Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et irréfutables, de ces
arguments qui fondent devant la raison comme la neige an feu, et
qu'on ne peut saisir, des arguments absurdes et triomphants, de
curé de campagne qul démontre Dieu.--Guy DE MAUPASSANT.
Sybell's party broke up on Saturday, with the exception of Rachel and
Mr. Tristram, who had been unable to finish by that date a sketch he was
making of Sybell. When Doll discovered that his wife had asked that
gentleman to stay over Sunday he entreated Hugh, in moving terms, to do
the same.
"I am not literary," said Doll, who always thought it necessary to
explain that he was not what no one thought he was. "I hate all that
sort of thing. Utter rot, I call it. For goodness' sake, Scarlett, sit
tight. I must be decent to the beast in my own house, and if you go I
shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all hours of the night in
the smoking-room."
Hugh was easily persuaded, and so it came about that the morning
congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching Hugh
and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved Wilderleigh pew,
with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it, and Doll at the other. No one
looked at Rachel. Her hat attracted a momentary attention, but her face
none.
The Miss Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man
milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the sparse
congregation. The spectator of so many points, all made the most of,
unconsciously felt with a sense of oppression that everything that could
be done had been done. No stone had been left unturned.
Their brother, Captain Algernon Pratt, sitting behind them, looked
critically at them, and owned that they were smart women. But he was not
entirely satisfied with them, as he had been in the old days, before he
went into the Guards and began the real work of his life, raising
himself in society.
Captain Pratt was a tall, pale young man--_assez beau
garçon_--faultlessly dressed, with a quiet acquired manner. He was not
ill-looking, the long upper lip concealed by a perfectly kept mustache,
but the haggard eye and the thin line in the cheek, which did not
suggest thought and overwork as their cause, made his appearance vaguely
repellent.
"Jesu, lover of my soul,"
sang the shrill voices of the choir-boys, echoed by Regie and Mary,
standing together, holding their joint hymnbook exactly equally between
them, their two small thumbs touching.
Fräulein, on Hester's other side, was singing with her whole soul,
accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body:
"Cover my defenceless 'ead,
Wiz ze sadow of Zy wing."
Mr. Gresley, after baying like a blood-hound through the opening verses,
ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer. The congregation amened and
settled itself. Mary leaned her blond head against her mother, Regie
against Hester.
The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley.
He gave out the text:
"Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?"
* * * * *
All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a period
admirably suited for quiet reflection.
"A good woman loves but once," said Mr. Tristram to himself, in an
attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a pillar in
front of him. Some of us would be as helpless without a Bowdlerized
generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the invalid would be
without his peptonized beef-tea.
"Rachel is a good woman, a saint. Such a woman does not love in a hurry,
but when she does she loves forever." What was that poem he and she had
so often read together? Tennyson, wasn't it? About love not altering
"when it alteration finds," but bears it out even to the crack of doom.
Fine poet, Tennyson; he knew the human heart. She had certainly adored
him four years ago, just in the devoted way in which he needed to be
loved. And how he had worshipped her! Of course he had behaved badly. He
saw that now. But if he had it was not from want of love. She had been
unable to see that at the time. Good women were narrow, and they were
hard, and they did not understand men. Those were their faults. Had she
learned better by now? Did she realize that she had far better marry a
man who had loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than
some fortune-hunter, like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram
called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and ask
for forgiveness. He glanced for a moment at the gentle, familiar face
beside him.
"She will forgive me," he said, reassuring himself, in spite of an
inward qualm of misgiving. "I am glad I arranged to stay on. I will
speak to her this afternoon. She has become much softened, and we will
bury the past and make a fresh start together."
* * * * *
"I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon," said Doll, stretching a leg
outside the open end of the pew. "I wish Gresley would not call the
Dissenters worms. They are some of my best tenants, and they won't like
it when they hear of it. And I'll go round the young pheasants. (Doll
did this, or something similar, every Sunday afternoon of his life, but
he always rehearsed it comfortably in thought on Sunday mornings.) And
if Withers is about I'll go out in the boat--the big one, the little one
leaks--and set a trimmer or two for to-morrow. I'm not sure I'll set one
under the south bank, for there was the devil to pay last time, when
that beast of an eel got among the roots. I'll ask Withers what he
thinks. I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters blind leaders of
the blind. It's such bad form, and I don't suppose the text meant that
to start with, and what's the use of ill-feeling in a parish? And I'll
take Scarlett with me. We'll slip off after luncheon, and leave that
bounder to bound by himself. And poor old Crack shall come too. Uncle
George always took him."
* * * * *
"James is simply surpassing himself," said Mrs. Gresley to herself, her
arm round her little daughter. "Worms what a splendid comparison! The
Churchman, the full-grown man after the stature of Christ, and the
Dissenter invertebrate (I think dear James means inebriate), like a worm
cleaving to the earth. But possibly God in His mercy may let them slip
in by a back-door to heaven! How like him to say that, so generous, so
wide-minded, taking the hopeful view of everything! How noble he looks!
These are days in which we should stick to our colors. I wonder how he
can think of such beautiful things. For my part, I think the duty of the
true priest is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right
wrong for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson
to the Bishop, if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as if
right and wrong were mere matters of opinion! What a gift he has! I know
he will eat nothing for luncheon. If only we were somewhere else where
the best joints were a little cheaper, and his talents more
appreciated." And Mrs. Gresley closed her eyes and prayed earnestly, a
tear sliding down her cheek on to Mary's floss-silk mane, that she might
become less unworthy to be the wife of one so far above her, that the
children might all grow up like him, and that she might be given
patience to bear with Hester even when she vexed him.
* * * * *
Captain Pratt's critical eye travelled over the congregation. It
absolutely ignored Mrs. Gresley and Fräulein. It lingered momentarily on
Hester. He knew what he called "breeding" when he saw it, and he was
aware that Hester possessed it, though his sisters would have laughed at
the idea. He had seen many well-bred women on social pinnacles look like
that, whose houses were at present barred against him. The Pratt sisters
were fixed into their smartness as some faces are fixed into a grin. It
was not spontaneous, fugitive, evanescent as a smile, gracefully worn,
or lightly laid aside, as in Hester's case. He had known Hester slightly
in London for several years. He had seen her on terms of intimacy, such
as she never showed to his sisters, with inaccessible men and women with
whom he had achieved a bare acquaintance, but whom, in spite of many
carefully concealed advances, he had found it impossible to know better.
Captain Pratt had reached that stage in his profession of raising
himself when he had become a social barometer. He was excessively
careful whom he knew, what women he danced with, what houses he visited;
and any of his acquaintances who cared to ascertain their own social
status to a hair's-breadth had only to apply to it the touchstone of
Captain Pratt's manner towards them.
Hester, who grasped many facts of that kind, was always amused by the
cold consideration with which he treated her on his rare visits to the
parental Towers; and which his sisters could only construe as a sign
that "Algy was gone on Hessie."
"But he will never marry her," they told each other. "Algy looks
higher."
It was true. If Hester had been Lady Hester, it is possible that the
surname of Pratt, if frequently refused by stouter women, might
eventually have been offered to her. But Captain Pratt was determined
to marry rank, and nothing short of a Lady Something was of any use to
him. An Honorable was better than nothing, but it did not count for much
with him. It had a way of absenting itself when wanted. No one was
announced as an Honorable. It did not even appear on cards. It might he
overlooked. Rank, to be of any practical value, must be apparent,
obvious. Lady Georgiana Pratt, Lady Evelina Pratt! Any name would do
with that prefix. His eye travelled as far as Sybell and stopped again.
She was "the right sort" herself, and she dressed in the right way. Why
could not Ada and Selina imitate her? But he had never forgiven her the
fact that he had met "a crew of cads" at her house, whom he had been
obliged to cut afterwards in the Row. No, Sybell would not have done for
him. She surrounded herself with vulgar people.
Captain Pratt was far too well-mannered to be guilty of staring, except
at pretty maid-servants or shop-girls, and his eye was moved on by the
rigid police of etiquette which ruled his every movement. It paused
momentarily on Rachel. He knew about her, as did every bachelor in
London. A colossal heiress. She was neither plain nor handsome. She had
a good figure, but not good enough to counterbalance her nondescript
face. She had not the air of distinction which he was so quick to detect
and appraise. She was a social nonentity. He did not care to look at her
a second time. "I would not marry her with twice her fortune," he said
to himself.
* * * * *
Regie's hand had stolen into Hester's. His even breathing, felt rather
than heard, as he dropped asleep against her shoulder, surrounded Hester
with the atmosphere of peace and comfort which his father had broken
earlier in the day. Regie often brought back to her what his father
wrested from her.
She listened to the sermon as from a warm nest safely raised above the
quaggy ground of personal feeling.
"Dear James! How good he is! how much in earnest! But worms don't go in
at back-doors. Why are not clergymen taught a few elementary rules of
composition before they are ordained? But perhaps no one will notice it
except myself. James is certainly a saint. He has the courage of his
opinions. I believe he loves God and the Church with his whole heart,
and would go to the stake for them, or send me there if he thought it
was for the good of my soul. Why has he no power? Why is he so much
disliked in the parish and neighborhood? I am sure it is not because he
has small abilities, and makes puns, and says cut-and-dried things. How
many excellent clergymen who do the same are beloved? Is it because he
deals with every one as he deals with me? What dreadful things he thinks
of me. I don't wonder he is anxious about me. What unworthy motives of
wilful blindness and arrogance he is attributing to the Nonconformists!
Oh, James, James! will you never see that it is disbelief in the
sincerity of the religion of others, because it is not in the same
narrow form as your own, which makes all your zeal and earnestness of
none effect! You think the opposition you meet with everywhere is the
opposition of evil to good, of indifference to piety. When will you
learn that it is the good in your hearers which opposes you, the love of
God in them which is offended by your representation of Him?"
* * * * *
Hugh's eyes were fixed on the same pillar as Mr. Tristram's, but if he
had been aware of that fact he would have chosen another pillar. His
thin, handsome face was beginning to show the marks of mental strain.
His eyes had the set, impassive look of one who, hedged in on both
sides, sees a sharp turn ahead of him on an unknown road.
* * * * *
"Rachel! Rachel! Rachel! Don't you hear me calling to you? Don't you
hear me telling you that I can't live without you? The hymn was
right--'Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee'--only
it was written of you, not of that far, far away God who does not care.
Only care for me. Only love me. Only give me those cool hands that I may
lean my forehead against them. No help can come to me except through
you. Stoop down to me and raise me up, for I love you."
The sun went in suddenly, and a cold shadow fell on the pillar and on
Hugh's heart.
Love and marriage were not for him. That far-away God, that Judge in the
black cap, had pronounced sentence against him, had doomed that he
should die in his sins. When he had sat in his own village church only
last Sunday between his mother and sister, he had seen the empty place
on his chancel wall where the tablet to his memory would be put up. When
he walked through the church-yard, his mother leaning on his arm, his
step regulated by her feeble one, he had seen the vacant space by his
father's grave already filled by the mound of raw earth which would
shortly cover him. His heart had ached for his mother, for the gentle,
feeble-minded sister, who had transferred the interest in life, which
keeps body and soul together, from her colorless existence to that of
her brother. Hughie was the romance of her gray life: what Hughie said,
what Hughie thought, Hughie's wife--oh, jealous thought, only to be met
by prayer! But later on--joy of joys--Hughie's children! He realized it,
now and then, vaguely, momentarily, but never as fully as last Sunday.
He shrank from the remembrance, and his mind wandered anew in the
labyrinth of broken, twisted thought, from which he could find no way
out.
_There must be some way out!_ He had stumbled callously through one day
after another of these weeks in which he had not seen Rachel towards his
next meeting with her, as a half-blind man stumbles towards the light.
But the presence of Rachel afforded no clew to the labyrinth. What vain
hope was this that he had cherished unconsciously that she could help
him. There was no help for him. There was no way out. He was in a trap.
He must die, and soon, by his own hand. Incredible, preposterous fate!
He shuddered, and looked around him involuntarily.
His glance, reverent, full of timid longing, fell on Rachel, and his
heart cried aloud, suddenly, "If she loves me, I shall not be able to
leave her."