|The low-lying landscape had vanished in the twilight, and the stars
were twinkling in the clear blue sky before Edith rose, dried her
eyes, and began to return homeward. The moon had risen, but had yet
scarcely freed itself from the tops of the dark woods, through which
it shone round and ruddy. As she passed the Vicarage, she paused and
looked up at the windows. She felt prompted to steal quietly up to
the door and inquire whether Mr. Santley was any better, but a fear
arising from many causes held her back. Besides, the house was in
darkness, and every one seemed to have retired to rest.
Since Edith had been in the habit of visiting the Vicarage, this was
the first occasion on which she had returned home alone. Unreasonable
as she acknowledged the suspicion to be, she could not rid herself
of the belief that Mr. Santleys indisposition had been, assumed as an
excuse for avoiding her. She strove to convince herself that she was
foolishly sensitive and jealous, to hope that the change in the vicars
manner was but an illusion of her excited fancy, to feel confident
that when she saw him to-morrow she would recognize how childish she
had been.
Miss Dove was exceedingly fond of music, and during the week she was
accustomed to spend hours alone in the church, giving utterance to her
thoughts, and feelings in dreamy voluntaries, which were the fugitive
inspiration of the moment, or filling the cool, richly lighted aisles
with the impassioned strains of Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. The
sound of the organ could be heard at the Vicarage, and Mr. Santley had
been in the habit of going into the church, and conversing with her
while she played. It was with the hope that one of his favourite
pieces would again bring him to her that, during the afternoon of the
following day, Edith took her seat at the organ. With nervous, eager
fingers she swept the key-board, and sent her troubled heart into
the yearning anguish and clamorous impetration of the _Agnus Dei_
of Haydn’s No. 2. When she had finished she rested for a little, and
glanced expectantly down the aisle; but no footstep disturbed
the quiet of the place. She then turned to another of the vicar’s
favourites--a _Gloria_ of Mozart’s. The volumes of throbbing sound
vibrated through the stained windows, and floated across the bright
churchyard to the Vicarage; but Ediths hope was not realized. She
played till she felt wearied, rather with the hopelessness of her task
than with the physical exertion; but the schoolboy who blew the organ
for her was exhausted, and when she saw how red and hot he looked,
she closed the instrument and dismissed him. Every day that week she
repeated her experiment, but her music had apparently lost its
magical influence. The vicar never came. She called thrice to see Miss
Santley, but each time he was away from home. Once she saw him in the
village, and her heart began to beat violently as he approached; but
they were on different sides of the street, and instead of crossing
over to her, as he had always done hitherto, he merely smiled, raised
his hat, and passed on. Sunday came round at length, and she looked
forward with a sad, painful wonder to the customary visit in the
evening.
It was a bright, breezy sabbath morning, and the great limes and
sycamores which buried Foxglove Manor in a wilderness of billowy
verdure, rolled gladsomely in the sun, and filled the world with a
vast sealike _susurrus_. On the stone terrace which ran along the
front of the mansion the master of the Manor was lounging, with a
cigar in his mouth, and a huge deer-hound basking at his feet; while
in the shadow of the room his wife stood at an open French window,
conversing with him.
Mr. Haldane was a tall, broad-shouldered, powerful man of about
forty years of age. His face, especially in repose, was by no means
handsome. His grave, large, strongly marked features expressed
decision, daring, and indomitable force. His forehead was broad, and
deeply marked with the perpendicular lines of long mental labour. The
poise of his head suggested a habit of boldly confronting an opponent.
His short hair and closely trimmed beard were touched with gray, and
gave a certain keenness and frostiness to his appearance. A grim,
self-sufficing, iron-natured man, one would have said, until one had
looked into his bright blue-gray eyes, which lit up his strong, rugged
face with an expression of frankness and dry humour.
“My dear Nell,” he said at length, in answer to the persistent
persuasion of his wife, “do not be cross. There are two things in the
world which I abhor beyond all others: a damp church and a dry
sermon. Invite your vicar as often as you please. I will do my best to
entertain him; but do not press me to sit out an interminable farrago
of irritating platitudes in a chilly, straight-backed pew.”
“I assure you, George, you will be charmed with him, if you will only
let me prevail on you to come.”
“Why cannot you Christians dispense with incense, and allow smoking
instead--at least during the sermon?”
Mrs. Haldane made a little grimace of horror.
“You would then have whole burnt offerings dedicated with a devout and
cheerful heart.”
“George, you are shockingly profane! I see it is no use urging you
any further; but I did think you would have put yourself to even some
little inconvenience for my sake.”
“For your sake, Nell!” replied Mr. Haldane, laughing. “Why did you not
say so sooner? You know I would do anything on those terms. Have I not
often told you the married philosopher has but one moral law--to do
his wife’s will in all things.”
“Then you will accompany me?”
“Certainly I will.”
“You are a dear, good old bear,” exclaimed Mrs. Haldane, slipping on
to the terrace and caressing his head with both hands. “But you
know you _are_ a bear, and you will try for once to be nice and
good-natured, will you not? And you will not be cold and cynical
with him because he is ideal and enthusiastic? And if you do not
acknowledge that he is a delightful preacher, and that the dear little
church is charming----”
“You will not ask me to go again?”
“I was going to say that, but it will be wiser to make no promises.
You know, dear, you should go to church, if it were only for the sake
of giving a good example; and it is my duty to try and persuade you
to go. And oh, George, seriously I do wish you could feel that it drew
you nearer to God; that where two or three are gathered together, He
is in the midst of them. Now, do not smile in that hard, derisive
way. I know I cannot argue with you, but if I cannot reply to your
reasoning, you cannot convince my heart. I do believe, in spite of all
logic, that I have a heavenly Father who loves and watches over me and
you too, dear; and I should be wretched----”
“My dear little woman,” said Mr. Haldane, taking both her hands in one
of his, “you have no cause to be wretched. I have no wish to deprive
you of your belief in a heavenly Father. With women the illusions of
the heart last longer than with men; and perhaps, in these days of
change and innovation, it is as well that women have still a creed to
find comfort in. For my part, I confess I hardly understand what it
is attracts you in your religion. The civilized world, so far as I can
see, has outgrown the golden age of worship, and _latria_ is one of
the lost arts.”
The presence of the master of Foxglove Manor created considerable
surprise and curiosity among the congregation at St. Cuthbert’s.
Though he had lived in the neighbourhood for the last twelve years,
this was the first time he had been seen inside a church. Much more
attention was paid during the service to the beautiful lady of the
Manor, and the grim, powerful man who sat beside her, than was in
keeping with the sacred character of the occasion. Mr. Haldane, on his
part, though he did his best by imitating the example of his wife to
conform to the ritual, was keenly critical of the whole service. The
dim religious light of the painted windows pleased his eye, but failed
to exercise any influence on his feelings. The decorations of the
church seemed to him insincere and artificial. He missed in the
atmosphere that sense of reverence which he had experienced in the old
cathedrals in Spain and Italy. The ceremonies appeared dry, joyless,
and uninteresting, and as he watched the congregation bowing,
kneeling, praying, singing, pageants of the jubilant mythic worship of
the ancient world crowded upon his imagination.
“What are you thinking of?” his wife once whispered, as she caught a
sidelong glance at his abstracted face.
“Diana at Ephesus!” he replied, with a curious twinkle in his keen
gray eyes.
Once or twice during the sermon a saturnine smile passed across
his face, and Mrs. Haldane pressed his foot by way of warning; but
otherwise he listened gravely throughout, with his large, strongly
marked features turned to the preacher.
“Well, have you been interested, dear?” asked Mrs. Haldane, when the
service was over, and they were waiting in the churchyard for the
vicar.
“Yes,” he replied drily; “your vicar is interesting.”
“Now, what do you mean by that?”
“He will repay study, my dear.”
Mrs. Haldane looked sharply into her husband’s face, but was
dissatisfied with her scrutiny.
“You don’t like him?”
“I have no reason yet to like or dislike him. In a general way, I
should prefer to say that I do like him.”
“But what do you mean by your remark that he will repay study?”
“Perhaps you will not understand me,” he answered thoughtfully. “Your
vicar has a soul, Nell.”
“So have we all, I suppose.”
“At least he believes he has one,” said Mr. Haldane, with a slight
shrug of his shoulders.
“Well!”
“And he is trying to save it.”
“We all are, I hope.”
“I beg your pardon, Nell; the phenomenon in these days is a
psychological rarity, and, being rare, is naturally interesting. It
is one of the obscure problems of cerebration. Ah! here comes your
vicar.”
With a bright smile Mrs. Haldane advanced to meet him, and cordially
shook hands with him. “You must allow me to introduce you to my
husband. George, Mr. Santley.”
“My wife tells me,” said Mr. Haldane, as they shook hands, “that she
was an old pupil of yours.”
“Yes,” said the vicar, with an uneasy glance towards her, “many years
ago.”
“It is a little curious,” continued Mr. Haldane, “how people lose
sight of each other for years, and then are unexpectedly thrown
together into the same small social circle, after they have quite
forgotten each others existence.”
The vicar winced at the last words, but replied with a faint smile,
“The great world is, after all, a very little world.”
“Ah, my dear sir, I see I have started a familiar train of
thought--the littleness of the world,” said Mr. Haldane, with a dry
light in his eyes.
“And you fear I may improve the occasion?” asked the vicar a little
coldly.
“Pray do not misunderstand my husband,” interposed Mrs. Haldane. “He
was delighted with your sermon to-day; and I do not wonder, for you
have the power of appealing to the heart and raising the mind beyond
earthly things. It was only a few moments ago that he told me he was
deeply interested.”
“I perceived that he was amused once or twice,” replied the vicar,
with a smile.
“I confess that I may have smiled at one or two points in your
discourse.”
“Excuse my interrupting you,” said Mrs. Haldane; “will you not walk?
You can spare time to accompany us a little way?”
Mr. Santley bowed, and Mrs. Haldane signed to the coachman to drive on
slowly towards the village.
“For example,” resumed Mr. Haldane, “I see you still stick to the old
chronology and the mythic Eden.”
“Certainly I do.”
“And yet you should be aware that at least a thousand years before the
date you fix for the creation of Adam, tribes of savage hunters and
fishers peopled the old fir-woods of Denmark, and set their nets in
the German Ocean.”
“It may eventually prove necessary to revise the chronology of the
Bible,” replied the vicar; “but there is at present too much conflict
of opinion among your archaeologists to decide on the absolute age of
these tribes. After all, the question is one of minor importance.”
“Granted. But you cannot say the same of the efficacy of prayer.”
Mrs. Haldane laid her hand on her husband’s arm, and stopped abruptly.
“Ask Mr. Santley to dinner, George, and then you can discuss as long
and as profoundly as you like; but I will not allow you to argue now.
Besides, I want to talk to Mr. Santley.”
Mr. Haldane laughed good-naturedly. “Just as you please, my dear. If
Mr. Santley will favour us with his company, I shall be very glad.
Your predecessor was a frequent visitor at our house. A jovial,
rubicund fellow, whose troubles in this life were less of the world
and the devil than of the flesh! A fat, ponderous man and a Tory, as
all fat men are; a sort of Falstaff _in pontificalibus_; a man with a
wit and a shrewd palate for old port. Poor fellow! he was snuffed out
like a candle. One could have better spared a better man.”
“Will you come to-morrow?” asked Mrs. Haldane; “and, if your sister
can accompany you, will you bring her? You will excuse our informality
and so short a notice.”
“I shall be very happy to call tomorrow.”
“Then, if you can spare me a few moments I will have a better
opportunity of speaking to you. I must learn all about the parish,
and I have a whole catechism of questions to ask you. You will come
to-morrow, then?” she concluded, with one of those flashing looks from
her great dark eyes.
He watched them drive away with that look burning in his brain and
the pressure of her hand tingling through every nerve. He stood gazing
after her with a passionate light in his eyes and an eager, yearning
expression on his pale, agitated face. This was the woman he had
lost, and now they were again thrown together in the same small social
circle, after she had completely forgotten his existence! Those words
of her husband had cut him to the quick. Could she so soon, so easily,
so completely have forgotten him? It seemed incredible. If she
had used any such expression to her husband, was it not rather to
forestall any jealous suspicion on his part? Clearly she had not
divulged the secret of those schoolgirl days. _He_ knew not the
story of that sweet, imperishable romance; those burning kisses and
unforgotten vows had been hidden from him; and in that concealment
the vicar found a strange, subtle pleasure. It was at least one tie
between him and her; one secret in common in which her husband had no
share.