"Doan't yo go too far on t' fells, missy. It's coomin' on to snaw, an

it'll snaw aw neet. Lor bless yer, it's wild here i' winter. An when t'

clouds coom down like yon--" he pointed up the valley--"even them as

knaws t' fells from a chilt may go wrang."

"Where does this path lead?" said Hester, absently.

"It goes oop to Marly Head, and joins on to th' owd road--t' Roman road,

foak calls it--along top o' t' fells. An' if yo follers that far enoof

you may coom to Ullswatter an' Pen'rth."

"Thank you. Good afternoon," said Hester, moving on.

[Illustration: "The old shepherd looked after her doubtfully"]

The old shepherd looked after her doubtfully, then said to himself that

what the lady did was none of his business, and turned back toward one of

the farms across the bridge. Who was she? She was a strange sort of body

to be walking by herself up the head of Long Whindale. He supposed she

came from Burwood--there was no other house where a lady like that could

be staying. But it was a bit queer anyhow.

* * * * *

Hester walked on. She turned a craggy corner beyond which she was

out of sight of any one on the lower stretches of the road. The struggle

with the wind, the roar of water in her ears, had produced in her a kind

of trance-like state. She walked mechanically, half deafened, half

blinded, measuring her force against the wind, conscious every now and

then of gusts of snow in her face, of the deepening gloom overhead

climbing up and up the rocky path. But, as in that fatal moment when she

had paused in the Burwood lane, her mind was not more than vaguely

conscious of her immediate surroundings. It had become the prey of

swarming recollections--captured by sudden agonies, unavailing,

horror-stricken revolts.

At last, out of breath, and almost swooning, she sank down under the

shelter of a rock, and became in a moment aware that white mists were

swirling and hurrying all about her, and that only just behind her, and

just above her, was the path clear. Without knowing it, she had

climbed and climbed till she was very near the top of the pass. She

looked down into a witch's cauldron of mist and vapour, already thickened

with snow, and up into an impenetrable sky, as it seemed, close upon her

head, from which the white flakes were beginning to fall, steadily and

fast.

She was a little frightened, but not much. After all, she had only to

rest and retrace her steps. The watch at her wrist told her it was not

much past four; and it was February. It would be daylight till half-past

five, unless the storm put out the daylight. A little rest--just a little

rest! But she began to feel ill and faint, and so bitterly, bitterly

cold. The sense of physical illness, conquering the vague overwhelming

anguish of heart and mind, began to give her back some clearness of

brain.

Who was she?--why was she there? She was Hester Fox-Wilton--no! Hester

Meryon, who had escaped from a man who had called himself, for a few days

at least, her husband; a man whom in scarcely more than a week she had

come to loathe and fear; whose nature and character had revealed to her

infamies of which she had never dreamed; who had claimed to be her

master, and use her as he pleased, and from whom she had escaped by

night, after a scene of which she still bore the marks.

"You little wild-cat! You think you can defy me--do you?"

And then her arms held--and her despairing eyes looking down into his

mocking ones--and the helpless sense of indignity and wrong--and of her

own utter and criminal folly.

And through her memory there ran in an ugly dance those things, those

monstrous things, he had said to her about the Scotch woman. It was not

at all absolutely sure that she, Hester, was his wife. He had shown her

those letters at St. Germains, of course, to reassure her; and the

letters were perfectly genuine letters, written by the people they

professed to be written by. Still Scotch marriage law was a damned

business--one never knew. He _hoped_ it was all right; but if she did

hate him as poisonously as she said, if she did really want to get rid of

him, he might perhaps be able to assist her.

Had he after all tricked and ruined her? Yet as her consciousness framed

the question in the conventional phrases familiar to her through

newspapers and novels, she hardly knew what they meant, this child of

eighteen, who in three short weeks had been thrust through the fire of an

experience on which she had never had time to reflect. Flattered vanity,

and excitement, leading up almost from the first day to instinctive and

fierce revolt--intervals of acquiescence, of wild determination to be

happy, drowned in fresh rebellions of soul and sense--through these

alternations the hours had rushed on, culminating in her furtive and

sudden escape from the man of whom she was now in mad fear--her blind

flight for "home."

The _commonness_ of her case, the absence of any romantic or poetic

element in it--it was that which galled, which degraded her in her own

eyes. Only three weeks since she had felt that entire and arrogant belief

in herself, in her power over her own life and Philip's, on which she now

looked back as merely ludicrous!--inexplicable in a girl of the most

ordinary intelligence. What power had girls over men?--such men as Philip

Meryon?

Her vanity was bleeding to death--and her life with it. Since the

revelation of her birth, she seemed to have been blindly struggling to

regain her own footing in the world--the kind of footing she was

determined to have. Power and excitement; _not_ to be pitied, but to be

followed, wooed, adored; not to be forced on the second and third bests

of the world, but to have the "chief seat," the daintest morsel, the

_beau rôle_ always--had not this been her instinctive, unvarying demand

on life? And now? If she were indeed married, she was tied to a man who

neither loved her, nor could bring her any position in the world; who was

penniless, and had only entrapped her that he might thereby get some

money out of her relations; who, living or dead, would be a disgrace to

her, standing irrevocably between her and any kind of honour or

importance in society.

And if he had deceived her, and she were not his wife--she would be free

indeed; but what would her freedom matter to her? What decent man would

ever love her now--marry her--set her at his side? At eighteen--eighteen!

all those chances were over for her. It was so strange that she could

have laughed at her own thoughts; and yet at the same time it was so

ghastly true! No need now to invent a half-sincere chatter about "Fate."

She felt herself in miserable truth the mere feeble mouse wherewith the

great cat Fate was playing.

And yet--after all--she herself had done it!--by her own sheer madness.

She seemed to see Aunt Alice's plaintive face, the eyes that followed

her, the lip that trembled when she said an unkind or wanton thing; she

heard again the phrases of Uncle Richard's weekly letters, humorous,

tender phrases, with here and there an occasional note of austerity, or

warning.

Oh yes--she had done it--she had ruined herself.

She felt the tears running over her cheeks, mingling with the snow as it

pelted in her face. Suddenly she realized how cold she was, how soaked.

She must--must go back to shelter--to human faces--to kind hands. She put

out her own, groping helplessly--and rose to her feet.

But the darkness was now much advanced, and the great snowstorm of the

night had begun. She could not see the path below her at all, and only

some twenty yards of its course above her. In the whirling gloom and in

the fury of the wind, although she turned to descend the path, her

courage suddenly failed her. She remembered a stream she had crossed

on a little footbridge with a rail; could she ever see to recross it

again?--above the greedy tumult of the water? Peering upward it seemed to

her that she saw something like walls in front of her--perhaps another

sheepfold? That would give her shelter for a little, and perhaps the snow

would stop--perhaps it was only a shower. She struggled on, and up, and

found indeed some fragments of walls, beside the path, one of the many

abandoned places among the Westmoreland fells that testify to the closer

settlement of the dales in earlier centuries.

And just as she clambered within them, the clouds sweeping along the

fell-side lifted and parted for the last time, and she caught a glimpse

of a wide, featureless world, the desolate top of the fells, void of

shelter or landmark, save that straight across it, from gloom to gloom,

there ran a straight white thing--a ghostly and forsaken track. The Roman

road, no doubt, of which the shepherd had spoken. And a vision sprang

into her mind of Roman soldiers tramping along it, helmeted and speared,

their heads bent against these northern storms--shivering like herself.

She gazed and gazed, fascinated, till her bewildered eyes seemed to

perceive shadows upon it, moving--moving--toward her.

A panic fear seized her.

"I must get home!--I must!--"

And sobbing, with the sudden word "mother!" on her lips, she ran out of

the shelter she had found, taking, as she supposed, the path toward the

valley. But blinded with snow and mist, she lost it almost at once. She

stumbled on over broken and rocky ground, wishing to descend, yet keeping

instinctively upward, and hearing on her right from time to time, as

though from depths of chaos, the wild voices of the valley, the wind

tearing the cliffs, the rushing of the stream. Soon all was darkness; she

knew that she had lost herself; and was alone with rock and storm. Still

she moved; but nerve and strength ebbed; and at last there came a step

into infinity--a sharp pain--and the flame of consciousness went out.

CHAPTER XXIII

The February afternoon in Long Whindale, shortened by the first heavy

snowstorm of the winter, passed quickly into darkness. Down through all

the windings of the valley the snow showers swept from the north,

becoming, as the wind dropped a little toward night, a steady continuous

fall, which in four or five hours had already formed drifts of some depth

in exposed places.

Toward six o'clock, the small farmer living across the lane from Burwood

became anxious about some sheep which had been left in a high "intak" on

the fell. He was a thriftless, procrastinating fellow, and when the

storm came on about four o'clock had been taking his tea in a warm

ingle-nook by his wife's fire. He was then convinced that the storm would

"hod off," at least till morning, that the sheep would get shelter enough

from the stone walls of the "intak," and that all was well. But a couple

of hours later the persistence of the snowfall, together with his wife's

reproaches, goaded him into action. He went out with his son and

lanterns, intending to ask the old shepherd at the Bridge Farm to help

them in their expedition to find and fold the sheep.

Meanwhile, in the little sitting-room at Burwood Catherine Elsmere and

Mary were sitting, the one with her book, the other with her needlework,

while the snow and wind outside beat on the little house. But Catharine's

needlework often dropped unheeded from her fingers; and the pages of

Mary's book remained unturned. The postman who brought letters up the

dale in the morning, and took letters back to Whinborough at night, had

just passed by in his little cart, hooded and cloaked against the storm,

and hoping to reach Whinborough before the drifts in the roads had made

travelling too difficult. Mary had put into his hands a letter addressed

to the Rev. Richard Meynell, Hotel Richelieu, Paris. And beside her on

the table lay a couple of sheets of foreign notepaper, covered closely

with Meynell's not very legible handwriting.

Catharine also had some open letters on her lap. Presently she turned to

Mary.

"The Bishop thinks the trial will certainly end tomorrow."

"Yes," said Mary, without raising her eyes.

Catharine took her daughter's hand in a tender clasp.

"I am so sorry!--for you both."

"Dearest!" Mary laid her mother's hand against her cheek. "But I don't

think Richard will be misunderstood again."

"No. The Bishop says that mysterious as it all is, nobody blames him for

being absent. They trust him. But this time, it seems, he _did_ write to

the Bishop--just a few words."

"Yes, I know. I am glad." But as she spoke, the pale severity of the

girl's look belied the word she used. During the fortnight of Meynell's

absence, while he and Alice Puttenham in the south of France had been

following every possible clue in a vain search for Hester, and the Arches

trial had been necessarily left entirely to the management of Meynell's

counsel, and to the resources of his co-defendants, Darwen and Chesham,

Mary had suffered much. To see his own brilliant vindication of himself

and his followers, in the face of religious England, snuffed out and

extinguished in a moment by the call of this private duty had been

hard!--all the more seeing that the catastrophe had been brought about by

misconduct so wanton, so flagrant, as Hester's. There had sprung up in

Mary's mind, indeed, a _saeva indignatio,_ not for herself, but for

Richard, first and foremost, and next for his cause. Dark as she knew

Meynell's forebodings and beliefs to be, anxiety for Hester must

sometimes be forgotten in a natural resentment for high aims thwarted,

and a great movement risked, by the wicked folly of a girl of eighteen,

on whom every affection and every care had been lavished.

"The roads will be impassable to-morrow," said Catharine, drawing aside

the curtain, only to see a window already blocked with drifted snow.

"But--who can be ringing on such a night!"

For a peal of the front door bell went echoing through the little house.

Mary stepped into the hall, and herself opened the door, only to be

temporarily blinded by the rush of wind and snow through the opening.

"A telegram!" she exclaimed, in wonder. "Please come in and wait. Isn't

it very bad?"

"I hope I'll be able to get back!" laughed the young man who had brought

it. "The roads are drifting up fast. It was noa good bicycling. I got 'em

to gie me a horse. I've just put him in your stable, miss."

But Mary heard nothing of what he was saying. She had rushed back into

the sitting-room.

"Mother!--Richard and Miss Puttenham will be here to-night. They have

heard of Hester."

In stupefaction they read the telegram, which had had been sent from

Crewe:

"Received news of Hester on arrival Paris yesterday. She has left M. Says

she has gone to find your mother. Keep her. We arrive to-night

Whinborough 7.10."

"It is now seven," said Catharine, looking at her watch. "But

where--where is she?"

Hurriedly they called their little parlour-maid into the room and

questioned her with closed doors. No--she knew nothing of any visitor.

Nobody had called; nobody, so far as she knew, had passed by, except the

ordinary neighbours. Once in the afternoon, indeed, she had thought she

heard a carriage pass the bottom of the lane, but on looking out from the

kitchen she had seen nothing of it.

Out of this slender fact, the only further information that could be

extracted was a note of time. It was, the girl thought, about four

o'clock when she heard the carriage pass.

"But it couldn't have passed," Catharine objected, "or you would have

seen it go up the valley."

The girl assented, for the kitchen window commanded the road up to the

bridge. Then the carriage, if she had really heard it, must have come to

the foot of the lane, turned and gone back toward Whinborough again.

There was no other road available.

The telegraph messenger was dismissed, after a cup of coffee; and

thankful for something to do, Catharine and Mary, with minds full of

conjecture and distress, set about preparing two rooms for their guests.

"Will they ever get here?" Mary murmured to herself, when at last the two

rooms lay neat and ready, with a warm fire in each, and she could allow

herself to open the front door again, an inch or two, and look out into

the weather. Nothing to be seen but the whirling snow-flakes. The horrid

fancy seized her that Hester had really been in that carriage and had

turned back at their very door. So that again Richard, arriving weary and

heart-stricken, would be disappointed. Mary's bitterness grew.

But all that could be done was to listen to every sound without, in the

hope of catching something else than the roaring of the wind, and to give

the rein to speculation and dismay.

Catharine sat waiting, in her chair, the tears welling silently. It

touched her profoundly that Hester, in her sudden despair, should have

thought of coming to her; though apparently it was a project she had not

carried out. All her deep heart of compassion yearned over the lost,

unhappy one. Oh, to bring her comfort!--to point her to the only help and

hope in the arms of an all-pitying God. Catharine knew much more of

Meryon's history and antecedents--from Meynell--than did Mary. She was

convinced that the marriage, if there had been a marriage, had been a

bogus one, and that the disgrace was irreparable. But in her stern,

rich nature, now that the culprit had turned from her sin, there was not

a thought of condemnation; only a yearning pity, an infinite tenderness.

At last toward nine o'clock there were steps on the garden path. Mary

flew to the door. In the porch there stood the old shepherd from the

Bridge Farm. His hat, beard, and shoulders were heavy with snow, and his

face shone like a red wrinkled apple, in the light of the hall lamp.

"Beg your pardon, miss, but I've just coom from helpin' Tyson to get his

sheep in. Varra careless of him to ha' left it so long!--aw mine wor safe

i't' fold by fower o'clock. An' I thowt, miss, as I'd mak bold, afore

goin' back to t' farm, to coom an' ast yo, if t' yoong leddy got safe

hoam this afternoon? I wor a bit worritted, for I thowt I saw her on t'

Mardale Head path, juist afther I got hoam, from t' field abuve t' Bridge

Farm, an' it wor noan weather for a stranger, miss, yo unnerstan', to be

oot on t' fells, and it gettin' so black--"

"What young lady?" cried Mary. "Oh, come in, please."

And she drew him hurriedly into the sitting-room, where Catharine

had already sprung to her feet in terror. There they questioned him.

Yes--they had been expecting a lady. When had he seen her?--the young

lady he spoke of? What was she like? In what direction had she gone? He

answered their questions as clearly as he could, his own honest face

growing steadily longer and graver.

And all the time he carried, unconsciously, something heavy in his hand,

on the top of which the snow had settled. Presently Mary perceived it.

"Sit down, please!" she pushed a chair toward him. "You must be tired

out! And let me take that--"

She held out her hand. The old man looked down--recollecting.

"That's noan o' mine, miss. I--"

Catharine cried out--

"It's hers! It's Hester's!"

She took the bag from Mary, and shook the snow from it. It was a small

dressing-bag of green leather and on it appeared the initials--"H. F.-W."

They looked at each other speechless. The old man hastened to explain

that on opening the gate which led to the house from the lane his foot

had stumbled against something on the path. By the light of his lantern

he had seen it was a bag of some sort, had picked it up and brought it

in.

"She _was_ in the carriage!" said Mary, under her breath, "and must have

just pushed this inside the gate before--"

Before she went to her death? Was that what would have to be added? For

there was horror in both their minds. The mountains at the head of Long

Whindale run up to no great height, but there are plenty of crags on them

with a sheer drop of anything from fifty to a hundred feet. Ten or twenty

feet would be quite enough to disable an exhausted girl. Five hours since

she was last seen!--and since the storm began; four hours, at least,

since thick darkness had descended on the valley.

"We must do something at once." Catharine addressed the old man in quick,

resolute tones. "We must get a party together."

But as she spoke there were further sounds outside--of trampling feet and

voices--vying with the storm. Mary ran into the hall. Two figures

appeared in the porch in the light of the lamp as she held it up, with a

third behind them, carrying luggage. In front stood Meynell, and an

apparently fainting woman, clinging to and supported by his arm.

"Help me with this lady, please!" said Meynell, peremptorily, not

recognizing who it was holding the light. "This last little climb has

been too much for her. Alice!--just a few steps more!"

And bending over his charge, he lifted the frail form over the threshold,

and saw, as he did so, that he was placing her in Mary's arms.

"She is absolutely worn out," he said, drawing quick breath, while all

his face relaxed in a sudden, irrepressible joy. "But she would come."

Then, in a lower voice--"Is Hester here?" Mary shook her head, and

something in her eyes warned him of fresh calamity. He stooped suddenly

to look at Alice, and perceived that she was quite unconscious. He and

Mary, between them, raised her and carried her into the sitting-room.

Then, while Mary ministered to her, Meynell grasped Catharine's

hand--with the brusque question--

"What has happened?"

Catharine beckoned to old David, the shepherd, and she, with David and

Meynell, went across, out of hearing, into the tiny dining-room of the

cottage. Meanwhile the horses and man who had brought the travellers from

Whinborough had to be put up for the night, for the man would not venture

the return journey.

Meynell had soon heard what there was to tell. He himself was gray with

fatigue and sleeplessness; but there was no time to think of that.

"What men can we get?" he asked of the shepherd.

Old David ruminated, and finally suggested the two sons of the farmer

across the lane, his own master, the young tenant of the Bridge Farm, and

the cowman from the same farm.

"And the Lord knaws I'd goa wi you myself, sir"--said the fine-featured

old man, a touch of trouble in his blue eyes--"for I feel soomhow as

though there were a bit o' my fault in it. But we've had a heavy job on

t' fells awready, an I should be noa good to you."

He went over to the neighbouring farm, to recruit some young men, and

presently returned with them, the driver, also, from Whinborough, a

stalwart Westmoreland lad, eager to help.

Meanwhile Meynell had snatched some food at Catharine's urgent entreaty,

and had stood a moment in the sitting-room, his hand in Mary's, looking

down upon the just reviving Alice.

"She's been a plucky woman," he said, with emotion; "but she's about at

the end of her tether." And in a few brief sentences he described the

agitated pursuit of the last fortnight; the rapid journeys, prompted now

by this clue, now by that; the alternate hopes and despairs; with no real

information of any kind, till Hester's telegram, sent originally to

Upcote and reforwarded, had reached Meynell in Paris, just as they had

returned thither for a fresh consultation with the police at

headquarters.

As the sound of men's feet in the kitchen broke in upon the hurried

narrative, and Meynell was leaving the room, Alice opened her eyes.

"Hester?" The pale lips just breathed the name.

"We've heard of her." Meynell stooped to the questioner. "It's a real

clue this time. She's not far away. But don't ask any more now. Let Mrs.

Elsmere take you to bed--and there'll be more news in the morning."

She made a feeble sign of assent.

A quarter of an hour later all was ready, and Mary stood again in the

porch, holding the lamp high for the departure of the rescuers. There

were five men with lanterns, ropes, and poles, laden, besides, with

blankets, and everything else that Catharine's practical sense could

suggest. Old David would go with the rest as far as the Bridge Farm.

The snow was still coming down in a stealthy and abundant fall, but the

wind showed some signs of abating.

"They'll find it easier goin', past t' bridge, than it would ha' been an

hour since," said old David to Mary, pitying the white anxiety of her

face. She thanked him with a smile, and then while he marched ahead, she

put down the lamp and leant her head a moment against Meynell's shoulder,

and he kissed her hair.

Down went the little procession to the main road. Through the lane the

lights wavered, and presently, standing at the kitchen window, Catharine

and Mary could watch them dancing up the dale, now visible, now

vanishing. It must be at least, and at best, two or three hours before

the party reappeared; it might be much more. They turned from useless

speculation to give all their thoughts to Alice Puttenham.

Too exhausted to speak or think, she was passive in their hands. She was

soon in bed, in a deep sleep, and Mary, having induced her mother to lie

down in the sitting-room, and having made up fires throughout the

house, sent the servants to bed, and herself began her watch in Alice

Puttenham's room.

Dreary and long, the night passed away. Once or twice through the waning

storm Mary heard the deep bell of the little church, tolling the hours;

once or twice she went hurriedly downstairs thinking there were steps

in the garden, only to meet her mother in the hall, on the same bootless

errand. At last, worn with thinking and praying, she fell fitfully

asleep, and woke to find moonlight shining through the white blind in

Alice Puttenham's room. She drew aside the blind and saw with a shock of

surprise that the storm was over; the valley lay pure white under a

waning moon just dipping to the western fells; the clouds were upfurling;

and only the last echoes of the gale were dying through the bare,

snow-laden trees that fringed the stream. It was four o'clock. Six hours,

since the rescue party had started. Alack!--they must have had far to

seek.

Suddenly--out of the dark bosom of the valley, lights emerged. Mary

sprang to her feet. Yes! it was they--it was Richard returning.

One look at the bed, where the delicate pinched face still lay high on

the pillows, drenched in a sleep which was almost a swoon, and Mary stole

out of the room.

There was time to complete their preparations and renew the fires. When

Catharine softly unlatched the front door, everything was ready--warm

blankets, hot milk, hot water bottles. But now they hardly dared

speak to each other; dread kept them dumb. Nearer and nearer came the

sound of feet and lowered voices. Soon they could hear the swing of the

gate leading into the garden. Four men entered, carrying something.

Meynell walked in front with the lantern.

As he saw the open door, he hurried forward. They read what he had to say

in his haggard look before he spoke.

"We found her a long way up the pass. She has had a bad fall--but she is

alive. That's all one can say. The exposure alone might have killed her.

She hasn't spoken--not a word. That good fellow"--he nodded toward the

Whinborough lad who had brought them from, the station--"will take one of

his horses and go for the doctor. We shall get him here in a couple of

hours."

Silently they brought her in, the stalwart, kindly men, they mounted the

cottage stairs, and on Mary' bed they laid her down.

O crushed and wounded youth! The face, drawn and fixed in pain, was

marble-cold and marble-white; the delicate mire-stained hands hung

helpless. Masses of drenched hair fell about the neck and bosom; and

there was a wound on the temple which had been bandaged, but was now

bleeding afresh. Catharine bent over her in an anguish, feeling for pulse

and heart. Meynell, whispering, pointed out that the right leg was broken

below the knee. He himself had put it in some rough splints, made out of

the poles the shepherds were carrying.

Both Catharine and Mary had ambulance training, and, helped by their two

maids, they did all they could. They cut away the soaked clothes. They

applied warmth in every possible form; they got down some spoonfuls of

warm milk and brandy, dreading always to hear the first sounds of

consciousness and pain.

They came at last--the low moans of one coming terribly back to life.

Meynell returned to the room, and knelt by her.

"Hester--dear child!--you are quite safe--we are all here--the doctor

will be coming directly."

His tone was tender as a woman's. His ghostly face, disfigured by

exhaustion, showed him absorbed in pity. Mary, standing near, longed to

kneel down by him, and weep; but there was an austere sense that not even

she must interrupt the moment of recognition.

At last it came. Hester opened her eyes--

"Uncle Richard?--Is that Uncle Richard?"

A long silence, broken by moaning, while Meynell knelt there, watching

her, sometimes whispering to her.

At last she said, "I couldn't face you all. I'm dying." She moved her

right hand restlessly. "Give me something for this pain--I--I can't stand

it."

"Dear Hester--can you bear it a little longer? We will do all we can. We

have sent for the doctor. He has a motor. He will be here very soon."

"I don't want to live. I want to stop the pain. Uncle Richard!"

"Yes, dear Hester."

"I hate Philip--now."

"It's best not to talk of him, dear. You want all your strength."

"No--I must. There's not much time. I suppose--I've--I've made you very

unhappy?"

"Yes--but now we have you again--our dear, dear Hester."

"You can't care. And I--can't say--I'm sorry. Don't you remember?"

His face quivered. He understood her reference to the long fits of

naughtiness of her childhood, when neither nurse, nor governess, nor

"Aunt Alice" could ever get out of her the stereotyped words "I'm sorry."

But he could not trust himself to speak. And it seemed as though she

understood his silence, for she feebly moved her uninjured hand toward

him; and he raised it to his lips.

"Did I fall--a long way? I don't recollect--anything."

"You had a bad fall, my poor child. Be brave!--the doctor will help you."

He longed to speak to her of her mother, to tell her the truth. It was

borne in upon him that he _must_ tell her--if she was to die; that in the

last strait, Alice's arms must be about her. But the doctor must decide.

Presently, she was a little easier. The warm stimulant dulled the

consciousness which came in gusts.

Once or twice, as she recognized the faces near her, there was a touch of

life, even of mockery. There was a moment when she smiled at Catharine--

"You're sweet. You won't say--'I told you so'!"

In one of the intervals when she seemed to have lapsed again into

unconsciousness Meynell reported something of the search. They had found

her a long distance from the path, at the foot of a steep and rocky

scree, some twenty or thirty feet high, down which she must have slipped

headlong. There she had lain for some eight hours in the storm before

they found her. She neither moved nor spoke when they discovered her, nor

had there been any sign of life, beyond the faint beating of the pulse,

on the journey down.

The pale dawn was breaking when the doctor arrived. His verdict was at

first not without hope. She _might_ live; if there were no internal

injuries of importance. The next few hours would show. He sent his motor

back to Whinborough Cottage Hospital for a couple of nurses, and

prepared, himself, to stay the greater part of the day. He had just gone

downstairs to speak to Meynell, and Catharine was sitting by the bed,

when Hester once more roused herself.

"How that man hurt me!--don't let him come in again."

Then, in a perfectly hard, clear voice, she added imperiously--"I want to

see my mother."

Catharine stooped toward her, in an agitation she found it difficult to

conceal.

"Dear Hester!--we are sending a telegram as soon as the post-office is

open to Lady Fox-Wilton."

Hester moved her hand impatiently.

"She's not my mother, and I'm glad. Where is--_my mother_?" She laid a

strange, deep emphasis on the word, opening her eyes wide and

threateningly. Catharine understood at once that, in some undiscovered

way, she knew what they had all been striving to keep from her. It was no

time for questioning. Catharine rose quietly.

"She is here, Hester, I will go and tell her."

Leaving one of the maids in charge, Catharine ran down to the doctor, who

gave a reluctant consent, lest more harm should come of refusing the

interview than of granting it. And as Catharine ran up again to Mary's

room she had time to reflect, with self-reproach, on the strange

completeness with which she at any rate had forgotten that frail

ineffectual woman asleep in Mary's room from the moment of Hester's

arrival till now.

But Mary had not forgotten her. When Catharine opened the door, it was to

see a thin, phantom-like figure, standing fully dressed, and leaning on

Mary's arm. Catharine went up to her with tears, and kissed her, holding

her hands close.

"Hester asks for you--for her mother--her real mother. She knows."

"_She knows_?" Alice stood paralyzed a moment, gazing at Catharine. Then

the colour rushed back into her face. "I am coming--I am coming--at

once," she said impetuously. "I am quite strong. Don't help me, please.

And--let me go in alone. I won't do her harm. If you--and Mary--would

stand by the door--I would call in a moment--if--"

They agreed. She went with tottering steps across the landing. On the

threshold, Catharine paused; Mary remained a little behind. Alice went in

and shut the door.

The blinds in Hester's room were up, and the snow-covered fells rising

steeply above the house filled it with a wintry, reflected light; a

dreary light, that a large fire could not dispel. On the white bed

lay Hester, breathing quickly and shallowly; bright colour now in

each sunken cheek. The doctor himself had cut off a great part of her

hair--her glorious hair. The rest fell now in damp golden curls about her

slender neck, beneath the cap-like bandage which hid the forehead and

temples and gave her the look of a young nun. At first sight of her,

Alice knew that she was doomed. Do what she would, she could not restrain

the low cry which the sight tore from the depths of life.

Hester feebly beckoned. Alice came near, and took the right hand in hers,

while Hester smiled, her eyelids fluttering. "Mother!"--she said, so as

scarcely to be heard--and then again--"_Mother_!"

Alice sank down beside her with a sob, and without a word they gazed into

each other's eyes. Slowly Hester's filled with tears. But Alice's were

dry. In her face there was as much ecstasy as anguish. It was the first

look that Hester's _soul_ had ever given her. All the past was in it; and

that strange sense, on both sides, that there was no future.

At last Alice murmured:

"How did you know?"

"Philip told me."

The girl stopped abruptly. It had been on her tongue to say--"It was that

made me go with him."

But she did not say it. And while Alice's mind, rushing miserably over

the past, was trying to piece together some image of what had happened,

Hester began to talk intermittently about the preceding weeks. Alice

tried to stop her; but to thwart her only produced a restless excitement,

and she had her way.

She spoke of Philip with horror, yet with a perfectly clear sense of her

own responsibility.

"I needn't have gone--but I would go. There was a devil in me--that

wanted to know. Now I know--too much. I'm glad it's over. This life isn't

worth while--not for me."

So, from these lips of eighteen, came the voice of the world's old

despairs!

Presently she asked peremptorily for Meynell, and he came to her.

"Uncle Richard, I want to be sure"--she spoke strongly and in her natural

voice--"am I Philip's wife--or--or not? We were married on January 25th,

at the Mairie of the 10th Arrondissement, by a man in a red scarf. We

signed registers and things. Then--when we quarrelled--Philip said--he

wasn't certain about that woman--in Scotland. You might be right. Tell me

the truth, please. Am I--his wife?"

And as the words dropped faintly, the anxiety in her beautiful

death-stricken eyes was strange and startling to see. Through all her

recklessness, her defiance of authority and custom, could be seen at last

the strength of inherited, implanted things; the instinct of a race, a

family, overleaping deviation.

Meynell bent over her steadily, and took her hand in both his own.

"Certainly, you are his wife. Have no anxiety at all about that. My

inquiries all broke down. There was no Scotch marriage."

Hester said nothing for a little; but the look of relief was clear. Alice

on the farther side of the bed dropped her face in her hands. Was it not

only forty-eight hours since, in Paris, Meynell had told her that he had

received conclusive evidence of the Scotch marriage, and that Hester was

merely Philip's victim, not his wife? Passionately her heart thanked him

for the falsehood. She saw clearly that Hester's mortal wounds were not

all bodily. She was dying partly of self-contempt, self-judgment.

Meynell's strong words--his "noble lie"--had lifted, as it were, a

fraction of the moral weight that was destroying her; had made a space--a

freedom, in which the spirit could move.

So much Alice saw; blind meanwhile to the tragic irony of this piteous

stress laid at such a moment, by one so lawless, on the social law!

Thenceforward the poor sufferer was touchingly gentle and amenable.

Morphia had been given her liberally, and the relief was great. When the

nurses came at midday, however, the pulse had already begun to fail. They

could do nothing; and though within call, they left her mainly to those

who loved her.

In the early afternoon she asked suddenly for the Communion, and Meynell

administered it. The three women who were watching her received it with

her. In Catharine's mind, as Meynell's hands brought her the sacred bread

and wine, all thought of religious difference between herself and him had

vanished, burnt away by sheer heat of feeling. There was no difference!

Words became mere transparencies, through which shone the ineffable.

When it was over, Hester opened her eyes--"Uncle Richard!" The voice was

only a whisper now. "You loved my father?"

"I loved him dearly--and you--and your mother--for his sake."

He stooped to kiss her cheek.

"I wonder what it'll be like"--she said, after a moment, with more

strength--"beyond? How strange that--I shall know before you! Uncle

Richard--I'm--I'm sorry!"

At that the difficult tears blinded him, and he could not reply. But she

was beyond tears, concentrating all the last effort of the mind on the

sheer maintenance of life. Presently she added:

"I don't hate--even Philip now. I--I forget him. Mother!" And again she

clung to her mother's hand, feebly turning her face to be kissed.

Once she opened her eyes when Mary was beside her, and smiled brightly.

"I've been such a trouble, Mary--I've spoilt Uncle Richard's life. But

now you'll have him all the time--and he'll have you. You dear!--Kiss me.

You've got a golden mother. Take care of mine--won't you?--my poor

mother!"

So the hours wore on. Science was clever and merciful and eased her pain.

Love encompassed her, and when the wintry light failed, her faintly

beating heart failed with it, and all was still....

"Richard!--Richard!--Come with me."

So, with low, tender words, Mary tried to lead him away, after that

trance of silence in which they had all been standing round the dead. He

yielded to her; he was ready to see the doctor and to submit to the

absolute rest enjoined. But already there was something in his aspect

which terrified Mary. Through the night that followed, as she lay awake,

a true instinct told her that the first great wrestle of her life and her

love was close upon her.

CHAPTER XXIV

On the day following Hester's death an inquest was held in the

dining-room at Burwood. Meynell and old David, the shepherd, stood out

chief among the witnesses.

"This poor lady's name, I understand, sir," said the gray-haired Coroner,

addressing Meynell, when the first preliminaries were over, "was Miss

Hester Fox-Wilton; she was the daughter of the late Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton;

she was under age; and you and Lady Fox-Wilton--who is not here, I am

told, owing to illness--were her guardians?"

Meynell assented. He stood to the right of the Coroner, leaning heavily

on the chair before him. The doctor who had been called in to Hester sat

beside him, and wondered professionally whether the witness would get

through.

"I understand also," the Coroner resumed, "that Miss Fox-Wilton had left

the family in Paris with whom you and Lady Fox-Wilton had placed her,

some three weeks ago, and that you have since been in search of her, in

company I believe with Miss Fox-Wilton's aunt, Miss Alice Puttenham. Miss

Puttenham, I hope, will appear?"

The doctor rose--

"I am strongly of opinion, sir, that, unless for most urgent reasons,

Miss Puttenham should not be called upon. She is in a very precarious

state, in consequence of grief and shock, and I should greatly fear the

results were she to make the effort."

Meynell intervened.

"I shall be able, sir, I think, to give you sufficient information,

without its being necessary to call upon Miss Puttenham."

He went on to give an account, as guarded as he could make it, of

Hester's disappearance from the family with whom she was boarding, of the

anxiety of her relations, and the search that he and Miss Puttenham had

made.

His conscience was often troubled. Vaguely, his mind was pronouncing

itself all the while--"It is time now the truth were known. It is better

it should be known." Hester's death had changed the whole situation. But

he could himself take no step whatever toward disclosure. And he knew

that it was doubtful whether he should or could have advised Alice to

take any.

The inquiry went on, the Coroner avoiding the subject of Hester's French

escapade as much as possible. After all there need be--there was--no

question of suicide; only some explanation had to be suggested of the

dressing-bag left within the garden gate, and of the girl's reckless

climb into the fells, against old David's advice, on such an afternoon.

Presently, in the midst of David's evidence, describing his meeting with

Hester by the bridge, the handle of the dining-room door turned. The door

opened a little way and then shut again. Another minute or two passed,

and then the door opened again timidly as though some one were hesitating

outside. The Coroner annoyed, beckoned to a constable standing behind the

witnesses. But before he could reach it, a lady had slowly pushed it

open, and entered the room.

It was Alice Puttenham.

The Coroner looked up, and the doctor rose in astonishment. Alice

advanced to the table, and stood at the farther end from the Coroner,

looking first at him and then at the jury. Her face--emaciated now beyond

all touch of beauty--and the childish overhanging lip quivered as she

tried to speak; but no words came.

"Miss Puttenham, I presume?" said the Coroner. "We were told, madam, that

you were not well enough to give evidence."

Meynell was at her side.

"What do you wish?" he said, in a low voice, as he took her hand.

"I wish to give evidence," she said aloud.

The doctor turned toward the Coroner.

"I think you will agree with me, sir, that as Miss Puttenham has made the

effort, she should give her evidence as soon as possible, and should give

it sitting."

A murmur of assent ran round the table. Over the weather-beaten

Westmoreland faces had passed a sudden wave of animation.

Alice took her seat, and the oath. Meynell sitting opposite to her

covered his face with his hands. He foresaw what she was about to do, and

his heart went out to her.

Everybody at the table bent forward to listen. The two shorthand writers

lifted eager faces.

"May I make a statement?" The thin voice trembled through the room.

The Coroner assured the speaker that the Court was willing and anxious to

hear anything she might have to say.

Alice fixed her eyes on the old man, as though she would thereby shut out

all his surroundings.

"You are inquiring, sir--into the death--of my daughter."

The Coroner made a sudden movement.

"Your daughter, madam? I understood that, this poor young lady was the

daughter of the late Sir Ralph and Lady Fox-Wilton?"

"She was their adopted daughter. Her father was Mr. Neville Flood, and

I--am her mother. Mr. Flood, of Sandford Abbey, died nearly twenty years

ago. He and I were never married. My sister and brother-in-law adopted

the child. She passed always as theirs, and when Sir Ralph died, he

appointed--Mr. Meynell--and my sister her guardians. Mr. Meynell

has always watched over her--and me. Mr. Flood was much attached to him.

He wrote to Mr. Meynell, asking him to help us--just before his death."

She paused a moment, steadying herself by the table.

There was not a sound, not a movement in the room. Only Meynell uncovered

his eyes and tried to meet hers, so as to give her encouragement.

She resumed--

"Last August the nurse who attended me--in my confinement--came

home to Upcote. She made a statement to a gentleman there--a false

statement--and then she died. I wished then to make the truth public--but

Mr. Meynell--as Hester's guardian--and for her sake, as well as mine--did

not wish it. She knew nothing--then; and he was afraid of its effect upon

her. I followed his advice, and took her abroad, in order to protect her

from a bad man who was pursuing her. We did all we could--but we were not

able to protect her. They were married without my knowing--and she went

away with him. Then he--this man--told her--or perhaps he had done it

before, I don't know--who she was. I can only guess how he knew; but he

is Mr. Flood's nephew. My poor child soon found out what kind of man he

was. She tried to escape from him. And because Mrs. Elsmere had been

always very kind to her, she came here. She knew how--"

The voice paused, and then with difficulty shaped its words again.

"She knew that we should grieve so terribly. She shrank from seeing us.

She thought we might be here--and that--partly--made her wander away

again--in despair--when she actually got here. But her death was a pure

accident--that I am sure of. At the last, she tried to get home--to me.

That was the only thing she was conscious of--before she fell. When she

was dying--she told me she knew--I was her mother. And now--that she is

dead--"

The voice changed and broke--a sudden cry forced its way through--

"Now that she is dead--no one else shall claim her--but me. She's mine

now--my child--forever--only mine!"

She broke off incoherently, bowing her head upon her hands, her slight

shoulders shaken by her sobs.

The room was silent, save for a rather general clearing of throats.

Meynell signalled to the doctor. They both rose and went to her. Meynell

whispered to her.

The Coroner spoke, drawing his handkerchief hastily across his eyes.

"The Court is very grateful to you, Miss Puttenham, for this frank and

brave statement. We tender you our best thanks. There is no need for us

to detain you longer."

She rose, and Meynell led her from the room. Outside was a nurse to whom

he resigned her.

"My dear, dear friend!" Trembling, her eyes met the deep emotion in his.

"That was right--that will bring you help. Aye! you have her now--all,

all your own."

On the day of Hester's burying Long Whindale lay glittering white under a

fitful and frosty sunshine. The rocks and screes with their steep beds of

withered heather made dark scrawls and scratches on the white; the smoke

from the farmhouses rose bluish against the snowy wall of fell; and the

river, amid the silence of the muffled roads and paths, seemed the only

audible thing in the valley.

In the tiny churchyard the new-made grave had been filled in with frozen

earth, and on the sods lay flowers piled there by Rose Flaxman's kind and

busy hands. She and Hugh had arrived from the south that morning.

Another visitor had come from the south, also to lay flowers on that

wintry grave. Stephen Barron's dumb pain was bitter to see. The silence

of spiritual and physical exhaustion in which Meynell had been wrapped

since the morning of the inquest was first penetrated and broken up by

the sight of Stephen's anguish. And in the attempt to comfort the

younger, the elder man laid hold on some returning power for himself.

But he had been hardly hit; and the depth of the wound showed itself

strangely--in a kind of fear of love itself, a fear of Mary! Meynell's

attitude toward her during these days was almost one of shrinking. The

atmosphere between them was electrical; charged with things unspoken, and

a conflict that must be faced.

* * * * *

The day after Hester's funeral the newspapers were full of the sentence

delivered on the preceding day, in the Arches Court, on Meynell and his

co-defendants. A telegram from Darwen the evening before had conveyed

the news to Meynell himself.

The sentence of deprivation _ab officio et beneficio_ in the Church of

England, on the ground of heretical opinion and unauthorized services,

had been expressed by the Dean of Arches in a tone and phraseology of

considerable vehemence. According to him the proceedings of the

Modernists were "as contrary to morality as to law," and he marvelled how

"honest men" could consent to occupy the position of Meynell and his

friends.

Notice of appeal to the Privy Council was at once given by the Modernist

counsel, and a flame of discussion arose throughout England.

Meanwhile, on the morning following the publication of the judgment,

Meynell finished a letter, and took it into the dining-room, where Rose

and Mary were sitting. Rose, reading his face, disappeared, and he put

the letter into Mary's hands.

It was addressed to the Bishop of Dunchester. The great gathering in

Dunchester Cathedral, after several postponements to match the delays in

the Court of Arches, was to take place within a fortnight from this date,

and Meynell had been everywhere announced as the preacher of the sermon,

which was to be the battle-cry of the Movement, in the second period of

its history; the period of open revolt, of hot and ardent conflict.

The letter which Mary was invited to read was short. It simply asked that

the writer should be relieved from a task he felt he could not adequately

carry out. He desired to lay it down, not for his own sake, but for the

sake of the cause. "I am not the man, and this is not my job. This

conviction has been borne in upon me during the last few weeks with an

amazing clearness. I will only say that it seems to represent a

command--a prohibition--laid upon me, which I cannot ignore. There are of

course tragic happenings and circumstances connected with it, my dear

lord, on which I will not dwell. The effect of them at present on my mind

is that I wish to retire from a public and prominent part in our great

Movement; at any rate for a time. I shall carry through the Privy Council

appeal; but except for that intend to refuse all public appearance. When

the sentence is confirmed, as of course it will be, it will be best for

me to confine myself to thinking and writing in solitude and behind the

scenes. 'Those also serve who only stand and wait.' The quotation is

hackneyed, but it must serve. Through thought and self-proving, I believe

that in the end I shall help you best. I am not the fighter I thought

I was; the fighter that I ought to be to keep the position that has been

so generously given me. Forgive me for a while if I go into the

wilderness--a rather absurd phrase, however, as you will agree, when

I tell you that I am soon to marry a woman whom I love with my whole

heart. But it applies to my connection with the Modernist Movement, and

to my position as a leader. My old friends and colleagues--many of them

at least--will, I fear, blame the step I am taking. It will seem to them

a mere piece of flinching and cowardice. But each man's soul is in his

own keeping; and he alone can judge his own powers."

The letter then became a quiet discussion of the best man to be chosen in

the writer's stead, and passed on into a review of the general situation

created by the sentence of the Court of Arches.

But of these later pages of the letter Mary realized nothing. She sat

with it in her hands, after she had read the passage which has been

quoted, looking down, her mouth trembling.

Meynell watched her uneasily--then came to sit by her, and took her hand.

"Dearest!--you understand?" he said, entreatingly.

"It is--because of Hester?" She spoke with difficulty.

He assented, and then added--

"But that letter--shall only go with your permission."

She took courage. "Richard, you know so much better than I,

but--Richard!--did you ever neglect Hester?"

He tried to answer her question truly.

"Not knowingly."

"Did you ever fail to love her, and try to help her?"

He drew a long breath.

"But there she lies!" He raised his head. Through the window, on a rocky

slope, half a mile away, could be seen the tiny church of Long Whindale,

and the little graveyard round it.

"It is very possible that I see the thing morbidly"--he turned to her

again with a note of humility, of sad appeal, that struck most poignantly

on the woman's heart--"but I cannot resist it. What use can I be to any

human being as guide, or prophet, or counsellor--if I was so little use

to her? Is there not a kind of hypocrisy--a dismal hypocrisy--in my

claim to teach--or inspire--great multitudes of people--when this one

child--who was given into my care--"

He wrung her hands in his, unable to finish his sentence.

Bright tears stood in her eyes; but she persevered. She struck boldly for

the public, the impersonal note. She set against the tragic appeal of the

dead the equally tragic appeal of the living. She had in her mind the

memory of that London church, with the strained upturned faces, the

"hungry sheep"--girls among them, perhaps, in peril like Hester, men

assailed by the same vile impulses that had made a brute of Philip

Meryon. During the preceding months Mary's whole personality had

developed with great rapidity, after a somewhat taciturn and slowly

ripening youth. The need, enforced upon her by love itself, of asserting

herself even against the mother she adored; the shadow of Meynell's cloud

upon her, and her suffering under it, during the weeks of slander; and

now this rending tragedy at her doors--had tempered anew the naturally

high heart, and firm will. At this critical moment, she saved Meynell

from a fatal step by the capacity she showed of loving his cause, only

next to himself. And, indeed, Meynell was made wholesomely doubtful once

or twice whether it were not in truth his cause she loved in him. For

the sweet breakdowns of love which were always at her lips she banished

by a mighty effort, till she should have won or lost. Thus throughout she

showed herself her mother's daughter--with her father's thoughts.

It was long, however, before she succeeded in making any real impression

upon him. All she could obtain at first was delay, and that Catharine

should be informed.

As soon as that had been done, the position became once more curiously

complex. Here was a woman to whom the whole Modernist Movement was

anathema, driven finally into argument for the purpose of compelling

the Modernist leader, the contriver and general of Modernist victory, to

remain at his post!

For it was part of Catharine's robust character to look upon any pledge,

any accepted responsibility, as something not to be undone by any mere

feeling, however sharp, however legitimate. You had undertaken the

thing, and it must, at all costs, be carried through. That was the

dominant habit of her mind; and there were persons connected with her on

whom the rigidity of it had at times worked harshly.

On this occasion it was no doubt interfered with--(the Spirit of Comedy

would have found a certain high satisfaction in the dilemma)--by the fact

that Meynell's persistence in the course he had entered upon must be,

in her eyes, and _sub specie religionis_, a persistence in heresy and

unbelief. What decided it ultimately, however, was that she was not only

an orthodox believer, but a person of great common sense--and Mary's

mother.

Her natural argument was that after the tragic events which had occurred,

and the public reports of them which had appeared, Meynell's abrupt

withdrawal from public life would once more unsettle and confuse the

public mind. If there had been any change in his opinions--

"Oh! do not imagine"--she turned a suddenly glowing face upon him--"I

should be trying to dissuade you, if that were your reason. No!--it is

for personal and private reasons you shrink from the responsibility

of leadership. And that being so, what must the world say--the ignorant

world that loves to think evil?"

He looked at her a little reproachfully.

"Those are not arguments that come very naturally from you!"

"They are the right ones!--and I am not ashamed of them. My dear

friend--I am not thinking of you at all. I leave you out of count; I am

thinking of Alice--and--Mary!"

Catharine unconsciously straightened herself, a touch of something

resentful--nay, stern--in the gesture. Meynell stared in stupefaction.

"Alice!--_Mary_!" he said.

"Up to this last proposed action of yours, has not everything that has

happened gone to soften people's hearts? to make them repent doubly of

their scandal, and their false witness? Every one knows the truth

now--every one who cares; and every one understands. But now--after the

effort poor Alice has made--after all that she and you have suffered--you

insist on turning fresh doubt and suspicion on yourself, your motives,

your past history. Can't you see how people may gossip about it--how they

may interpret it? You have no right to do it, my dear Richard!--no right

whatever. Your 'good report' belongs not only to yourself--but--to Mary!"

Catharine's breath had quickened; her hand shook upon her knee. Meynell

rose from his seat, paced the room and came back to her.

"I have tried to explain to Mary"--he said, desperately--"that I should

feel myself a hypocrite and pretender in playing the part of a spiritual

leader--when this great--failure--lay upon my conscience."

At that Catharine's tension gave way. Perplexity returned upon her.

"Oh! if it meant--if it meant"--she looked at him with a sudden, sweet

timidity--"that you felt you had tried to do for Hester what only

grace--what only a living Redeemer--could do for her--"

She broke off. But at last, as Meynell, her junior by fifteen years--her

son almost--looked down into her face--her frail, aging, illumined

face--there was something in the passion of her faith which challenged

and roused his own; which for the moment, at any rate, and for the first

time since the crisis had arisen revived in him the "fighter" he had

tried to shed.

"The fault was not in the thing preached," he said, with a groan; "or so

it seems to me--but in the preacher. The preacher--was unequal to the

message."

Catharine was silent. And after a little more pacing he said in a more

ordinary tone--and a humble one--

"Does Mary share this view of yours?"

At this Catharine was almost angry.

"As if I should say a word to her about it! Does she know--has she ever

known--what you and I knew?"

His eyes, full of trouble, propitiated her. He took her hand and kissed

it.

"Bear with me, dear mother! I don't see my way, but Mary--is to me--my

life. At any rate, I won't do in a hurry what you disapprove."

Thus a little further delay was gained. The struggle lasted indeed

another couple of days, and the aspect of both Meynell and Mary showed

deep marks of it by the end. Throughout it Mary made little or no appeal

to the mere womanly arts. And perhaps it was the repression of them that

cost her most.

On the third day of discussion, while the letter still lay unposted in

Meynell's writing-case, he went wandering by himself up the valley. The

weather was soft again, and breathing spring. The streams ran free; the

buds were swelling on the sycamores; and except on the topmost crags the

snow had disappeared from the fells. Harsh and austere the valley was

still; the winter's grip would be slow to yield; but the turn of the year

had come.

That morning a rush of correspondence forwarded from Upcote had brought

matters to a crisis. On the days immediately following the publication of

the evidence given at the inquest on Hester the outside world had made no

sign. All England knew now why Richard Meynell had disappeared from the

Arches Trial, only to become again the prey of an enormous publicity, as

one of the witnesses to the finding and the perishing of his young ward.

And after Alice Puttenham's statement in the Coroner's Court, for a few

days the England interested in Richard Meynell simply held its breath

and let him be.

But he belonged to the public; and after just the brief respite that

decency and sympathy imposed, the public fell upon him. The Arches

verdict had been given; the appeal to the Privy Council had been lodged.

With every month of the struggle indeed, as the Modernist attack had

grown more determined, and its support more widespread, so the orthodox

defence had gathered force and vehemence. Yet through the length and

breadth of the country the Modernist petition to Parliament was now

kindling such a fire as no resistance could put out. Debate in the House

of Commons on the Modernist proposals for Church Reform would begin after

Easter. Already every member of the House was being bombarded from both

sides by his constituents. Such a heat of religious feeling, such a

passion of religious hope and fear, had not been seen in England for

generations.

And meanwhile Meynell, whose action had first released the great forces

now at work, who as a leader was now doubly revered, doubly honoured by

those who clamoured to be led by him, still felt himself utterly

unable to face the struggle. Heart and brain were the prey of a deadly

discouragement; the will could make no effort; his confidence in himself

was lamed and helpless. Not even the growing strength and intensity of

his love for Mary could set him, it seemed, spiritually, on his feet.

He left the old bridge on his left, and climbed the pass. And as he

walked, some words of Newman possessed him; breathed into his ear through

all the wind and water voices of the valley:

_Thou_ to wax fierce

In the cause of the Lord

To threat and to pierce

With the heavenly sword!

Anger and Zeal

And the Joy of the brave

Who bade _thee_ to feel--

Dejectedly, he made his way along the fatal path; he found the ruin where

Hester had sheltered; he gradually identified the route which the rescue

party had taken along the side of the fell; and the precipitous scree

where they had found her. The freshly disturbed earth and stones still

showed plainly where she had fallen, and where he and the shepherds had

stood, trampling the ground round her. He sat down beside the spot,

haunted by the grim memory of that helpless, bleeding form amid the snow.

Not yet nineteen!--disgraced--ruined--the young body broken in its prime.

Had he been able to do no better for Neville's child than that? The load

of responsibility crushed him; and he could not resign himself to such a

fate for such a human being. Before him, on the chill background of the

tells, he beheld, perpetually, the two Hesters: here, the radiant,

unmanageable child, clad in the magic of her teasing, provocative beauty;

there, the haggard and dying girl, violently wrenched from life.

Religious faith was paralyzed within him. How could he--a man so disowned

of God--prophesy to his brethren?....

Thus there descended upon him the darkest hour of his history. It was

simply a struggle for existence on the part of all those powers of the

soul that make for action, against the forces that make for death and

inertia.

It lasted long; and it ended in the slow and difficult triumph, the final

ascendency of the "Yeas" of Life over the "Nays," which in truth his

character secured. He won the difficult fight not as a philosopher, but

as a Christian; impelled, chastened, brought into line again, by purely

Christian memories and Christian ideas. The thought of Christ healed

him--gradually gave him courage to bear an agony of self-criticism,

self-reproach, that was none the less overwhelming because his calmer

mind, looking on, knew it to be irrational. There was no prayer to

Christ, no "Christe eleison" on his rips. But there was a solemn kneeling

by the Cross; a solemn opening of the mind to the cleansing and

strengthening forces that flow from that life and death which are

Christendom's central possession; the symbol through which, now

understood in this way, now in that, the Eternal speaks to the Christian

soul.

So, amid "the cheerful silence of the fells," a good man, heavily, took

back his task. From this wreck of affection, this ruin of hope, he must

go forth to preach love and hope to other men; from the depths of his

grief and his defeat he must summon others to struggle and victory.

He submitted.

Then--not till then--naked and stripped as he was of all personal

complacency; smarting under the conviction of personal weakness and

defeat; tormented still, as he would ever be, by all the "might have

beens" of Hester's story, he was conscious of the "supersensual

moment," the inrush of Divine strength, which at some time or other

rewards the life of faith.

On his way back to Burwood through the gleams and shadows of the valley,

he turned aside to lay a handful of green moss on the new-made grave.

There was a figure beside it. It was Mary, who had been planting

snowdrops. He helped her, and then they descended to the main road

together. Looking at his face, she hardly dared, close as his hand clung

to hers, to break the silence.

It was dusk, and there was no one in sight. In the shelter of a group of

trees, he drew her to him.

"You have your way," he said, sadly.

She trembled a little, her delicate cheek close against his.

"Have I persecuted you?"

He smiled.

"You have taught me what the strength of my wife's will is going to be."

She winced visibly, and the tears came into her eyes.

"Dearest!--" he protested. "Must you not be strong? But for you--I should

have gone under."

The primitive instinct of the woman, in this hour of painful victory,

would have dearly liked to disavow her own power. The thought of ruling

her beloved was odious. Yet as they walked on hand in hand, the modern

in Mary prevailed, and she must needs accept the equal rights of a love

which is also life's supreme friendship.

A few more days Meynell spent in the quiet of the valley, recovering, as

best he could, and through a struggle constantly renewed, some normal

steadiness of mood and nerve; dealing with an immense correspondence;

and writing the Dunchester sermon; while Stephen Barron, who had already

resigned his own living, was looking after the Upcote Church and parish.

Meanwhile Alice Puttenham lay upstairs in one of the little white rooms

of Burwood, so ill that the doctors would not hear of her being moved.

Edith Fox-Wilton had proposed to come and nurse her, in spite of "this

shocking business which had disgraced us all." But Catharine at Alice's

entreaty had merely appealed to the indisputable fact that the tiny house

was already more than full. There was no danger, and they had a good

trained nurse.

Once or twice it was, in these days, that again a few passing terrors ran

through Mary's mind, on the subject of her mother. The fragility which

had struck Meynell's unaccustomed eye when he first arrived in the valley

forced itself now at times, though only at times, on her reluctant sense.

There were nights when, without any definite reason, she could not sleep

for anxiety. And then again the shadow entirely passed away. Catharine

laughed at her; and when the moment came for Mary to follow Meynell to

the Dunchester meeting, it was impossible even for her anxious love to

persuade itself that there was good reason for her to stay away.

* * * * *

Before Meynell departed southward there was a long conversation between

him and Alice; and it was at her wish, to which he now finally yielded,

that he went straight to Markborough, to an interview with Bishop Craye.

In that interview the Bishop learnt at last the whole story of Hester's

birth and of her tragic death. The beauty of Meynell's relation to the

mother and child was plainly to be seen through a very reticent

narrative; and to the tale of those hours in Long Whindale no man of

heart like the little Bishop could have listened unmoved. At the end, the

two men clasped hands in silence; and the Bishop looked wistfully at the

priest that he and the diocese were so soon to lose.

For the rest, as before, they met as equals, curiously congenial to each

other, in spite of the battle in front. The Bishop's certainty of victory

was once more emphatically shown by the friendly ease with which he still

received his rebellious incumbent. Any agreeable outsider of whatever

creed--Renan or Loisy or Tyrrell--might have been thus welcomed at the

Palace. It was true that till the appeal was decided Meynell remained

formally Rector of Upcote Minor. The church and the parish were still in

his hands; and the Bishop pointedly made no reference to either. But a

very few weeks now would see Meynell's successor installed, and the

parish reduced to order.

Such at least was the Bishop's confidence, and in the position in which

he found himself--with seven Modernist evictions pending in his diocese,

and many more than seven recalcitrant parishes to deal with, he was not

the man to make needless friction.

In Meynell's view, indeed, the Bishop's confidence was excessive; and the

triumph of the orthodox majority in the Church, if indeed it were to

triumph, was neither so near, nor likely to be so complete, as the Bishop

believed. He had not yet been able to resume all the threads of

leadership, but he was clear that there had been no ebbing whatever of

the Modernist tide. On the contrary, it seemed to him that the function

at Dunchester might yet ring through England, and startle even such

an optimist as Bishop Craye.

The next few days he spent among his own people, and with the Flaxmans.

The old red sandstone church of Upcote Minor was closely packed on

Sunday; and the loyalty of the parish to their Rector, their answer

to the Arches judgment, was shown in the passion, the loving intelligence

with which every portion of the beautiful Modernist service was followed

by an audience of working men and women gathered both from Upcote

itself and from the villages round, who knew very well--and gloried in

the fact--that from their midst had started the flame now running through

the country. Many of them had been trained by Methodism, and were now

returning to the Church that Wesley had been so loath to leave. "The

Rector's changed summat," said men to each other, puzzled by that

aspect--that unconscious aspect--of spiritual dignity that falls like

a robe of honour, as life goes on, about the Knights of the Spirit. But

they knew, at least, from their newspapers, how and when that beautiful

girl who had grown up from a child in their midst had perished; they

remembered the winter months of calumny and persecution; and their rough,

kind hearts went out to the man who was so soon, against their will and

their protest, to be driven out from the church where for twenty years he

had preached to his people a Christ they could follow, and a God they

could adore.

The week passed, and the Dunchester meeting was at hand. Meynell was to

spend the night before the great service with the old Bishop, against

whom--together with the whole of his Chapter--Privy Council action

was now pending. Mary was to be the guest of one of the Canons in the

famous Close.

Meynell arrived to find the beautiful old town in commotion. As a protest

against the Modernist demonstration, all the students from a famous

Theological College in a neighbouring diocese under a High Church bishop

had come over to attend a rival service in the second church of the town,

where the congregation was to be addressed "on this outrage to our Lord"

by one of the ablest and most saintly of the orthodox leaders--the Rev.

Cyril Fenton, of the Markborough diocese--soon, it was rumoured, to be

appointed to a Canonry of St. Paul's. The streets were full of rival

crowds, jostling each other. Three hundred Modernist clergy were staying

in or near the town; the old Cathedral city stared at them amazed; and

from all parts had come, besides, the lay followers of the new Movement

thronging to a day which represented for them the first fruits of a

harvest, whereof not they perhaps but their children would see the full

reaping.

On the evening before the function Meynell went into the Cathedral with

Mary just as the lengthening March afternoon was beginning to wane. They

stepped through the western doors set open to the breeze and the sunshine

into a building all opal and ebony, faintly flooded with rose from the

sky without; a building of infinite height and majesty, where clustered

columns of black marble, incredibly light, upheld the richness of the

bossed roof, where every wall was broidered history, where every step was

on "the ruined sides of Kings," and the gathered fragments of ancient

glass, jewels themselves, let through a jewelled light upon the creamy

stone.

For the first time, since Hester's death, Meynell's sad face broke into

joy. The glorious church appeared to him as the visible attestation of

the Divine creative life in men, flowing on endlessly, from the Past,

through the Present, to the unknown Future.

From the distance came a sound of chanting. They walked slowly up the

nave, conscious of a strange tumult in the pulse, as though the great

building with its immemorial history were half lending itself to, half

resisting, the emotion that filled them. In the choir a practice was

going on. Some thirty young clergy were going through the responses and

canticles of the new service-book, with an elder man, also in clerical

dress, directing them. At the entrance of the southern choir aisle stood

the senior verger of the Cathedral in his black gown--open-mouthed and

motionless, listening to the strange sounds.

Meynell and Mary knelt for a moment of impassioned prayer, and then sat

down to listen. Through the fast darkening church, chanted by half the

choir, there stole those words of noblest poetry:

"_A new commandment_--_a new commandment--I give unto you_ ..." To be

answered by the voices on the other side--"_That ye love--ye love one

another_!"

And again:

"_I have called you friends. Ye are my friends_"--

With the reply:

"_If ye do the things which I command you_."

And yet again:

"_The words that I speak unto you_:"--

"_They--they are spirit; and they are life_!"

A moment's silence, before all the voices, gathering into one harmony,

sent the last versicle ringing through the arches of the choir, and the

springing tracery of the feretory, and of the Lady Chapel beyond.

"_Lord to whom shall we go?--Thou--thou hast the words of eternal life_!"

"Only a few days or weeks," murmured Meynell, as they passed out into the

evening light, "and we two--and those men singing there--shall be

outcasts and wanderers, perhaps for a time, perhaps while we live.

But to-day--and to-morrow--we are still children in the house of our

fathers--sons, not slaves!--speaking the free speech of our own day in

these walls, as the men who built them did in theirs. That joy, at least,

no one shall take from us!"

At that "sad word Joy" Mary slipped her hand into his, and so they walked

silently through the Close, toward the Palace, pursued by the rise and

fall of the music from within.

The great service was over, with its bold adaptation of the religious

language of the past, the language which is wrought into the being of

Christendom, to the needs and the knowledge of the present. And now

Meynell had risen, and was speaking to that thronged nave, crowded

by men and women of many types and many distinctions, with that mingling

of passion and simplicity which underlies success in all the poetic

arts, and, first and foremost, the art of religious oratory. The

sermon was to be known in after years by the name of "The Two

Christianities"--and became one of the chief landmarks, or, rather,

rallying cries of the Modernist cause. Only some fragments of it can be

suggested here; one passage, above all, that Mary's brooding memory will

keep close and warm to her life's end:

"...Why are we here, my friends? For what purpose is this great

demonstration, this moving rite in, which we have joined this day?

One-sixth at least of this congregation stands here under a sentence of

ecclesiastical death. A few weeks perhaps, and this mighty church will

know its white-haired Bishop no more. Bishop and Chapter will have been

driven out; and we, the rank and file, whose only desire is to cling to

the Church in which we were baptized and bred, will find ourselves exiles

and homeless.

"What is our crime? This only--that God has spoken in our consciences,

and we have not been able to resist Him. Nor dare we desert our posts in

the National Church, till force drive us out. Why? Because there is

something infinitely greater at stake than any reproach that can be

hurled at us on the ground of broken pledges--pledges made too early,

given in ignorance and good faith, and broken now, solemnly, in the face

of God and this people--for a greater good. What does our personal

consistency--which, mind you, is a very different thing from personal

honesty!--matter? We are as sensitive as any man who attacks us on the

point of personal honour. But we are constrained of God; we bear in our

hands the cause of our brethren, the cause of half the nation; and we can

no other. Ask yourselves what we have to gain by it. Nay! With expulsion

and exile in sight--with years perhaps of the wilderness before us--we

stand here for the liberties of Christ's Church!--its liberties of growth

and life....

"My friends, what is the life either of intellect or spirit but the

response of man to the communication of God? Age by age, man's

consciousness cuts deeper into the vast mystery that surrounds us;

absorbs, transmutes, translates ever more of truth, into conceptions he

can use, and language he can understand.

"From this endless process arise science--and history--and philosophy.

But just as science, and history, and philosophy change with this

ever-living and growing advance, so religion--man's ideas of God and his

own soul.

"Within the last hundred years man's knowledge of the physical world has

broadened beyond the utmost dreams of our fathers. But of far greater

importance to man is his knowledge of himself. There, too, the century

of which we are now the heirs has lifted the veil--for us first among

living men--from secrets hitherto unknown. HISTORY has come into being.

"What is history? Simply the power--depending upon a thousand laborious

processes--of constructing a magic lens within the mind which allows us

to look deep into the past, to see its life and colour and movement

again, as no generation but our own has yet been able to see it. We hold

our breath sometimes, as for a brief moment perhaps we catch its very

gesture, its very habit as it lived, the very tone of its voices. It has

been a new and marvellous gift of our God to us; and it has transformed

or is transforming Christianity.

"Like science, this new discipline of the human mind is divine and

authoritative. It lessens the distance between our human thought and the

thought of God, because, in the familiar phrase, it enables us to "think,

in some sort, His thoughts after Him." Like science it marches slowly on

its way; through many mistakes; through hypothesis and rectification;

through daring vision and laborious proof; to an ever-broadening

certainty. History has taken hold of the Christian tradition. History has

worked upon it with an amazing tenderness, and patience, and reverence.

And at the end of a hundred years what do we see?--that half of

Christendom, at least, which we in this church represent?

"We see a Christ stripped of Jewish legend, and Greek speculation, and

medieval scholasticism; moving simply and divinely among the ways of His

Jewish world, a man among men. We can watch, dimly indeed by comparison

with our living scrutiny of living men, but still more clearly than any

generation of Christendom since the disappearance of the first has been

able to watch, the rise of His thoughts, the nature of His environment,

the sequence of His acts, the original significance, the immediate

interpretation, the subsequent influence of His death. We know much more

of Jesus of Nazareth than the fathers of Nicaea knew; probably than St.

Paul knew; certainly than Irenaeus or Clement knew.

"But that is only half the truth; only half of what history has to tell.

On the one side we have to do with the recovered fact: on the other with

its working through two thousand years upon the world.

"_There,_ for the Modernist, lies revelation!--in the unfolding of the

Christian idea, through the successive stages of human thought and

imagination, it has traversed, down to the burst of revelation in the

present day. Yet we are only now at the beginning of an immense

development. The content of the Christian idea of love--love,

self-renouncing, self-fulfilling--is infinite, inexhaustible, like that

of beauty, or of truth. Why? At this moment, I am only concerned to give

you the Christian answer, which is the answer of a reasonable faith.

Because, like the streams springing forever from 'the pure founts of

Cephisus,' to nourish the swelling plains below, these governing ideas of

our life--tested by life, confirmed by life--have their source in the

very being of God, sharers in His Eternity, His Ever-Fruitfulness....

"But even so, you have not exhausted the wealth of Christianity; For to

the potency of the Christian idea is added the magic of an incomparable

embodiment in human life. The story of Jesus bears the idea which it

enshrines eternally through the world. It is to the idea as the vessel of

the Grail.

"... Do these conceptions make us love our Master less? Ask your

own hearts? There must be many in this crowded church that have

known sorrow--intolerable anguish and disappointment--gnawing

self-reproach--during the past year, or months, or weeks; many that have

watched sufferings which no philosophic optimism can explain, and

catastrophes that leave men dumb. Some among them will have been

driven back upon their faith--driven to the foot of the Cross. Through

all intellectual difference, has not the natural language of their

fathers been also their language? Is there anything in their changed

opinions which has cut them off from that sacrifice

"Renewed in every pulse,

That on the tedious Cross

Told the long hours of death, as, one by one,

The life-strings of that tender heart gave way?

"Is there anything in this new compelling knowledge that need--that

does--divide _us_--whose consciences dare not refuse it--from the

immortal triumph of that death? In our sharpest straits, are we not

comforted and cleansed and sustained by the same thoughts, the same

visions that have always sustained and comforted the Christian? No!--the

sons of tradition and dogma have no monopoly in the exaltation, the

living passion of the Cross! We, too, watching that steadfastness grow

steadfast; bowed before that innocent suffering, grow patient; drinking

in the wonder of that faith, amid utter defeat, learn to submit and go

forward. In us too, as we behold--Hope 'masters Agony!'--and we follow,

for a space at least, with our Master, into the heavenly house, and still

our sore hearts before our God."

* * * * *

Quietly and low, in tones that shook here and there, the words had fallen

upon the spell-bound church.

Mary covered her eyes. But they saw only the more intently the vision of

Hester maimed and dying; and the face of Meynell bending over her.

* * * * *

Then from this intimity, this sacredness of feeling, the speaker

passed gradually and finally into the challenge, the ringing yet

brotherly challenge, it was in truth his mission to deliver. The note of

battle--honourable, inevitable battle--pealed through the church, and

when it ceased the immense congregation rose, possessed by one heat of

emotion, and choir and multitude broke into the magnificent Modernist

hymn, "Christus Rex"--written by the Bishop of the See, and already

familiar throughout England.

The service was over. Out streamed the great congregation. The Close was

crowded to see them come. Lines of theological students were drawn up

there, fresh-faced boys in round collars and long black coats, who, as

the main body of the Modernist clergy approached, began defiantly to

chant the Creed. Meynell, with the old yet stately Bishop leaning on his

arm, passed them with a friendly, quiet look. He caught sight for a

moment of the tall form of Fenton, standing at their rear--the long face

ascetically white, and sternly fixed.

He left the Bishop at the gates of the Palace, and went back quickly for

Mary. Suddenly he ran into an advancing figure and found his hand grasped

by Dornal.

The two men gazed at each other.

"You were not there?" said Meynell, wondering.

"I was." Dornal hesitated a moment, and then his blue eyes melted and

clouded.

"And there was one man there--not a Modernist--who grieved, like a

Modernist, over the future!"

"Ah, the future!" said Meynell, throwing his head back. "That is not for

you or me--not for the bishops, nor for that body which we call the

Church--that is for _England_ to settle."

* * * * *

But another meeting remained.

At the parting with Dornal, Meynell turned a corner and saw in front of

him, walking alone, a portly gentleman, with a broad and substantial

back. A start ran through him. After a moment's hesitation, he began to

quicken his steps, and soon overtook the man in question.

Barron--for it was he--stopped in some astonishment, some confusion even,

which he endeavoured to hide. Meynell held out his hand--rather timidly;

and Barron just touched it.

"I have been attending the service at St. Mathias," he said, stiffly.

"I imagined so," said Meynell, walking on beside him, and quite

unconscious of the fact that a passing group of clergy opposite were

staring across the street in amazement at the juxtaposition of the two

men, both well known to them. "Did it satisfy you?"

"Certainly. Fenton surpassed himself."

"He has a great gift," said Meynell, heartily. They moved on in silence,

till at last Meynell said, with renewed hesitation--"Will you allow me to

inquire after Maurice? I hope your mind is more at ease about him."

"He is doing well--for the moment." Another pause--broken by Barron, who

said hurriedly in a different voice--"I got from him the whole story of

the letters. There was nothing deliberate in it. It was a sudden,

monkeyish impulse. He didn't mean as much harm by it as another man would

have meant."

"No doubt," said Meynell, struck with pity, as he looked at the sunken

face of the speaker. "And anyway--bygones are bygones. I hope your

daughter is well?"

"Quite well, I thank you. We are just going abroad."

There was no more to be said. Meynell knew very well that the orthodox

party had no room in its ranks, at that moment, for Henry Barron; and it

was not hard to imagine what exclusion and ostracism must mean to

such a temper. But the generous compunctions in his own mind could find

no practical expression; and after a few more words they parted.

* * * * *

Next morning, while every newspaper in the country was eagerly discussing

the events at Dunchester, Catharine, in the solitude of Long Whindale,

and with a full two hours yet to wait for the carrier who brought the

papers from Whinborough, was pondering letters from Rose and Mary written

from Dunchester on the preceding afternoon. Her prayer-book lay beside

her. Before the post arrived she had been reading by herself the Psalms

and Lessons, according to the old-fashioned custom of her youth.

The sweetness of Mary's attempt to bring out everything in the Modernist

demonstration that might be bearable or even consoling to Catharine, and

to leave untold what must pain her, was not lost upon her mother.

Catharine sat considering it, in a reverie half sorrow, half tenderness,

her thin hands clasped upon the letter:

* * * * *

"Mother, beloved!--Richard and I talked of you all the way back to the

Palace; and though there were many people waiting to see him, he is

writing to you now; and so am I. Through it all, he feels so near to

you--and to my father; so truly your son, your most loving son....

"Dearest--I am troubled to hear from Alice this morning that yesterday

you were tired and even went to lie down. I know my too Spartan mother

doesn't do that without ten times as much reason as other people. Oh! do

take care of yourself, my precious one. To-morrow, I fly back to you with

all my news. And you will meet me with that love of yours which has

never failed me, as it never failed my father. It will take Richard and

me a life time to repay it. But we'll try! ... Dear love to my poor

Alice. I have written separately to her."

* * * * *

Rose's letter was in another vein.

* * * * *

"Dearest Catharine, it is all over--a splendid show, and Richard has come

out of it finely, though I must say he looks at times more like a ghost

than a man. From the Church point of view, dear, you were wise not to

come, for your feelings must have been sadly mixed, and you might have

been compelled to take Privy Council proceedings against yourself. I need

not say that Hugh and I felt an ungodly delight in it--in the crowd and

the excitement--in Richard's sermon--in the dear, long-nosed old Bishop

(rather like a camel, between you and me, but a very saintly one) and in

the throng of foolish youths from the Theological College who seemed to

think they settled everything by singing the Creed at us. (What a pity

you can't enjoy the latest description of the Athanasian Creed! It is by

a Quaker. He compares it to 'the guesses of a ten-year old child at the

contents of his father's library.' Hugh thinks it good--but I don't

expect you to.)"

* * * * *

Then followed a vivacious account of the day and its happenings.

"And now comes the real tug of war. In a few weeks the poor Modernists

will be all camping in tents, it seems, by the wayside. Very touching and

very exciting. But I am getting too sleepy to think about it. Dear

Cathie--I run on--but I love you. Please keep well. Good-bye."

* * * * *

Catharine laid the letter down, still smiling against her will over some

of its chatter, and unconsciously made happy by the affection that

breathed from its pages no less than from Mary's.

Yet certainly she was very tired. She became sharply conscious of her

physical weakness as she sat on by the fire, now thinking of her Mary,

and now listening for Alice's step upon the stairs. Alice had grown very

dear to Catharine, partly for her own sake, and partly because to be in

bitter need and helplessness was to be sure of Catharine's tenderness.

Very possibly they two, when Mary married, might make their home

together. And Catharine promised herself to bring calm at least and

loving help to one who had suffered so much.

The window was half open to the first mild day of March; beside it stood

a bowl of growing daffodils, and a pot of freesias that scented the room.

Outside a robin was singing, the murmur of the river came up through

the black buds of the ash-trees, and in the distance a sheep-dog could be

heard barking on the fells. So quiet it was--the spring sunshine--and so

sweet. Back into Catharine's mind there flowed the memory of her own

love-story in the valley; her hand trembled again in the hand of her

lover.

Then with a sudden onset her mortal hour came upon her. She tried to

move, to call, and could not. There was no time for any pain of parting.

For one remaining moment of consciousness there ran through the brain

the images, affections, adorations of her life. Swift, incredibly swift,

the vision of an opening glory--a heavenly throng!... Then the tired

eyelids fell, the head lay heavily on the cushion behind it, and in the

little room the song of the robin and the murmur of the stream flowed

on--unheard.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's The Case of Richard Meynell, by Mrs. Humphrey Ward