as she had compassed in the summer--she knew it

now--had only been a drugged peace after all.

She had had to tell her father. That had not been easy. Yet she had,

somehow, dominated his bitter disappointment. She did not show him

Tristram's letter, but she did not keep from him the fact that she had

been to Oriel. Perfectly calm, and not, apparently, in an exalted

state, she yet produced on the Rector the impression of some change so

profound as to make her seem another person. He was, if the truth be

told, a little alarmed.

But it was the letter which, two days later, she was obliged to write to

the Duchesse that really showed Horatia what she was losing. Madame de

la Roche-Guyon had said that she should have her own establishment if

she wished. It occurred to Horatia, rather bitterly, how much to be

envied she would seem to her friends--young, titled, rich, her own

mistress, with the entree to the most exclusive society in the world;

and yet--and yet, even with the child, all these advantages were as a

pinch of dust. Better to be by Tristram's side in some tiny parsonage,

in some dull village...

And when this really came home to her she suddenly threw down the pen

and covered her face, an action which was the cause of the straggling

blot on the page which, later, drew forth from the Duchesse strictures

on the untidiness of the English.

But Horatia, neglecting the blot, took up the pen again and went on

without flinching to the end. In spite of the sense of suffering, she

had something which she had not before. For the first time in her life

she could really pray. And already, on this and the days that followed,

she had some inkling of what Dormer had meant, some taste of the peace

that truly comes to the resigned will. In this ocean of rest she lived

for some days, thinking sometimes how wonderful it was that it should

have enclosed her, with all her turbulent desires, in so sudden a

gentleness, but not unconscious that its waves broke quietly over a rock

of regret.

*(3)*

"Darling, what are you doing?" she exclaimed, coming suddenly into the

study, and surprising her father on his hands and knees on the

hearthrug, surrounded by a medley of objects, and trying to stuff

something into a large stocking--trying also, with incomplete success,

to hide from her both stocking and litter.

"Well, my dear, Christmas will be upon us before very long, and I

thought I would try whether they will go in," said the Rector,

attempting to pull out the bulky object, which, having refused to enter

the stocking now equally refused to be extracted.

He looked ten years older than he had done at the time of their

conversation in the night nursery a few days ago. Horatia's heart smote

her as--not for the first time--she realised the change, and her eyes

were full of tears when, kneeling down by him she put her arms round him

and kissed the white hair by his temple.

"Dearest Papa, you can't be going to give him all those toys; it will be

so bad for him! Keep some of them for next Christmas."

She had said it without thinking.

"And where ... where will he be then?" asked her father rather gulpily.

A single tear splashed on to the drum which he had succeeded in pulling

from the stocking. Horatia bit her lip hard.

"I think, dear, that we shall always come home for Christmas. Or else

you will come to us. You will have a curate soon; you know we discussed

it the other day, and then you will be so free.--What a splendid drum!

Where did you get all these things, you secretive old Papa? Surely not

in Oxford?"

"I bought them when I was in London the other day, at the Soho Bazaar.

I was thinking that we should have such a pleasant Christmas...."

A stab went through Horatia's heart. That broken vision of his was in

her mind too--the Christmas hearth, Tristram with the child in his arms,

prefigurement of what should be henceforward ... and what would now

never be.

"It will be Maurice's third Christmas," went on the Rector, with an

attempt at cheerfulness, thinking from her silence and averted face that

he had been too cruel. "I made up my mind last Christmas that he should

have----"

A knock caused him to scramble hastily from his unwonted position.

Horatia jumped up and went to the door. Martha stood there.

"Please, Mam, would you come to the nursery. I don't think Master

Maurice seems quite himself."

Horatia was gone before the Rector had got to his chair. She was back

in a few minutes.

"Papa, if I may I shall send Sam Dawes for the doctor. I don't think it

is anything serious, at least I hope not, but he seems so drowsy and

feverish, and he has been very sick, poor darling."

"He was quite well this morning," observed the Rector, astonished.

"Indeed, he was making such a great noise in here that I could hardly

get on with my sermon."

*(4)*

Maurice de la Roche-Guyon, who was to have a drum and many other

delights on his third Christmas Day, did not seem likely to receive

these now, though as he lay, flushed and brilliant-eyed, chattering to

himself, his rambling talk ran sometimes on his small possessions.

"A child to give back to God." All through the two long agonising

nights and days the words echoed in Horatia's head, with those others

"He is stripping you of everything." Every few hours the doctor came,

and there was never any change, except that Maurice's breathing seemed

to get more and more rapid as his lungs consolidated. And Horatia could

do nothing, for now she could not even pray.

"He is stripping you of everything." Then He wanted from her the last

thing, the best thing, the thing incomparably the dearest, not the baby

she had refused to look at, not the baby who had been a delightful toy

at Plaisance, a growing interest in England, but her own child, her very

own, to hold through the years against sorrow and change, to be, not her

comfort but her existence, not a consolation for what she had lost, but

life itself. And set against it all, inexorable, "a child to give back

to God"--not hers at all, but only a treasure lent...

"O God, save Maurice--take the rest, take everything, I give it

willingly, only save Maurice! I will give him back to You in the end,

only leave him a little longer!" But she believed that her prayers

could not pierce the thick cloud that hung now between her and the

Christ she had so lately come to know, though she never doubted that

prayer could reach Him--the prayer of a heart that prayed always...

Downstairs were the floods of toys, the half-filled stocking, the holly

and the mistletoe; up here the gift of gifts was going away from her.

"O God, make me so that I can pray to You...."

But there was only Maurice asking, in his shrunk little voice of

delirium, for something to drink.

*(5)*

It was always rather dark in St. Thomas's, and what daylight remained to

the December afternoon hung nearly vanquished in the little church. It

had been much lighter when Tristram, unlocking the door, had come in

over the planks laid along the aisle for a causeway in time of flood,

and, passing the disproportionate pulpit, had entered the chancel and

knelt down at the altar rails.

Many hours had he spent there during the last two days, holding up

before God not his own suffering but that of the woman who suffered for

him. Now he could pray no more, but he still knelt, a suppliant at the

door of the Divine Pity, a beggar at the Heavenly Gate.

But as the light withdrew itself more and more from the sanctuary, till

at last the bare table itself was scarcely visible, he became gradually

conscious that this church was not more still than that inner place into

which he found himself somehow to have passed, a place of great

quietness, of which he had never before possessed the key--the innermost

room in the house of his soul. He did not know how he had gained

entrance to it--perhaps because he had ceased to strive--he only knew

that he was there, that he could never again lose the way thither, and

that this chamber held for him that open vision which he had sought so

often and never found.

As he left St. Thomas's he remembered that he must go to Christ Church

and ask if the Precentor, who was indisposed, was likely to be well

enough to preach the charity sermon on Christmas Day, or whether he

wished him to do it. So he walked once more up the way of sorrows that

he had traversed three or four days ago, and came out in just the same

manner on the front of Christ Church. Lights were beginning to twinkle

there, and down the narrow dusk of St. Aldate's, along which he had so

often ridden. In Tom Quad he met Mr. Pusey, who responded to his

salutation by wishing him a happy Christmas, passed on and then turned

back.

"By the way, Mr. Hungerford," he said, "I am afraid the Grenvilles at

Compton Regis are in sad trouble--but perhaps you know it? I heard from

my brother this morning that the little boy, Madame de la Roche-Guyon's

child, is very ill--dying, they fear."

The pain in his voice and eyes (his own little Katharine's death being

only a year-old wound) was lost on Tristram who, after a moment's

horror, forgetful alike of his errand and of himself, had turned and

hurried back into St. Aldate's to the nearest livery-stable for a horse.

He probably galloped most of the fifteen miles on the hard December

road, for he got there by half-past six. Anyhow the hack came down with

him in the dark just outside Compton village, and Tristram, merciful man

though he was, left it to the two or three yokels who had collected and

hastened on, oblivious of a slightly wrenched knee. Sick at the thought

of what he might hear he rang the bell at the Rectory. Mr. Grenville

himself answered it.

"O, my dear Tristram!" he exclaimed, his eyes brimming with tears.

"Have you heard--is that why you have come? ... No, the child is alive

... the doctor is here now.--Forgive me, come in...."

"Is that Tristram?" exclaimed a breathless voice, and behind her father

suddenly appeared Horatia herself. She almost pushed the Rector aside,

and seized Tristram by the wrist. "O, thank God, thank God that you

have come!" And, the ghost of herself, she fairly dragged him across

the hall into the drawing-room and shut the door.

"Tristram, our Lord has sent you! Listen, for you can save

Maurice--only pray, pray as you never prayed before! It is the crisis.

He will listen to you--I know He will!"

And, as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone.

* * * * *

The stable clock struck nine. Steps came down the stairs, and voices;

the outer door shut.

The Rector appeared at the drawing-room door, mopping his eyes. He

beckoned and Tristram, with a sinking heart, followed him out of the

room and up the stairs. Half-way up Mr. Grenville put away his

handkerchief, and it was then obvious that his tears were tears of joy.

He gripped Tristram's arm.

"He will live, my dear boy, he will live, thank God!"

He continued to ascend, and Tristram, hardly knowing why, went after

him. They came to the nursery floor. A door was ajar. The Rector

stood aside, but Tristram did not enter.

From the threshold he saw, as in a frame, part of the room within, and

the little crib against the wall by which Horatia was kneeling, with

bowed head. Over her shoulders was a shawl of Chinese silk, blue as

lapis-lazuli, studded with the golden eyes of dragons, and glorified,

like the shining auburn of her hair, by the mingled light of lamp and

fire. For him the picture seemed to hold the love and pain of years,

his own and hers, barren and fruitful both, and he did not know that he

could look any more....

The child stirred. Horatia rose from her knees, and bending over him

began very gently to rearrange a pillow. The change of position gave

Tristram to her sight, and so he went softly in and stood by her side,

looking down with her at him.

Maurice lay fast asleep, breathing quietly, and more natural of hue--a

frail bark rejected by the great tide that washes so hungrily round the

shores of the little island of life, and whose receding is nearly as

full of awe as its oncoming. To the man and the woman looking at him

the spray of that ocean seemed still wet in his curls.

"You have given him back to me," said Horatia in a voice less than a

whisper, and, to herself, more faintly still, "God did not ask _all_."

For answer Tristram stooped and kissed her son.

In the doorway he looked back, and at last the toll levied on human

nerves by days of so much strain and anguish was demanded of him. A

momentary hallucination of the senses--nothing but that, he knew it--but

all his life it was to remain with him, in mysterious consolation, that

for one heart-beat he saw there, in Horatia's place, a Woman wrapped,

like her, in a blue mantle glinting with light, kneeling in adoration of

a Child.

*EPILOGUE*

*EPILOGUE*

The barrel-organ which was grinding out "Keemo Kimo" changed with a

hiccough to "Bobbing Around," and the ring of tattered dancers likewise

made some alteration in their steps. Five very dirty little girls

composed the corps de ballet, and a small boy industriously kicking an

empty can along the gutter added further orchestral harmony. This youth

had already rejected the offer of his peers to "play at the Relief of

Lucknow," having learnt by experience that the role of a Sepoy was

unenviable, that it was vain ever to aspire to the part of Sir Colin

Campbell, and still retaining, in this autumn of 1859, unpleasant

recollections of the massacre of Cawnpore, as staged by the same players

in a certain backyard two years ago.

Had it been daylight this long street of the great seaport town would

have showed for what it was, a slum, but the evening darkness of the

last day of October veiled some of its worst features, while it caused

the radiance pouring from the _Dockers' Arms_, half-way along it, to

gain tenfold in attraction. Outside this resort two sailors were

engaged in a muddled argument, not sufficiently foreshadowing blows to

recall the now scattered impersonators of the Indian Mutiny, but

interesting enough to cause the pensive child with the can to direct his

football towards them with a gleam of hope. He was rewarded otherwise

than he had foreseen, and, after a moment's delighted gazing along the

vista beyond the public-house, abandoned his tin and ran back towards

the dancers.

"Victorier! Victorier! there's a swell coming! I seen 'im--coming

this way!"

The conviction in her brother's tone detached Victorier from her

pirouetting. She followed his finger and saw that his imagination had

not betrayed him, as sometimes, into falsehood, for a figure answering

indubitably to his description came at that moment into the light of the

_Dockers' Arms_, the half-drunken sailors made way for it, and, in a

moment or two, the organ, now ploughing mournfully through "Poor Dog

Tray," had lost its fascination, and Victorier's fellow-artistes, were

all standing at gaze.

The newcomer was a tall young man in a greatcoat, palpably a gentleman;

to any instructed eye a soldier, but not--though this would have taken

some discernment to detect--an Englishman. To the children he was

merely a swell, and his passage heralded as such by cries that rang

along the street, bringing a slatternly woman or two from an alley, and

rousing occasional comment from male loungers. But the young man

exhibited no sign of embarrassment at these attentions, and, stranger

still, he seemed to know his way in his surroundings. Indeed, on the

open-mouthed Victorier he bestowed, so she declared for days afterwards,

"a lovely smile" and a "Time you were in bed, little girl," ere he

passed out of sight into the ill-lighted gloom.

As the street left the _Dockers' Arms_ behind, it became slightly more

respectable, and signs of some agency at work began to appear, for

though the uninformed might not have known that a nondescript building

on the left was a school, no one could have mistaken that it was a

Sister of Mercy who suddenly emerged from one of the houses near. But

the swell evidently did not need these tokens to guide him towards his

objective, and, indeed, as the street turned a little, it was before

him--a big church, lighted up. When he realised this latter fact the

young man hesitated a moment; then he made his way, as one who knows his

whereabouts, to a small door, and pushing it cautiously open, went

through.

An intense, almost strained silence reigned within, so that for a moment

it was difficult to realise how large a congregation was there, and how

varied--clerks, dockers, women with shawls over their heads, women in

fashionable bonnets, ragged boys, a few sailors. The great gilt cross

suspended from the roof over the chancel steps glimmered faintly in the

lowered lights. From the screened-off door by which he had entered,

Maurice de la Roche-Guyon could have seen a section of the great raised

choir, and half the altar, severe and simple, even on a festival, but it

was not in this direction that he looked. He looked at the pulpit.

He saw there a spare, rather shrunken figure that rested both thin

hands--and not without a suggestion of leaning for physical support--on

the edge of the stone. Then he checked an exclamation. Not since the

days after Balaclava had he seen anything like this. Across the

preacher's forehead, from grey hair to eyebrow, ran a terrible scar, red

and puckered, straight as a swordcut but not so clean-edged, showing the

worn and thoughtful face to be as much that of a soldier as of a priest.

"_Children_," said the slow, very clear voice, "_I commend you from the

bottom of my heart into the captivity of the Cross of our Lord Jesus

Christ._" The tension was lifted, the lights went up, and the voice

that Maurice was waiting for gave out the first lines of a hymn;

"Spouse of Christ, in arms contending

O'er each clime beneath the sun..."

So he _was_ there! The young Frenchman slipped out, and went round to

the clergy-house.

Mrs. Squire, the housekeeper, a small wiry lady of varied, and

especially of conversational gifts, opened the door herself.

"Lor bless me!" she exclaimed exhibiting much surprise. "Well, I never!

Fancy you poppin' in like this, Sir, and all the way from foreign parts,

too, I suppose. They're all in the church, Sir; been at it this long

time.--But come in; I hope you're well, Sir--your Grace, as I should

say. You must be tired, and want some supper, I'm sure."

"Thank you, Mrs. Squire, I am very well, and I've had supper," responded

the young man, following her into the narrow hall. "But I do want a bed

for the night, and to-morrow night, too, if you have a room."

"You can't 'ave the guest-room, Sir," said Mrs. Squire, opening a door,

"seein' as the Vicar's sleepin' there, because he would have Mr. Dormer

put in _his_ room, but Mr. Johnson he's away, and I'll have 'is room

ready in 'alf-an-hour. If you'll please to step in here, Sir."

A lamp was already burning in the study, but the fire demanded her

attention. The visitor meanwhile began to divest himself of his

greatcoat. The light showed him pleasant to look upon, fair rather than

dark, with a small sunburnt moustache and a very lively expression,

while the removal of his outer garment revealed a tiny scrap of red

ribbon in his buttonhole.

"Now, Sir, you make yourself comfortable here, and I'll have a snack of

something ready for you when they come in." At this point a thought

appeared to strike Mrs. Squire, for she shut the door and advanced

mysteriously on the young man.

"I think I ought to warn you, Sir, that when you see Mr. Dormer, you may

have a shock."

"I've had it!" said Maurice with a little grimace. "I saw him in the

church. Tell me about it quickly, before he comes in. It was an

accident, I suppose? My mother heard that he had not been well, but no

more than that."

Mrs. Squire sniffed. "That's what they told her Ladyship, no doubt, and

that's what they told more than one! Mr. Dormer he hates to have it

mentioned, but he'll carry the mark to his dying day. Nothing to be

ashamed of, rather the opposite, I says, but you know what Mr. Dormer

is. Nor I wouldn't say nothing about it to the Vicar, Sir, if I was

you--Not well, indeed, and 'im unconscious for twenty-four hours, and

the Vicar, when 'e 'eard about it, in such a taking as I've never seen

'im, and off up to London at once, and..."

"But what was it, Mrs. Squire?"

"A brick, Sir."

"A brick!" repeated Maurice, mystified. "Do you mean off a house?"

"Thrown at 'im, Sir, and cruel hard! Ah, there's wicked people in this

world! In London it was, at one of them nasty places by the docks, St.

George's-in-the-East. They've got what they calls a mission there, and

there was dreadful disturbances going on all summer, even in the church

itself, if you'll believe me, so that they could 'ardly 'old their

services. A very low lot, Sir, and paid to do it, roughs 'ired by them

as keeps bad 'ouses thereabouts and the like, so I've 'eard. Well, Mr.

Dormer goes there in August to preach for them, and coming out of the

church there was a terrible riot. Fancy 'im alone in an 'owlin' mob

without so much as an umberella in 'is 'and!--not, I'm sure, that 'e'd

'ave used anything if 'e'd 'ad it. A pity you wasn't there, Sir, with

them queer baggy soldiers of yours. Well, the end of it was one of

these villains throws a brick at 'im--pretty near did for 'im

altogether, I believe. This 'ere's the first time he've preached

since." Mrs. Squire paused, and then added judicially, "Of course I

don't deny we've 'ad trouble 'ere before now, as your Grace knows,

though not for a long time, and I can't say as I approves of all the

'igh Church goings on. Not that I'm saying anything against the Vicar,

for I wouldn't leave him not if he was to turn Papist to-morrow. Where

'e goes I goes, if it's to the Pope of Rome 'imself--the Lord forgive me

for saying so."

She went to the windows and gave a twitch to the already drawn curtains,

as Maurice digested this information, and also had a sudden little

memory of a gory combat waged by him in boyish days with an urchin who

asseverated that that ---- parson was a ---- Papist, the champion only

remembering at its victorious close that he was a Papist himself.

"Between you and me, Sir," resumed Mrs. Squire confidentially, "I shan't

be sorry when Mr. Dormer's gone back, for I shouldn't like a death in

the 'ouse, and it's my belief 'e's not long for this world. Not fit for

this preachin', any'ow, and don't eat 'ardly nothin'.... But 'ow I do

run on. I daresay the Vicar won't be late, Mr. Dormer being 'ere,

though sometimes, if you'll believe me, he ain't in from church till

after compline. It gets worse, Sir; selfish, I calls it, keeping 'im

out of bed with their sins, and then all this getting up early in the

morning. The Vicar is strong, thanks be, but he ain't so young as he

was, and it tells on him. Can't see, meself, as the Almighty asks so

much of us. Where's your bag, if you please, Sir?"

The news that it was being brought up from the railway station and might

arrive any moment, put a term to Mrs. Squire's volubility, and she

departed.

Maurice de la Roche-Guyon looked round the room thus left to him with a

smile of recognition. Of fair size, though somewhat choked up with

furniture, much of which belonged to a past decade of the Mahogany Age,

it was spotlessly clean and possessed a sort of shabby comfort. There

was little to mark it as the room of a priest, since any person with a

large correspondence might have had so littered a writing-table--the

sight of whose contents filled the beholder with wonder and thankfulness

that he should ever have received a reply to a letter--and the pictures

were mostly views of Oxford, the High, Oriel, and a couple of Dighton's

caricatures. Only in a corner of the room was a little water-colour

drawing of average execution, representing the Madonna kneeling by the

child Christ in the manger. On the window-sill were several flower-pots

containing forlorn geranium stems, green tips with yellow leaves at the

base. Maurice did not know if the pathetic hope of preserving geraniums

through the winter had ever been realised, but he supposed that it had,

since the pots persevered. They had been in exactly the same depressed

condition when he was here a year ago.

He threw himself into one of the armchairs by the fire. The spring was

broken, so he exchanged it for another. Tristram's chairs were given to

broken springs. It was either the same chair, never mended, or else

succeeding occupants were heavy. He stretched out his legs and smiled

to himself, thinking of the great news he brought and of Tristram's

pleasure in hearing it. Most important events in his life had been

unfolded to Tristram, since the occasion on which he had first sat in a

springless chair and waited for him. Not that he had smiled then....

It had been in dull quarters in the next street, before the clergy-house

was built, that Maurice had first sat in a broken-springed chair and

wished that chair and remaining springs and he might sink into the

earth. He was in his first year at Eton, and his adored English

grandfather having recently died he had begged to be allowed to spend

Christmas (it was that of 1844) with Tristram, before going for the rest

of the holidays to his mother's cousins in Cavendish Square. It was a

curious preference for a small boy brought up in stately surroundings,

to go into a dingy habitation in the neighbourhood of docks, but to

Maurice it was an adventure of the wildest nature. Although he could

not have explained it, to be with Tristram at all meant a feeling of

freedom. There were so many things which, according to Tristram's code,

did not seem to matter; but the fact that he was not punished for

spilling ink and tearing his clothes only convinced him that really to

transgress might be very uncomfortable indeed.

Maurice, though he was an only child, had been brought up by an almost

military discipline to an exact obedience, even to the acceptance

without question of those mixed ecclesiastical surroundings which had

always puzzled him. Maman, though she prayed so much, never went with

him to Mass. M. le Cure, in the country, when pressed would shake his

head and say that Madame la Comtesse was Anglicane et tres devote, and

although not a Catholic not quite a Protestant. As if to excuse this

enlightened view he would add that she believed in the Real Presence,

that she had a crucifix in her oratory, and that Mr. Dormer, for whose

learning he had a great respect, was her director. Yet this very

director (whose infrequent appearances were vaguely disliked by Maurice)

seemed to be on the best of terms with his own kinsman Prosper de la

Roche-Guyon, and though one was a Bishop of the Catholic Church and the

other a Protestant pastor, they looked, to the son of Armand, very much

alike--except that he was somewhat afraid of Mr. Dormer and not at all

of His Grandeur. His mother herself would say, "Mon fils, you are a

Catholic and a Frenchman. Monseigneur de Troyes will tell you what you

ought to think." The Bishop's explanation, if painstaking, was

unintelligible, and left Maurice with the responsibility of praying for

the conversion of his mother, his grandfather Grenville, his "Uncle"

Tristram Hungerford, Mr. Dormer, and a quantity of persons at Oxford of

whom he had never heard. After this he abandoned for a time his pursuit

of knowledge.

But Eton had revived and intensified his bewilderment, and it suddenly

came to him that now was the chance of asking Uncle Tristram. He knew

that Tristram was the cure of this great parish, that the church which

could be seen from the windows would soon be finished, but he was

forbidden to enter a Protestant temple, and an Anglican church was

certainly not Catholic, so it must be Protestant. Partly because of the

prohibition he had an enormous desire to see the inside of this edifice,

and as there seemed no possibility of its being gratified, he added to

his nightly petitions for the conversion of Tristram to the Roman

obedience, the turning of the Church of the Passion into a Catholic

place of worship.

Christmas Day came. Maurice set off, lonely, to the Catholic chapel not

far away for Mass. As he came back he had to pass the Mission church,

which was used until the completion of the permanent building. It was

mid-day, and the bell stopped ringing a little before he reached the

door. He listened; a harmonium was playing _Venite adoremus_. Why

should he not peep inside; no one would see. He yielded to the

temptation and slipped in, to find himself almost touching Uncle

Tristram's surpliced back at the end of the procession which, with some

difficulty, was squeezing round the small building. He decided to stay.

The church was decked with holly and flowers, and the tiny sanctuary was

hung with red. Maurice was much interested, especially as his ideas of

Protestant worship were extremely vague, so that he was surprised to see

what was clearly an altar (though it seemed to him, with only two

lighted candles and a cross, very bare), and to listen to a service

which, for all its lack of Latin, of bells, and of inaudibility, was

presumably some kind of a mass. But gradually his interest waned. He

began to see clearly what he had done. He had not only been

disobedient, but had dealt a wound to that implicit trust which he

always felt that Tristram reposed in him, and the delicacy of Tristram's

position was quite plain to the half-French boy. At the communion of

the people he went out. The rest of Christmas Day, spent at the house

of a churchwarden with a large family, lacked enjoyment. Nothing was

said on his return, and he felt pretty sure that Tristram had not seen

him. But next day, after breakfast, he waited for him in a

broken-springed chair.

"I was at the Mass yesterday."

"I know," said Tristram.

"I mean I was at your Mass."

"I know," said Tristram again. "I've been waiting for you to tell me."

There was a silence.

"You have my pocket-money," suggested a miserable voice, for Maurice

always associated misdeeds with an immediate penalty, and anything was

better than suspense. But he looked up from the floor to find that

Tristram was smiling.

"My son," said the latter, "for your punishment I am going to explain to

you the Anglican position. I have always disagreed with your mother in

not trying to make this clear to you before."

It was not punishment to Maurice. Sin had brought him what had never

been granted to virtuous behaviour. He listened with the most rapt

attention, until Tristram, leaning back in his chair, said "Do you

understand now, my boy, why you are forbidden to attend an Anglican

service? It is for this reason that you must regard me as a heretic,

though _I_ can believe myself and you to belong equally to the Catholic

Church. Perhaps you can understand, too, how hard it has been for your

mother, so ardently devoted to her own faith, to bring you up in a

religion which must of necessity separate you from her. Not that she

ever hesitated."

He got up. "Come with me, Maurice. I am going to show you something."

And, leading him to a little room at the top of the house, he unlocked a

chest. "I won't take them out, but you can see what they are--the full

Eucharistic dress of a priest."

"Oh, Mass vestments," said Maurice, looking in.

"They have been given, but they cannot be worn yet." He unlocked

another case and showed the boy the sacramental plate, still

unconsecrated. One of the chalices was studded with large pearls, the

other with different stones.

"What fine pearls!" observed Maurice. "I have never seen such large

ones, except on a rope that Maman used to wear. Now she hardly wears

any jewels."

"These were your mother's," said Tristram. "She wished to give all her

personal jewels--all except those belonging to your family, which will

come one day to your wife." (He always spoke to Maurice in a

matter-of-fact way, as though Maurice were grown up.) "And here, you

see, set in the paten, is a little old Anglo-Saxon brooch that she used

to wear as a girl, and which she gave to me long ago.--Now I'll show you

the church."

Maurice bore away from that visit an impression of surprising dignity,

simplicity, and space. He had seen the raised chancel, the still more

raised sanctuary, the stone altar, which it was doubtful if the Bishop

would consecrate, and the beautiful marble font, a memorial to his

grandfather Grenville, set in almost equal honour in the apse at the

west end. He had been told that there would be no galleries or pews,

that the church was to be quite free and always open, and that one day a

great cross or crucifix would hang from the roof. As they left he

caught sight of a little inscription on a stone let into the wall near

the door--"Pray for the sinner who built this church."

Going through the porch he said, reflectively, "I suppose that as it is

such a large church he was a very wicked man."

But Tristram gave no answer.

Maurice had looked forward to his next Christmas in the new

clergy-house, and next Christmas had, indeed, found him there, but in

company with Mr. Dormer and great gloom--unwelcome circumstances which

it took him some time to connect with a certain notable conversion to

his own communion in the previous October. But what mattered to Maurice

was much less that the Church of England had lost John Henry Newman,

than that the Church of the Passion was now offering a haven among its

priests to its founder, and that the centre of interest at the

clergy-house had shifted from him, Maurice, to the man who was mourning

not only the defection of a leader but the loss of a friend.

But when next he came to scale the church roof and plague the curates,

Mr. Dormer seemed to have gone, not to Oxford but to London, and careful

cross-questioning of the new deacon elicited facts which, to Maurice's

mind, could only mean that Mr. Dormer would perhaps one day become a

monk. How this could be, even in the Church of England as explained by

Tristram, was a mystery, but since such a calling presupposed a fixed

abode, and, for the time being, Mr. Dormer was certainly settled in

London, Maurice had got all the information that he wanted. There was

no cloud now upon a visit to Uncle Tristram, and one delightful summer

even brought his mother to stay at the hotel in the fashionable quarter

of the town. By a coincidence, which Maurice was not able to

appreciate, the arrival of the French comtesse was recorded in close

proximity to "More Popish Practices of a Puseyite Priest."

A kind of sporting interest in the Tractarian Movement was a curious

possession for a French soldier and a sound Catholic. Yet, just when

the English newspapers were full of the battle of the Alma, the post

bore to Tristram, recently inhibited for hearing confessions, a letter

from the seat of war adjuring him to stick to his guns, and this from a

young man who knew that an Anglican clergyman cannot bind or loose,

whatever the opinions of his bishop.

At this moment, however, the writer of that epistle had some grounds for

wishing that the inhibition had not been removed, or that Tristram's

invalid absolutions were not sought at such a late hour. Looking round

for something to occupy him, the Duc de la Roche-Guyon caught sight of a

heap of _Punches_ in a corner. He guessed why they were there. Mr.

Punch was strongly, even rabidly, "anti-Puseyite," and it was

characteristic of Tristram cheerfully to preserve the numbers in which

this guardian of public morals had also constituted himself Defender of

the Faith. Here, for instance, was the succession of last year's

cartoons dealing with the alleged Romanist tendencies of "Soapy Samuel,"

the Bishop of Oxford, and the Puseyite cleric being kicked downstairs by

the united boots of Mr. Punch and John Bull. After what he had just

heard about St. George's-in-the-East, Maurice was not greatly surprised

to find Mr. Punch warning "reverend gents who think fit to make images,

figures, or guys of themselves" to beware of an "iconoclastic spirit"

which plainly had his approval. In the current number itself, the

Rector of St. George's, in a notice headed "Nathan's Clerical Costumes,"

addressed to "sacristans, footmen of the superior Roman Catholic clergy

and others," was made to express himself desirous of purchasing "any

amount of the left-off vestments of priests" and to offer "a liberal

allowance for holy candle ends and waste incense."

Maurice put down the paper with a shrug, but as he stooped to pick up a

number which had fallen open on the floor, his eye was caught by the

words "Margaret Street" and "All Saints":--

"The All Saints crows his Lordship pets,

And, hoping against hope, forgets

The many birds that thence have come,

Fled to the rookery of Rome.

* * * * *

"Can it be right to consecrate

The new church in Street Margaret,

Which looks more Puseyite by far

Than English churches elsewhere are?"

He read these lines with interest, because he knew that the famous

Tractarian church had once been Margaret Chapel, where his mother had

been married. Then he laughed, and threw the paper away.

What a devil of a time they were in coming! He got up and looked at the

photograph of a young man in uniform on the mantelpiece, one of

Tristram's lads. Five years ago, at Inkerman, after his regiment had

carried, at the point of the bayonet, the seven times captured and

recaptured Sandbag Battery, the young lieutenant of Zouaves had happened

to address a word or two in English to one of the rescued men of the

95th, and thus, amid the carnage, had made the surprising discovery of a

common friend in an English clergy-house...

Maurice put his elbows on the chimney-piece. Four years more of

soldiering, encounters with Kabyles in Africa, even this summer's guns

of Magenta and Solferino, had done little to efface the memory of

Sebastopol, its horror and its glory. Still, in dreams, he led his men

through the iron hail up to the Malakoff; still, sometimes, felt again

the shock and blankness when that hail had scorched him too, and he

fell, not knowing that he had outdone the daring even of his own most

daring corps. More pleasant to dream of was the waking in hospital and

the finding, pinned to the sheet, the red-ribboned, five-pointed star,

the Cross of the Legion of Honour, which they had doubted if he would

live to receive. Most pleasant of all, the putting it into his mother's

hands.

The Crimea had won him that, and his step as captain. Last July had

brought him more promotion; last month still more. But last week had

given him---- he smiled and pulled at his ridiculous moustache. Grand

Dieu! what had he done to deserve such happiness?

Here they were at last! The young man deliberately went out of the

lamplight into a corner and stood with his back to any who should enter.

The door opened.

"You know, Charles," the well-remembered voice was saying, "that unless

you obey me in this I shan't allow you to preach at all to-morrow."

And the other voice, palpably tired, but very quiet and even, replied:

"If I were you, Tristram, I would not utter threats before witnesses.

Look there!"

Maurice turned slowly round and faced the two priests, but the blur of

shadow hid the smile on his face.

"There is nothing the matter?" asked the taller, a note of sharp alarm

in his tone. "Horatia--your mother is not ill?"

"No, no!" cried Maurice, instantly repenting of his jest. "No--there is

nothing the matter--only good news!" And, flinging himself at Tristram

Hungerford, he embraced him in French fashion.--"How do you do, Mr.

Dormer? I heard your sermon--that is to say the end of it."

"I saw you," said Dormer, smiling, as he shook hands, and Tristram

exclaimed, "Oh, were you there, my dear boy? Come and sit down,

Charles, and then we must hear this good news. Supper will be up in a

moment--but I hope you have had something more substantial, Maurice?"

And, evidently torn between a desire to pilot his friend to the most

comfortable chair and eagerness to hear the promised tidings, he

accomplished the first before taking hold of Maurice and saying "Well?"

And then it burst out.

"Solange will marry me, and what is more, will marry me in three weeks'

time!"

"At last!" exclaimed Tristram. "My boy, I am so glad! But why is it so

very sudden?"

A sort of struggle between satisfaction and sadness was visible in the

young soldier's manner as he replied, "Because I am ordered to Algeria

next month, and must sail from Marseilles on the 25th. You see, they

have made me lieutenant-colonel."

Tristram gave an exclamation, and Maurice went on quickly. "Solange is

so wonderful; she has given up all idea of a great wedding. She said at

once that if she was to marry a soldier she could be ready in three

weeks."

"What did her mother say?" asked Tristram.

"Oh, Maman arranged all that," returned Maurice, sitting down astride a

chair. "She is almost as pleased as I am that it has come all right."

"Or as I am," said Tristram. "How long can you stay, Maurice?"

"Only long enough to tell you all about it. I told Maman I might sleep

here two nights if there was room. Will you let me, mon pere?"

"My dear boy, what a question! So you came all this way just to tell

me--you left Mademoiselle Solange and your mother, who has you now for

such a short time, for that?"

"Mademoiselle Solange sent you a message that she remembered you

perfectly, that next time she would not allow me to leave her, and that

she should come with me to visit you. As for Maman, when did she ever

think of herself? Of course she wanted me to come and tell you.

Besides, what a fuss about nothing! Who came over to see me when I was

invalided home after the Crimea?"

"Hasn't this promotion followed very quickly on that which you got after

the Italian campaign this summer?" asked Dormer, breaking in for the

first time.

"You know I have always been luckier than my deserts!" explained the

young man laughing. "Tiens! someone at the door!"

It was Mrs. Squire with a tray, and so, in a moment or two Maurice,

drinking his coffee, was able to take a swift survey of his companions.

There were a few more threads of grey in Tristram's dark, grizzled hair,

a line or two more on his face, but yes, he was looking well, and young

for his years. But Mr. Dormer--no, for the last twelve years or so he

had looked much older than Tristram, and now, not ill exactly, but

fragile in the extreme. Everything that was not spirit seemed to have

ebbed away from his face, where, by reason of its bloodlessness, the

angry line of the great scar was all the more noticeable. Indeed, it

was hard to keep one's eyes off it, hard too, to avoid surprising the

anxious glances cast by Tristram at his friend, who was evidently very

tired.

Voices in altercation had been heard for some time in the hall, and now,

as the simple meal drew to its close, reached a climax.

"Whatever is that noise?" exclaimed the visitor. "Not, surely, more

ri----" He stopped himself in time.

"I think I had better go and see," said Tristram, getting up.

Maurice laid a hand on his arm. "Let them fight it out, mon pere! It

is my first night, and I have only two."

Outside a child's voice was raised in a dismal howl. Tristram gently

extricated himself. "I must go," he repeated. At the some moment there

was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Squire appeared, in some agitation.

The little hall seemed entirely blocked up with people, a young cleric

among them. Tristram closed the door behind him.

"What a place to live in! What a life--never a moment's peace!"

exclaimed the young Frenchman.

"Tristram is wanted by everybody all day long," said Dormer.

"I'm not surprised," returned Maurice; "but I wanted him to-night."

Dormer shook his head as if it were hopeless. Then he said:

"Have I congratulated you, Maurice, as I should do? I don't think I

have. I am most sincerely glad about Mademoiselle de Bethisy. Your

mother has wished for it so long--and I have hoped for it, too. Then

there is your rapid promotion. I suppose, my dear boy, that one can

hardly congratulate you enough!"

He smiled, a very sweet and human smile that made him look suddenly

years younger, and held out his hand, just as the door opened and

Tristram reappeared, glancing down at someone behind him.

"Come in, Jack! You shall have some hot coffee, and be quick about it,

and then I will come with you."

A thin, ragged boy of about twelve, all eyes, shyly followed him. In

Tristram's arms, wrapped round with an old red shawl, was a rosy little

girl, not much more than a baby, from whose cheeks Tristram was

removing, presumably with his own handkerchief, a few remaining tears.

"Pour out some coffee, Maurice, will you?" he said. "No, Mary had better

have milk only."

"There are no cups," observed Dormer, making to ring the bell.

"Here is mine," said Tristram, seizing it with his free hand. "Jack and

Mary won't mind, and there is no time to lose."

"You are not going out again!" exclaimed Maurice in dismay.

"My dear boy, I'm afraid I must! I'm so sorry." He put the infant down

in his chair, but as she immediately started to howl he picked her up

again, and began to pour the milk down her throat himself. "You see,

their mother has refused to have her baby christened. Now it is dying,

and Jack has brought a message that if the Vicar would come himself she

would have it 'done.' Mrs. Squire, who I am afraid is getting ideas of

her own about who is and who is not to see me, has been trying to

persuade them to take Wilmot or French, but the boy knew it would be

useless, and seems to have been arguing with them all for the last ten

minutes. That was what we heard. So I must go myself; I can't help

it."

"You never could," said Maurice, getting up and stretching himself. "I

shall come with you, mon pere. Is it far?"

"Yes, it's right down by the docks. Now, Jack, ready?" He shouldered

the drowsy bundle. "Charles, don't sit up, I beg of you! It is a dark

night, and we shall be at least an hour."

They went out, Tristram in his shabby cassock, the head of curls on his

shoulder, the ragged boy's hand in his, and Maurice, Duc de la

Roche-Guyon, Zouave of the Guard.

But Dormer sat motionless in his chair, his hands laid along the arms.

"When did she ever think of herself?" Jack and Mary had cause to say

the same, had they but known their debt to a greyhaired and crinolined

French lady, the envied mother of a soldier one day to be famous. Yet

it was not greyhaired and crinolined that Horatia de la Roche-Guyon came

to the door of the priest's memory to-night, but as he had once seen her

in a Parisian drawing-room, a few years after her return to France,

still young, laughing, admired--marked nevertheless, to his eyes, with a

sacrifice so deep that no one, perhaps for that very reason, could have

guessed at its existence. There were times, he knew, when not even her

child could comfort her. But from that aching loneliness the captivity

of the Cross had long since set her free.

Yet Tristram, whose outward life was hard, had suffered less, for from

the beginning it seemed as if the promise had been fulfilled to him, an

hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and

mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions. Tristram, who had

been almost the last to see the vision which had called to his friends

in the streets and gardens of Oxford, was, after all, one of the first

to interpret it to others. Of those friends he who, among the shining

spires, had seen it most clearly, was come many years since to the city

whose builder and maker is God. But though the inspiration of his ardour

was so early taken from them, though some were scattered, some

disheartened, Hurrell Froude lived on in those who fought and suffered

with unwavering hope. To these the vision splendid still beckoned, but

for their leader, the brother of his spirit, it had faded into the light

of common day. And so, haunted by his dream, John Henry Newman had gone

out from among his own people, and for him another vision dawned.

But Charles Dormer was not unfaithful to his early vision. For though

he too had not found,--though he no longer looked for--a perfect Church,

he had seen amazingly disclosed, in his own communion, the treasures of

a real if forgotten Catholicity. He had seen the slaves in the

prison-house of sin free servants in the palace of a King, Who Himself

struck off their fetters, and, clothing them in the garments of His

righteousness, led them by the steep stairs of penitence to the

protection of the angels, the companionship of the saints, that they

might sit, even with the princes of His household, guests at the banquet

of His love. Henceforward disappointment, failure, persecution,

defection were to the Tractarian but proofs that the Church of England

was indeed a part of the Body of Christ, for, all unworthy, she bore the

marks of the Passion of her Lord.

And now the vision of the Light Divine, drawing him always out of the

battle and the conflict, luring him still further into the way of

prayer, had brought him at last to a dark place where he lay so close to

God that he could no longer see Him, where, in the tomb of life, he

waited the first rays of the Resurrection Glory.