It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, a day that atones and
amends with prodigal, open-handed generosity for all the fogs and chilly
darknesses of autumn and winter. Heavy rain had fallen during the night
before, cold, chilly rain, but an hour before morning it had ceased, and
a great warm, boisterous wind came humming up from the southwest. Like
some celestial house-clearer it swept the clouds from the face of the
sky, and an hour of ivory starlight and setting moon ushered in the day.
That same wind had awakened Helen with the sound of the tapping,
struggling blind drawn over her open window, and with eyes suffused with
sleep she had got out of bed to quiet the rattling calico by the simple
process of rolling it up. And having rolled it up, she stood for a
moment at the window, her hair stirred by the wind, drinking in the soft
cool breath of the huge night that blew her night-dress close to her
skin. The clean smell of rain was in the air, but the sky was all clear,
and to the east behind the tower of Chartries church the nameless
dove-coloured hue of coming dawn was beginning to make dim the stars.
Then she went back to bed with a vague but certain sense that some
change had come--winter was over; in her very bones she felt that.
Gloriously did the morning fulfil her expectations. White fleecy clouds,
high in the heavens, bowled along the blue, their shadows racing
beneath them across the brown grass of the downs; the wind, warm and
pregnant with spring, drove boisterously out of the west, and the sun
flooded all that lived in a bath of light. Round the elms in the
church-yard there had been wrought that yearly miracle, that mist of
green leaf hovering round the trees, and paler and more delicate it hung
round the slim purple-twigged birches in the woods that climbed up the
hillside beyond to Chartries. Here after breakfast her path lay, for she
had a parish errand to an outlying hamlet beyond, and with eye and ear
and nostril and open mouth she breathed and was bathed in the
revivification of spring. That morning, so it seemed to her, all the
birds in the world sang together,--thrushes bubbled with the noise of
chuckling water and delicious repeated phrases of melody, as if to show,
brave musicians, that the “first fine careless rapture” is perfectly
easy to recapture, if you happen to know the way of the thing;
blackbirds with liquid throat and tawny bill scudded through the bushes;
above swifts chided in swooping companies, and finches and sparrows
poured out staccato notes. One bird alone was silent, for the
nightingale waited till summer should come and love.
That filled the ear. For the eye there were blue distances, blue shadows
of racing clouds, the sun, and more near the budding trees, and in the
dingle below the woods of Chartries a million daffodils. Helen had
forgotten that they were there, waiting for her, and she came on them
suddenly, and stood quite still a moment with a long pause of pure and
complete delight. The place was carpeted with them; they all danced and
shone and sang together like the morning stars. And as she looked her
eyes grew dim with happy tears.
“Dear God,” she said, “thank you so much.”
Yes, indeed, it was spring; and as she walked on she repeated the word
over and over again to herself, finding a magic in it. It was
everywhere: the sky and the sun were full of it, it burst in those
myriad blossoms from the dark, wholesome soil; it was spring that set
this good wind blowing, it bubbled and chuckled in the chalk-stream,
with its waving weeds and bright glimmering beds of pebbles. Above all,
it was in her own heart on this glorious morning, till she thought it
must almost burst, too, so overflowing was it with sheer, unreasoning
happiness.
Indeed, Martin had been quite right when he had told Karl how happy she
was, and though she did not reason to herself about it, the cause was
abundantly clear. For the last six months she had lived at home, through
days and weeks of ever-recurring difficulties, and with each, as it
presented itself, she had dealt smilingly, patiently. She had made up
her mind on her visit to Cambridge that her duty was clear and obvious,
nothing striking nor picturesque was in the least required, she was
neither going to renounce her future happiness, nor, on the other hand,
to throw all else aside and grasp at it. No heroic knot-cutting measures
of any kind were indicated, except the quiet, unobtrusive heroism of
taking up again, quite simply, quietly, and naturally, all the
straightforward, familiar little duties of her home life which again and
again she had found so tedious. Nor had they been in themselves less
tedious. Only here was the difference,--she had ceased to look upon them
from any point of view except one, namely, that it was quite distinctly
her business to do them. That she had found to be sufficient; it was
enough day by day to get through with them without expenditure of
thought as to whether they were distasteful or not, and her work, her
daily bread, had somehow been sweet and wholesome and nourishing. Truly,
if, as Karl had said, Martin had been growing out of knowledge, his twin
also would be scarcely recognisable.
And bread, bread of the soul, had come to her; her table had been laid
in the wilderness, and happiness, royal inward happiness of a very fine
and unselfish sort, in the midst of a thousand things which made for
unhappiness, had blossomed in her. A thousand times she had been tempted
to say, “It is doing no good. Why should I put off what is waiting for
me when my renunciation does not help father in any way?” But a thousand
times she had just not said it; and now, at the end of these difficult
months, she could without egoism look back and see what infinite good
had been done. That her father should in any way alter his own
convictions about her marriage she had never expected; but what had been
gained was that he saw now, and consciously saw, that she was in the
very simplest language “being good.”
But it had been difficult enough for all concerned, except perhaps for
Aunt Clara, who was scarcely capable of emotion, and often Helen’s heart
had bled for her father. It had been most terrible of all when Martin
had joined the Roman Church. His letter to his father--Helen winced when
she thought of it now--had arrived on Sunday morning, and he had found
it on the breakfast-table when he had come back from the early
celebration. It was a manly, straightforward letter enough, stating that
he had not yet gone over, but had practically determined to. If his
father wished he would come down to Chartries, and talk it over with
him, and give to his advice and counsel the very fullest possible
consideration. And at the end he expressed very bluntly and sincerely,
as was his way, the sorrow and the pain that he knew the news would
cause his father.
The sheet fell from his hand, and Helen, who was making tea, looked up.
She saw the colour rise in her father’s face; the arteries in his neck
and temples swelled into cords, and his eyes with pupils contracted to
pin-pricks looked for the moment like the eyes of a madman. Then he
spoke, his voice vibrating with suppressed furious anger.
“Martin is going to join the Roman Church,” he said. “From the day he
does so, Helen, never speak to me of him again. He is dead to me,
remember.”
That was a week before Christmas, and for more than a month after that
Martin’s name had literally hardly crossed his father’s lips. The boy
had come down to stay with his uncle once, but Mr. Challoner had
absolutely refused to see him. He had even wished Helen not to; but on
this occasion, for the only time during all that long winter, she had
quietly but quite firmly disobeyed him. It was then first, too, as one
looking down from barren rocks of a mountain-range, that she saw, though
still far off, the harvest that was ripening in these long, patient
months of her living here with her father. Before going to Chartries she
had thought best to go into his study and tell him that she was doing
so.
“I am going to see Martin,” she said, wondering and very nervous as to
how her father would take it. “And I wanted to tell you, father, before
I went, that I was going.”
Mr. Challoner was writing his sermon, but on her words his pen paused;
then he looked up at her.
“Very well, dear,” he said. “You know my feeling about it; but it is a
thing in which you must do as you think right. And, Helen,” again he
paused, and his eyes wandered away from her and were bent on his paper,
“tell me, when you come back, how the lad looks, if he seems well.”
She came closer to him. This was the first sign he had shown that he
recognised Martin’s existence.
“Ah, father, come with me,” she said.
But he shook his head.
“No, dear; no, dear,” he said, and went on with his work.
But, on this March morning of windy brightness, what gave the _comble_
to her happiness was the talk--the first intimate one for all these
weeks--which she had had with her father the night before. She had gone
to her room as usual after prayers, but finding there some parish-work,
concerning outdoor relief, which she ought to have done and taken to him
the day before, she sat up for nearly a couple of hours, until she had
finished it. Then with the papers in her hand she went down to his
study.
“I am so sorry, father,” she said. “You told me you wanted these
yesterday, and I absolutely forgot to do them. They are finished now.”
He looked up in surprise.
“Why, Helen,” he said, “it is after twelve. You ought to have been in
bed long ago. Have you been sitting up to do them?”
She smiled at him.
“Why, yes,” she said.
He took them from her.
“You have been a very good daughter to me, dear,” he said.
He paused, but Helen said nothing, for his tone shewed an unfinished
sentence. And the pause was long; it was not at all easy for him to say
what followed.
“And I have been often and often very difficult and very hard all these
months,” he said. “But will you do your best to forget that? Will you
try to forgive me?”
She went close to him, very much moved, and laid her hand on his
shoulder.
“Ah, don’t cut me to the heart,” she said.
“But promise me, if you can,” he said.
Yes, it was true; he had often been difficult and hard. And she answered
him.
“Yes, dear father,” she said. “I promise you that with my whole heart.
And in turn, when May comes, will you try not to think too hardly of me.
I have tried to be good.”
She sat down by his side, looking rather wistfully at him.
“I have been wanting to talk to you often before about that,” he said,
“so let me say once and for all what is in my mind. I disagree with you,
as you know, vitally, essentially, and I believe that God tells me to
disagree. But now I believe also, dear,--and this your goodness and your
sweet patience all these months has taught me,--that God tells you to
do as you are going to. How that is I do not understand. Perhaps that
doesn’t matter so much as I used to think. But He fulfils Himself in
many ways. And there, too, I have very often thought that He had to
fulfil Himself in my way. It is you who have made me see that, I think.”
Helen raised shining eyes to his.
“You have made me very happy,” she said.
“And what have you done for me? There were certain days, dear, during
this winter which I do not see how I could have got through without
you.”
Here was an opportunity for which Helen had often sought.
“Martin?” she asked. “Oh, father, I wonder if you want Martin as much as
I do.”
The strength and the tenderness died out of his face, leaving it both
helpless and hard.
“I can’t see him,” he said, quickly; “I dare not. Some day, perhaps; but
if I saw him now I should say--I could not, I know, help saying--what I
feel. If that would do any good, I would say it; but it would do none. I
should only--I should only frighten him,” he said, with an accent
infinitely pathetic.
* * * * *
She left him then without more words, for all this winter she had been
learning every day and all day long the divine and human gospel of
patience in dealing with people,--the patience that teaches us not to
pull buds open, however desirable it may be that the flower should
unfold, that is content to do its best with them, and wait for results
without the desire even that they should come quickly. Till this
evening, as has been said, Martin’s name had scarcely been mentioned by
his father, and it was something, after this bitterness of long silence,
that he should be able to say “Not yet, not now.” Pity also, pity with
hands of healing, had entered at last into that stern, upright,
God-fearing soul, filtering its way like water through dry and stony
soil; a very exiguous trickle it might be, but cool, liquid, refreshing.
How hardly it had won its way there Helen but guessed dimly, he alone
knew. For day had succeeded day, and week week, and all day and all week
he had wrestled blindly, hopelessly with the misery that Martin had
brought on him, unable for all his efforts to find any possible
justifying cause for what he had done, which seemed to him as wanton and
as wicked as violent crime. To his Puritan mind, Martin’s
reason,--namely, the craving for and the necessity of beauty and poetry
in religion was as unintelligible as a page in an unknown language; not
knowing at all what that craving meant, any more than he knew what
homicidal mania meant to a maniac, he could not in any degree whatever
feel or appreciate its force. And for the sake of this his son had left
the mother-church, and embraced the heresies, the abominations, the
idolatries of Rome. Such was his sober, literal view: the Roman Church
was idolatrous, and for idolaters was the doom appointed, revealed by
God, believed by him. And there stood Martin.
For weeks nothing had come to sweeten the bitterness of these dark
waters; his suffering was as unintelligible to him as is pain to a dumb
animal; he could not guess what it could possibly mean. That fierce
anguish, like a flame, had burned up for a time in its withering breath
all human affection; he had hated Martin for what he had done. Shocking
as that was, he knew it to be true, and his hate seemed somehow
justified. There were things, there were actions and passions which he
was bound to hate; and so filled was he with this conviction, that human
affection, human love could find at first no place in his mind; it was
turned out, evicted. But now, like a dog beaten and driven from the
house, it was beginning, so Helen thought, to creep noiselessly,
stealthily homeward again. So she was content; she did not even want to
hurry it.
And this morning spring was here, too, and the daffodils danced.
* * * * *
From the dance of daffodils the slope rose steeply upward through the
hanging woods of Chartries, and her path lay by the bushes in which last
summer Frank had found the trapped hare. Here, as always, she went
slowly, telling over in her mind, like the beads of a rosary, the
history of those hours. Then raising her eyes, she saw him, Frank,
standing a little way up the path, looking at her.
Involuntarily her heart leaped to him, and, holding out both hands, she
quickened her step, as if running to him. That first movement she could
no more help than she could help the fresh blood springing to her
cheeks. But at once almost she recollected herself and paused.
“Ah, Frank,” she cried, “you shouldn’t have come here. You know you
shouldn’t.”
He came no nearer.
“No, my darling,” he said; “but I couldn’t help it. It is not your
fault; you have not broken your promise. I only had to see you, just
see you. I think it was the spring that made me do it. I am with your
uncle for just one night. See, there is this for you from Martin.”
He held out a note for her, standing a little aside, so that the path
was clear for her to pass on her way. But, as their fingers met, she
lingered and hung on her step, still not looking at him. She tried, she
tried her best to pass on, but she could not; her eyelids swept upward
and she looked at him. Then which of them moved first neither knew, but
next moment his arms were round her, and he kissed her. And, alas! her
struggle to get free was very faint; her tongue protested, but not very
earnestly.
“Ah, let me go, let me go,” it said.
“I can’t. Helen, it was here that----“
“I know,” she said. “I come here every day. I knew I should meet you
here some day. And this of all days, the first of spring. Oh, Frank, let
me go. I love you: is not that enough? And it is not for long now.”
“No, my darling, it is not long now.”
“And--and it has been so long. And I have wanted you so much.”
She disengaged herself quietly from his arms, but in a way that made it
impossible for him to hold her.
“Good-bye,” she said. “You ought never to have come. And--oh, my
darling--I thank you so for coming.”
For one infinitesimal moment she looked at him again, then with her
quick, light step she went on up the path with Martin’s letter in her
hand and never looked back. She did not pause till she reached the top
of the wood, but as she walked she listened for and longed for, and yet
dreaded, to hear footsteps behind. But none came, she had made her
meaning too clear for that (and how she wished she had been less
explicit), and having arrived at the top, she slackened her pace and
opened Martin’s letter. It was very short, a couple of lines only,
announcing his engagement to Stella and asking her to tell his father.
And with that spring was complete.
Upward again lay her path; no more among trees and sheltered places, but
high over the broad swell of the short-turfed downs, where shadows of
clouds ran glorious races. Something in the huge view and the large sky
chimed in wonderful harmony to the girl’s mood; all was so big, so
untainted, so full of light. Beneath her foot the dead autumn turf still
stretched in brown tufts and patches, but springing up in between were
the myriad shoots of the young grass, and even since yesterday, she
thought, the tone of the colour was changed. Till to-day all had been
grey and brown, all still pointed backward, winterwards; but this
morning it was different, and the million sprouting lives shouted, “Look
forward, look forward! For, lo, the winter is past and the time of the
singing-bird has come.” “Ah, song of songs,” she thought, “indeed it is
so.”
Martin! There were no words into which she could put what she felt, any
more than the pervading sunlight could be put into words. It was there,
a great, huge, exultant presence that flooded everything. Ah, the
beloved twin! Why, it was only a few years ago that he was in Eton
jackets and broad white collars and sang treble. And she? Well, yes, she
was in short frocks about the same time. Yet had not she, half an hour
ago, down in the wood below her, where the young leaves hung like a
green mist around the purple branches of the birch, felt a loving arm
round her and kisses on her face. Oh, it was very wrong of Frank. No,
not wrong of him,--he would have stood aside, he did stand aside to let
her pass. It was very wrong of her. But at that moment she could not
pass by,--it was as if her power of movement had been paralysed. Yet she
was not in the least degree ashamed of herself, and she looked forward
with a certain secret glee to telling her father,--for that had to be
done,--for so by speaking of it she would live it over again. “No, that
was not all,” she said to herself, rehearsing question and answer, “He
kissed me.”
Sunlight, and larks invisible, and the shadows of clouds that coursed
over the downs. And some distance off a tall figure, moving towards her
rapidly, a figure she easily recognised. They came nearer and met. Her
hat was in her hand, her hair tossed over her forehead, and there was
spring and the sure promise of summer in her face. And in her father’s,
too, there was something of that infused joy. His hand held a little
bunch of primroses, which he had plucked as he walked.
They met without words, but with smiles, the unconscious smile that the
morning had made.
“Well, Helen?” said he. “You look, indeed you look like the morning.”
He came close to her and with his neat precision put the primroses into
her hat.
“You ought to pin them,” he said. “They will fall out.”
She laughed.
“Ah, nothing can fall out to-day,” she said. “Don’t you feel it, father?
Spring, spring--and--oh, the daffodils. And I have news.”
Then her face sobered suddenly.
“Two pieces of news,” she said, smiling again, unable not to be gay.
“The first is of Martin: he is engaged to be married. He asked me to
tell you. Stella Plympton, whom you met here. He wrote me just a line,
asking me to tell you.”
Her instinct was right to repeat that. Sharp as a knife, a father’s
jealousy had pierced him. He should have been told first; whatever his
disagreements with Martin, he, his father, ought to have been told
first. But that passed in a moment.
“Martin?” he said, gently. “The boy?”
“Yes; I thought of it like that. But he is really--oh, ever so old. As
old as I am.”
Mr. Challoner’s face relaxed.
“I had forgotten,” he said; “an immense age. What next, Helen?”
She looked up at him.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked, feeling suddenly chilly and
disappointed.
“You think I am hard, Helen,” he said. “I try to be. But what next?”
Yes, it was chilly on these upland downs. She put her hat on.
“Just this,” she said. “I met Frank half an hour ago. He gave me
Martin’s note. I did not expect to see him. As far as I am concerned it
was quite accidental. I had no idea he was here. I had promised you not
to see him. That I could not help.”
She stopped, drew a long breath, and went on.
“I suppose I could have helped the rest,” she said. “I suppose it was
that I did not choose to help it. He stood aside for me to pass.
But--but I did not pass. I went to him. I let him kiss me. He stood
there with me. I thought I could not help it. Indeed, I thought that.”
For a moment Mr. Challoner’s hardness, his involuntary condemnation of
weakness of any sort, of failure to keep a promise, returned to him,
mixed with a very ugly thing, suspicion.
“And is this the first time you have seen or spoken to him or had any
communication with him?” he asked.
Helen raised her eyes to him in quiet surprise. No trace of resentment
or sense of injustice was in her voice.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I should have told you otherwise.”
He looked at the sweet, patient face, struggling for a moment with this
worse self of his, which yet was so upright, so devoted.
“I know you would,” he said at last. “I don’t know why I asked you
that.”
Helen laughed.
“Nor do I,” she said.
“You and he have been very patient, Helen,” he said.
“Yes, till this morning I think we have,” she said. “But to-day,
perhaps, the spring was too strong for us both. Is it not in your blood
this morning, father? It is in mine.”
He smiled at her gravely.
“And a very suitable thing,” he said. “And summer comes next for you.
For you and Martin.”
“Yes, Martin too,” she said, with an appeal in her eyes. “Oh, father,
can’t we be all happy together again? We used to be.”
Mr. Challoner stood silent a moment, a sort of aching longing for all he
had always missed in Martin and a dim, bitter regret for all his own
missed opportunities of making the most of the human relation between
himself and his son rising suddenly within him. And he spoke with a
terrible quiet sincerity.
“I don’t think Martin used ever to be happy with me,” he said. “Once he
told me he was not happy at home. I don’t think that he ever was. It was
perhaps the fault of both of us, but it was certainly mine. I should
have done somehow differently. I think we never understood each other.
Nor can I understand him now. It is sad. I cannot reconcile what he has
done----“
He broke off again.
“There, dear, you must be getting on your way,” he said, “and I must be
getting home.”
But she detained him a moment more.
“Won’t you give me a little hope?” she said. “I thought last night that
perhaps, perhaps soon--and this news this morning----“
But her father disengaged her hand.
“I shall, of course, write to him,” he said, “and congratulate him. She
is a very charming girl. I think Martin is most fortunate.”
“Martin is very charming, too, remember,” said she.
Mr. Challoner walked swiftly homewards after Helen had left him, feeling
strangely and deeply moved by the news. He felt somehow that his
children were his children no longer; all the responsibility for them
had passed into other hands, and they themselves, light-heartedly,
eagerly, were now taking on themselves the responsibility for others. He
had thought of them always as a boy and a girl, each bound to obedience
to his will, dependent on him, without any real, individual existence of
their own. But within the last year first one and now the other was
passing out of his reach. Helen first and then Martin had acted for
themselves in direct defiance not only of his wish, but of that which
was the mainspring and motive of his life. She, it is true, by these
months of quiet, normal life at home had made a great change in him; her
disobedience to him personally had vanished from his mind, and, as he
had told her last night, though he believed no less strongly than before
that his conviction with regard to her marriage was the will of God for
him, he believed also, though he could not understand how, that she,
too, was acting consonantly to that same will. But with regard to
Martin, however he looked at his conduct, or whatever possible
interpretation he tried to put on it, he could not see light. He was
trivial, superficial, not in earnest about religious matters, just as he
had been in the rest of his education. Nothing, except music, which Mr.
Challoner could not frankly bring himself to regard as anything but a
mere æsthetic fringe, a mere ornament of life, had ever touched him
deeply. He had no depth, no seriousness. And now that boy, that child,
was going to be married, to take upon himself with the same
light-hearted _insouciance_ all the responsibilities of a husband and a
father.
How strange that they were twins! Helen developing every day in
patience, dutifulness, love; and Martin, still thoughtless, bent only on
the personal gratification of his musical tastes, and willing, so Mr.
Challoner bitterly put it to himself, to leave the English Church, the
mother of his faith, for the sake of a hymn-tune! He would write to him,
as he had said, but even now he could not see him. For he knew himself
well, and recognised, though he scarcely wished to cure his own
impatience, his anger at one who seemed to him to be going wrong
wilfully. On a point like this he could make no concession, for any
concession implied a failure of loyalty on his own part to his creed.
He had by this time entered the woods round Chartries, where the path
was wet and a little slippery under the trees, causing him to abate the
briskness of his pace. How different, how utterly different Helen had
proved herself. If only she could see the question of her marriage as he
saw it, how would his whole heart rise up in thankfulness. For though he
admitted here that both he and she might be right, he was still full of
disquietude and anxiety about it. Then suddenly, turning a corner, he
found himself face to face with her lover.
For a moment neither spoke. To Frank it seemed that if words even of
commonplace greeting were to pass between them it must be for Mr.
Challoner to make the beginning, while to the elder man the sudden shock
of seeing him inevitably awakened again, for the moment, the horror and
bitterness of their last interview. Under that his mouth was compressed
and tightened, a gleam almost of elemental enmity shone in his eyes,
and it seemed to himself that he would pass by Frank with averted head.
But then over that, veiling and softening it, there rose all that he had
been learning this winter, all that Helen had been teaching him, and as
he came close to Frank he paused. Then, with an effort that cost the
proud man something, he put his lesson into practice, and held out his
hand. And the strength and the big loveableness of the man was offered
with it, whole-heartedly.
“We shook hands last time we met, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. “Will you
not let me shake hands with you again?”
That done, that effort made, the rest was easier, for all that was
generous and sympathetic in Frank responded.
“Thank you,” he said, simply. “And I am not exaggerating, Mr. Challoner,
when I tell you that I know nothing in the world that could have
happened to me which could give me so much pleasure as this.”
Mr. Challoner still retained his hand.
“Do you know, you are a very good fellow?” he said. “You are very
generous to me. So has Helen been. I cannot tell you what she has been
to me all this winter. And I thank you very much for letting her be with
me, for not urging her otherwise. You have made it all as easy for her
as you can. You have been very unselfish, both of you. And I have been
making it very difficult for her.”
Frank was a good deal moved. There was a very noble and a pathetic
sincerity about this.
“I think you wrong yourself,” he said. “I am sure you wrong yourself. We
have all tried to--well, to do our best. And we all three of us know
that.”
But Mr. Challoner had more to say.
“I ask your forgiveness,” he said, simply, and his voice trembled a
little.
“Ah, don’t do that,” said Frank.
They stood there together a moment longer, under the flecked sunlight
filtering through the trees, suddenly brought close again, just as they
had been in that dreadful hour when Helen’s weakness made them forget
all else. But now the reconciliation went far deeper than it had gone
before. Then they had joined hands in ministering to the physical
suffering of one they both loved, but now they joined hands over an
appreciation not of weakness but of strength. The bond between them was
no longer a thing that could easily break. Poles apart as they still
were, that golden thread could scarcely be snapped.
“I met Helen just now,” said Mr. Challoner at length. “She told me she
had seen you, dear girl. She told me also the news from my son. Are you
busy? Will you walk with me a little way?”
Frank turned at once, and they went on down the steep path towards the
rectory.
“Have you seen Martin lately?” asked his father.
“Yes; I see him constantly in London.”
“Then can you tell me about him? _What_ is he? That is the thing I
puzzle and pray over. He joined the Roman Church, as you know, at
Christmas. I don’t think anything ever pained me more. But I should be
very glad to know if he is in earnest about it. Or does he take it as he
takes everything else? Do you understand it?”
“Yes, I think I do,” said Frank, and paused a moment. “It is this.
Martin demands beauty in all that is real to him. That is the ruling
instinct in his nature. And, in matters of religion, the Roman Church
seemed to him to supply that more than the church he left.”
“And it was for that he threw it over?” said Mr. Challoner. “And without
regret or struggle even?”
“He regretted very sincerely the pain it would give you,” said Frank.
Mr. Challoner waved this aside.
“That does not matter,” he said. “But otherwise without a regret?”
Frank let his silence unmistakably answer that before he went on.
“I know you will excuse me,” he said, “but I don’t think you quite
realise what Martin is or how the artistic instincts dominate him. Till
he fell in love, I don’t think he ever had any very poignant emotion
apart from them.”
Mr. Challoner’s face got even more grave.
“Simply, then,” he said, “he puts them above the love of God. I do not
understand how a Christian can do that. And I do not want to understand
it,” he added.
They had reached the rectory, and Mr. Challoner paused on the terrace
walk.
“Is he a good boy?” he asked, suddenly.
“Morally? Yes, I am sure of it.”
“How do you know that?” asked his father.
“Because I know his opinion about immorality. He feels very strongly
that it must blunt the artistic sense.”
Mr. Challoner winced as if in sudden pain.
“Ah,” he cried, “is that all? Dear God, is that all?”
“The result in the way of conduct is identical,” said Frank, quietly.
“Yes, yes; but are we not taught that works without faith are dead? Ah,
I beg your pardon; indeed I do, my dear fellow. I spoke without
thinking. I was thinking only of my poor Martin. Pray, forgive me. And
is he happy, do you think?”
“Yes, quite extraordinarily happy. He has fallen in love, too, with the
same white ardour that he brings to everything which appeals to him.”
Mr. Challoner considered this a moment, and then faced Frank.
“I want your opinion, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. “Do you think that any
good purpose would be served by my seeing Martin? I ask you for your
candid opinion--whatever it is or implies.”
“I think it depends entirely on yourself,” said Frank.
“You mean,--ah, pray tell me quite straight out. I shall be very
grateful.”
Frank looked at him with real pity. What he was going to say seemed very
cruel, but it seemed true.
“I mean this, Mr. Challoner,” he said, “that if you are quite certain
that the sight of Martin, or the possible issues into which talk may
lead you, will not again embitter you against him, you had far better
see him. Why not? There is all to be gained. But if your reconciliation
cannot be complete, if there is a chance of your getting angry with him,
and--frightening him--you had better not. You asked me to tell you
straight.”
“You think he is afraid of me? Has he told you?”
“I cannot help knowing it. If he has told me, you must take my word for
it that he has not told me in any disloyal way. And if I have hurt you,
I am very sorry.”
“No, I thank you for telling me,” said Mr. Challoner. “I think you are
right. I am afraid it is better I should not see him yet.”
He smiled rather sadly.
“I am afraid I have a great deal to learn yet,” he said. “I must take
myself in hand. But I dream about him, Lord Yorkshire, so often. And
always almost in my dreams I say things to him that frighten him.
Sometimes, it is true, we are great friends. Those are beautiful nights,
and I thank God for them. I so long to see his dear face again.”
“Those beautiful nights must find fulfilment in many beautiful days,”
said Frank.
“Yes; I hope that it is still possible. He was such a bright little
fellow when he was small. Always quick, always laughing. I had many
plans for him. I think all my life I have been rather too ready to push
other people into places I think suitable.”
* * * * *
They had come to the far end of the terrace again, when from inside the
vicarage the gong sounded for lunch. Frank’s back was towards the house,
but the vicar, looking up, saw Helen, still hatless, coming towards them
across the lawn. And all the happiness of the morning, when she saw
these two together, all the spirit of spring, quivered and concentrated
itself into one rose-coloured point of joy. That was the best moment to
her in all the days of spring that were yet to come.
“You will stay to lunch, Lord Yorkshire?” said he.
“Thanks, so much; but I am afraid I ought to get back to Chartries. I
said I would be back.”
Mr. Challoner waited till Helen was close to them.
“Perhaps if Helen adds her voice to mine,” he said.
He turned quickly and saw her. And there was no need of words, but once
more the three stood together, hands clasped. This time the vicar did
not go back alone to his empty room.