"He was suspended for five year, and the bishop has given him leave to get to work directly the five year is up. That I happen to know."
"It must be nearly up now!"
"That's up next Sunday as ever is, and you'll know it when you hear the bell ring. He's got one of the old uns slung to a tree, for I helped him to sling it, and it's the first help he's had all this time. I wouldn't mention it, miss, for the reverend doesn't want a crowd; there'll be quite enough come when they hear the bell, if it's only to see what happens; but the whole neighbourhood 'll be there if that get about."
"And there's really going to be service in the church—just as it is—without a roof—this very next Sunday!"
It sounded incredible to Gwynneth, and yet it thrilled her as the incredible does not. The very drone of the saw was thrilling now.
"There is, miss, and I mean to be there," said the village Hampden, with inflated chest. "I can't help it if that cost me Sir Wilton's custom, the reverend and me are good friends again, and I mean to be there."
It had been in the air all Saturday, but few believed the rumour until ten minutes to eleven next morning. At that hour and at that minute Long Stow was electrified by the measured ringing of a single bell—a bell hoarse with five years' rest and rust—a bell no ear had heard since the night of the fire.
Gwynneth was afield upon the upland, far beyond the church, a pitiful waverer between desire and indecision. Now she must go; and now she must not think of it. It was unnecessary, gratuitous, provocative, ostentatious, unmaidenly, immodest—and yet—both her duty and her desire. So the string of adjectives might be applied to her; they were no deterrent to a nature which hesitated often, but seldom was afraid. Gwynneth treated more respectfully the poignant query of her own consciousness: was she absolutely certain that she did not at all desire to show off like the saddler? She was not.
She did desire to show off, if it was showing off to honour openly the man whom she admired and wished others to admire. She gloried in the man's achievement, and possibly also in her own appreciation of it and him. That was her real point of contact with the saddler. But for Fuller there was the excuse of unconsciousness, and for Gwynneth there was not. So she read herself that Sunday morning, under an August sky without a fleck and a sun that drew the resin from those very pine-trees upon which the outcast had so often gazed. It was thereabouts that Gwynneth lingered, of self-analysis all compact. Then the hoarse bell began—came calling up to her from the clump of chestnuts and of elms—calling like a friend in pain . . .
Gwynneth reached church by way of the strip of glebe behind it and the gate into this from the lane, thus escaping the throng already gathered at the other gate. She saw nothing but the rude benches as she entered in; the last of these was too near for her; she shrank to the far end of it, close against the wall, and the bell stopped as she sank upon her knees. The beating of her heart seemed to take its place. Then there came a light yet measured step. It passed very near, with a subdued and subtle rustle, that might yet have meant one other woman. But Gwynneth knew better, though she never looked.
"I will arise, and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."
Already the girl could not see; all her being was involved in an effort to suppress a sob. It was suppressed. There were no tears in the voice that so moved Gwynneth. How serene it was, though sad! It began to soothe her, as she remembered that it had done when she was quite a little girl. She was a little girl again: these five years fled . . . But oh,why had he chosenthatsentence of the scriptures? Gwynneth looked at her book (for now she could see) and found that some of the others would have been worse.
At last she could raise her eyes; and there was Fuller in the very front; and not another soul.
But Gwynneth cared for nothing any more except the gentle voice that it was her pride to follow in the general confession, kneeling indeed, yet kneeling bolt upright in her proud allegiance.
A strange picture, the rude benches, the ragged walls; the east window still a chasm, the hot sun streaming through it down the aisle; and over all the blue cruciform of sky, broken only by the nodding plumes of the taller elms. And a congregation yet more strange—only Gwynneth and the saddler. But this did not continue. Gwynneth heard movements in the porch behind her, and presently a stumble on the part of one driven in by the press; but no voices; not a whisper; and ere-long he who had been forced in, tired of standing, came on tiptoe and occupied the end of Gwynneth's bench.
Now it was the second lesson. The rector was reading it in the same sweet voice, with all his old precision and knowledge of his mother tongue, and never a trip or an undue emphasis. No one would have believed that that voice had been all but silent for five whole years. And yet some change there was, something different in the reading, something even in the voice; the clerical monotone was abandoned, the reading was more human, natural, and sympathetic. The change was in keeping withothers. The rector wore no vestments in the naked eye of heaven, but only his cassock, his surplice, and his Oxford hood. There were flowers upon the simple table behind him, such roses as still grew wild in his tangled garden, but no candle to melt double in the sun. The lectern he had done his best to burnish; but it was still a cripple from the fire. Above, the rector's hair shone like silver, for the sun swept over it, but the lean dark face was all in shadow. Gwynneth only saw the fresh trim cut of the grizzled beard, and the walnut colour of the gnarled hand drooping over the book. That speaking hand!
Now it was the first hymn—actually! So he dared to have hymns, and to sing them if necessary by himself! But it was not necessary, and not only Gwynneth joined in with all the little voice she possessed, but presently there were false notes from the other end of the bench, and the saddler was not silent. But Robert Carlton's voice rang sweet and clear above the rest:—
"Jesu, Lover of my soul,Let me to Thy Bosom fly,While the gathering waters roll,While the tempest still is high:Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,Till the storm of life is past:Safe into the haven guide,O receive my soul at last . . ."
"Jesu, Lover of my soul,Let me to Thy Bosom fly,While the gathering waters roll,While the tempest still is high:Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,Till the storm of life is past:Safe into the haven guide,O receive my soul at last . . ."
The hymn haunted Gwynneth upon her knees, taking her mind from the remaining prayers. It was a hymn that she had loved as a little child, and now it seemed so simple and so whole-hearted to one wholonged always to be both. But it was the passionate humility of it that touched and filled the heart; and yet there had been neither tremor nor appeal in the voice that led; and the humility was only in accord with one of the simplest services ever held.
The second hymn was another of Gwynneth's favourites; she could not afterwards have said which, for in the middle Mr. Carlton knelt, and then came forward to the twisted lectern at the head of the aisle.
It was not a sermon; it was only a very few words. Yet in Long Stow nothing else was talked of that day, nor for many a day to follow.
The few words were these:—
"The first verse of the nineteenth psalm:"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."Though I have given you a text, my brethren, I do not intend this morning to preach any sermon. If you care to hear me again—if you choose to give me another trial—if you are willing to help me to start afresh—then come again next Sunday, only come in properly, and make the best of the poor benches which are all I have to offer you as yet. There will only be one weekly service at present. I believe that you could nearly all come to that—if you would! But I am afraid that many would have to stand."I cannot tell you how grieved I am that your church is not ready for you; but I hope and believe, as I stand before you here, that it will be ready soon,much sooner than you suppose. Then one great wrong will be righted, though only one."Meanwhile, so long as we are blessed with days like these—and I pray that many may be in store for us—meanwhile, could there be a fitter or a lovelier roof to the House of God than His own sky as we see it above us to-day? Though at present we can have no music worthy the name, have you not noticed, during all this our service, the constant song and twitter of those friends of man, as I know them to be, of whom Jesus said, 'Not one of them is forgotten before God'? And for incense, what fragrance have we not, in our unfinished church, that is the House of God all the more because it is also His open air."My brethren,youneed be no farther from heaven, here in this place, unfinished as it is, than when the roof is up, and the windows are in, and proper seats, and when a new organ peals . . . and one whom you can respect stands where I am standing now . . ."My brethren—once my friends—will you never, never be my friends again?"Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen . . ."Dear friends, I have said far more than I ever meant to say. But it is your own fault; you have been so good to me; so many of you have come in; and you are listening to me—to me! If you never listen to me again, if you never come near me any more, I shall still thank you—thank you—to my dying hour!"But let no eye be dim for me. I do not deserve it. I do not want it. If you ever cared for me—any of you—be strong now and help me . . ."And remember—never, never forget—that a just God sits in yonder blue heaven above us—that He is not hard—that I told you . . . He is merciful . . . merciful . . . merciful . . ."O look above once more before we part, and see again how 'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.'"And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all honour, power, dominion, might, henceforth and for ever. Amen."
"The first verse of the nineteenth psalm:
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
"Though I have given you a text, my brethren, I do not intend this morning to preach any sermon. If you care to hear me again—if you choose to give me another trial—if you are willing to help me to start afresh—then come again next Sunday, only come in properly, and make the best of the poor benches which are all I have to offer you as yet. There will only be one weekly service at present. I believe that you could nearly all come to that—if you would! But I am afraid that many would have to stand.
"I cannot tell you how grieved I am that your church is not ready for you; but I hope and believe, as I stand before you here, that it will be ready soon,much sooner than you suppose. Then one great wrong will be righted, though only one.
"Meanwhile, so long as we are blessed with days like these—and I pray that many may be in store for us—meanwhile, could there be a fitter or a lovelier roof to the House of God than His own sky as we see it above us to-day? Though at present we can have no music worthy the name, have you not noticed, during all this our service, the constant song and twitter of those friends of man, as I know them to be, of whom Jesus said, 'Not one of them is forgotten before God'? And for incense, what fragrance have we not, in our unfinished church, that is the House of God all the more because it is also His open air.
"My brethren,youneed be no farther from heaven, here in this place, unfinished as it is, than when the roof is up, and the windows are in, and proper seats, and when a new organ peals . . . and one whom you can respect stands where I am standing now . . .
"My brethren—once my friends—will you never, never be my friends again?
"Oh spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen . . .
"Dear friends, I have said far more than I ever meant to say. But it is your own fault; you have been so good to me; so many of you have come in; and you are listening to me—to me! If you never listen to me again, if you never come near me any more, I shall still thank you—thank you—to my dying hour!
"But let no eye be dim for me. I do not deserve it. I do not want it. If you ever cared for me—any of you—be strong now and help me . . .
"And remember—never, never forget—that a just God sits in yonder blue heaven above us—that He is not hard—that I told you . . . He is merciful . . . merciful . . . merciful . . .
"O look above once more before we part, and see again how 'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.'
"And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all honour, power, dominion, might, henceforth and for ever. Amen."
He had controlled himself by a superb effort. The end was as calm as the beginning; but the rather hard, almost defiant note, that might have marred the latter in ears less eager than Gwynneth's and more sensitive than those of the people in the porch, that note had passed out of Robert Carlton's voice for ever.
And there no longer were any people in the porch; one by one they had all crept in to listen, some stealing to the rude seats, more standing behind, none remaining outside. Thus had they melted the heart they could not daunt, until all at once it was speaking to their hearts out of its own exceeding fulness, in a way undreamed of when the preacher delivered his text.
And this was to be seen as he came down the aisle, white head erect, pale face averted, and so through the midst of his people—his once more—without catching the eye of one.
Mr. Fuller had made a hasty exit; but he waylaid Gwynneth on the road. "Excuse me, miss," he cried, and the girl felt bound to do so. Next moment she was trying to sort the mixed emotions in the saddler's face, for a few steps had brought them to his house, and he had halted at the workshop window.
"Well, miss, and what doyouthink of it?"
"Oh, Mr. Fuller, please don't ask me."
"I don't mean the sermon, miss; I mean the flock of sheep that come and listened to the sermon," said the saddler, with a bitterness that astonished Gwynneth.
"But, surely, Mr. Fuller, you were glad they did come? I was so thankful!" declared the girl.
"So was I, miss; so was I," said the saddler, grimly; "but, Gord love yer, do you suppose they ever would have shown their noses if you an' me hadn't given 'em the lead?"
"Then we ought to be very proud, Mr. Fuller; at least you ought, since but for you I never should have known in time."
"But do you think a man of 'em 'll admit it?" continued Fuller fiercely. "Not they—I know 'em.They'll take the credit, the moment there's any credit to take—them that hasn't given him a word or a look in all these years. But the reverend,heknow—heknow!"
"I'm sure he does," said Gwynneth, kindly; and left the forerunner to his ignoble jealousy, only hoping there was some foundation for it, and that a real reaction was already in the air.
Even on her way home there were further signs. Jones the schoolmaster, an implacable enemy these five years, but an emotional man all his life, was still dabbing his eyes as he held unguarded converse with the phlegmatic owner of the mill on the lock, who had been his fellow churchwarden in the days before the fire.
"I'll be his churchwarden again," declared the schoolmaster, "and Sir Wilton can say what he likes. We know who ruled the roast before, and we know——"
Gwynneth caught no more as she hurried on, her first desire a quiet hour without a whisper from the world. She wished to recall every word of the sermon, while every syllable remained in her mind, and then to write it all down and to possess it for ever. Such was her first feverish resolve; nor, analytical as she was, did she stop to analyse this. The stable gates were open; it never occurred to Gwynneth to wonder why. There was a good way through the stable-yard to the garden, whose uttermost end she might thus reach without being seen from the house. And Fraulein Hentig had known where she was thinking of going, had shaken Gwynneth not a littlewith her remonstrances, but would be none the less certain to ask questions when next they met.
Near the Italian garden was a certain walk, with stark yew hedges on either hand, and fine grass stretched like a drugget from end to end. Across this strip the old English flowers, poppies and peonies, hollyhocks and larkspur, faced each other in serried lines as in a country dance; and the vista ended in a thatched summer-house where it was always cool. The spot was a favourite haunt of Gwynneth, who would catch herself humming the old English songs there, and thinking of patches and powder and the minuet. It had not that effect this morning; she neither saw nor smelt the flowers, nor heard the thrush which was singing to her with persistent sweetness from the stately trees upon the lawn beyond. Gwynneth was in that other world which had existed all these years within half-a-mile of this one. What she heard was the virile cadence of the voice which had always thrilled her; strong and masterful in the beginning; softening all at once, as the people pressed in to hear; then for a little high-pitched and hoarse, spasmodic, tremulous, too touching even to remember with dry eyes; then that last pause, and the silver clarion of his proper voice once more and to the end. And what Gwynneth saw, through her tears, was the sunlight resting on that stricken head, as though God had stretched out His hand in final mercy and forgiveness.
But what she was to see, before many minutes were past, or the sermon over in her mind, was a dapper figure approaching between the old flowersand the spruce hedges, a figure in riding breeches, swinging a cutaway coat in his walk.
It was Sidney, ridden over from Cambridge on a hired horse. Gwynneth had time to come out of the summer-house to meet him, but none to think. So he had given her a kiss before she realised what that meant—and knew in her heart that it must be the last. And the next moment she saw that he was displeased.
"So here you are!" was his verbal greeting: "I've been looking for you all over the shop."
"I'm so sorry," said poor Gwynneth. "If you had only let us know——"
"Oh, that's all right; I took my risk, of course."
He looked her up and down, as she stood in the sunlight, tall and comely, her state of mind instinctively and successfully concealed; and the brown tinge came upon his handsome face as the annoyance vanished. Endearments fell from his lips, but now she made him keep his distance, though so tactfully that he obviously did not realise his repulse. Gwynneth looked at him for an instant with great compassion; then she led the way into the summer-house, her mind made up.
"You haven't been here all the morning, have you?" he went on. "No, I see you haven't; there are your gloves."
"Yes."
"Been for a walk?"
"Well, I did go for one."
"What do you mean?" demanded Sidney, struck at last by her manner.
"I've been to church!"
"What! Over to Linkworth and back?"
"No."
Her tone trembled; he was not helping her at all.
"Then what church did you go to, and what on earth's up with you, darling?"
"I went to our own church."
"But I thought that Lakenhall chap only came in the afternoon?"
"He doesn't go to the church."
Sidney stared an instant, and was on his feet the next. "You don't mean to say you've been up to the church talking to—to Carlton?" he cried.
"No, not talking to him."
"Then do you mind telling me what you do mean?"
Gwynneth did her best to explain the occasion and to describe the service, but found herself unable to do the subject justice in a few words, and drifted into a nervous enthusiasm as she went. Sidney's eyes seemed smaller than when she began; she had never known he had so sharp a chin. But he heard her out, standing in the doorway, and not always looking her way; it was when averted that his face looked so hard. When she had finished he gave her his whole attention, and was some time regarding her, his hands in his pockets, without a word.
"So you deliberately went to hear that blackguard!"
"You needn't call him that," said Gwynneth, hotly.
"But I do."
"I should be ashamed to abuse him after all he has done!"
"That doesn't alter what—what you apparently and very properly know nothing about, Gwynneth."
"And I don't want to know!" cried the girl, indignant at his tone. "I only say, whatever he has done, he has paid very bitterly for it, and made such amends as were never made by anybody I ever heard of. He may have been all you say. He is more than all that I can say now!"
"And what do you say?" inquired Sidney, with polite contempt.
"That we shall honour ourselves in future by honouring him, and dishonour ourselves by continuing to dishonour him. He has had his punishment, and look how he has borne it! Why, he has done what was never done in the world before by one solitary man."
Gwynneth stopped breathless. Sidney eyed her coolly, his nostrils curling. "So that's your opinion," he sneered.
"It's a good deal more than that," cried Gwynneth. "It's my fixed conviction and personal resolve."
"To honour that fellow, eh?"
Gwynneth coloured.
"To the extent of attending his services when I happen to be here," she said. And Sidney gave her a pregnant look—a more honest look—angry and determined as her own.
"And what about me?" he said. "What if I object?"
Gwynneth was slow to answer, to tell him the sharp truth outright.
"Do you mean to go your own way in spite of me, in spite of the governor, in spite of all of us?"
Gwynneth saw that she could not remain at the hall and follow such a course. So this question went unanswered like the last, though for a different reason. Meanwhile Sidney was accounting for her silence to his own satisfaction, and he now conceived that the moment had arrived for him to play the strong man.
"Look here, Gwynneth," said he, "this is all rot and bosh, and worse—if you'll take my word for it. And you must take my word, and take it on trust in a thing like this, or you never will in anything. I tell you this fellow Carlton is the most unspeakable skunk. But it isn't a thing we can discuss together. Isn't that enough for you? Isn't my wish enough, in a thing like this, which I know all about and you don't? Have I got to enforce it while we're still engaged? If so——"
Gwynneth had raised her head slowly, and at last she spoke.
"We are not engaged, Sidney," she said quietly.
"Not—engaged?"
"It has never been a proper engagement."
"A proper engagement!" Sidney gasped. "Not a public one, if you like! What difference does that make?"
"No difference. It only makes it—easier——"
"What does it make easier?" he demanded fiercely.
Gwynneth was choking with humiliation. It was some moments before she could command her voice. Her distress was pitiful; but the young man was already busy pitying himself. A sudden change had come over Sidney. It was not in all respects a change for the worse. His cynical aplomb had already disappeared, leaving a tremulous, an angry, but a human being behind. So Gwynneth felt a leaning to him even at the last; but this time she knew her mind.
And she spoke it with equal candour and humility: it was all her fault: she could never forgive herself; but he would forgive her, when he saw for himself what the woman will always see quicker than the man. She liked him better than anybody she knew; that week at Cambridge had been the happiest week in her life; one day they would, they must, be good friends again. Meanwhile they had both made a miserable mistake. This was not love.
"Speak for yourself," cried Sidney, all bitterness and mortification. "And I never believed in a woman before," he groaned; "my God, I never shall again!"
And he strode out savagely into the sun; but a different Sidney was back next moment, one that reminded Gwynneth of the very old days, when he would pass her whistling with his dog. A sneer was on his lips, and his dry eyes glittered.
"I beg your pardon for making a scene, Gwynneth; it isn't in my line, as you know, and I apologise. But do you mind telling me when you discovered that you had—changed?"
"I have not changed, Sidney. That is my shame."
"Do you mean that you never did care about me?"
"Never in that way. I am ashamed to say it—more humiliated and ashamed than you can ever know. But it's the truth."
"Yet at the First Trinity ball, I remember, if you don't——"
His tone was more than Gwynneth could endure.
"Yes, I remember," she cried; "and I can explain it, though explanations are no excuse. Sidney, you know what my life was until the last few months? Happy enough in heaps of ways, but not the least gaiety in it; and suddenly I felt the want of it. I felt it first abroad, and you met that want in your May-week in a way beyond my dreams. You may sneer at me now, but you were awfully nice to me then, and I shall never, never forget it. You were so nice that I honestly did think for a little that you met every other want as well! Yet I tell you now, what I tried to tell you once before, that when once you had spoken nothing was the same. It was like touching a bubble. The bubble had burst."
"You felt like that from the first?"
Gwynneth turned away, for now they were both upon their feet, restlessly hovering between the summer-house and the sunlight.
"And yet it has taken you two months to tell me," pursued Sidney without remorse.
"I know; it was dreadful of me; yet I could nottell you till I was absolutely certain, and it is not so easy to be certain of oneself in such things. If you find no difficulty, Sidney, then you might pity those who do. Nevertheless, I did write, on my birthday, when you sent me those beautiful pearls. Sidney, you must take them back—for my sake. I meant to send them back at once, but you know what I heard that very morning! It may have been cowardly and weak, but how could I tell you I did not love you the moment I knew I was to have a little money of my own? It's hard enough as it is; but I had not the pluck for that. Yet it is hard enough now," repeated Gwynneth, with great feeling; "and you haven't made it easier, Sidney. No, I don't mean anything you may have said; you have not said more than I deserve. But you tempted me—you little know how you have tempted me—to be dishonest with you to the end. It would have been so easy to make poor Mr. Carlton the whole cause, and not to have told you the truth at all!"
"Then I wish to God you had done so!" Sidney cried out, revealing the character of his wound unawares, yet once more human, young, and vain. Moreover there was passion enough in his eyes and voice, as there had been in his wooing. "Besides," he continued, "poor Mr. Carlton, as you call him,isthe cause, I don't care what you say. Curse him! Curse him, body and soul!"
Gwynneth was outside in the sun, doubly adorable now that he had lost her, and for other reasons too. Her sweet skin was flushed, and even her tears inflamed the unhappy young man. He looked at herlong and passionately, then muttered venom through his teeth.
"What did you say?"
"I said it was like him, too, the blackguard!"
"I don't know what you mean, and I don't want to."
"It's as well," jeered Sidney, with exceeding malice; but already she was turning away. She was turning away without one word. In an instant he had her by both wrists, as the devil possessed himself.
"Let me go," cried Gwynneth. "You're hurting me!"
"I'm not. I'm not. I'm only going to let you know the kind of beast that's come between us."
Gwynneth stood with unresisting wrists. Her scorn was splendid.
"I am not sorry to have seen you in your true colours, Sidney."
"You are going to see some one else in his."
Her scorn had destroyed his last scruple. His eyes were devilish now.
"Let me go, you brute!"
"There are worse, Gwynneth, there are worse. It isn't a thing we can discuss, as I told you. But did you never notice the likeness?"
Her blank face put the involuntary question he desired.
"Only between the one big villain in this parish—and the one rather jolly little boy!"
At last her wrists were released. But Gwynneth remained standing in the sun. She was not lookingat Sidney; on the contrary, her face declared her oblivious to his continued presence. It was white with several kinds of horror; it was pinched with many separate pangs. So she stood a few moments, then went her way slowly, only turning with a shudder. As for him, his fever subsided as he watched; and, before the diminishing figure had passed out of the vista of cropped hedges and crude flowers, even Sidney Gleed knew himself, for once in his life, for what he was and would be to its end.
Next Sunday there was a real congregation. Yet the benches were almost as empty as before, the people herding near the porch until entreated either to occupy such seats as there were, or to leave the church. "Curiosity may have brought some of you here," said Mr. Carlton; "but I earnestly hope that none will remain in that spirit." The benches were full in a minute, and many had still to stand. All the next week Robert Carlton spent in sawing more planks to one length, and more props to one height for their support. And on the third Sunday his church was packed.
The summer of 1887 was, however, a remarkable one. And the month of August was an ideal month for the inauguration of open-air services, where there were trees.
In those hot still days came visitors of every type, and in greater numbers than Robert Carlton desired. The tide had turned; he was early aware of his danger now. Again and again it became his own sore duty to remind this one or the other, distantly perhaps, yet none the less unmistakably, of that which they might forget, but he never. Their open admiration tried him acutely. He did like it a littlefor its own sake, after five years' ostracism; more for the fresh purchase it gave him over simple hearts; but he was very hard on himself for liking it at all. On the other hand, he knew that it must put many a mind, the subtler minds, more than ever against him. It also renewed his own shame. So it was not admiration that he wanted at all; it was confidence, forgiveness, love; and these if possible by degrees. It was not possible, and Robert Carlton had to suffer in turn from the saddler, the schoolmaster, and the rest. The first would come to hedge and hedge with a view to Sir Wilton's imminent return; the next would intercept him as he came away, learn what he had been saying, and forthwith step across to the church to let the reverend know how the schoolmaster's character impressed itself upon a man of his experience. It was an unattractive trait in Fuller that he questioned everybody's sincerity but his own, albeit his strictures were not seldom justifiable. He talked, however, as though for years he had been the one and only philanthropist to hold any dealings with the rector; at last it became necessary to set him right on the point, which Mr. Carlton did with a mild account of his illness and the sexton's aid.
"I do wish I'd ha' known," said Fuller, with perfect truth; "I do wish I'd ha' known an' had the nursun of yer, reverend, instead o' him. And he never come near you no more; so I should expect."
"But you tell me he's very ailing, Fuller."
"He haven't been ailun all these years."
"We—we had a little tiff in the end. It was my fault. I wonder if he'd see me now?"
"I'll make him, reverend, I'll tell him he's got to."
"No, Fuller, I can't allow that. Besides, he has not got to do anything of the sort; he has turned dissenter, and may prefer me to stop away. Nevertheless I shall call, if only to ask how he is."
There was no need to ask, in the event. The old sexton was failing fast, and "not long for this world," as his daughter announced in front of him. The poor man was in bed, and very dirty, but as sensible as he ever had been; and he welcomed the rector with cadaverous grins.
"They tell me," he whispered, "you fare to finish the church with your own two hands. You're a wonderful man, sir—and I'm another."
"You are, indeed. Why, you must be nearly ninety, Busby?"
"Eighty-eight, sir, come next September. But I wasn't thinkun o' my age, sir. Do you remember that little varmin I swallered out 'f a pond?"
"I remember."
"I've killed that, sir!"
And the sunken eyes shone like lamps.
"I congratulate you, Busby."
"I killed that two year ago; and you'll never guess how!" The ex-sexton proceeded to rehearse the various remedies he had tried in vain. "I killed that with bacca-smoke," he concluded in sepulchral triumph. "It was the minister's idea. I had to swaller the bacca-smoke instead o' puffun that out, an' that choked that in three pipes!"
The rector said it must be a great relief to be rid of such an incubus. 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 wasanother 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 totake 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 puthimself 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 onthe 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 asIforgave 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 thatdon'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.
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 acard 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 loveof 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 facebetween 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 Gwynnethwas 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 halfthe 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.
So there was no exchange of confidences between these two, both reticent natures, and neither unduly inquisitive about the other's affairs. Gwynneth only knew that her friend's married life had been a very short one; for her own part, she had said nothing to let Nurse Ella suppose that she had herself been even asked in marriage. But one night they were speaking of another nurse, who had left St. Hilda's that day, in floods of tears, to be married the following week.
"If I felt like that," Gwynneth had declared, "I wouldn't be married at all."
Nurse Ella looked up quickly, her glasses flaming in the firelight. "What, not after you had given your word?" said she.
"Certainly not, if I felt I had made a mistake." Gwynneth was staring into the fire.
"You would break your solemn promise in a thing like that?" the other persisted.
"Better one promise than two lives," replied Gwynneth, with oracular brevity. Nurse Ella watched her in sidelong astonishment.
"It's easy to talk, my dear! I believe you are the last person who would do anything so dishonourable."
"I don't call it dishonourable."
"But it is, to break your word."
"Suppose you have changed?"
"You have no business to change. Say you'll do a thing, and do it."
The spectacled face had assumed a rigid cast which Gwynneth knew well, and for which Nurse Ella had just the chin.
"But supposing you never really loved——"
"Love is an inexact term; it's not always easy to tell when it applies to your feelings, and when it does not. But when you say you'll marry anybody, that's a definite promise, and nothing in the world should make you break it, unless it's been extracted under false pretences. We are both very positive, aren't we?" and Nurse Ella smiled. "I wonder why you are, Gwynneth?"
"Because," said the girl, impelled to frankness, yet hanging her head, "as a matter of fact, I've been more or less engaged myself."
"And you got out of it?"
"I broke it off."
"Simply because you had changed?"
"No—it was a mistake from the beginning. I had never really cared. That was my shame."
"And you broke your word—you had the courage!"
The tone was a low one of mere surprise. There was more in the look which accompanied the tone. But Gwynneth had her eyes turned inward, and her wonder was not yet.
"It had to be done," she said simply. "It was humiliating enough, but it was not so bad as going on . . . Can anything be so bad as marrying aman you do not love, just because you have made a mistake, and are too proud to admit it?"
"No . . . you are right . . . that is the worst of all."
It might have been a studied picture that the two young women made, in the old oak room, with the firelight falling on their quaint sweet garb, and reddening their pensive faces, only conscious of the inner self. Nurse Ella was standing up, gazing down into the fire, her back turned to Gwynneth; but now her tone was enough. It was neither wistful nor bitter, but only heavy with conviction; and in another moment Nurse Ella was gone, not more abruptly than usual, but without letting Gwynneth see her face again. Then Gwynneth recalled the look with which the other had exclaimed upon her courage, and either she flattered herself, or that look had been one of envy pure and simple. Could it be that her friend's decided character was all self-conscious and acquired? Was her intolerance of the slightest hesitation, in matters of no account, a life's reaction from a fatal irresolution in some crisis of her own career?
Gwynneth never knew; for a fine mutual reserve distinguished the intimacy of this pair, and even drew them together, opposite as they were in so many other respects, more than impulsive confidences on either side. One had suffered; the other was suffering now; each was a little mystery to her friend. And there was one more reason for this: neither was sure of the other's sympathy: at every point of contact they diverged.
So Gwynneth used to wonder whether Nurse Ella was in reality a widow at all, and Nurse Ella was quite sure that Gwynneth was still in love, probably with the man she had jilted, according to the wise way of women; she was so ready to speak of love in the abstract; and once she spoke so passionately. This was in Kensington Gardens, one foggy Sunday, when the two nurses were on their way to church; for they were allowed to worship where they listed after matins at St. Hilda's. Nurse Ella rented a sitting under a fashionable preacher who discoursed with much wisdom and some acidity on topics of the hour; but Gwynneth was still seeking her spiritual ideal. They would walk together as far as the Bayswater Road, where their ways diverged, unless Nurse Ella could induce Gwynneth to go with her; on this particular morning they were arguing about a novel when the houses loomed upon them through the bare trees and the fog.
"She never would have forgiven him," Nurse Ella had declared, in crisp settlement of the point at issue. "No young wife would forgive a young husband who behaved like that. So it may be the cleverest novel in the language, but it isn't true to life." Whereupon Gwynneth, who had been defending a masterpiece with laudable spirit, walked some yards in silence. "Are you sure that it matters how people behave," she then inquired, "if you really love them?"
"How they behave?" echoed her friend. "Why, Gwynneth, of course! Nothing does matter except behaviour."
"It wouldn't to me," Gwynneth exclaimed, almost through her teeth.
"But surely what one does is everything!"
"Not in love," averred Gwynneth, whose convictions were few but firm; "and those two are more in love than any other couple I know in fiction or real life. No; you love people for what they are, not for what they do."
Nurse Ella laughed outright.
"That may be good metaphysics," said she, "but it's shocking common-sense! Our actions are the only possible test of our character, as its fruit is the only test of a tree."
In Gwynneth's eyes burnt wondrous fires, and on her cheeks; and her breath was coming very quickly. But most persons look straight ahead as they walk and talk, and between these two fell the kindly fog besides.
"Suppose you loved somebody," the young girl cried at last; "and suppose you suddenly discovered he had once done something dreadful—unspeakable. Would that alter your feeling towards him?"
"It could never fail to do so, Gwynneth."
"It would not alter mine!"
Nurse Ella turned her head. But in the road the fog seemed thicker than in the gardens. And, apart from its vigour, Gwynneth's tone had sounded impersonal enough.
"I believe it would," her friend persisted, "when the time came."
"And I know that it would not," said Gwynneth, half under her breath and half through her teeth.
"Well, Gwynneth," said Nurse Ella, with a laugh, "we were evidently born to differ. In my view that would be the one sort of excuse for changing one's mind about a man—whereas you see others!"
"But I am not talking about one's mind," cried Gwynneth; "the feeling I mean, the feeling those two have in the book, lies infinitely deeper than the mind."
"And no crime could alter it?"
"Not if he atoned—not if the rest of his life were one long atonement."
"But, Gwynneth, that would make all the difference."
Gwynneth walked on in silence. She was reconsidering her own last words.
"Atonement or no atonement," she exclaimed at length, "it would make no difference—if I loved the man. Atonement or no atonement!" repeated Gwynneth defiantly.
Nurse Ella had a passion for the last word, but they were come to her corner, and there was Gwynneth glowing through the fog, her eyes alight, her cheeks flaming, a new being in the puzzled eyes of her friend.
"Come with me, Gwynneth," begged Nurse Ella, at length; "don't go off by yourself. Come, dear, and hear a shrewd, hard-headed sermon, without sentiment or superstition!"
Gwynneth smiled. That was the last thing to meet her mood.
"Then where shall you go?"
"Either St. Simeon's or All Souls'," said Gwynneth. "I haven't made up my mind."
Nurse Ella shook her head over an admission as characteristic as her disapproval. This was the Gwynneth that she knew.
"When do you make it up!" exclaimed Nurse Ella without inquiry.
"When it's a matter of the least importance," said Gwynneth, choosing to reply. "What can it signify which church I go to, what difference can it possibly make? As a matter of fact I rather think of going to All Souls'."