But, though such thoughts had been in and out of his mind for some time, he was hardly in love with her as yet. His temperament was honest and sincere, but cool and judicial also. He was the last man to take any definite step without a full weighing of the chances and results.
But the two had become great friends. Agatha Poyntz had her own thoughts about the matter, and they were very pleasant ones. Nothing would have pleased her more than the marriage of her brother and her friend, and she had madetête-à-têtesfor them in the adroit, unobtrusive manner that girls know.
In all his conversations with Lucy, Poyntz had found a keen, resilient brain that answered to his thoughts in precisely the way he wished. The tinge of cynicism in her corresponded to the flavour of it in him, and there was sometimes real wit and understanding in her mockery.
She "suited" him—that is how he would have put it—and he was now beginning to ask and examine himself if love were not being born, a love which might make their union a perfect and lasting thing upon his way through life. Of her sentiments towards him he knew no more than that she sincerely liked him and that they were friends.
The regular throbbing pant of a steam launch on the silver Thames outside was heard, and Lucy turned suddenly in Poyntz's direction. She saw that he was looking at her gravely and steadily. A very faint flush came into her cheeks, almost imperceptible indeed, and then she smiled frankly at him.
He smiled also, pleased with himself and her, and with a sense that a new intimacy was suddenly established between them, an odd sense of which he was quite certain.
Agatha looked at the little watch in a leather bracelet on her wrist. "It's nearly lunch time!" she said; "I don't know how you people feel, but the word has a very welcome sound to me. Jim, get up and punt us home. You'll be able to argue with Father Saltus; I've asked him to lunch with us to-day. I didn't know you were coming down."
She spoke of Lord Huddersfield's domestic chaplain, a wise and courtly elderly man, whom they all liked, without in the least realising the part he played in Church affairs, regarding him, indeed, as a harmless student and a pleasant companion, but no more.
In fact, as the light and careless conversation of all of them showed, not one of the three young people had the remotest idea of what they were discussing. And though each one of them had a sense of humour, they were not able to see the humorous side of their airy patronage of the Catholic Church! This Mr. Saltus was known as one of the most profound metaphysicians of the day. The greatest modern brains were influenced by his writings in Christian apologetics; bishops, statesmen, great scientists knew of him as one to whom it was given to show how all thought and all philosophy were daily proving the truth of the Incarnation. His work in the life of the Church was this, and he was Lord Huddersfield's chaplain because that position gave him leisure and freedom for his work, and kept him in touch with the very centre of things.
James Poyntz had arrived from London by an early train, and had joined the girls at once.
In a moment or two, the young man was propelling the long mahogany punt with easy strokes towards the artificial cutting which led to the Seaming boathouse. Then, laughing and talking together, the three strolled over the wonderful lawns, pneumatic to the tread, brilliant as emerald to the eye, towards the old house with its encircling oaks and elms.
The tall red chimneys rose up between the leaves, that triumph of the Tudor style, which alone of all architectural systems has shown how chimneys may aid and complete the beauty of a building. The house rested upon the lawns as if it might float away at any moment, as they passed round an ancient grey dove-cot and some formal box-trees, and came in sight of the beautiful place. James Poyntz gave a quick breath of pleasure as he saw it, the old riverside palace of his ancestors. There were other houses which would one day be his—a great, grim Yorkshire fortress, the gay villa at Nice by the old citadel of Mont-Albano, where the Paglion sings its song of the mountain torrent, the decorous London mansion in Berkeley Square. But of all, he loved the old Tudor house by the river best.
How well Lucy walked! her carriage was a pleasure to watch. Yes! she harmonised with her background, she was in correspondence with her environment, she would be a fit mistress of Scarning in some dim future day.
They sat down to lunch in an ancient, mellow room, panelled in oak, with Tudor roses everywhere. It was beautifully cool and fresh after the glare outside. Father Saltus was a tall and very portly elderly man. His head was large, formed on a grand scale, and his mouth powerful but good-humoured. His eyebrows were very bushy and extremely white, and they overhung eyes which were of a dark grey, deep but not sombre, with much that was latent there.
The meal was progressing merrily when the butler entered and spoke to the footman who had been waiting on them. Then he went up to Agatha. "His Lordship has returned, Miss," he said, "and will be down to lunch in a moment."
Lord Huddersfield had been away for several days. The family house in London was let, as the Baron did not entertain largely since his wife's death. Agatha's season was spent under the wing of the St. Justs, her mother's people. But Lord Huddersfield had chambers in Piccadilly, and no one ever quite knew whether or not he would be at Scarning at any given time.
He entered in a moment, a slim, spectacled man, with a short beard, very quietly dressed, a man who did not, at first glance, in any way suggest the power he wielded or the strenuous personality he was.
He kissed his daughter, shook hands with his son, Lucy, and the chaplain, and sat down. They noticed that he was pale and worried.
"Have any of you seen the papers?" he said in a strong, resonant voice, which came oddly from a man so ordinary and undistinguished in appearance.
"I saw theTimesthis morning, Father," Poyntz said, "but that is all." The girls confessed that they had not touched the pile of journals in the library, and Mr. Saltus said he had been writing letters all the morning and so had not yet been able to see the news.
"I am sorry," said Lord Huddersfield sadly. "I had hoped that you would have seen the thing that has happened. I had hoped that I should not have had to tell you, Miss Blantyre."
His voice was so charged with meaning that Lucy shivered. Her eyes became full of apprehension. "Why me, Lord Huddersfield?" she said, "what has happened?"
Agatha, who was thoroughly frightened, laid a sympathetic hand upon her friend's arm. James, who was gazing anxiously at the girl, suddenly turned to his father.
"I think you had better tell your news right out," he said quietly. "Don't keep Miss Blantyre in suspense, Father; it is mistaken kindness. I am sure that she will be brave."
Every one looked at Lord Huddersfield; the air was tense with expectation. "Your good brother, Miss Blantyre," the peer began—Lucy gave a quick gasp and the colour faded from her lips—"your good brother, yesterday in church, was saying Mass when suddenly some local residents rose in their places and made an open protest, shouting and brawling at the very moment of the Prayer of Consecration!"
Lucy gazed steadfastly at him, waiting. He said nothing more. "Go on, please," she managed to whisper at last.
"They were at once ejected, of course," Lord Huddersfield said.
"And Bernard?"
"Although his state of mind must have been terrible, despite his pain, I learn from a private telegram that he continued the service to the end."
The three young people stared incredulously; only Father Saltus suddenly looked very grave.
"But—why—is that all, Lord Huddersfield?" Lucy said with a gasp of half-relief. "I thought you meant that something dreadful had happened to Bernard."
"Yes," he said, very surprised, "I have told you."
James picked up his knife and fork, and continued his lunch without a word. He was very angry with his father.
Agatha shrugged her shoulders slightly.
"Oh, that wasn't quite fair, Lord Huddersfield," Lucy said tremulously. "You really made me think some awful thing had happened. Only a brawl in church?"
"I am very sorry, my dear," he answered quickly; "I fear I have shown a great want of tact. I did not know. I forgot, that is, that you don't quite see these things as we do. You don't realise what it means."
"Shall I give you some chicken, Father?" Agatha said, looking at a dish of mayonnaise before her. She thought that there had been quite a fuss made about nothing.
Lord Huddersfield sighed. He felt that he was in a thoroughly uncongenial atmosphere, though he was sorry for the alarm he had caused. Once his eye fell in mild wonder upon his guest. How unlike her brother she was, he thought.
There was an awkward silence, which James broke at length.
"I always thought," he said, "that there would be trouble soon. The days for locking clergymen up have passed by, but Protestant feeling is bound to have its outlet."
His quick brain had seized upon the main point at once.
"Well, there will be more work for the lawyers," he continued.
Lord Huddersfield frowned a little. "Of course, I can't expect you to see the thing as I do, James," he said. "To me such a public insult to our Lord is terrible. It almost frightens one. What poor Blantyre must have felt, what every Catholic there must have felt, is most painful to imagine."
"I'm sure Mr. Poyntz has sympathy with any body of people whose most sacred moment has been roughly disturbed," the chaplain said. "Whatever a man's convictions may be, he must feel that. But the thing is over and nothing can put it right. What I fear is, that this is only the beginning of a series of sacrilegious acts which may do the Church incalculable harm."
"The newspaper report, which appeared everywhere but in theTimes," Lord Huddersfield replied, "stated that it was only the beginning of a campaign. All the reports were identical and apparently supplied to the papers by the same person, probably the brawlers themselves—who appear to be people of no consequence whatever."
"There will be a service of reparation?" asked the chaplain.
"Yes, to-morrow," answered Lord Huddersfield. "I am going down to Hornham and shall be present. We must discuss everything with Blantyre and settle exactly what lines theChurch Standardwill take up."
"Of course, Mr. Blantyre will prosecute?" James said.
"Oh, yes. My telegram told me that the summons had already been issued. The law is quite clear, I suppose, on the point, James?"
"Quite. Brawling in church is a grave offence. But these people will, of course, pose as martyrs. Public opinion will be with them, a nominal fine will be inflicted, and they'll find themselves heroes. I'm afraid the Ritualists are going to have a bad time. In '68, the Martinv.Mackonochie judgment was very plain, and in '71 the judicial committee of the Privy Council was plainer still in the case of Herbertv.Punchas. Then, after the Public Worship Regulation Act, the Risdale judgment clinched the whole thing. That was at the beginning of it all. Now, though prosecutions have been almost discontinued, the few cases that have been heard before the ecclesiastical courts are all the same. So far as I can see, if this pleasant little habit of getting up and brawling protests in church becomes popular, a big fire will be lighted and the advanced men will have to draw in their horns."
Lord Huddersfield smiled. He attempted no argument or explanation. He had thrashed out these questions with his son long ago. Father Saltus spoke instead.
"If this really spreads into a movement, as it may," he said, "ignorant public opinion will be with the protestors for a month or two. But that is all. The man in the street will say that every one has a right to hold whatever religious opinions he pleases, and to convert others to his views—if he can—by the ordinary methods of propagandism. But he will also say that no one has a right to air his opinions by disturbing the devotions of those who don't happen to agree with him. And what is more, no religious cause was ever advanced by these means. I have no doubt that these people will boast and brag that they are vindicating the cause of law in the Church of England. But if they knew anything of the history of that Protestantism they champion—which, of course, theydon't, for they know nothing whatever—they would know that the law is the most impotent of all weapons to crush a religious movement."
James nodded. "It is a truism of history," he agreed.
"Exactly. To call in the aid of the law to counteract the spread of any religious doctrine or ceremonial is to adopt the precise means that sent the Oxford martyrs to the stake and lighted the Smithfield fires. From the days when the High Priests called in the law's aid to nip Christianity in the bud, the appeal to the law has never been anything but an appeal to the spirit of intolerance and persecution against the freedom of religious belief and worship."
Agatha rose from the table. "Come along, Lucy dear," she said; "'all's well that ends well,' and your brother's not going to have a bomb thrown at him just yet. You will be in the thick of the disturbance in a few days; meanwhile, make the most of the river and the sunshine! Jim, come and punt us to the Eyot."
She kissed her father and fluttered away singing happily a snatch of an old song,Green Grow the Rushes O!
The others followed her. The two elder men were left alone, and for a minute or two neither spoke.
Then Saltus said: "They are all young, they have made no contact with real life yet. God does not always call in early life. To some people, the cross that is set so high over the world is like a great star,—it is not seen until the surrounding sky is darkened and the sun grows dim."
"I am going into the chapel," Lord Huddersfield said, "to be alone for an hour. There must be many prayers going up to-day to God for the wrong these poor ignorant men have done."
"Pray that they may be forgiven. And then, my dear Lord," he continued, "suppose we have a talk over the situation that has been created—if any situation beyond the purely local onehasbeen created." A fighting look came into his face. "We shall be wise to be prepared, to have our guns loaded."
"Yes, Father," Lord Huddersfield said rather grimly, "we are not without power and influence, I am happy to think."
Lucy Blantyre left Scarning Court on Thursday morning. James Poyntz travelled up to town with her. She was to go home to Park Lane for an hour or two, make one of the guests at a lunch party with Lady Linquest, and then, in the afternoon, drive down to Hornham.
She was alone in a first-class carriage with James during the whole of the journey to London. The last three days had marked a stage in their intercourse. Both of them were perfectly aware of that. Intimacy between a young man and a girl is very rarely a stationary thing. It progresses in one direction or another. James began to talk much of his ambitions. He told her how he meant to carve his way in the world, the place he meant to take. The Poyntz family was a long-lived one; Lord Huddersfield himself was only middle-aged, and might live another thirty years. James hoped that it would be so.
"I want to win my own way by myself," he said. "I hope the title will not come for many years. It would mean extinction if it came now. You sympathise with that, don't you?"
She was very kind to him. Her answers showed a real interest in his confidences, but more than that. There was acumen and shrewdness in them.
"You know," he said, "I do hate and detest the way the ordinary young man in my position lives. It is so futile and silly. I recognised it even at Oxford. Because of one's father, one was expected to be a silly fool and do no work. Of course, there were some decent fellows,—Dover, the Duke of Dover, was quiet and thought about things. But all my friends were drawn from the social class which people suppose to be just below our own, the upper middle class. It's the backbone of England. Men in it take life seriously."
He stopped after a time, and gazed out of the window at the flying landscape. Suddenly he turned to her. "I'm so glad you are my sister's great friend, Lucy," he said.
It was the first time that he had spoken her first name to her. His tone was charged with meaning.
She looked up quickly, and saw that his eyes were fixed upon her.
"You are all very kind to me," she said.
"Every one would be kind to you. I have been very happy since you have let me be your friend. Do you know that my work and my hopes seem dearer than ever to me now that I have told you so much of them. We have got to know each other very well, haven't we?"
"Very well."
"We shall know each other better. It is my hope. I wonder if I might write to you now and then, and tell you some of my thoughts and how things are with me? Would such letters bore you?"
"I should value them, and think them a privilege. A woman is always gratified when a man confides his thoughts to her. So many men never allow a woman friend to see below the surface, and so many men—at any rate, men that I am in the way of meeting—have no thoughts to tell one even if they would."
The train began to go more slowly as it rumbled through the dingy environs, and shook over the myriad points of Waterloo Station. Neither of them spoke again. There was no doubt in the mind of either as to the meaning of the situation.
The girl had gathered all his thoughts from his tone. It was very pleasant to be with him, this sane and brilliant young man with a great name and such powers. It made her happy to know how he regarded her—that out of all the girls he knew he had chosen her for a friend. He would some day ask her to be something more; that also she knew, and knew that he was conveying it to her. She did not love him, love was a word not very real to her as yet. Her mental eyes had never visualised it, it was an abstraction. But she liked and admired him more than any other man of her set: he was aman. Well, there was time enough yet to think of all that. Meanwhile his deference was sweet; her heart warmed to him as his, she knew, was warm to her at that moment.
He saw her to the door of the waiting victoria, and stood chatting for a moment in the hurry of the station, making the footman mount his box again.
Then he gave the signal to start, and stood upon the platform by his hansom as she was driven rapidly away. Once she turned and waved a hand to him.
Lucy lay back in the carriage, pleased with herself and all the world. She had come on to Victoria, instead of getting out at Vauxhall, specially to enjoy the longer drive. It was a brilliant day, and as the carriage came upon Waterloo Bridge, the wonderful panorama of riverside London was uplifting. Away to her right, the purple dome of St. Paul's shone white-grey in the sun. The great river glittered in the morning air, and busy craft moved up and down the tide. The mammoth buildings of the embankment, Somerset House with its noble façade, the Savoy, the monster Cecil, the tiled roofs of Scotland Yard all came to the eye in one majestic sweep of form and colour. And far away to the left, dim in a haze of light, the towers of Westminster rose like a fairy palace, tipped with flame as the sun caught the gold upon the vanes and spires.
London! yes! it was, after all, the most beautiful city in the world, seen thus, at this hour, from this place. How the heart quickened and warmed to it.
Suddenly the thought of Hornham came to her. She made a little involuntary movement of disgust. For a whole fortnight she would be there. It would be intolerable. Why could not Bernard come to Park Lane for a fortnight? How much more sensible that would be.
Well, it was no good thinking of it. The thing must be done. Yet, from one point of view how curious it was. How strange that a drive of two hours would plunge her into a world entirely foreign and alien in every way to her world.
She was driving up Grosvenor Place now, by the long walls of the King's Palace Garden, over which the trees showed fresh and green. The stately street, with the Park gates at the end of its vista, only accentuated the contrast. She utterly failed to understand how any one could do what her brother did. There was not the slightest reason for the endurance of these horrors. His personal income was large, his family connections were influential. He could obtain a fashionable West End living without any trouble. She was still scornfully wondering as the carriage stopped at Lady Linquest's house in Park Lane.
Lucy found her aunt in a little room of china-blue and canary-yellow which looked out over the Park.
She was a tall woman, of full figure. The face was bright and animated, though somewhat sensual, inasmuch as it showed that its owner appreciated the good material things that life has to offer. At sixty-two, when dames of the middle classes have silver hair and are beginning to assume the gentle manners of age, Lady Linquest wore the high curled fringe of the fashion, a mass of dark red hair that had started life upon the head of a Bréton peasant girl. Art had been at work upon her face and she was pleasant to look on, an artificial product indeed, but with all the charm that a perfect work of art has.
She made no secret of it to her intimate friends, and no one thought any the worse of her in a society where nearly every one who has need of aids to good looks buys them in Bond Street. Indeed, she was quite unable to understand what she called "the middle class horror of paint." "Why on earth," she would say, "any one can possibly object to an old woman making herself look as pleasant as possible for the last few years of her life, I can't make out. It's a duty one owes to one's friends. It sweetens life. At any rate,Idon't intend to go about like old Mother Hubbard or the witch in whatshername."
"Lucy, my dear," said this vivacious dame as her niece entered, "you're looking your best this morning. And when you look your best my experience generally tells me that you've been up to some wickedness or other! How's Agatha, and has James Poyntz been at Scarning, and how's that poor dear man, Huddersfield, who always reminds me of a churchwarden? He is the king of all the churchwardens in England, I think."
Lucy sat down and endeavoured to answer the flood of questions as satisfactorily as might be, while Lady Linquest took her mid-morning pick-me-up of Liebig and cognac.
The good lady gave her niece a rapidprécisof the news of their set during the few days she had been away. "So that you'll know," she said, "what to talk about at General Pompe's lunch—your last decent meal, by the way, for a fortnight! I shall give orders to the cook to put a hamper in the carriage for you to take with you to Bernard's. All those poor young men starve themselves."
She rattled away thus while Lucy went to her own room to dress. For some reason or other, why she could not exactly divine, she was dissatisfied and ill at ease. The exhilaration of the railway journey, of the wonderful drive through sunlit London, had gone. Her aunt, kind creature as she was, jarred upon her this morning. How terribly shallow the good lady seemed, after all! She was like some gaudy fly dancing over a sunlit brook—or even circling round malodorous farmyard stuff—brilliant, useless, and with nothing inside but the mere muscles of its activity. James Poyntz's words recurred to her, his deep scorn of a purely frivolous, pleasure-loving life was present in her brain.
Lucy was genuinely fond of Lady Linquest, but somehow on this bright morning to hear a woman with one foot in the grave talking nothing but scandal and empty catchwords of Vanity Fair, struck with a certain chill to her heart.
To see her sitting there, curled, painted, scented, sipping her tonic drink, ready for a smart party of people as empty and useless as herself, was to see a thing that hurt, after the experiences of the morning.
Lucy had not taken her maid to Scarning. She had wanted to live as simply as possible there, to live the outdoors riverside life. And she was not going to take Angelique to Hornham either—where the girl would be miserable and a nuisance to the grave little community there. She felt very glad, as the chattering little French woman helped her to dress, that she was not coming with her. The maid's voluble boulevard French got on her nerves; the powder on her face, which showed violet in the sunlight, the strong scent of verbena she wore, the expression of being abnormally "aware"—all these were foreign to Lucy's mood, and she noticed them with an almost physical sense of disapproval that she had never before felt so strongly.
The drive to the smart hotel near Piccadilly only took five or six minutes, and the two ladies were soon shaking hands with old General Pompe, their host. General the Hon. Reginald Pompe was an old creature who was only kept from senile decay by his stays. He was unmarried, extremely wealthy, and the fashion. In his younger days, his life had been abominable; now, his age allowed him to do nothing but lick the chops of vicious memories and prick his ears for scandals in which he could not share. People said, "Old General Pompe is reallytoobad, but where one sees the Duke of —— and the Prince of —— we may be sure that people like ourselves cannot be far wrong."
The other guests comprised Lord Rollington, of whom there was nothing to be said save that he was twenty-four and a fool; Gerald Duveen, who was a fat man of good family, and more or less of a success upon the stage; and his beautiful, bold-looking wife, a judge's daughter, who played under the name of Miss Mary Horne, and of whom much scandal was whispered.
After a moment or two in the palm room, waiting for the Duveens, who were a minute or two late, the six people went in to lunch. The special table General Pompe always used was reserved for them, decorated with a triumphant scheme of orchids and violets. Lumps of ice were hidden among the masses of flowers, diffusing an admirable coolness round the table.
The host drew attention to the menu, which he had composed. He mumbled over it, and as he bent his head Lucy saw that his ears were quite pointed, and that the skin upon his neck lay in pachydermatous folds, dry and yellowish.
"Baked red snapper, red wine sauce," said Mr. Duveen, with the purring and very distinct voice of high comedy. "Hm—turtle steaksmiroton—sweetbreads—Tadema, quite the best way to do sweetbreads."
Mrs. Duveen was talking in a low, rapid voice to Lady Linquest. Her eyes were very bright, and malice lurked in the curves of a lovely mouth as she retailed some story of iniquity in high places, one of these private and intimate scandals in which the half-life of the stage is so rich—actors and actresses more than most people being able to see humanity with the mask off. How greedy the three men looked, Lucy thought, as they devoured the lunch in prospect. "Pigs!" she said to herself with a little inward shudder.
Why was this? She had been at dozens of these functions before now and had thought none of these thoughts. To-day a veil seemed removed from her eyes: she saw things as they really were. And as they really were, these people were abominable.
Any of them would
"Buy a minute's mirth to wail a week,And sell eternity to gain a toy."
"Buy a minute's mirth to wail a week,And sell eternity to gain a toy."
They had the manners of organ-grinders and the morals of monkeys. She caught some words of what Mrs. Duveen was saying now and again. Lord Rollington began to tell her, with affected disgust, how he had been at a burlesque theatre the night before, and the musical-comedy heroine of the hour had been so intoxicated that she could hardly sing her song.
"Too bad, you know, Miss Blantyre. I spotted it at once. It's always disgustin' to see a girl take too much to drink, but when she's caperin' about the stage like that one really has a right to complain. Don't you think so? Now, if it had been a poor little chorus girl, she'd have been fired out of the theatre in a second. For my part, I—" and so on for an interminable five minutes.
General Pompe began to flirt with Lucy in that elderly "you-are-only-a-little-girl" sort of manner, that is so difficult to repel and which is so offensive. She saw his horny eyes roving over her person with appreciation.
A great many of Lady Linquest's particular set were like this. Not all of them, thank goodness, but so very many! And the worst of it was that society mingled and overlapped so strangely. The sheep and the goats were not separated in any way. People like the Huddersfields stood almost alone, and even Agatha, when she was with the St. Justs—her mother's family—constantly met this sort of people. But, then, Agatha didn't seem to care, she didn't realise. She laughed at everything and thought it "awfully good fun." In fact, Lucy realised Agatha was exactly the same as she herself had always been—with the very slightest intervals—until this moment. It was startling to think that the words of Lord Huddersfield's son had worked this revolution in her point of view. For she was quite persuaded that they were the reason of it. She could find no other reason.
She did not realise then, as she was to realise with humble thankfulness and awe in the future, the august influence that was at work within her.
She was not gay at lunch. Usually she was a most welcome member of any such gathering as this. Her sayings were pointed, she entered fully into the spirit of the hour, her wit adorned the charm of her personality, and she was universally popular and voted "good fun" in the comprehensive epitome of her associates. This was the highest praise they knew, and they gave it her without stint.
To-day the party fell flat—there was no doubt about it. The radiance of the early morning had given place to a heat which became terribly oppressive, and the sky was overclouded. Thunder was in the air, and London awaited a storm.
The electric lights began to glow in the restaurant.
Lady Linquest did her best to rouse her niece to gaiety, but her efforts were futile. The old man who was entertaining them grew sulky, and Lord Rollington drank glass after glass of champagne. The beautiful actress was frankly bored, and became more cynical and bitter with every scandalous story she told.
Only Mr. Duveen preserved his equanimity. He ate and drank and purred with secure complaisance. It was his rôle in life. Ever since he had been a little lick-trencher fag at Eton he had been thus. It was said by his friends in society—after his back was turned—that on one occasion, having discovered the Earl of —— kissing his wife, he had murmured an apology, saying that he had come to find his cigarette case, and hurriedly retired from the room. This, no doubt, was scandal and untrue, but it showed the estimation in which he was generally held.
Lucy knew this unpleasant story—Lady Linquest had told her. She thought of it as she watched the man pouringmandarininto his coffee. Once more she felt the shrinking and repulsion that had come over her more than three hours ago.
She knew, or once had known, her Dante. She had had but little time for anything but frothy reading during the last year or two, but once she had kept up her Italian. A passage from theInfernocame into her brain now,—a long-forgotten passage:
"Quest i non hanno speranza di morte,E la lor cicca vita è tanto bassaChe invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte."
"Quest i non hanno speranza di morte,E la lor cicca vita è tanto bassaChe invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte."
She saw the people of whom the Florentine spoke before her now, the people for whom the bitterest fate of all had been reserved,—these who "have no hope of death, and whose blind life so meanly drags that they are envious of every other fate."
Before she left Park Lane, it had been arranged that the small brougham should call for her at the restaurant, and take her on to Hornham. Her luggage was small. This smart society girl was going to take her plunge into the great LondonHinterlandwith a single trunk, like any little governess driving to her new situation, where she would learn how bitter the bread of another may taste, and how steep are the stairs in the house of a stranger.
The carriage arrived just as lunch was over, and she left all of them with immeasurable relief.
Driving up Shaftesbury Avenue to find her northward route was like driving into a black curtain. It was terribly hot and dark, the horses were uneasy, and the people moving on the pavements seemed like phantoms in some city of dreadful night.
London began to grip and hold her then as it had never done before. Seen under this pall, its immensity and the dignity it gained by that was revealed in a new aspect.HerLondon, her corner of the town, the mere pleasure-city, became of no consequence, its luxury, its parks and palaces, shrank and dwindled to nothing in her consciousness.
She was attuned to thoughts more solemn than were wont to have their way with her. Her eyes and ears were opened to the reality of life.
She had lost her dislike for the visit she was going to pay. Below her frequent irritation at her brother's way of life there had always been a strong affection for him. And more than that, she had always respected him, though often enough she would not admit it even to herself. As the brougham turned into the surging arcana at Islington her curiosity about the next few days was quickened: the thought of personal discomfort—discomfort of a physical kind—had quite gone. She felt that she was about to have experience of something new, her pulses quickened to it.
The vicarage of St. Elwyn's was one of those stately old red-brick houses, enclosed in a walled garden of not inconsiderable extent, that are still to be found here and there in north London. They date from the florid Georgian times, when that part was a spacious countryside where wealthy merchants withdrew from commerce in the evening of their days and lived a decorous life among the fields and trees. Here and there, in the vast overgrown and congested districts, one or another of these old freeholds has been preserved inviolate—as may be seen in the ride from Hackney to Edmonton—and becomes an alien in a wilderness of mean little houses and vulgar streets.
Father Blantyre had bought one of these few remaining mansions in Hornham, at a high price, and had presented it to the parish of St. Elwyn's as its vicarage. Here he lived with his two curates and a staff of four servants,—a housekeeper, two maids, and a man-of-all-work. The personal wants of the three clergymen were very simple, but the servants were useful in many parochial affairs. In times when work was scarce, the vicarage staff boiled soup, like any cheap restaurant-keeper. The house was open at all times of the day or night to people who wanted to be quiet and alone for a time; social clubs and guilds had their headquarters there.
Indeed, the place was the centre of a diversified and complex life—how complex, neither Lucy, nor any outsider, had the least conception.
The carriage stopped at the heavy square porch with its flight of steps, and the footman ran up them and rang the bell.
Lucy noticed with amusement that the man's face expressed a mild wonder at the neighbourhood in which he found himself, and that he winked solemnly at the coachman on his box.
Lucy stood on the steps for a moment. The sky was quite dark, and the little side street in which she was, showed in a dim and sulphurous half-light—like the light round the House of Usher. A piano-organ close by was beating out its vibrant mechanical music with an incongruous and almost vulgar disregard of the menace of the heavens.
The housekeeper opened the front door, and Lucy entered a big panelled hall, now in a gloom that was almost profound, and with a tiled floor that clicked and echoed as the high heels of her shoes struck upon it.
"The vicar is in his study, Miss," the housekeeper said. She was a tall, gaunt, elderly woman, with a face that always reminded Lucy of a horse, and her voice was dry and hesitating.
Lucy crossed the hall, opened a door of oak and another of green baize, and entered her brother's room.
It was a large, lofty place. The walls were covered with books in sober bindings,—there must have been several thousands there. A soft carpet covered the floor, in the centre of which stood an enormous writing-table crowded with books and papers.
Hardly any light came into the place through the long window, and two candles in massive silver holders stood upon the writing-table, throwing a soft radiance around.
The light fell upon a tall crucifix of silver that stood upon the table, a beautiful specimen of English Pre-Reformation work. A small couch had been drawn up close to the table, and on it the priest lay asleep. The face was lined and drawn with worry and with work, and all its secrets were told as the man slept. One hand lay hanging from the side of the sofa—a lean, strong hand, with a coil of muscle upon the back. Seen thus in an abandonment of repose, Lucy's brother showed as a man worn and weary with battle, scarred and battered, bruised, but how irrevocably rich!
A rush of tenderness came over the girl as she looked at him. Here was the man who had not winced or cried aloud, whose spirit was unbowed beneath the bludgeonings of life.
A high serenity lay over the pain upon the face. It was a face vowed, a saint's face, and even as he slept the great soul which shone like a monstrance within him, irradiated the mask that hid it.
Lucy saw all this, received some such impressions as those in two or three moments. Some attraction drew her eyes from the sleeper to the shining symbol of God's pain upon the table. Then they went back to Bernard Blantyre. To her excited fancy there seemed some subtle sympathy between them, an invisible shuttle that was flying to and fro.
Then Blantyre awoke and saw her. He did not come from the kingdom of sleep gradually, as most people do, loath to leave those silent halls. He sprang suddenly into full consciousness, as soldiers upon fields of battle, as old veterans used to sudden drums and tramplings are known to do.
His eyes lighted up with merriment and triumph, his mobile face was one great smile. He caught her by the arms and kissed her repeatedly. "It's splendid to have you again, me darling," he said, with a slight Irish accent that came to both of them when they were excited. "Ye little wretch, staying away so long! Why, ye're prettier than ever! Ye'll have all the Hornham boys waiting for ye outside the church door after Mass, for we don't see your sort down our humble way—the rale West End product!"
Laughing and chattering, putting on the most exaggerated brogue, the brother and sister moved out into the hall. Father Blantyre called loudly, "King! Stephens! where are ye? she's come!—I don't know where my boys are at all, mavourneen—We'll dress um down for not being in to welcome the new clergywoman. Now, come up to your room, sweetheart, and Bob'll bring your box up. Bob! bring me sister's trunk up-stairs."
The little man ran up the wide stairway, an odd, active figure in his black cassock, laughing and shouting in an ecstasy of pleasure and excitement. No schoolboy could have been more merry, more full of simple joy.
Lucy followed him, half laughing, half inclined to sob at this happy welcome. She was carried off her feet by it all, by this strange arrival under lurid skies at the dingy old house which suddenly seemed so home-like.
Reproach filled her heart at her long neglect as she heard her brother's joy. Simplicity!—yes, that was it. He was utterly simple. The thought of the people she had left so short a time ago was more odious than ever.
She found herself alone in her bedroom, a big, gloomy place with solid mahogany furniture in the old style. There was nothing modern there save a littleprie-dieuof oak by the bedside. But the sober colours and outmoded massiveness of it all no longer troubled her. She did not give a single thought to her own luxurious nest in Park Lane—as she had done so often during her first visit to St. Elwyn's a year ago.
When she went down-stairs once more, both the assistant priests had come in and were waiting with the vicar in the study, where some tea was presently brought.
Stephens was a tall, youthful-looking man, rather slangy perhaps, with a good deal of the undergraduate about him still, but obviously in earnest. King was square-faced; the clean-shaved jaw showed powerful and had a flavour of the prize-fighter about it, while his general expression was grim and somewhat forbidding. He was much the elder of the two. His expression, the outward shell, was no index to the man within. A tenderer heart never beat in a man; a person more temperamentally kind never lived. But he had more capacity for anger, righteous anger, than either the vicar or Stephens. There were moments when he could be terrible, and some savage strain in him leaped to the surface and was only curbed by a will which had long been sanctified to good.
The two men seemed glad to see Lucy again. She had seen little of them on her first visit; neither of them had made any impression on her. Now they interested her at once.
"Now, then, Bernard," Lucy said as she began to pour out the tea, "what is all this I hear about a scene in church? Lord Huddersfield was full of it. He was most distressed."
"He has been awfully good about it," Blantyre said. "He was down here on Tuesday morning going into the matter. A man named Hamlyn, the editor of a little local paper, threw the church into a miserable state of confusion during Mass last Sunday, just after I had said the Prayer of Consecration. He read a document protesting against the Blessed Sacrament. We had him ejected, and yesterday he was fined ten shillings in the local police court. The magistrate, who is a pronounced Protestant in his sympathies, said that though the defendant had doubtless acted with the best intentions, one must not combat one illegality with another, and that the law provided methods for the regulation of worship other than protests during its process!"
"Pompous old ass!" said Stephens.
"Well, I'm glad they fined him," Lucy said.
"'All's well that ends well!' You won't have the services disturbed again."
"On the contrary, dear, we are all very much afraid that this is the first spark of a big fire. We hear rumours of an organised movement which may be widely taken up by the enemies of the Church. All through the ranks there's a feeling of uneasiness. Lord Huddersfield is working night and day to warn the clergy and prepare them. We cannot say how it will end."
He spoke with gravity and seriousness. Lucy, who privately thought the whole thing a ridiculous storm in a teacup, and was utterly ignorant of the points at issue, looked sympathetic, but said nothing. She was not in a flippant mood; she realised she was quite an outsider in the matter, which seemed so momentous to the three intelligent men she was with, and, unwilling to betray her lack of comprehension or to say anything that would jar, she kept a discreet silence.
"We all get shouted after already, when we go into the worst parts of the parish," said Stephens cheerfully. "They've been rousing the hooligan element. It's an old trick. Lazy bounders, who don't know a Christian from a Jew and have never been in a church in their lives, shout 'papist' after us as we go into the houses. Just before I came in, I was walking up the street when a small and very filthy urchin put his head round the corner of a house and squeaked out, 'Oo kissed ve Pope's toe?' Then he turned and ran for dear life. As yet, I haven't been assaulted, but King has! Haven't you, King?"
Mr. King looked rather like a bashful bulldog, and endeavoured to change the subject.
"Do you mean any one actually struck you, Mr. King?" Lucy said, absolutely bewildered. "How awful! But why should any one want to do that?"
The vicar broke in with a broad grin that made his likeness to a comedian more apparent than ever.
"Oh, King was splendid!" he said with a chuckle. "That ended very well. A big navvy chap was coming out of a public-house just as King was passing. He looked round at his friends and called out something to the effect that here was another monkey in petticoats—we wear our cassocks in the streets—and see how he'd do for um! So he gave poor King a clout on the side of the head."
"Oh, Iamsorry," Lucy said, looking with interest upon the priest, and realising dimly that to be a clergyman in Hornham apparently ranked as one of the dangerous trades. "What did you do, Mr. King?"
King flushed a little and looked singularly foolish. He was a bashful man with ladies,—they did not come much into his pastoral way.
Lucy thought that the poor fellow had probably run away and wished that she had not asked such an awkward question.
"Oh, he won't tell ye, my dear!" Blantyre said, "but I will. When the gentleman smacked um on the cheek, he turned the other to him and kept's hands behind's back. Then the hero smacked that cheek too. 'Hurroo!' says King, or words to that effect, 'now I've fulfilled me duty to me religion and kept to the words of Scripture. And now, me friend, I'm going to do me duty to me neighbour and thrash ye till ye can't see out of your eyes.' With that he stepped up to um and knocked um down, and when he got up, he knocked um down again!"
Mr. King fidgeted uneasily in his seat. "I thought it was the wisest thing to do," he said, apologetically. "You see, it would stop anything of the sort for the future!"
"And the fun of the whole thing, Miss Blantyre," Stephens broke in, "was that I came along soon after and found the poor wretch senseless—King's got a fist like a hammer. So we got him up and refused to charge him to the policeman who turned up after it was all over, and we brought him here. We sponged him and mended him and fed him, and he turned out no end of a good sort when the drink was out of him. Poor chap gets work when he can, hasn't a friend in the world; hadn't any clothes or possessions but what he stood up in, and was utterly a waster and uncared for. We asked him if he knew what a papist was, and found he hadn't an idea, only he thought that they made love to workingmen's wives when their husbands were at work! He'd been listening to our friend, Mr. Hamlyn, who called a mass-meeting after the police-court proceedings and lectured on the three men of sin at the vicarage!"
A flood of strange and startling ideas poured into the girl's brain. A new side of life, a fourth dimension, was beginning to be revealed to her. She looked wonderingly at the three men in their long cassocks; she felt she was in the presence of power. She had felt that when James Poyntz was talking to her in the train, in the fresh, sunlit morning, which seemed a thing of the remotest past now. Yet this afternoon she felt it more poignantly than before. Things were going on down here, in this odd corner of London, that were startling in their newness.
"And what happened to the poor man?" she said at length.
"Oh," answered the vicar, "very fortunately we are without a man of all work just now, so we took him on. He carried your trunk up-stairs. He's wearing Stephen's trousers, which are much too tight for um! and an old flannel tennis coat of King's—till we can get his new clothes made. He was in rags!"
"But surely that's rather risky," Lucy said in some alarm. "And what about the other servants? I shouldn't think Miss Cass liked it much!"
Miss Cass was the housekeeper, the woman with the face like a horse. She always repelled Lucy, who, for no reason than the old, stupid "Dr. Fell" reason, disliked her heartily.
To her great surprise, she saw three faces turned towards her suddenly. On each was an expression of blank surprise, exactly the same expression. Lucy wanted to laugh; the three men were as alike as children are when a conjuror has just made the pudding in the hat or triumphantly demonstrated the disappearing egg.
The taciturn King spoke first. "I forgot," he said; "of course you don't know anything about Miss Cass. How should you, indeed! Miss Cass is a saint."
He said it quite simply, with a little pride, possibly, that the vicarage which housed him housed a saint, too, but that was all.
"Yes," the vicar said, his brogue dropping away from him, as it always did when he was serious, "Miss Cass is a saint. I'll tell you her story some time while you're here, dear. It is a noble story. But don't you be alarmed about our new importation. Bob will be all right. We know what we are doing here."
"It's wonderful, Miss Blantyre," Stephens broke out, his boyish face all lighted up with enthusiasm. "You know, Bob'd actually never been in church before yesterday morning, when he came to Mass."
He stopped for a moment, out of breath in his eagerness. Lucy saw that he—indeed, all of them—took it quite for granted that these things they spoke of had supreme interest for her as for them. There was such absoluteconvictionthat these things were the only important things, that no excuse or apology was necessary in speaking of them. She found she liked that, she liked it already. There was a magnetism in these men that drew her within their circle. She saw that, whatever else they were, they were absolutely consistent. They did not have one eye on convention and the world, like the West End clergymen she knew,—some of them at least. These men lived for one aim, one end, with tremendous force and purpose. They simply disregarded everything else. Nothing else occurred! Yes, this was a fourth dimension indeed. She bent herself to listen to the boy's story, marking, with a pleasure that had something maternal in it, the vividness and reality of his interest and hopes.
"Before he went," the young man said, "I explained the Church's teaching exactly to him. Don't forget that the poor chap hadn't the slightest idea of anything of the sort. He was astounded. A mystery that I could not explain to him, a mystery for which there were nomaterialevidences at all, came home to him at once.I saw faith born.And they say this is not an age of miracles! Think of the tremendous revolution in the man's mind. He talked to me after the service. It was all wonderfully real to him. He was absolutely convinced of the coming of our Lord. There isn't a rationalist in London that could shake the man's belief. I asked him why he was so sure—was it merely because I had told him, because I believed in it? His answer was singularly touching. 'Nah,' he said, scratching his head,—they all do when they try to think,—'It wasn't wot you said, guvnor, it was wot Ifelt. Iknowedas 'E wos there. Why, I ses to myself,It's true!'"
"It is very wonderful," Lucy said. "It's more wonderful by far than a man at a Salvation Army meeting or a revival. One can understand that the sudden shouts and the trumpets and banners and things would influence any one. But that a service which is inexplicable even to the people who conduct it should influence this poor uneducated man is strange."
"Now, I don't think it strange, Lucy, dear," the vicar said; "it's far more natural to me than the other. The wonderful power of the Church lies in this,that her mysteries appeal to quite simple people whose minds are a blank on religious questions. They appeal to the simple instantly and triumphantly.They feel the power of the Blessed Sacrament. AndonlyCatholicism can do this in full and satisfying measure. We find that over and over again. The jam-and-glory teas, the kiss-in-the-ring revivals, have a momentary and hysterical influence with the irreligious. But it doesn't last, there is no system or discipline, and above all,there is no dignity. Only priests realise thoroughly how the poorer and less-educated classes crave for the proper dignity and beauty of worship. It has always been so. It is the secret of the power that the Roman Church has over the minds of men."
"Then why are there so many Salvationists and Dissenters?" Lucy asked.
"For a multitude of reasons. A dislike to discipline chiefly. People don't go to church because the novelties of thirty or forty years ago have filtered down into the omnibuses and people who are naturally irreligious prefer to make a comfortable little code for themselves. The Church says youmust notdo this or that; its rules are thoroughly well defined. Folk are afraid to come as near to God as the Church brings them. Their cry is always that the Church comes between them and God. Often that is a malevolent cry, and more often still it's pure ignorance. The silly people haven't an idea what they're talking about. It would be just as reasonable for me to say, 'I hate and abominate Nicaragua, which is a pernicious and soul-destroying place,' when I've never been nearer to Nicaragua than Penzance."
"There is one thing that we do see," King continued in his slow, powerful way. "Whenever we have open-minded men or women come to church to pray and find help, they find it. Dozens and dozens of people have come to me after they have become members of the Church and said that they could not understand the anti-Church nonsense they themselves had joined in before. 'We never knew,' that is the cry always."
"The thunder's beginning!" Father Blantyre said suddenly, realising apparently that the talk was straying into channels somewhat alien to a young society lady presiding at afternoon tea.
"Lucy, me dear, it's tired you'll be of sitting with three blathering old priests talking shop in a thunderstorm—there's a flash for ye!"
A sheet of brilliant steel-blue had flashed into the room as he spoke, showing every detail of it clear and distinct as in some lurid day of the underworld. The books, the writing table, the faces of the three clergymen, and the tall silver crucifix between the candles, which had momentarily faded to a dull and muddy yellow, all made a sudden tableau which burned itself upon the retina. Then came darkness once more and the giant stammer of the thunder far overhead.
The thunder ceased and they waited, expectant of the next explosion, when the penetrating and regular beating of an adjacent bell was heard.
"There's the bell for evensong!" Blantyre said; "I did not know it was so late." He put on his berretta and left the room, the other men following him. Lucy rose also. She felt that she would make one of them, and going up-stairs to get a hat, she presently found herself in the long, covered passage that connected the vicarage with the church.
The idea of a house which was but an appanage of the church was new to her. The passage had been built since her last visit. And as she entered the huge, dim building, she saw clearly how powerful in the minds of her brother and his friends its nearness must be. All their life, their whole life, centred in this church. Its services were as frequent and natural as their daily food. How strangely different it all was to the life of the outside world! She herself had not been to church for six weeks or more. Even people who "called themselves Christians" only entered a pew and enjoyed a hebdomadal siesta in church. But these men could not get on without it. Every thought and action was in communion with the Unseen. And she was forced to acknowledge it to herself,—if one actually did believe in a future life, in eternity, then this was the only logical way in which to prepare for it. If life was really like a sojourn of one night in an inn, then the traveller who made no preparation for the journey, and spent the night in careless disregard of the day, was an utter fool. But no one called worldly people fools!—it was all very puzzling and worrying, and common-sense did not seem like common-sense in Hornham.
And was James Poyntz a fool?
It was the last question she asked herself as she turned into the side chapel where evensong was to be said. Some twenty kneeling figures were there. The place was dimly lighted save for the tall gas standards by the priests' seats in front of the altar.
High up before the painted reredos hung a single lamp that burned with a dull red glow. There were many sick folk in the parish of St. Elwyn's: at all hours of the day and night, the clergy were sent for to help a departing soul upon its way hence, and the Blessed Sacrament was reserved upon this altar in the side chapel.
The simple and stately service was nearly over. The girl had listened to the sonorous words as if she heard them now for the first time. As she knelt, her heart seemed empty of the hopes, fears, and interests of daily life. It seemed as a vessel into which something was steadily flowing. And the fancy came to her that all she experienced was flowing to her from the dim tabernacle upon the altar. It was almost aphysicalsense, it was full of awe and sweetness. She trembled exceedingly as the service ended and her brother prayed for the fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
For a time after the echoing footsteps of the clergy had died away, she remained upon her knees. She was praying, but without words; all her thoughts were caught up into one voiceless, wordless, passionate ejaculation.
When at length she bowed low,—it was the first time she had ever done such a thing,—before the altar, and left the church, it was by the west door.
She had a fancy for the street, and she found that the thunder had all passed away and that a painted summer's evening sky hung over the garish town.
As she finally turned into the vicarage, she cast one look back at the church. It rose among the houses high into the air. The sunset fired the wet tiles of the roof and gilded the cross upon the lantern. She thought of That which was within.
"Todgers," Mr. Stephens remarked to Lucy, as they went down into the garden after lunch on Saturday, "could do it when it chose."
The last preparations for the garden party were being made. The big marquee was erected, the tennis lawns were newly marked, there was a small stand for the string band.
Waiters, looking oddly out of their element in the brilliant sunshine, which showed dress-coats, serviceable enough at night, tinged with a metallic green like a magpie's wing, were moving about with baskets of strawberries and zinc boxes of ice.
The old-fashioned garden, an oasis in the wilderness of brick all around, was brilliant with sunflowers, stocks, and geraniums; the lawns were fresh and green. The curate was in tennis flannels and an Oxford blazer, and Lucy meditated upon the influence of clothes, as her betters had done before her. Stephens seemed to have put off his priesthood with his tippet and cassock, and the jaunty cap covered a head which seemed as if it had never worn a berretta. Lucy found, to her own surprise, that she liked the man less so. It was a total inversion of her ordinary ideas. She began to think that a priest should be robed always.
Miss Cass, the housekeeper, in a new cap, came up to them. Lucy had talked to the woman for more than an hour on Friday afternoon, and the prejudice caused by her appearance was removed.
"I hope everything is satisfactory, Miss," she said. "It all seems to be going on well. The men from Whiteley's know their business."
"It all seems splendid, Miss Cass," Lucy said. "I'm sure it couldn't be better. Have the band people come?"
"Yes, Miss, and the piano-entertainer too. They're having some refreshment in the library. His Reverence is telling them funny stories, Miss."
She hurried away to superintend further arrangements.
"The vicar is always so fine," the young man said, with a delighted enthusiasm in his chief that was always pleasant for Lucy to hear. "He gets on with men so well; such a lot of parsons don't. There's nothing effeminate about the vicar. He's a man's man. I'll bet every one of those fellows in there will go away feeling they've made a friend, and that parsons aren't such scalawags after all."
A burst of laughter came from the door leading into the garden, as if to confirm his words, and Father Blantyre descended the steps with a little knot of men dressed in something between livery and uniform, carrying oddly shaped cases of black waterproof in their hands.
Laughing and joking, the men made their way towards the music stands.
The vicar came up to Lucy. "How will it do?" he said. "It seems all right. Just walk round with me, my dear, and I'll give ye a few tips how to play hostess in Hornham."
They strolled away together. "Now, ye'll be careful, won't ye, mavourneen?" he said rather anxiously. "The folk coming this afternoon require more management and tact than any I've ever met. They'll all have what they think is the high society manner—and ye mustn't laugh at um, poor dears. I love 'em all, and I won't have you making fun of them. I like them better in church than in society, I'm quite free to admit to you, and their souls are more interesting than their bodies! Perhaps half a dozen people here this afternoon will be what you'd call gentlefolk—the doctor, Dr. Hibbert, and a few others. The rest of them will be fearfully genteel. The young gentlemen will be back early from the city, and they'll come in flannels and wear public-school ribbons round their hats, roses in their button-holes and crimson silk cummerbunds!"
"Good heavens!" Lucy said.
"Yes, and they'll all want to flirt with ye, in a very superfine, polite sort of way, and mind ye let um! They'll ask if they might 'assist you to a little claret cup,' and say all sorts of strange things. But they're good enough at heart, only they will be so polite!"
"And the women?"
Father Blantyre shrugged his shoulders. "You'll find them rather difficult," he said. "You bet they see your name in the papers—they all read the 'Fashionable Intelligence'—confound um!—and the attitude will be a little hostile. But be civil for my sake, dear. I hate all this just as much as you do. I can get in touch with them spiritually, but socially I find it hard. But I think it's the right thing to do, to entertain them all once or twice a year, and they do enjoy themselves! And I owe them a deep, deep debt of gratitude for their loyalty during this trying week. I have had dozens and dozens of letters and calls. Every one has rallied to the church in a wonderful and touching way since the Sunday affair. God bless them all!"
Lucy squeezed his arm with sympathy. In an hour, the guests began to arrive.
Lucy and her brother met them by the garden door of the house. It was a gay scene enough. A brilliant flood of afternoon sunshine irradiated everything; the women were well and fashionably dressed, the band played, and every one seemed happy.
Lucy found it much easier than she expected. The guests were suburban, of course, and not of the "classic suburbs" at that. But, she reflected, there was hardly a man there who had not better manners than Lord Rollington or General Pompe. And if they wore Carthusian or Zingari ribbons, that meant no more than that they were blessed with a colour-sense; while a slight admixture of "i" in the pronunciation of the first vowel was certainly preferable to the admixture of looseness and innuendo that she was sometimes forced to hear in much more exalted circles. So she received tea and strawberries at the hands of gallant and debonair young gentlemen engaged in the minor walks of commerce; she chatted merrily with fluffy young ladies who, when they had gotten over their first distrust of a girl who went to the drawing-room and stayed with lords, finding that she wasn't the "nasty, stuck-up thing" they expected, were somewhat effusively affectionate. She talked gravely about the "dear vicar and those dreadful men" to ample matrons who for a moment had forgotten the cares of a small suburban villa and a smaller income, in the luxury of fashion, the latest waltz tunes, the champagne cup, and a real social event. Indeed, everything went "with a snap," as one young gentleman remarked to Lucy. She became popular almost at once, and was surrounded by assiduous young bloods of the city "meccas."
Father Blantyre, as he went about from group to group, was in a state of extreme happiness, despite his somewhat gloomy anticipations. It was an hour of triumph for him. His people, for whom he prayed and laboured and gave his life and fortune, were one and all engaged to show him how they would stand by him in the anticipated trouble. Everywhere he was greeted with real warmth and affection, and before long the quick Celtic temperament was bringing a mist before the merry grey eyes and a riot and tumult of thankfulness within.
On all sides, he heard praises of his sister. "The pretty dear," one good lady, the wife of a cashier in a small Mincing Lane firm, said to him. "I had quite a long talk with her, Father Blantyre. And a sweet girl she is. We're not in the way of meeting with society folk, though we read of all the gay goings-on in theMail; but I said to Pa, 'Pa,' I said, 'if all the society girls are like that, then there's nothing much the matter with the aristocracy, andModern Societyis a catchpenny rag.' And Pa quite agreed. He was as much struck by her as I was."
And so on. Every one seemed pleased with Lucy. The guests began to arrive less and less frequently, until at length the gardens were crowded and no one else appeared to be coming. All the various games and entertainments were in full swing, and Lucy was about to accept the invitation of a tall boy in a frock coat and a silk hat to sit down and watch a set of tennis with him, when there was a slight stir and commotion at the garden door of the house.
Miss Cass came hurriedly down the steps, as a sort of advance guard for two ladies who were ushered into the garden by a waiter. The housekeeper dived into the crowd and found the vicar, who turned and went with her at once to meet the late-comers.
"There's Miss Pritchett and Gussie Davies," said the young man to Lucy in rather an awed voice, and then, as if to banish some unwelcome impression, relieved his feelings by the enigmatic remark of "Pip, pip," which made Lucy stare at him, wondering what on earth he meant.
She noticed that nearly every one at this end of the garden was watching, more or less openly, the meeting between the vicar and his guests. She did not quite understand why, but guessed that some local magnate had arrived, and looked with the rest.
The elder of the two women was expensively dressed in mauve silk, and wore a small bonnet with a white aigrette over a coffee-coloured fringe of hair that suggested art. Her face was plump and pompous, a parrot-like nose curved over pursy lips that wore an expression of arrogant ill-temper, and the small eyes glanced rapidly hither and thither. In one white-gloved hand, the lady held a long-handled lorgnette of tortoise-shell and gold. Every now and then she raised these glasses and surveyed the scene before her, in exactly the manner in which countesses and duchesses do upon the stage.
Her companion was young, a large, blonde girl, not ill-looking, but without character or decision in her face or walk. She was dressed very simply.
Lucy turned to her companion. "Do you know them, then?" she said.
"Rather," he replied. "I should think I did. That's Miss Pritchett, old Joseph Pritchett's daughter, old Joseph, the brewer. He left her all his money, she's tons of stuff—awfully wealthy, I mean, Miss Blantyre."
"Does she live here, then?"
"Oh, yes. In spite of all her money she's always been an unappropriated blessing. She's part of Hornham, drives a pair in a landau. The girl is Gussie Davies, her companion. She's not half a bad sort. All the Hornham boys know Gussie. Nothing the matter with Gussie Davis! The old cat sits on her fearfully, though. She can't call her soul her own. It's bally awful, sometimes, Gussie says."
Lucy gasped. These revelations were startling indeed. She was moving in the queerest possible set of people. She hadn't realised that such folk existed. It took her breath away, like the first plunge into a bath of cold water.
The artless youth prattled on, and Lucy gathered that the lady with the false front was a sort of femalearbiter elegantariumto Hornham, indubitably the richest person there, a leading light. She saw her brother talking to the woman in an eager way. He seemed afraid of her,—as, indeed, the poor man was, under the present circumstances,—and Lucy resented it. With a quick feminine eye, she saw that Miss Pritchett was assuming an air of tolerance, of patronage even, to the vicar.
At last, Bernard caught sight of her. His face became relieved at once and he led the spinster to the place where she was sitting.
Every instinct of the girl rose up in dislike and rebellion as the woman drew near. She had felt nothing of the sort with the other people. In this case, it was quite different. She prepared to repel cavalry, to use the language of the military text-books.
On the surface, the incident was simple and commonplace enough. A well-bred girl felt a repulsion for an obviously unpleasant and patronising woman of inferior social rank. That was all. It is a trite and well-worn aphorism that no event is trivial, yet it is extraordinarily true. Who could have said that this casual meeting was to be fraught with storm and danger for the Church in England; that out of a hostile handshake between two women a mighty scandal and tumult was to rise?
Miss Pritchett came up to Lucy, and Father Blantyre introduced her. Then, with an apologetic murmur, he hurried away to another part of the garden.
"Won't you sit down?" Lucy said, looking at the chair that had been left vacant by her late companion.
"Thank you, Miss Blantyre, but I've been sitting in my carriage. I should prefer to stand, if it's the same to you," said Miss Pritchett.
Lucy rose. "Perhaps you would like to walk round the grounds?" she asked.
"Probably I know the grounds better than you," the elder woman answered with a patronage which was bordering on the purely ludicrous. "This residence was one of my dear father's houses, as were many of the Hornham houses. When the vicar acquired the property, the brewery trustees sold it to him, though I think it far from suitable for a parish clergyman."