Busby, however, with a sick man's reluctance to admit any alleviating
circumstance in his case, was not so sure about that. He sometimes fared
to wish he had the little varmin back. Croap, croap, croap! That had
been wonderful good company after all. The ex-sexton was not too ill to
wax eloquent upon his favourite topic. And the tenor of his talk was
that mankind had been building churches since the world began, but what
other man had lived for years with a live frog on his chest?
Their religious dispute was evidently forgotten, and Mr. Carlton did not
feel it incumbent upon him to risk another in the circumstances of the
case. On the way home the other egotist waylaid him, with his opinion of
old Busby's hallucination and general sanity since the saddler could
remember him.
"But half the village and half the county is the same, reverend. Silly
Suffolk!"
"Yet you're a Suffolk man yourself, Fuller," observed Mr. Carlton,
mildly.
"Yes, reverend, but there was corn in Egypt, if you recollect."
Meanwhile the building still went on, and was rapidly nearing a point
beyond which Carlton himself could not proceed unaided. That point was
the last window; the others were all finished. He had left out the
single mullions and all the tracery. They might be added afterwards by
an expert hand. They were not essential to the windows, which were ready
for glazing as they were. But the east window was another affair. It
must have its two mullions as before, with the quatrefoil tracery which
had remained undamaged in the west window opposite. All this was beyond
the self-taught hewer of coursed rubble and of gargoyles; the arch
itself must be two feet wider than any he had yet attempted; but on a
worthy east window he had set his heart.
Such was the dilemma in which Robert Carlton found himself at the end of
August, and there seemed only one thing to be done. He must call for aid
at last, and now he knew that aid would come, for he had received
various offers of assistance since the beginning of the month. Some of
these were from local firms which had refused his work in the beginning;
Carlton had promised that if he called for tenders he would consider
theirs; and now call he must. Yet he could not bring himself to do so
all at once.
To call in the world after all! To open his leafy solitude to the
British workmen in gangs, to hear their chaff, to smell their tobacco,
where he had laboured in quiet and alone through so many, many seasons!
But it had to come. A tinge of autumn was on the trees. Any Sunday now
the open-air service might prove a discomfort and a peril to all; in a
few weeks at most it would become impossible. But the people must have
their church. They had waited long enough. Therefore any further
reluctance in him was little and unworthy, as Carlton saw at once for
himself. Yet there was now so much else to do, so many poor folks to
see, so many old threads to take up, that for once he temporised. And
even as he temporised, his mind made up, and a competition pending
between the masons of the neighbourhood, Sir Wilton Gleed arrived in
Long Stow for the shooting.
Sir Wilton arrived with a frown. It deepened but little at what he
heard. He was prepared for everything; and about Gwynneth he knew. She
had left his house, she had gone her own way, he washed his hands of
her, and only congratulated Sidney on his escape. That chapter was
closed. It was the older matter that harassed Sir Wilton Gleed.
So that devil had reinstated himself after all! The fact might not be
finally accomplished; it was none the less inevitable, imminent. And Sir
Wilton had long been prepared for it; for the last two years he had been
unable to move without hearing the name he abhorred; it dogged him in
town, it followed him to Scotland, it awaited him in every hole and
corner of the Continent. Once he had been fond of speaking of his
property; but in two senses it was hard to do this without giving the
place a name. Sir Wilton was learning to deny himself the boast
altogether.
Long Stow? Could there be two Long Stows? Then that must be the place
where the parson was building up his church. What a romance! And what a
man! Oh, no doubt he was a very dreadful person also; but there, in any
case, was a Man.
Sir Wilton could not deny it; and by degrees he wearied of insisting
upon the deplorable side of the man's character. The task was
ungrateful; it put himself in an ungenerous light, which was the harder
upon one who was by no means ill-natured in grain. Gradually he took to
admitting his adversary's good points; even admitted them to himself;
but that did not remove the chronic irritation of infallible defeat. And
defeated Sir Wilton already was, with the people flocking to that man
again, and doubtless willing to help him finish his church. His own
parishioners had forgiven him--and well they might, said Sir Wilton's
friends in every country-house. Besides, the suspended parson was a
figure of the past; the law was done with him; he was absolutely free to
begin afresh. Henceforth the vindictiveness of the individual must
recoil deservedly upon the individual's head.
Sir Wilton saw all this before his actual return; and he realised the
madness of either urging or attempting to coerce his tenantry to harden
their hearts, a second time, against one who had committed no second
sin. If he failed it would destroy his influence in the neighbourhood;
even if he succeeded it would damage his popularity elsewhere. And a
chat with the schoolmaster, a call upon one or two of the neighbouring
clergy, a word with old Marigold in his gig, all served but to convince
him finally of these facts.
Sir Wilton's mind was made up. He had come back primed with a desperate
measure for the last of all. Once it was resolved upon, his spirits
rose.
He told his wife and took her breath away; but a very little reasoning
brought the lady round the compass to his view. This was after breakfast
on the second day. The same forenoon Sir Wilton went up the village,
brisk and rosy, a flower in his coat, and a word for all. Past the Flint
House he began to walk slowly, took no notice of a courtesy, swung round
suddenly himself, and was knocking at Jasper Musk's door that minute,
still a thought less confident than he had been.
Musk was in his garden, fast as usual to his chair. Mrs. Musk brought
out another chair for Sir Wilton, and drove Georgie indoors on her way
back. Sir Wilton watched the child out of sight, and then favoured
Jasper with his peculiarly fixed stare. There was unusual meaning in it
this morning.
"So the world has forgiven him," said Sir Wilton Gleed.
Musk stared in his turn, his great face glowing with contempt. "Have
you?" said he at last.
"Not yet," replied Sir Wilton, a shade more pink in the face. He had
meant to lead up to his intention. He was taken aback.
"But you mean to, do you?" pursued Musk, pressing his point in no
respectful tone: in all their relations this one had never pandered to
the other.
"I don't say that, either," replied Sir Wilton, in studied tones.
"Then what do you say?"
"Less than anybody else, a good deal less," declared the squire. "I--I
don't quite understand your tone, Musk, I must say; but I can well
understand your position in this matter. It is unique, of course. So is
mine, in a sense. But I must beg of you not to jump to conclusions. I am
the last person to make a hero of the man I did my best to kick out of
the parish five years ago; next to yourself, no one has reason to love
the fellow less. I thought it a public scandal that he should be
empowered to stay here against all our wills. My opinion of that whole
black matter is absolutely and totally unchanged. But I do confess to
you, Musk, that this last year or two have somewhat modified my opinion
of the man himself."
Musk's eyes had never dropped or lifted from his visitor's face. Their
expression was inscrutable. The iron cast of that massive countenance
was the only key to the workings of the mind within: the lines seemed
subtly emphasised, as in the faces of the dead. And his gigantic body
was the same; only the eyes seemed alive; and they were as still as the
rest of him.
"What if I've modified mine?"
Sir Wilton looked up quickly; for the habitual starer had been for once
outstared. "Do you mean that you have?" cried he.
"I don't say as I have or I haven't. But that's a man, Sir Wilton, and I
won't deny it."
"Exactly what everybody is saying. I say no more myself."
"And I won't say no less . . . Suppose you was to patch it up with him,
Sir Wilton?"
"I should help him finish his church."
Musk sat silent for some time. His eyes seemed smaller. But they had not
moved.
"That would be a wonderful good action on your part, Sir Wilton," he
said at last.
"Not at all, Musk. I should be doing it for the people, not for Mr.
Carlton."
Another pause.
"And yet, Sir Wilton, in a manner o' speaking, you might say as he
deserved it, too?"
Sir Wilton was quite himself again--a gentleman in keeping with the
flower in his coat.
"I certainly never expected to hear you say so, Musk," said he frankly;
"though it's what I've sometimes thought myself."
"I haven't said as _I_ forgave him, have I?"
"No, no, Musk, you haven't; it is not in human nature that you could."
It was a strange tongue that had spoken in the massive head; there was
no forgiveness in that voice. Yet in the next breath the note of hate
was hushed as suddenly as it had been struck.
"That may be in human natur'," said Musk, "but that ain't in mine. I'm
not a religious man, Sir Wilton. That may be the reason. But I do have
enough respect for religion to wish to see that church up again before I
die."
"I consider it very generous of you to say so, Musk," declared the
other, with enthusiasm.
"But I do say it, Sir Wilton, and I never said a truer word."
"So I hear; and that decides me!" cried Sir Wilton, jumping up. "I
really had decided--for the sake of the parish--and was actually on my
way to the church to take the whole job over. A gang of competent
workmen could polish it off in a couple of months; and it ought to be
polished off. But it's really wonderful what he has done!"
"I don't deny it," said Musk; and waited for the squire to recover his
point, his own set face unchanged.
"Yes," resumed Sir Wilton, suddenly, "I was on my way up to make him
that proposal just now; but as I passed your door I could not resist
coming in. I thought I would like to tell you what I intended to do, and
to give you my reasons for doing it."
"There was no need to do that," said Musk, with an upward movement of
the lips, hardly to be called a smile; for once also his great head
moved slowly from side to side.
"And now I shall be going on," announced Sir Wilton, who did not like
this look, and was now less inclined to suffer disrespect.
"Hold on a bit, Sir Wilton. I'm glued tight to this here chair by my old
enemy; that seem to get worse and worse, and I'm jealous I shall soon
set foot to the ground for the last time. That take me ten minutes to
mount upstairs to bed. I haven't been further'n this here lawn these
twelve months. So I can't come and see you, Sir Wilton; and I should
like another word or two now we're on the subject. You see, he was here
a good bit when the boy was bad, and even I don't feel all I did about
him, though forgive him I never shall on earth. At the same time I'd
like to see him have his church. That'd want consecrating again, sir, I
suppose?"
"I suppose it would."
"Would the bishop do it, think you?"
"Like a shot," said Sir Wilton, a touch of pique in his tone. "I had
some correspondence with him years ago about this matter, and I was
surprised at the view the bishop took. He will come, if he is alive."
Jasper had taken his eyes from Sir Wilton's face at last; they were
resting on the level sunlit land beyond the river. "That'll be a great
day for Long Stow," he murmured almost to himself; and suddenly his lips
came tight together at the corners.
"It should be a very interesting ceremony," said Sir Wilton, foreseeing
his part in it. He had forgiven his enemy, the scandalous clergyman who
had lived down a scandal and a tragedy; it was Sir Wilton who had helped
him to live them down. Not at first; then he had been adamant; but his
justice in the beginning was only equalled by his generosity in the end,
when the man had proved his manhood, and the sinner had atoned for his
sin, so far as atonement was possible in this world. That poor
pertinacious devil had been five years running up the walls. Sir Wilton
Gleed had thrown his money and his influence into the scale, and
finished the whole thing in less than five months. They were saying all
this at the opening ceremony; everybody was there. His magnanimity was
being talked of in the same breath with the parson's pluck. The bishop
was his guest.
"A very interesting ceremony," repeated Sir Wilton. "We could have it at
Christmas, if not before."
"That won't see me," said Jasper Musk. "I couldn't get, even if I wanted
to. But sciatica that don't kill, and I hope to live to see the day."
And again the corners of his mouth were much compressed.
"Yet you think you can never forgive him?"
Sir Wilton felt that he could not be the bearer of too much good-will,
now that he was about it; but Musk turned his eyes full upon him, and
there was a queer hard light in them.
"I don't think," said he. "I know."
And so it fell out that in an hour of unusual depression, and of natural
hesitation which was yet not natural in Robert Carlton, he looked up
suddenly and once more saw his enemy in the sanctuary which would soon
be his very own leafy sanctuary no longer. Carlton had come there to
meditate and to pray, but not to work. That sort of work was not for him
any more. Others must take it up; the time was ripe; only the beginning
was hard. And here was Sir Wilton Gleed advancing towards him.
And Sir Wilton was holding out his hand.
XXIX
A HAVEN OF HEARTS
Slower to decide than most young persons of her independent character,
Gwynneth was one of those who are none the less capable of decisive
conduct in a definite emergency. She behaved with spirit in the
predicament in which her weakness and her strength had combined to place
her. She had jilted Sidney; outsiders might not know it; but she had
treated him in a way which he and his were never likely to forgive.
After that, and that alone, his home could not have been her home any
more; but Gwynneth had other and even stronger reasons for determining
to leave Long Stow; and there were none why she should not. She had her
money. She was of age. She would be a good riddance now. It was her
first thought in the garden. The thought hardened to resolve while
Sidney, full of bitterness and champagne, was still galling his hired
horse back to Cambridge. Gwynneth also was gone within the week.
It was a chance acquaintance to whom the girl had written in her need.
She had met in Leipzig a strangely interesting woman: commanding,
mysterious, self-contained. This lady, a Mrs. Molyneux by name, had
taken notice of Gwynneth, and, at the close of their short acquaintance,
had given her a card inscribed in pencil with the name of St. Hilda's
Hospital, Campden Hill.
"You have never heard of it," Mrs. Molyneux had said with a smile; "but
I shall be very glad if you will come and see me and my hospital some
day when you are in town."
Gwynneth had felt honoured, she could scarcely have said why, for she
knew no more of this lady than she had seen for herself, which was
really very little. But there is a kind of distinction which appeals to
the instinct rather than to the conscious perceptions, and Gwynneth had
felt both awed and flattered by an invitation which was obviously
sincere. She had said that she should love to see the hospital--and had
never been near it yet.
"I don't know whether you have ever thought of being a nurse," Mrs.
Molyneux had added with Gwynneth's hand in hers; "but if you ever
should--or if ever you want to do something, and don't know what else to
do--I wish you would write to me, and let me be your friend."
The second invitation had been given with a wonderfully understanding
look--a look which seemed to sift the secrets of Gwynneth's heart--a
look she would not have cared to meet during the late season. She had
promised again, however, very gratefully indeed; and it was her second
promise that Gwynneth eventually kept.
"I had such a strong feeling about you," Mrs. Molyneux wrote by return.
"I knew that I should hear from you sooner or later . . . I like your
frankness in saying that it is no fine impulse, or love of nursing for
its own sake, that makes you wish to come. I do not seek to know what it
is. Even if you are no nurse you can play the organ in our little chapel
as it has not been played yet; and that would be very much to me. So
come any day and make your home with us at least for a time." The writer
contrived to refer to herself as "Reverend Mother," in emphatic
capitals, and her letter was signed "Constance Molyneux, Mother in God."
It happened that Gwynneth had spoken of Mrs. Molyneux to her aunt, who
knew a good name when she heard it, and had often asked Gwynneth if she
was not going to pay that call on Campden Hill; thus her recklessness in
casting herself among strangers was more apparent than real, and little
likely to aggravate her prime offence against kith and kin. Nor did it;
nevertheless it was a plunge into all but unknown waters. The hospital
was a private one, and Mrs. Molyneux both spoke and wrote of it as her
own. It was a cancer hospital for women, evidently run upon religious
lines, and those not easy to define, since Gwynneth happened to know
that the Reverend Mother was not a Roman Catholic. And these things were
all she did know when her hansom drew up before a red-brick building
with ecclesiastical windows, and a cross over the door, in a leafy road
not five minutes' climb from Kensington High Street.
Gwynneth pulled the wrought-iron bell-handle, and next moment caught her
breath. The door had been opened by a portress in austere but becoming
garb, a young girl like herself, and the pretty face between the quaint
cap and collar was smiling a sweet greeting to the newcomer. A few worn
steps of snowy stone, and a Gothic doorway, with the oak door standing
open, showed more girls within against the wainscot; all were pretty;
and all wore blue serge, with white aprons and long cambric cuffs,
square bib-collars trimmed with lace, and Normandy caps with streamers
of fine lawn. Gwynneth blushed for her own conventional attire, as she
was ushered through this hall, past a dispensary where another of the
uniformed girls was busy among the bottles, and so into the presence of
the Reverend Mother.
Mrs. Molyneux, the well-dressed woman of the world whom Gwynneth had
known in Leipzig, was a lost identity in a habit which marked her sway
only by its supreme severity; an order of St. John of Jerusalem hung
upon her bosom, and a crucifix dangled at her side. Her hands were
hidden beneath some short and shapeless garment reaching to the waist,
but one emerged for a moment to greet Gwynneth warmly. "Do you feel as
if you had come into a convent?" the Reverend Mother asked, a gentle
humour in her lowered voice. It was exactly what Gwynneth did feel, and
the sensation was by no means displeasing to her. The Mother herself
then showed Gwynneth over the establishment, which was indeed a singular
amalgam of the hospital and the nunnery. The dining-room was termed the
"refectory"; a cross hung over every bed in the wards upstairs, and in
the nurses' cubicles below the wards. Cap and apron, bib-collar and
cuffs, were laid out on Gwynneth's bed, and these she found herself
expected to don then and there. The Mother returned when she was ready,
and showed her the chapel last of all. It was a tiny chapel, but as
beautiful as antique carving, rich embroidery, much stained glass, and
hanging lights could make it. In her innocence Gwynneth wondered why
these lights were burning while the summer sun, shining through the
stained glass, filled the chapel with vivid beams of purple and red. She
was even puzzled by the unmistakable odour of recent incense; but she
said, with truth, that the chapel delighted her.
"I knew it would," the Mother whispered with her penetrating smile.
"How could you know?" Gwynneth asked, smiling also, because she had
never touched on religion with Mrs. Molyneux.
"I saw you once in the English church," the Mother said. "It was before
I knew you; and yet, you see, I did know you, even then!"
In this chapel there were daily matins, vespers, nones; and at each of
the three services attendance was compulsory on the part of all nurses
not required at an actual deathbed, and of all patients who were still
up and about. French-capped, pink-frocked maid-servants and ward-maids
filled the front rows of chairs; the patients sat behind; and on either
hand, in the carved oak stalls, were the pretty nurses, the Reverend
Mother near the entrance in their midst. The services, conducted by an
attendant Anglican of small account, were punctuated by genuflexions and
the sacred sign; and it was impossible to follow them in the Book of
Common Prayer.
Gwynneth tried hard to lift up her heart in this strange sanctuary. She
longed for real religion as she had longed for little in her life
before. At the first blush, it seemed as though Providence alone could
have led her into so unique a haven of equal sanctity and usefulness;
and yet, also from the first, the girl was repelled a little if
attracted more. She liked her work; she was a natural nurse, and soon
grew used, but never hardened, to hopeless suffering and slow death.
There were patients who loved Gwynneth, and not a nurse who was not fond
of her, before she had been at St. Hilda's a month. Already she was
playing the organ at all three services, and her own music, and the
voices floating up to her, at these set times, filled her heart with
peace; but she wondered if it was the right kind of peace; she wondered
whether this was religion at all. Sometimes the sweet little chapel--for
it was all that to Gwynneth's mind--struck her also as a stage of
studied effects. The nurses were so pretty, their garb so becoming, and
the blue of it had such a perfect foil in the maid-servants' pink. But
then the Reverend Mother, in her sombre supremacy, gradually revealed
herself as the superb mistress of deliberate effect; and a strange study
Gwynneth found her; of foibles and fascination all compact; at once
subtle, simple, vain, and noble. It appeared that Mrs. Molyneux was an
extremely wealthy widow, whose one consoling hobby was this anomalous
retreat upon Campden Hill.
The patients paid nothing; the nurses received nothing; it was a retreat
for both, and Gwynneth was not the only one who had sought it
primarily, and frankly, for peace of mind and salvation from self. Her
hands at least were not the less tender and untiring on that account.
Some of her capped and cuffed comrades were no older than herself; many
were refreshingly frivolous, and properly free from care. Gwynneth's
chief crony was Nurse Ella, a bright young widow, who wore spectacles,
and declared herself unable to understand what the Reverend Mother had
ever seen in her, as she was neither pretty nor religious, nor as young
as the rest.
Nurse Ella had, however, a shrewd wit and a sharp tongue; made wicked
fun of the Mother's sacerdotal pretensions when alone with Gwynneth; and
thus stimulated the latter to think for herself, if only to refute her
friend's arguments. Nurse Ella was above all things an extraordinarily
decided character, aggressively so in immaterial issues, but good for
Gwynneth by that very fact.
These opposites became fast friends. Often they would talk over the
refectory fire--a wood fire in an ancient grate, which cast the right
mediæval glow over the polished floor and the dark wainscotting--long
after the others were in their cubicles. Nurse Ella had the greatest
scorn for the conventual side of St. Hilda's, which Gwynneth would
defend warmly, while her heart admitted more than her lips; the
discussion would ramify, and become animated on both sides; then all at
once Nurse Ella would look at her watch, and no persuasion would induce
her to stay another minute. Gwynneth could have sat up half the night,
and would plead in vain for ten minutes more; it seldom took Nurse Ella
as many seconds to suit her action to her word. She said she would do a
thing, and did it; that was Nurse Ella's principle in life.