Meynell went out into the dawn. His mystical sense had beheld the Lord in that small upper room; had seen as it were the sacred hands breaking to those two poor creatures the sacrament of love. His own mind was for the time being tranquillized. It was as though he said to himself, "I know that trouble will come back—I know that doubts and fears will pursue me again; but this hour—this blessing—is from God!"…
The sun was high in a dewy world, already busy with its first labours of field and mine, when Meynell left the cottage. The church clock was on the stroke of eight.
He passed down the village street, and reached again the little gabled house which he had passed the night before. As he approached, there was a movement in the garden. A lady, who was walking among the roses, holding up her gray dress from the dew, turned and hastened toward the gate.
"Please come in! You must be tired out. The gardener told me he'd seen you about. We've got some coffee ready for you."
Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment.
"What are you up for at this hour?"
"Why shouldn't I be up? Look how lovely it is! I have a friend with me, and I want to introduce you."
Miss Puttenham opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her among the roses Meynell perceived another lady—a girl, with bright reddish hair.
"Mary!" said Miss Puttenham.
The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy. But the unconscious dignity of bearing showed that the shyness was the shyness of strong character, rather than of mere youth and innocence.
"This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You've heard they're at Forkéd Pond?" Alice Puttenham said, smiling, as she slipped her arm round the girl. "I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I want you to know each other."
"Elsmere's daughter!" thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room, where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young face.
"I am in love with the house—I adore the Chase—I like heretics—and I don't think I'm ever going home again!"
Mrs. Flaxman as she spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache, and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off.
Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society.
Mr. Manvers overlooked a certain challenge that Mrs. Flaxman had thrown out, took the tea provided, and merely inquired how long the rebuilding of the Flaxmans' own house would take. For it appeared that they were only tenants of Maudeley House—furnished—for a year.
Mrs. Flaxman replied that only the British workman knew. But she looked upon herself as homeless for two years, and found the prospect as pleasant as her husband found it annoying.
"As if life was long enough to spend it in one county, and one house and park! I have shaken all my duties from me like old rags. No more school-treats, no more bean-feasts, no more hospital committees, for two whole years! Think of it! Hugh, poor wretch, is still Chairman of the County Council. That's why we took this place—it is within fifty miles. He has to motor over occasionally. But I shall make him resign that, next year. Then we are going for six months to Berlin—that's for music—myshow! Then we take a friend's house in British East Africa, where you can see a lion kill from the front windows, and zebras stub up your kitchen garden. That's Hugh's show. Then of course there'll be Japan—and by that time there'll be airships to the North Pole, and we can take it on our way home!"
"Souvent femme varie!" Mr. Manvers raised a pair of surprisingly shrewd eyes from the carpet. "I remember the years when I used to try and dig you and Hugh out of Bagley, and drive you abroad—without the smallest success."
"Those were the years when one was moral and well-behaved! But everybody who is worth anything goes a little mad at forty. I was forty last week"—Rose Flaxman gave an involuntary sigh—"I can't get over it."
"Ah, well, it's quite time you were a little nipped by the years," said Manvers dryly. "Why should you be so much younger than anybody else in the world? When you grow old there'll be no more youth!"
Mrs. Flaxman's eyes, of a bright greenish-gray, shone gayly into his; then their owner made a displeased mouth. "You may pay me compliments as much as you like. They will not prevent me from telling you that you are one of the most slow-minded people I have ever met!"
"H'm?" said Mr. Manvers, with mild interrogation.
Rose Flaxman repeated her remark, emphasizing with a little tattoo of her teaspoon on the Chippendale tea-tray before her. Manvers studied her, smiling.
"I am entirely ignorant of the grounds of this attack."
"Oh, what hypocrisy!" cried his companion hotly. "I throw out the most tempting of all possible flies, and you absolutely refuse to rise to it."
Manvers considered.
"You expected me to rise to the word 'heretic?'"
"Of course I did! On the same principle as 'sweets to the sweet.' Who—I should like to know—should be interested in heretics if not you?"
"It entirely depends on the species," said her companion cautiously.
"There couldn't be a more exciting species," declared Mrs. Flaxman. "Here you have a Rector of a parish simply setting up another Church of England—services, doctrines and all—off his own bat, so to speak—without a 'with your leave or by your leave'; his parishioners backing him up; his Bishop in a frightful taking and not the least knowing what to do; the fagots all gathering to make a bonfire of him, and a great black six-foot-two Inquisitor ready to apply the match—and yet—I can't get you to take the smallest interest in it! I assure you, Hugh isthrilled."
Manvers laid the finger-tips of two long brown hands lightly against each other.
"Very sorry—but it leaves me quite cold. Heresy in the Church of England comes to nothing. Our heretics are never violent enough. They forget the excellent text about the Kingdom of Heaven! Now the heretics in the Church of Rome are violent. That is what makes them so far more interesting."
"This man seems to be drastic enough!"
"Oh, no!" said the other, gently but firmly incredulous. "Believe me—he will resign, or apologize—they always do."
"Believeme!—you don't—excuse me!—know anything about it. In the first place, Mr. Meynell has got his parishioners—all except a handful—behind him—"
"So had Voysey," interjected Manvers, softly.
Mrs. Flaxman took no notice.
"—And he has hundreds of other supporters—thousands perhaps—and some of them parsons—in this diocese, and outside it. And they are all convinced that they must fight—fight to the death—andnotgive in. That, you see, is what makes the difference! My brother-in-law"—the voice speaking changed and softened—"died twenty years ago. I remember how sad it was. He seemed to be walking alone in a world that hardly troubled to consider him—so far as the Church was concerned, I mean. There seemed to be nothing else to do but to give up his living. But the strain of doing it killed him."
"The strain of giving up your living may be severe—but, I assure you, your man will find the strain of keeping it a good deal worse."
"It all depends upon his backing. How do you know there isn't a world behind him?" Mrs. Flaxman persisted, as the man beside her slowly shook his head. "Well, now, listen! Hugh and I went to church here last Sunday. I never was so bewildered. First, it was crowded from end to end, and there were scores of people from other villages and towns—a kind of demonstration. Then, as to the service—neither of us could find our way about. Instead of saying the Lord's Prayer four times, we said it once; we left out half the psalms for the day, the Rector explaining from the chancel steps that they were not fit to be read in a Christian church; we altered this prayer and that prayer; we listened to an extempore prayer for the widows and orphans of some poor fellows who have been killed in a mine ten miles from here, which made me cry like baby; and, most amazing of all, when it came to the Creeds—"
Manvers suddenly threw back his head, his face for the first time sharpening into attention. "Ah! Well—what about the Creeds?"
Mrs. Flaxman bent forward, triumphing in the capture of her companion.
"We had both the Creeds. The Rector read them—turning to the congregation—and with just a word of preface—'Here follows the Creed, commonly called the Apostles' Creed,'—or 'Here follows the Nicene Creed.' And we all stood and listened—and nobody said a word. It was the strangest moment! You know—I'm not a serious person—but I just held my breath."
"As though you heard behind the veil the awful Voices—'Let us depart hence?'" said Manvers, after a pause. His expression had gradually changed. Those who knew him best might have seen in it a slight and passing trace of conflicts long since silenced and resolutely forgotten.
"If you mean by that that the church was irreverent—or disrespectful—or hostile—well, you are quite wrong!" cried Mrs. Flaxman impetuously. "It was like a moment of new birth—I can't describe it—as though a Spirit entered in. And when the Rector finished—there was a kind of breath through the church—like the rustling of new leaves—and I thought of the wind blowing where it listed…. And then the Rector preached on the Creeds—how they grew up and why. Fascinating!—why aren't the clergy always telling us such things? And he brought it all round to impressing upon us that some daywemight be worthy of another Christian creed—by being faithful—that it would flower again out of our lives and souls—as the old had done…. I wonder what it all meant!" she said abruptly, her light voice dropping.
Manvers smiled. His emotion had quite passed away.
"Ah! but I forgot"—she resumed hurriedly—"we left out several of the Commandments—and we chanted the Beatitudes—and then I found there was a little service paper in the seat, and everybody in the church but Hugh and me knew all about it beforehand!"
"A queer performance," said Manvers, "and of course childishly illegal. Your man will be soon got rid of. I expect you might have applied to him the remark of the Bishop of Cork on the Dean of Cork—'Excellent sermon!—eloquent, clever, argumentative!—and not enough gospel in it to save a tom-tit!"'
Mrs. Flaxman looked at him oddly.
"Well, but—the extraordinary thing was that Hugh made me stay for the second service, and it was as Ritualistic as you like!"
Manvers fell back in his chair, the vivacity on his face relaxing.
"Ah!—is that all?"
"Oh! but you don't understand," said his companion, eagerly. "Of course Ritualistic is the wrong word. Should I have said 'sacramental'? I only meant that it was full of symbolism. There were lights—and flowers, and music, but there was nothing priestly—or superstitious"—she frowned in her effort to explain. "It was all poetic—and mystical—and yet practical. There were a good many things changed in the Service,—but I hardly noticed—I was so absorbed in watching the people. Almost every one stayed for the second service. It was quite short—so was the first service. And a great many communicated. But the spirit of it was the wonderful thing. It had all that—that magic—that mystery—that one gets out of Catholicism, even simple Catholicism, in a village church—say at Benediction; and yet one had a sense of having come out into fresh air; of saying things that were true—true at least to you, and to the people that were saying them; things that you did believe, or could believe, instead of things that you only pretended to believe, or couldn't possibly believe! I haven't got over it yet, and as for Hugh, I have never seen him so moved since—since Robert died."
Manvers was aware of Mrs. Flaxman's affection for her brother-in-law's memory; and it seemed to him natural and womanly that she should be touched—artist and wordling though she was—by this fresh effort in a similar direction. For himself, he was touched in another way: with pity, or a kindly scorn. He did not believe in patching up the Christian tradition. Either accept it—or put it aside. Newman had disposed of "neo-Christianity" once for all.
"Well, of course all this means a row," he said at length, with a smile."What is the Bishop doing?"
"Oh, the Bishop will have to prosecute, Hugh says; of course he must! And if he didn't, Mr. Barron would do it for him."
"The gentleman who lives in the White House?"
"Precisely. Ah!" cried Mrs. Flaxman, suddenly, rising to her feet and looking through the open window beside her. "What do you think we've done? We have evoked him!Parlez du diable, etc. How stupid of us! But there's his carriage trotting up the drive—I know the horses. And that's his deaf daughter—poor, downtrodden thing!—sitting beside him. Now then—shall we be at home? Quick!"
Mrs. Flaxman flew to the bell, but retreated with a little grimace.
"We must! It's inevitable. But Hugh says I can't be rude to new people.Why can't I? It's so simple."
She sat down, however, though rebellion and a little malice quickened the colour in her fair skin. Manvers looked longingly at the door leading to the garden.
"Shall I disappear?—or must I support you?"
"It all depends on what value you set on my good opinion," said Mrs.Flaxman, laughing.
Manvers resettled himself in his chair.
"I stay—but first, a little information. The gentleman owns land here?"
"Acres and acres. But he only came into it about three years ago. He is on the same railway board where Hugh is Chairman. He doesn't like Hugh, and he certainly won't like me. But you see he's bound to be civil to us. Hugh says he's always making quarrels on the board—in a kind of magnificent, superior way. He never loses his temper—whereas the others would often like to flay him alive. Now then"—Mrs. Flaxman laid a finger on her mouth—"'Papa, potatoes, prunes, and prism'!"
Steps were heard in the hall, and the butler announced "Mr. and MissBarron."
A tall man, with an iron-gray moustache and a determined carriage, entered the room, followed by a timid and stooping lady of uncertain age.
Mrs. Flaxman, transformed at once into the courteous hostess, greeted the newcomers with her sweetest smiles, set the deaf daughter down on the hearing side of Mr. Manvers, ordered tea, and herself took charge of Mr. Barron.
* * * * *
The task was not apparently a heavy one. Mrs. Flaxman saw beside her a portly man of fifty-five, with a penetrating look, and a composed manner; well dressed, yet with no undue display. Louis Manvers, struggling with an habitual plague of shyness, and all but silenced by the discovery that his neighbour was even deafer than himself, watched the "six-foot-two Inquisitor" with curiosity, but could find nothing lurid nor torturous in his aspect. There was indeed something about him which displeased a rationalist scholar and ascetic. But his information and ability, his apparent adequacy to any company, were immediately evident. It seemed to Manvers that he had very quickly disarmed Mrs. Flaxman's vague prejudice against him. At any rate she was soon picking his brains diligently on the subject of the neighbourhood and the neighbours, and apparently enjoying the result, to judge from her smiles and her questions.
Mr. Barron indeed had everything that could be expected of him to say on the subject of the district and its population. He descanted on the beauty of the three or four famous parks, which in the eighteenth century had been carved out of the wild heath lands; he showed an intimate knowledge of the persons who owned the parks, and of their families, "though I myself am only a newcomer here, being by rights a Devonshire man"; he talked of the local superstitions with indulgence, and a proper sense of the picturesque; and of the colliers who believed the superstitions he spoke in a tone of general good humour, tempered by regret that "agitators" should so often lead them into folly. The architecture of the district came in, of course, for proper notice. There were certain fine old houses near that Mrs. Flaxman ought to visit; everything of course would be open to her and her husband.
"Oh, tell me," said Mrs. Flaxman, suddenly interrupting him, "how far isSandford Abbey from here?"
Her visitor paused a moment before replying.
"Sandford Abbey is about five miles from you—across the park. The two estates meet. Do you know—Sir Philip Meryon?"
Rose Flaxman shrugged her shoulders.
"We know something of him—at least Hugh does. His mother was a very old friend of Hugh's family."
Mr. Barron was silent.
"Is he such a scamp?" said Mrs. Flaxman, raising her fine eyes, with a laugh in them. "You make me quite anxious to see him!"
Mr. Barron echoed the laugh, stiffly.
"I doubt whether your husband will wish to bring him here. He gathers some strange company at the Abbey. He is there now for the fishing."
Manvers inquired who this gentleman might be; and Mrs. Flaxman gave him a lightly touched account. A young man of wealth and family, it seemed, but spoilt from his earliest days, and left fatherless at nineteen, with only an adoring but quite ineffectual mother to take account of. Some notorious love affairs at home and abroad; a wild practical joke or two, played on prominent people, and largely advertised in the newspapers; an audacious novel, and a censored play—he had achieved all these things by the age of thirty, and was now almost penniless, and still unmarried.
"Hugh says that the Abbey is falling into ruin—and that the young man has about a hundred a year left out of his fortune. On this he keeps apparently an army of servants and a couple of hunters! The strange thing is—Hugh discovered it when he went to call on the Rector the other day—that this preposterous young man is a first cousin of Mr. Meynell's. His mother, Lady Meryon, and the Rector's mother were sisters. The Rector, however, seems to have dropped him long ago."
Mr. Barron still sat silent.
"Is he really too bad to talk about?" cried Mrs. Flaxman, impatiently.
"I think I had rather not discuss him," said her visitor, with decision; and she, protesting that Philip Meryon was now endowed with all the charms, both of villainy and mystery, let the subject drop.
Mr. Barron returned, as though with relief, to architecture, talked agreeably of the glories of a famous Tudor house on the west side, and an equally famous Queen Anne house on the east side of the Chase. But the churches of the district, according to him, were on the whole disappointing—inferior to those of other districts within reach. Here, indeed, he showed himself an expert; and a far too minute discourse on the relative merits of the church architecture of two or three of the midland counties flowed on and on through Mrs. Flaxman's tea-making, while the deaf daughter became entirely speechless; and Manvers—disillusioned—gradually assumed an aspect of profound melancholy, which merely meant that his wits were wool gathering.
"Well, I thought Upcote Minor church a very pretty church," said Rose Flaxman at last, with a touch of revolt. "The old screen is beautiful—and who on earth has done all that carving of the pulpit—and the reredos?"
Mr. Barron's expression changed. He bent toward his hostess, striking one hand sharply and deliberately with the glove which he held in the other.
"You were at church last Sunday?"
"I was." Mrs. Flaxman's eyes as she turned them upon him had recovered their animation.
"You were present then," said Mr. Barron with passionate energy, "at a scandalous performance! I feel that I ought to apologize to you and Mr. Flaxman in the name of our village and parish."
The speaker's aspect glowed with what was clearly a genuine fire. The slight pomposity of look and manner had disappeared.
Mrs. Flaxman hesitated. Then she said gravely: "It was certainly very astonishing. I never saw anything like it. But my husband and I liked Mr. Meynell. We thought he was absolutely sincere."
"He may be. But so long as he remains clergyman of this parish it is impossible for him to be honest!"
Mrs. Flaxman slowly poured out another cup of tea for Mr. Manvers, who was standing before her in a drooping attitude, like some long crumpled fly, apparently deaf and blind to what was going on, his hair falling forward over his eyes. At last she said evasively:
"There are a good many people in the parish who seem to agree with him. Except yourself—and a gaunt woman in black who was pointed out to me—everybody in the church appeared to us to be enjoying what the Rector was doing—to be entering into it heart and soul."
Mr. Barron flushed.
"We do not deny that he has got a hold upon the people. That makes it all the worse. When I came here three years ago he had not yet done any of these things—publicly; these perfectly monstrous things. Up to last Sunday, indeed, he kept within certain bounds as to the services; though frequent complaints of his teaching had been made to the Bishop, and proceedings even had been begun—it might have been difficult to touch him. But last Sunday!—" He stopped with a little sad gesture of the hand as though the recollection were too painful to pursue. "I saw, however, within six months of my coming here—he and I were great friends at first—what his teaching was, and whither it was tending. He has taught the people systematic infidelity for years. Now we have the results!"
"He also seems to have looked after their bodies," said Mrs. Flaxman, in a skirmishing tone that simply meant she was not to be brought to close quarters. "I am told that it was he brought the water-supply here; and that he has forced the owners to rebuild some of the worst cottages."
Mr. Barron looked attentively at his hostess. It was as though he were for the first time really occupied with her—endeavouring to place her, and himself with regard to her. His face stiffened.
"That's all very well—excellent, of course. Only, let me remind you, he was not asked to take vows about the water-supply! But he did promise and vow at his ordination to hold the Faith—to 'banish and drive away strange doctrines'!"
"What are 'strange doctrines' nowadays?" said a mild, falsetto voice in the distance.
Barron turned to the speaker—the long-haired dishevelled person whose name he had not caught distinctly as Mrs. Flaxman introduced him. His manner unconsciously assumed a note of patronage.
"No need to define them, I think—for a Christian. The Church has herCreeds."
"Of course. But while this gentleman shelves them—no doubt a revolutionary proceeding—are there not excesses on the other side? May there not be too much—as well as too little?"
And with an astonishing command of ecclesiastical detail Manvers gave an account—gently ironic here and there—of some neo-Catholic functions of which he had lately been a witness.
Barron fidgeted.
"Deplorable, I admit—quite deplorable! I would put that kind of thing down, just as firmly as the other."
Manvers smiled.
"But who are 'you'? if I may ask it philosophically and without offence? The man here does not agree with you—the people I have been describing would scout you. Where's your authority? Whatisthe authority in the English Church?"
"Well, of course we have our answer to that question," said Barron, after a moment.
Manvers gave a pleasant little laugh. "Have you?"
Barron hesitated again, then evidently found the controversial temptation too strong. He plunged headlong into a great gulf of cloudy argument, with the big word "authority" for theme. But he could find no foothold in the maze. Manvers drove him delicately from point to point, involving him in his own contradictions, rolling him in his own ambiguities, till—suddenly—vague recollections began to stir in the victim's mind.Manvers? Was that the name? It began to recall to him certain articles in the reviews, the Church papers. Was there not a well-known writer—a Dublin man—a man who had once been a clergyman, and had resigned his orders?
He drew himself together with dignity, and retreated in as good order as he could. Turning to Mrs. Flaxman, who was endeavouring to make a few commonplaces audible to Miss Barron, while throwing occasional sly glances toward the field of battle, he somewhat curtly asked for his carriage.
Mrs. Flaxman's hand was on the bell, when the drawing-room door opened to admit a gentleman.
"Mr. Meynell!" said the butler.
And at the same moment a young girl slipped in through the open French window, and with a smiling nod to Mrs. Flaxman and Mr. Manvers went up to the tea-table and began to replenish the teapot and relight the kettle.
Mr. Barron made an involuntary movement of annoyance as the Rector entered. But a few minutes of waiting before the appearance of his carriage was inevitable. He stood motionless therefore in his place, a handsome, impressive figure, while Meynell paid his respects to Mrs. Flaxman, whose quick colour betrayed a moment's nervousness.
"How are you, Barron?" said the Rector from a distance with a friendly nod. Then, as he turned to Manvers, his face lit up.
"Iamglad to make your acquaintance!" he said cordially.
Manvers took the outstretched hand with a few mumbled words, but an evident look of pleasure.
"I have just read your Bishop Butler article in theQuarterly," said Meynell eagerly. "Splendid! Have you seen it?" He turned to his hostess, with one of the rapid movements that expressed the constant energy of the man.
Mrs. Flaxman shook her head.
"I am an ignoramus—except about music. I make Mr. Manvers talk to me."
"Oh, but you must read it! I hope you won't mind my quoting a long bit from it?" The speaker turned to Manvers again. "There is a clerical conference at Markborough next week, at which I am reading a paper. I want to make 'em all read you! What? Tea? I should think so!" Then, to his hostess: "Will you mind if I drink a good deal? I have just been down a pit—and the dust was pretty bad."
"Not an accident, I hope?" said Mrs. Flaxman, as she handed him his cup.
"No. But a man had a stroke in the pit while he was at work. They thought he was going to die—he was a great friend of mine—and they sent for me. We got him up with difficulty. He has a bedridden wife—daughters all away, married. Nobody to nurse him as usual. I say!"—he bent forward, looking into his hostess's face with his small, vivacious eyes—"how long are you going to be here—at Maudeley?"
"We have taken the house for a year," said Rose, surprised.
"Will you give me a parish nurse for that time? It won't cost much, and it will do a lot of good," said the Rector earnestly. "The people here are awfully good to each other—but they don't know anything—poor souls—and I can't get the sick folk properly looked after. Will you?"
Mrs. Flaxman's manner showed embarrassment. Within a few feet of her sat the squire of the parish, silent and impassive. Common report made Henry Barron a wealthy man. He could, no doubt, have provided half a dozen nurses for Upcote Minor if he had so chosen. Yet here was she, the newcomer of a few weeks, appealed to instead! It seemed to her that the Rector was not exactly showing tact.
"Won't Mr. Barron help?" She threw a smiling appeal toward him.
Barron, conscious of an irritation and discomfort he had some difficulty in controlling, endeavoured nevertheless to strike the same easy note as the rest. He gave his reasons for thinking that a parish nurse was not really required in Upcote, the women in the village being in his opinion quite capable of nursing their husbands and sons.
But all the time that he was speaking he was chafing for his carriage. His conversation with Mrs. Flaxman was still hot in his ears. It was all very well for Meynell to show this levity, this callous indifference to the situation. But he, Barron, could not forget it. That very week, the first steps had been taken which were to drive this heretical and audacious priest from the office and benefice he had no right to hold, and had so criminally misused. If he submitted and went quietly, well and good. But of course he would do nothing of the kind. There was a lamentable amount of disloyalty and infidelity in the diocese, and he would be supported. An ugly struggle was inevitable—a struggle for the honour of Christ and his Church. It would go down to the roots of things and was not to be settled or smoothed over by a false and superficial courtesy. The days of friendship, of ordinary social intercourse, were over. Barron did not intend to receive the Rector again within his own doors, intimate as they had been at one time; and it was awkward and undesirable that they should be meeting in other people's drawing-rooms.
All these feelings were running through his mind while aloud he was laboriously giving Mrs. Flaxman his reasons for thinking a parish nurse unnecessary in Upcote Minor. When he came to the end of them, Meynell looked at him with amused exasperation.
"Well, all I know is that in the last case of typhoid we had here—a poor lad on Reynolds's farm—his mother got him up every day while she made his bed, and fed him—whatever we could say—on suet dumpling and cheese. He died, of course—what could he do? And as for the pneumonia patients, I believe they mostly eat their poultices—I can't make out what else they do with them—unless I stay and see them put on. Ah, well, never mind. I shall have to get Mrs. Flaxman alone, and see what can be done. Now tell me"—he turned again with alacrity to Manvers—"what's that new German book you quote about Butler? Some uncommonly fine things in it! That bit about the Sermons—admirable!"
He bent forward, his hands on his knees, staring at Manvers. Yet the eyes for all their intensity looked out from a face furrowed and pale—overshadowed by physical and mental strain. The girl sitting at the tea-table could scarcely take her eyes from it. It appealed at once to her heart and her intelligence. And yet there were other feelings in her which resisted the appeal. Once or twice she looked wistfully at Barron. She would gladly have found in him a more attractive champion of a majestic cause.
"What can my coachman be about?" said Barron impatiently. "Might I trouble you, Mrs. Flaxman, to ring again? I really ought to go home." Mrs. Flaxman rang obediently. The butler appeared. Mr. Barron's servants, it seemed, were having tea.
"Send them round, please, at once," said their master, frowning. "At once!"
But the minutes passed on, and while trying to keep up a desultory conversation with his hostess, and with the young lady at the tea-table, to whom he was not introduced, Mr. Barron was all the while angrily conscious of the conversation going on between the Rector and Manvers. There seemed to be something personally offensive and humiliating to himself in the knowledge displayed by these two men—men who had deserted or were now betraying the Church—of the literature of Anglican apologetics, and of the thought of the great Anglican bishop. Why this parade of useless learning and hypocritical enthusiasm? What was Bishop Butler to them? He could hardy sit patiently through it, and it was with most evident relief that he rose to his feet when his carriage was announced.
* * * * *
"How pretty Mrs. Flaxman is!" said his daughter as they drove away. "YetI'm sure she's forty, papa."
Her face still reflected the innocent pleasure that Rose Flaxman's kindness had given her. It was not often that the world troubled itself much about her. Her father, however, took no notice. He sat absent and pondering, and soon he stretched out a peremptory hand and lowered the window which his daughter had raised against an east wind to protect a delicate ear and throat which had been the torment of her life. It was done with no conscious unkindness; far from it. He was merely absorbed in the planning of his campaign. The next all-important point was the selection of the Commission of Inquiry. No effort must be spared by the Church party to obtain the right men.
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room which he had left, there was silence for a moment after his departure. Then Meynell said:
"I am afraid I frightened him away. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Flaxman."
Rose laughed, and glanced at the girl sitting hidden behind the tea-table.
"Oh, I had had quite enough of Mr. Barron. Mr. Meynell, have I ever introduced you to my niece?"
"Oh, but we know each other!" said Meynell, eagerly. "We met first at Miss Puttenham's, a week ago—and since then—Miss Elsmere has been visiting a woman I know."
"Indeed?"
"A woman who lost her husband some days since—a terrible case. We are all so grateful to Miss Elsmere."
He looked toward her with a smile and a sigh; then as he saw the shy discomfort in the girl's face, he changed the subject at once.
The conversation became general. Some feeling that she could not explain to herself led Mrs. Flaxman into a closer observation of her niece Mary than usual. There was much affection between the aunt and the niece, but on Mrs. Flaxman's side, at least, not much understanding. She thought of Mary as an interesting creature, with some striking gifts—amongst them her mother's gift for goodness. But it seemed to the aunt that she was far too grave and reserved for her age; that she had been too strenuously brought up, and in a too narrow world. Rose Flaxman had often impatiently tried to enliven the girl's existence, to give her nice clothes, to take her to balls and to the opera. But Mary's adoration for her mother stood in the way.
"And really if she would only take a hand for herself"—thought Mrs.Flaxman—"she might be quite pretty! She is pretty!"
And she looked again at the girl beside her, wondering a little, as though a veil were lifted from something familiar. Mary was talking—softly, and with a delicate and rather old-fashioned choice of words, but certainly with no lack of animation. And it was quite evident to an inquisitive aunt with a notorious gift for match making that the tired heretic with the patches of coal dust on his coat found her very attractive.
But as the clock struck six Meynell sprang up.
"I must go. Miss Elsmere"—he looked toward her—"has kindly promised to take me on to see your sister at the Cottage—and after to-day I may not have another opportunity." He hesitated, considering his hostess—then burst out: "You were at church last Sunday—I know—I saw you. I want to tell you—that you have a church quite as near to you as the parish church, where everything is quite orthodox—the church at Haddon End. I wish I could have warned you. I—I did ask Miss Elsmere to warn her mother."
Rose looked at the carpet.
"You needn't pity us," she said, demurely. "Hugh wants to talk to you dreadfully. But—I am afraid I am a Gallio."
"Of course—you don't need to be told—it was all a deliberate defiance of the law—in order to raise vital questions. We have never done anything half so bad before. We determined on it at a public meeting last week, and we gave Barron and his friends full warning."
"In short, it is revolution," said Manvers, rubbing his hands gently, "and you don't pretend that it isn't."
"It is revolution!" said Meynell, nodding. "Or a forlorn hope! The laymen in the Church want a real franchise—a citizenship they can exercise—and a law of their own making!"
There was silence a moment. Mary Elsmere took up her hat, and kissed her aunt; Meynell made his farewells, and followed the girl's lead into the garden.
Mrs. Flaxman and Manvers watched them open the gate of the park and disappear behind a rising ground. Then the two spectators turned to each other by a common impulse, smiling at the same thought. Mrs. Flaxman's smile, however, was almost immediately drowned in a real concern. She clasped her hands, excitedly.
"Oh! my poor Catharine! What would she—whatwouldshe say?"
Meynell and his companion had taken a footpath winding gently down hill and in a northwest direction across one of the most beautiful parks in England. It lay on the fringe of the Chase and contained, within its slopes and glades, now tracts of primitive woodland whence the charcoal burners seemed to have but just departed; now purple wastes of heather, wild as the Chase itself; or again, dense thickets of bracken and fir, hiding primeval and impenetrable glooms. Maudeley House, behind them, a seemly Georgian pile, with a columnar front, had the good fortune to belong to a man not rich enough to live in or rebuild it, but sufficiently attached to it to spend upon its decent maintenance the money he got by letting it. So the delicately faded beauty of the house had survived unspoilt; while there had never been any money to spend upon the park, where the woods and fences looked after themselves year by year, and colliers from the neighbouring villages poached freely.
The two people walking through the ferny paths leading to the cottage of Forkéd Pond were not, however, paying much attention to the landscape round them. Meynell showed himself at first preoccupied and silent. A load of anxiety depressed his vitality; and on this particular day long hours of literary work and correspondence, beginning almost with the dawn and broken only by the colliery scene of which he had spoken to Mrs. Flaxman, had left deep marks upon him. Yet the girl's voice and manner, and the fragments of talk that passed between them, seemed gradually to create a soothing and liberating atmosphere in which it was possible to speak with frankness, though without effort or excitement.
The Rector indeed had so far very little precise knowledge of what his companion's feeling might be toward his own critical plight. He would have liked to get at it; for there was something in this winning, reserved girl that made him desire her good opinion. And yet he shrank from any discussion with her.
He knew of course that the outlines of what had happened must be known to her. During the ten days since their first meeting both the local and London newspapers had given much space to the affairs of Upcote Minor. An important public meeting in which certain decisions had been taken with only three dissentients had led up to the startling proceedings in the village church which Mrs. Flaxman had described to Louis Manvers. The Bishop had written another letter, this time of a more hurried and peremptory kind. An account of the service had appeared in theTimes, and columns had been devoted to it in various Mercian newspapers. After years of silence, during which his heart had burned within him; after a shorter period of growing propaganda and expanding utterance, Meynell realized fully that he had now let loose the floodgates. All round him was rising that wide response from human minds and hearts—whether in sympathy or in hostility—which tests and sifts the man who aspires to be a leader of men—in religion or economics. Every trade union leader lifted on the wave of a great strike, representing the urgent physical need of his fellows, knows what the concentration of human passion can be—in matters concerned with the daily bread and the homes of men. Religion can gather and bring to bear forces as strong. Meynell knew it well; and he was like a man stepping down into a rushing stream from which there is no escape. It must be crossed—that is all the wayfarer knows; but as he feels the water on his body he realizes that the moment is perhaps for life or death.
Such crises in life bring with them, in the case of the nobler personalities, a great sensitiveness; and Meynell seemed to be living in a world where not only his own inner feelings and motives but those of others were magnified and writ large. As he walked beside Mary Elsmere his mind played round what he knew of her history and position; and it troubled him to think that, both for her and her mother, contact with him at this particular moment might be the reviving of old sorrows.
As they paused on the top of a rising ground looking westward he looked at her with sudden and kindly decision.
"Miss Elsmere, are you sure your mother would like to see me? It was very good of you to request that I should accompany you to-night—but—are you sure?"
Mary coloured deeply and hesitated a moment.
"Don't you think I'd better turn back?" he asked her, gently. "Your path is clear before you." He pointed to it winding through the fern. "And you know, I hope, that anything I could do for you and your mother during your stay here I should be only too enchanted to do. The one thing I shrink from doing is to interfere in any way with her rest here. And I am afraid just now I might be a disturbing element."
"No, no! please come!" said Mary, earnestly. Then as she turned her head away, she added: "Of course—there is nothing new—to her—"
"Except that my fight is waged from inside the Church—and your father's from outside. But that might make all the difference to her."
"I don't think so. It is"—she faltered—"the change itself. It is all so terrible to her."
"Any break with the old things? But doesn't it ever present itself to her—force itself upon her—as the upwelling of a new life?" he asked, sadly.
"Ah!—if it didn't in my father's case—"
The girl's eyes filled with tears.
But she quickly checked herself, and they moved on in silence. Meynell, with his pastoral instinct and training, longed to probe and soothe the trouble he divined in her. A great natural dignity in the girl—delicacy of feeling in the man—prevented it.
None the less her betrayal of emotion had altered their relation; or rather had carried it farther. For he had already seen her in contact with tragic and touching things. A day or two after that early morning when he had told the outlines of the Batesons' story to the two ladies who had entertained him at breakfast he had found her in Bateson's cottage with his wife. Bateson was dead, and his wife in that dumb, automaton state of grief when the human spirit grows poisonous to itself. The young girl who came and went with so few words and such friendly timid ways had stirred, as it were, the dark air of the house with a breath of tenderness. She would sit beside the widow, sewing at a black dress, or helping her to choose the text to be printed on the funeral card; or she would come with her hands full of wild flowers, and coax Mrs. Bateson to go in the dusk to the churchyard with them. She had shown, indeed, wonderful inventiveness in filling the first week of loss and anguish with such small incident as might satisfy feeling, and yet take a woman out of herself.
The level sun shone full upon her as she walked beside him, and her face, her simple dress, her attitude stole gradually like a spell on the mind of her companion. It was a remarkable face; the lower lip a little prominent, and the chin firmly rounded. But the smile, though rare, was youth and sweetness itself, and the dark eyes beneath the full mass of richly coloured hair were finely conscious and attentive—disinterested also; so that they won the spectator instead of embarrassing him. She was very lightly and slenderly made, yet so as to convey an impression of strength and physical health. Meynell said to himself that there was something cloistered in her look, like one brought up in a grave atmosphere—an atmosphere of "recollection." At the same time nothing could be merrier—more childish even—than her laugh.
Their talk flowed on, from subject to subject, yet always tending, whether they would or no, toward the matter which was inevitably in both their minds. Insensibly the barrier between them and it broke away. Neither, indeed, forgot the interposing shadow of Catharine Elsmere. But the conversation touched on ideas; and ideas, like fire in stubble, spread far afield. Oxford: the influences which had worked on Elsmere, before Meynell's own youth felt them; men, books, controversies, interwoven for Mary with her father's history, for Meynell with his own; these topics, in spite of misgivings on both sides, could not but reveal them to each other. The growing delight of their conversation was presently beyond Meynell's resisting. And in Mary, the freedom of it, no less than the sense of personal conflict and tragic possibilities that lay behind it, awakened the subtlest and deepest feelings. Poignant, concrete images rushed through her mind—a dying face to which her own had been lifted, as a tiny child; the hall of the New Brotherhood, where she sat sometimes beside her veiled mother; the sad nobility of that mother's life; a score of trifling, heartpiercing things, that, to think of, brought the sob to her throat. Silent revolts of her own too, scattered along the course of her youth, revolts dumb, yet violent; longings for an "ampler ether"—for the great tumultuous clash of thought and doubt, of faith and denial, in a living and daring world. And yet again, times of passionate remorse, in which all movement of revolt had died away; when her only wish had been to smooth the path of her mother, and to soften a misery she but dimly understood.
So that presently she was swept away—as by some released long-thwarted force. And under the pressure of her quick, searching sympathy his talk became insensibly more personal, more autobiographical. He was but little given to confession, but she compelled it. It was as though through his story she sought to understand her father's—to unveil many things yet dark to her.
Thus gradually, through ways direct and indirect, the intellectual story of the man revealed itself to the pure and sensitive mind of the girl. She divined his home and upbringing—his father an Evangelical soldier of the old school, a home imbued with the Puritan and Biblical ideas. She understood something of the struggle provoked—after his ordination, in a somewhat late maturity—by the uprising of the typical modern problems, historical, critical, scientific. She pieced together much that only came out incidentally as to the counsellors within the Church to whom he had gone in his first urgent distress—the Bishop whom he reverenced—his old teachers at Oxford—the new lights at Cambridge.
And the card houses, the frail resting-places, thus built, it seemed, along the route, had lasted long; till at last a couple of small French books by a French priest and the sudden uprush of new life in the Roman Church had brought to the remote English clergyman at once the crystallization of doubt and the passion of a freed faith. "Modernism"—the attempt of the modern spirit, acting religiously, to refashion Christianity, not outside, butinside, the warm limits of the ancient churches—was born; and Richard Meynell became one of the first converts in England.
"Ah, if your father had but lived!" he said at last, turning upon her with emotion. "He died his noble death twenty years ago—think of the difference between then and now! Then the Broad Church movement was at an end. All that seemed so hopeful, so full of new life in the seventies, had apparently died down. Stanley, John Richard Green, Hugh Pearson were dead, Jowett was an old man of seventy; Liberalism within the Church hardly seemed to breathe; the judgment in the Voysey case—as much a defiance of modern knowledge as any Papal encyclical—though people had nearly forgotten it, had yet in truth brought the whole movement to a stand. Allwithinthe gates seemed lost. Your father went out into the wilderness, and there, amid everything that was poor and mean and new, he laid down his life. But we!—we are no longer alone, or helpless. The tide has come up to the stranded ship—the launching of it depends now only on the faithfulness of those within it."
Mary was moved and silenced. The man's power, his transparent purity of heart, affected her, as they had already affected thousands. She was drawn to him also, unconsciously, by that something in personality which determines the relations of men and women. Yet there were deep instincts in her that protested. Girl as she was, she felt herself for the moment more alive than he to the dead weight of the World, fighting the tug of those who would fain move it from its ancient bases.
He seemed to guess at her thought; for he passed on to describe the events by which, amid his own dumb or hidden struggle, he had become aware of the same forces working all round him; among the more intelligent and quick-witted miners, hungry for history and science, reading voraciously a Socialist and anti-Christian literature, yet all the while cherishing deep at heart certain primitive superstitions, and falling periodically into hot abysses of Revivalism, under the influence of Welsh preachers; or among the young men of the small middle class, in whom a better education was beginning to awaken a number of new intellectual and religious wants; among women, too, sensitive, intelligent women—
"Ah! but," said Mary, quickly interrupting him, "don't imagine there are many women like Miss Puttenham! There are very, very few!"
He turned upon her with surprise.
"I was not thinking of Miss Puttenham, I assure you. She has taken very little part in this particular movement. I never know whether she is really with us. She stands outside the old things, but I can never make myself happy by the hope that I have been able to win her to the new!"
Mary looked puzzled—interrogative. But she checked her question, and drew him back instead to his narrative—to the small incidents and signs which had gradually revealed to him, among even his brother clergy, years before that date, the working of ideas and thoughts like his own. And now—
He broke off abruptly.
"You have heard of our meeting last week?"
"Of course!"
"There were men there from all parts of the diocese—and some from other counties. It made me think of what a French Catholic Modernist said to me two years ago—'Pius X may write encyclicals as he pleases—I could show him whole dioceses in France that are practically Modernist, where the Seminaries are Modernist, and two thirds of the clergy. The Bishop knows it quite well, and is helpless. Over the border perhaps you get an Ultramontane diocese, and an Ultramontane bishop. But the process goes on. Life and time are forus!'" He paused and laughed. "Ah, of course I don't pretend things are so here—yet. Our reforms in England—in Church and State—broaden slowly down. In France, reform, when it moves at all, tends to be catastrophic. But in the Markborough diocese alone we have won over perhaps a fifth of the clergy, and the dioceses all round are moving. As to the rapidity of the movement in the last few months it has been nothing short of amazing!"
"And what is the end to be? Not only—oh! Not only—to destroy!" said Mary. The soft intensity of the voice, the beauty of the look, touched him strangely.
He smiled, and there was a silence for a minute, as they wandered downward through a purple stretch of heather to a little stream, sun-smitten, that lay across their path. Once or twice she looked at him timidly, afraid lest she might have wounded him.
But at last he said:
"Shall I answer you in the words of a beloved poet?
"'What though there still need effort, strife?Though much be still unwon?Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life!Death's frozen hour is done!
"'The world's great order dawns in sheenAfter long darkness rude,Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,With happier zeal pursued.
"'What still of strength is left, employ,Thisend to help attain—One common wave of thought and joyLifting mankind again!'
"There"—his voice was low and rapid—"thereis the goal! a newhappiness: to be reached through a new comradeship—a freer and yet intenser fellowship. We want to say to our fellowmen: 'Cease from groping among ruins!—from making life and faith depend upon whether Christ was born at Bethlehem or at Nazareth, whether He rose or did not rise, whether Luke or some one else wrote the Third Gospel, whether the Fourth Gospel is history or poetry. The life-giving force ishere, andnow! It is burning in your life and mine—as it burnt in the life of Christ. Give all you have to the flame of it—let it consume the chaff and purify the gold. Take the cup of cold water to the thirsty, heal the sick, tend the dying, and feel it thrill within you—the ineffable, the immortal life! Let the false miracle go!—the true has grown out of it, up from it, as the flower from the sheath.' Ah! but then"—he drew himself up unconsciously; his tone hardened—"we turn to the sons of tradition, and we say: 'We too must have our rights in what the past has built up, the past has bequeathed—as well as you! Not for you alone, the institutions, the buildings, the arts, the traditions, that the Christ-life has so far fashioned for itself. They who made them are Our fathers no less than yours—give us our share in them!—we claim it! Give us our share in the cathedrals and churches of our country—our share in the beauty and majesty of our ancestral Christianity.' The men who led the rebellion against Rome in the sixteenth century claimed theplantof English Catholicism. 'We are our fathers' sons, and these things areours!' they said, as they looked at Salisbury and Winchester. We say the same—with a difference. 'Give us the rights and the citizenship that belong to us! But do not imagine that we want to attack yours. In God's name, follow your own forms of faith—but allow us ours also—within the common shelter of the common Church. We are children of the same God—followers of the same Master. Who made you judges and dividers over us? You shall not drive us into the desert any more. A new movement of revolt has come—an hour of upheaval—and the men, with it!'"
Both stood motionless, gazing over the wide stretch of country—wood beyond wood, distance beyond distance, that lay between them and the Welsh border. Suddenly, as a shaft of light from the descending sun fled ghostlike across the plain, touching trees and fields and farms in its path, two noble towers emerged among the shadows—characters, as it were, that gave a meaning to the scroll of nature. They were the towers of Markborough Cathedral. Meynell pointed to them as he turned to his companion, his face still quivering under the strain of feeling.
"Take the omen! It is forthem, in a sense—a spiritual sense—we are fighting. They belong not to any body of men that may chance to-day to call itself the English Church. They belong toEngland—in her aspect of faith—and to the English people!"
There was a silence. His look came back to her face, and the prophetic glow died from his own. "I should be very, very sorry"—he said anxiously—"if anything I have said had given you pain."
Mary shook her head.
"No—not to me. I—I have my own thoughts. But one must think—of others." Her voice trembled.
The words seemed to suggest everything that in her own personal history had stamped her with this sweet, shrinking look. Meynell was deeply touched. But he did not answer her, or pursue the conversation any farther. He gathered a great bunch of harebells for her, from the sun-warmed dells in the heather; and was soon making her laugh by his stories of colliery life and speech,à proposof the colliery villages fringing the plain at their feet.
* * * * *
The stream, as they neared it, proved to be the boundary between the heath land and the pastures of the lower ground. It ran fresh and brimming between its rushy banks, shadowed here and there by a few light ashes and alders, but in general open to the sky, of which it was the mirror. It shone now golden and blue under the deepening light of the afternoon; and two or three hundred yards away Mary Elsmere distinguished two figures walking beside it—a young man apparently, and a girl. Meynell looked at them absently.
"That's one of the most famous trout-streams in the Midlands. There should be a capital rise to-night. If that man has the sense to put on a sedge-fly, he'll get a creel-full."
"And what is that house among the trees?" asked his companion presently, pointing to a gray pile of building about a quarter of a mile away, on the other side of the stream. "What a wonderful old place!"
For the house that revealed itself stood with an impressive dignity among its stern and blackish woods. The long, plain front suggested a monastic origin; and there was indeed what looked like a ruined chapel at one end. Its whole aspect was dilapidated and forlorn; and yet it seemed to have grown into the landscape, and to be so deeply rooted in it that one could not imagine it away.
Meynell glanced at it.
"That is Sandford Abbey. It belongs, I regret to say, to a neer-do-weel cousin of mine who has spent all his time since he came into it in neglecting his duties to it. Provided the owner of it is safely away, I should advise you and Mrs. Elsmere to walk over and see it one day. Otherwise it is better viewed at a distance. At least those are my own sentiments!"
Mary followed the house with her eyes as they walked along the bank of the stream toward the two figures on the opposite bank.
A sudden exclamation from her companion caught her ear—and a light musical laugh. Startled by something familiar in it, Mary looked across the stream. She saw on the farther bank a few yards ahead a young man fishing, and a young girl in white sitting beside him.
"Hester!—Miss Fox-Wilton!"—the tone showed her surprise; "and who is that with her?"
Meynell, without replying, walked rapidly along the stream to a point immediately opposite the pair.
"Good afternoon, Philip. I did not know you were here. Hester, I am going round by Forkéd Pond, and then home. I shall be glad to escort you."
"Oh! thank you—thank yousomuch. But it's very nice here. You can't think what a rise there is. I have caught two myself. Sir Philip has been teaching me."
"She frames magnificently!" said the young man. "How d'ye do, Meynell? A long time since we've met."
"A long time," said Meynell briefly. "Hester, will you meet Miss Elsmere and me at the bridge? We sha'n't take you much out of your way."
He pointed to a tiny wooden bridge across the stream, a hundred yards farther down.
A look of mischievous defiance was flung at Meynell across the stream. "I'm all right, I assure you. Don't bother about me. How do you do, Mary? We don't 'miss' each other, do we? Isn't it a lovely evening? Such good luck I wouldn't go with mother to dine at the White House! Don't you hate dinner parties? I told Mr. Barron that spiders were so much more refined than humans—they did at least eat their flies by themselves! He was quite angry—and I am afraid Stephen was too!"
She laughed again, and so did the man beside her. He was a dark, slim fellow, finely made, dressed in blue serge, and a felt hat, which seemed at the moment to be slipping over the back of his handsome head. From a little distance he produced an impression of Apollo-like strength and good looks. As the spectator came closer, this impression was a good deal modified by certain loose and common lines in the face. But from Mary Elsmere's position only Sir Philip Meryon's good points were visible, and he appeared to her a dazzling creature.
And in point of looks his companion was more than his match. They made indeed a brilliant pair, framed amid the light green of the river bank. Hester Fox-Wilton was sitting on a log with her straw hat on her lap. In pushing along the overgrown stream, the coils of her hair had been disarranged and its combs loosened. The hair was of a warm brown shade, and it made a cloud about her headland face, from which her eyes and smile shone out triumphantly. Exceptionally tall, with clear-cut aquiline features, with the movements and the grace of a wood nymph, the girl carried her beautiful brows and her full throat with a provocative and self-conscious arrogance. One might have guessed that fear was unknown to her; perhaps tenderness also. She looked much older than seventeen, until she moved or spoke; then the spectator soon realized that in spite of her height and her precocious beauty she was a child, capable still of a child's mischief.
And on mischief she was apparently bent this afternoon. Mary Elsmere, shyly amused, held aloof, while Meynell and Miss Fox-Wilton talked across the stream. Meynell's peremptory voice reached her now and then, and she could not help hearing a sharp final demand that the truant should transfer herself at once to his escort.
The girl threw him an odd look; she sprang to her feet, flushed, laughed, and refused.
"Very well!" said Meynell. "Then perhaps, as you won't join us, you will allow me to join you. Miss Elsmere, I am very sorry, but I am afraid I must put off my visit to your mother. Will you give her my regrets?"
The fury in Hester's look deepened. She lost her smile.
"I won't be watched and coerced! Why shouldn't I amuse myself as I please!"
Meanwhile Sir Philip Meryon had laid aside his rod and was apparently enjoying the encounter between his companion and the Rector.
"Perhaps you have forgotten—this ismyside of the river, Meynell!" he shouted across it.
"I am quite aware of it," said the Rector, as he shook hands with the embarrassed Mary. She was just moving away with a shy good-bye to the angry young goddess on the farther bank, when the goddess said:
"Don't go, Mary! Here, Sir Philip—take the fly-book!" She flung it toward him. "Goodnight."
And turning her back upon him without any further ceremony, she walked quickly along the stream toward the little bridge which Meynell had pointed out.
"Congratulations!" said Meryon, with a mocking wave of the hand to the Rector, who made no reply. He ran to catch up Mary, and the two joined the girl in white at the bridge. The owner of Sandford Abbey stood meanwhile with his hand on his hip watching the receding figures. There was a smile on his handsome mouth, but it was an angry one; and his muttered remark as he turned away belied the unconcern he had affected.
* * * * *
"That comes, you see, of not letting me be engaged to Stephen!" saidHester in a white heat, as the three walked on together.
Mary looked at her in astonishment.
"I see no connection," was the Rector's quiet reply. "You know very well that your mother does not approve of Sir Philip Meryon, and does not wish you to be in his company."
"Precisely. But as I am not to be allowed to marry Stephen, I must of course amuse myself with some one else. If I can't be engaged to Stephen, I won't be anything at all to him. But, then, I don't admit that I'm bound."
"At present all you're asked"—said Meynell dryly—"is not to disobey your mother. But don't you think it's rather rude to Miss Elsmere to be discussing private affairs she doesn't understand?"
"Why shouldn't she understand them? Mary, my guardian here and my mother say that I mustn't be engaged to Stephen Barron—that I'm too young—or some nonsense of that kind. And Stephen—oh, well, Stephen's too good for this world! If he really loved me, he'd do something desperate, wouldn't he?—instead of giving in. I don't much mind, myself—I don't really care so much about marrying Stephen—only if I'm not to marry him, and somebody else wants to please me, why shouldn't I let him?"
She turned her beautiful wild eyes upon Mary Elsmere. And as she did so Mary was suddenly seized with a strong sense of likeness in the speaker—her gesture—her attitude—to something already familiar. She could not identify the something, but her gaze fastened itself on the face before her.
Meynell meanwhile answered Hester's tirade.
"I'm quite ready to talk this over with you, Hester, on our way home. But don't you see that you are making Miss Elsmere uncomfortable?"
"Oh, no, I'm not," said Hester coolly. "You've been talking to her of all sorts of grave, stupid things—and she wants amusing—waking up. I know the look of her. Don't you?" She slipped her arm inside Mary's. "You know, if you'd only do your hair a little differently—fluff it out more—you'd be so pretty! Let me do it for you. And you shouldn't wear that hat—no, you really shouldn't. It's a brute! I could trim you another in half an hour. Shall I? You know—I really like you.Hesha'n't make us quarrel!"
She looked with a young malice at Meynell. But her brow had smoothed, and it was evident that her temper was passing away.
"I don't agree with you at all about my hat," said Mary with spirit. "I trimmed it myself, and I'm extremely proud of it."
Hester laughed out—a laugh that rang through the trees.
"How foolish you are!—isn't she, Rector? No!—I suppose that's just what you like. I wonder what youhavebeen talking to her about? I shall make her tell me. Where are you going to?"
She paused, as Mary and the Rector, at a point where two paths converged, turned away from the path which led back to Upcote Minor. Mary explained again that Mr. Meynell and she were on the way to the Forkéd Pond cottage, where the Rector wished to call upon her mother.
Hester looked at her gravely.