And she put out an impatient hand, and drew the stately Catharine toward a chair beside her.
"You ought to be in bed," said Catharine, retaining her hand. The girl's ignorance of all that others knew affected her strangely—produced a great softness and compunction.
"I shouldn't sleep. I wonder when I shall get a decent amount of sleep again!" said Hester, pressing back the hair from her cheeks. Then she turned sharply on her visitor:
"Of course you know, Mrs. Elsmere, that I am simply being sent away—in disgrace."
"I know"—Catharine smiled, though her tone was grave—"that those who love you think there ought to be a change."
"That's a nice way of putting it—a real gentlemanly way," said Hester, swaying backward and forward, her hands round her knees. "But all the same it's true. They're sending me away because they don't know what I'll do next. They think I'll do something abominable."
The girl's eyes sparkled.
"Why will you give your guardians this anxiety?" asked Catharine, not without severity. "They are never at rest about you. My dear—they only wish your good."
Hester laughed. She threw out a careless hand and laid it on Catharine's knee.
"Isn't it odd, Mrs. Elsmere, that you don't know anything about me, though—you won't mind, will you?—though you're so kind to me, and I do like you so. But you can't know anything, can you, about girls—like me?"
And looking up from where she lay deep in the armchair, she turned half-mocking eyes on her companion.
"I don't know—perhaps—about girls like you," said Catharine, smiling, and shyly touching the hand on her knee. "But I live half my life—with girls."
"Oh—poor girls? Girls in factories—girls that wear fringes, and sham pearl beads, and six ostrich feathers in their hats on Sundays? No, I don't think I'm like them. If I were they, I shouldn't care about feathers or the sham pearls. I should be more likely to try and steal some real ones! No, but I mean really girls like me—rich girls, though of course I'm not rich—but you understand? Do you know any girls who gamble and paint—their faces I mean—and let men lend them money, and pay for their dresses?"
Hester sat up defiantly, looking at her companion.
"No, I don't know any of that kind," said Catharine quietly. "I'm old-fashioned, you see—they wouldn't want to know me."
Hester's mouth twitched.
"Well, I'm not that kind exactly! I don't paint because—well, I supposeI needn't! And I don't play for money, because I've nobody to play with.As for letting men lend you money—"
"That you would never disgrace yourself by doing!" said Catharine sharply.
Hester's look was enigmatic.
"Well, I never did it. But I knew a girl in London—very pretty—and as mad as you like. She was an orphan and her relatives didn't care twopence about her. She got into debt, and a horrid old man offered to lend her a couple of hundred pounds if she'd give him a kiss. She said no, and then she told an older woman who was supposed to look after her. And what do you suppose she said?"
Catharine was silent.
"'Well, youarea little fool!' That was all she got for her pains. Men are villains—Ithink! But they're exciting!" And Hester clasped her hands behind her head, and looked at the ceiling, smiling to herself, while the dressing-gown sleeves fell back from her rounded arms.
Catharine frowned. She suddenly rose, and kneeling down by Hester's chair, she took the girl in her arms.
"Hester, dear!—if you want a friend—whenever you want a friend—come to me! If you are ever in trouble send for me. I would always come—always!"
She felt the flutter of the girl's heart as she enfolded her. Then Hester lightly freed herself, though her voice shook—
"You're the kindest person, Mrs. Elsmere—you're awfully, awfully, kind. But I'm going to have a jolly good time in Paris. I shall read all kinds of things—I shall go to the theatre—I shall enjoy myself famously."
"And you'll have Aunt Alice all to yourself."
Hester was silent. The lovely corners of her mouth stiffened.
"You must be very good to her, Hester," said Catharine, with entreaty in her voice. "She's not well—and very tired."
"Why doesn't shetrustme?" said Hester, almost between her teeth.
"What do you mean?"
After a hesitating pause, the girl broke out with the story of the miniature.
"How can I love her when she won't trust me?" she cried again, with stormy breath.
Catharine's heart melted within her.
"But youmustlove her, Hester! Why, she has watched over you all your life. Can't you see—that she's had trouble—and she's not strong!"
And she looked down with emotion on the girl thus blindly marching to a veiled future, unable, by no fault of her own, to distinguish her lovers from her foes. Had a lie, ever yet, in human history, justified itself? So this pure moralist!—to whom morals had come, silently, easily, irresistibly, as the sun slips into the sky.
"Oh, I'll look after her," said Hester shortly; "why, of course I will. I'm very glad she's going to Paris—it'll be good for her. And as for you"—she bent forward like a queen, and lightly kissed Catharine on the cheek—"I daresay I'll remember what you've said—you're a great, great dear! It was luck for Mary to have got you for a mother. But I'm all right—I'm all right!"
* * * * *
When the Elsmeres were gone, Hester still sat on alone in the drawing-room. The lamp had burnt dim, and the little room was cold.
Presently she slipped her hand into the white bodice she wore. A letter lay there, and her fingers caressed it. "I don't know whether I love him or not—perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't. I don't know whether I believe Uncle Richard—or this letter. But—I'm going to find out! I'm not going to be stopped from finding out."
And as she lay there, she was conscious of bonds she was half determined to escape, half willing to bear; of a fluttering excitement and dread. Step by step, and with a childish bravado, she had come within the influences of sex; and her fate was upon her.
Meanwhile, amid this sensitive intermingling of the thoughts and feelings of women, there arose the sudden tumult and scandal of the new elements which had thrust themselves into what was already known to the religious world throughout England as "the Meynell case." During November and December that case came to include two wholly different things: the ecclesiastical suit in the Court of Arches, which, owing to a series of delays and to the illness of the Dean of the Court, was not to be heard in all probability before February, and the personal charges brought against the incumbent of Upcote Minor.
These fresh charges were formally launched by Henry Barron, the chief promoter also, as we know, of the ecclesiastical suit, in a letter written by him to Bishop Craye, on the very night when Alice Puttenham revealed her secret to Catharine Elsmere. But before we trace the effect of the letter, let us look for a moment at the general position of the Movement when this second phase of Meynell's connection with it began.
At that time the pending suits against the Modernist leaders—for there were now five instituted by different bishops, as test cases, in different parts of England—were already the subject of the keenest expectation and debate not only in church circles, but amid sections of the nation which generally trouble themselves very little about clerical or religious disputes. New births of time were felt to be involved in the legal struggle; passionate hopes and equally passionate fears hung upon it. There were old men in quiet country parsonages who, when they read theModernistand followed the accounts of the Movement, were inclined to say to themselves with secret joy and humility that other men were entering into their labours, and the fields were at last whitening to harvest; while others, like Newman of old, had "fierce thoughts toward the Liberals," talked and spoke of Meynell and the whole band of Modernist clergy as traitors with whom no parley could be kept, and were ready to break up the Church at twenty-four hours' notice rather than sit down at the same table of the Lord with heretics and Socinians.
Between these two groups of men, each equally confident and clear, though by no means equally talkative, there was a middle region that contained many anxious minds and some of the wisest heads in England. If, at the time of Norham's visit to Maudeley, Bishop Craye of Markborough, and many other bishops with him, were still certain that the Movement would be promptly and easily put down, so far at least as its organic effect on the Church of England was concerned, yet, as November and December wore on, anxieties deepened, and confidence began to waver. The passion of the Movement was beginning to run through England, as it seemed to many, like the flame of an explosion through a dusty mine. What amazed and terrified the bishops was the revelation of pent-up energies, rebellions, ideals, not only among their own flocks, but in quarters, and among men and women, hitherto ruled out of religious affairs by general consent. They pondered the crowds which had begun to throng the Modernist churches, the extraordinary growth of the Modernist press, and the figures reported day by day as to the petition to be presented to Parliament in February. There was no orthodox person in authority who was not still determined on an unconditional victory; but it was admitted that the skies were darkening.
The effect of the Movement on the Dissenters—on that half of religious England which stands outside the National Church, where "grace" takes the place of authority, and bishops are held to be superfluities incompatible with the pure milk of the Word—was in many respects remarkable. The majority of the Wesleyan Methodists had thrown themselves strongly on to the side of the orthodox party in the Church; but among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians there was visible a great ferment of opinion and a great cleavage of sympathy; while, among the Primitive Methodists, a body founded on the straitest tenets of Bible worship, yet interwoven, none the less, with the working class life of England and Wales, and bringing day by day the majesty and power of religion to bear upon the acts and consciences of plain, poor, struggling men, there was visible a strong and definite current of acquiescence in Modernist ideas, which was inexplicable, till one came to know that among Meynell's friends at Upcote there were two or three Primitive local preachers who had caught fire from him, were now active members of his Church Council, and ardent though persecuted missionaries to their own body.
Meanwhile the Unitarians—small and gallant band!—were like persons standing on tiptoe before an opening glory. In their isolated and often mistaken struggle they had felt themselves for generations stricken with chill and barrenness; their blood now began to feel the glow of new kinships, the passion of large horizons. So, along the banks of some slender and much hindered stream, there come blown from the nearing sea prophetic scents and murmurs, and one may dream that the pent water knows at last the whence and whither of its life.
But the strangest spectacle of all perhaps was presented by the orthodox camp. For, in proportion as the Modernist attack developed, was the revival of faith among those hostile to it, or unready for it. For the first time in their lives, religion became interesting—thrilling even—to thousands of persons for whom it had long lost all real savour. Fierce question and answer, the hot cut and thrust of argument, the passion of honest fight on equal terms—without these things, surely, there has been no religious epoch, of any importance, in man's history. English orthodoxy was at last vitally attacked; and it began to show a new life, and express itself in a new language. These were times when men on all sides felt that stretching and straining of faculty which ushers in the days of spiritual or poetic creation; times when the most confident Modernist of them all knew well that he, no more than any one else, could make any guess worth having as to the ultimate future.
Of all this rapid and amazing development the personality and the writings of Richard Meynell had in few months become the chief popular symbol. There were some who thought that he was likely to take much the same place in the Modernist Movement of the twentieth century as Newman had taken in the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth; and men were beginning to look for the weekly article in theModernistwith the same emotion of a passionate hero-worship on the one hand, and of angry repulsion on the other, with which the Oxford of the thirties had been wont to look for each succeeding "Tract," or for Newman's weekly sermon at St. Mary's. To Newman's high subtleties of brain, to Newman's magic of style, Richard Meynell could not pretend. But he had two advantages over the great leader of the past: he was the disciple of a new learning which was inaccessible to Newman; and he was on fire with social compassions and enthusiasms to which Newman, the great Newman, was always pathetically a stranger. In these two respects Meynell was the representative of his own generation; while the influences flowing from his personal character and life were such that thousands who had never seen him loved and trusted him wholly. Men who had again and again watched great causes break down for want of the incommunicable something which humanity exacts from its leaders felt with a quiet and confident gladness that in Meynell they had got the man they wanted, the efficacious, indispensable man.
And now—suddenly—incredible things began to be said. It was actually maintained that the leader round whom such feelings had gathered had been, since his ordination, the betrayer of a young and innocent girl, belonging to a well-known family; that although it had been in his power for twenty years to marry the lady he had wronged, he had never attempted to do so, but had rather, during all that time, actively connived at the fraud by which his illegitimate child had passed as the daughter of Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton; while over the whole period he had kept up relations—and who knew of what character?—with the child's mother, an inhabitant of the very village where he himself was Rector.
Presently—it was added that Mr. Henry Barron, of Upcote Minor, one of the prosecutors in the ecclesiastical suit, had obtained unexpected and startling confirmation of these extraordinary facts from the confession of a woman who had been present at the birth of the child and had identified the Rector of Upcote as the father. Then, very soon, paragraphs of a veiled sort began to appear in some of the less responsible newspapers. The circulation of the anonymous letters began to be known; and the reader of a Modernist essay at an Oxford meeting caused universal consternation by telling an indiscreet friend, who presently spread it abroad, that Barron had already written to the Bishop of Markborough, placing in his hands a mass of supporting evidence relating to "this most lamentable business."
At first Meynell's friends throughout the country regarded these rumours as a mere device of the evil one. Similar things they said, and with truth, are constantly charged against heretics who cannot be put down. Slander is the first weapon of religious hatred. Meynell, they triumphantly answered, will put the anonymous letters in the hands of the police, and proceed against Henry Barron. And they who have taken up such a weapon shall but perish by it themselves the sooner.
But the weeks passed on. Not only were no proceedings taken, or, apparently, in prospect, by Meynell against his accusers; not only did the anonymous letters reappear from time to time, untracked and unpunished, but reports of a meeting held at Upcote itself began to spread—a meeting where Meynell had been definitely and publicly challenged by Barron to take action for the vindication of his character, and had definitely and publicly refused.
The world of a narrow and embittered orthodoxy began to breathe again; and there was black depression in the Modernist camp.
Let us, however, go back a little.
Barron's letter to the Bishop was the first shot in the direct and responsible attack. It consisted of six or seven closely written sheets, and agreed in substance with four or five others from the same hand, addressed at the same moment to the chief heads of the Orthodox party.
The Bishop received it at breakfast, just after he had concluded a hot political argument with his little granddaughter Barbara.
"All Tories are wicked," said Barbara, who had a Radical father, "except grandpapa, and he, mummy says, is weally a Riberal."
With which she had leaped into the arms of her nurse, and was carried off gurgling, while the Bishop threatened her from afar.
Then, with a sigh of impatience, as he recognized the signature on the envelope, he resigned himself to Barron's letter. When he had done it, sitting by the table in his library, he threw it from him with indignation, called for his coat, and hurried across his garden to the Cathedral for matins. After service, as with a troubled countenance he was emerging from the transept door, he saw Dornal in the Close and beckoned to him.
"Come into the library for ten minutes. I very much want to speak to you."
The Bishop led the way, and as soon as the door was shut he turned eagerly on his companion:
"Do you know anything of these abominable stories that are being spread about Richard Meynell?"
Dornal looked at him sadly.
"They are all over Markborough—and there is actually a copy of one of the anonymous letters—with dashes for the names—in thePostto-day?"
"I never hear these things!" said the Bishop, with an impatience which was meant, half for a scandal-mongering world, and half for himself. "But Barron has written me a perfectly incredible letter to-day. He seems to be the head and front of the whole business. I don't like Barron, and I don't like his letters!"
And throwing one slender leg over the other, while the tips of his long fingers met in a characteristic gesture, the little Bishop stared into the fire before him with an expression of mingled trouble and disgust.
Dornal, clearly, was no less unhappy. Drawing his chair close to theBishop's he described the manner in which the story had reached himself.When he came to the curious facts concerning the diffusion and variety ofthe anonymous letters, the Bishop interrupted him:
"And Barron tells me he knows nothing of these letters!"
"So I hear also."
"But, my dear Dornal, if he doesn't, it makes the thing inexplicable! Here we have a woman who comes home dying, and sees one person only—Henry Barron—to whom she tells her story."
The Bishop went through the points of Barron's narrative, and concluded:
"Then, on the top of this, after her death—her son denying all knowledge of his mother's history—comes this crop of extraordinary letters, showing, you tell me, an intimate acquaintance with the neighbourhood and the parties concerned. And yet Barron—the only person Mrs. Sabin saw—knows nothing of them! They are a mystery to him. But, my dear Dornal, howcanthey be?" The Bishop faced round with energy on his companion. "He must at least have talked incautiously before some one!"
Dornal agreed, but could put forward no suggestion of his own. He sat drooping by the Bishop's fire, his aspect expressing the deep distress he did not shape in words. That very distress, however, was what made his company so congenial to the much perturbed Bishop, who felt, moreover, a warmer affection for Dornal than for any other member of his Chapter.
The Bishop resumed:
"Meanwhile, not a word from Meynell himself! That I confess wounds me." He sighed. "However, I suppose he regards our old confidential relations as broken off. To me—until the law has spoken—he is always one of my 'clergy'"—the Bishop's voice showed emotion—"and he would get my fatherly help just as freely as ever, if he chose to ask for it. But I don't know whether to send for him. I don't think I can send for him. The fact is—one feels the whole thing an outrage!"
Dornal looked up.
"That's the word!" he said gratefully. Then he added—hesitating—"I ought perhaps to tell you that I have written to Meynell—I wrote when the first report of the thing reached me. And I am sure that he can have no possible objection to my showing you his reply!" He put his hand into his pocket.
"By all means, my dear Dornal!" cried the Bishop with a brightening countenance. "We are both his friends, in spite of all that has happened and may happen. By all means, show me the letter."
Dornal handed it over. It ran as follows:
"MY DEAR DORNAL: It was like you to write to me, and with such kindness and delicacy. But even to you I can only say what I say to other questioners of a very different sort. The story to which you refer is untrue. But owing to peculiar circumstances it is impossible for me to defend myself in the ordinary way, and my lips are sealed with regard to it. I stand upon my character as known to my neighbours and the diocese for nearly twenty years. If that is not enough, I cannot help it.
"Thank you always for the goodness and gentleness of your letter. I wish with all my heart I could give you more satisfaction."
The two men looked at each other, the same conjectures passing through both minds.
"I hear the Fox-Wiltons and Miss Puttenham have all gone abroad," said the Bishop thoughtfully. "Poor things! I begin to see a glimmer. It seems to me that Meynell has been the repository of some story he feels he cannot honourably divulge. And then you tell me the letters show the handiwork of some one intimately acquainted with the local circumstances, who seems to have watched Meynell's daily life. It is of course possible that he may have been imprudent with regard to this poor lady. Let us assume that he knew her story and advised her. He may not have been sufficiently careful. Further, there is that striking and unfortunate likeness of which Barron of course makes the most. I noticed it myself, on an evening when I happened, at Maudeley, to see that handsome girl and Meynell in the same room. It is difficult to say in what it consists, but it must occur to many people who see them together."
There was silence a moment. Then Dornal said:
"How will it all affect the trial?"
"In the Court of Arches? Technically of course—not at all. But it will make all the difference to the atmosphere in which it is conducted. One can imagine how certain persons are already gloating over it—what use they will make of it—how they will magnify and embroider everything. And such an odious story! It is the degradation of a great issue!"
The little Bishop frowned. As he sat there in the dignity of his great library, so scrupulously refined and correct in every detail of dress, yet without a touch of foppery, the gleam of the cross on his breast answering the silver of the hair and the frank purity of the eyes, it was evident that he felt a passionate impatience—half moral, half esthetic—toward these new elements of the Meynell case. It was the fastidious impatience of a man for whom personal gossip and scandal ranked among the forbidden indulgences of life. "Things, not persons!" had been the time-honoured rule for conversation at the Palace table—persons, that is, of the present day. In those happy persons who had already passed into biography and history, in their peccadilloes no less than their virtues, the Bishop's interest was boundless. The distinction tended to make him a little super- or infra-human; but it enhanced the fragrance and delicacy of his personality.
Dornal was no less free from any stain of mean or scandalous gossip than the Bishop, but his knowledge of the human heart was far deeper, his sympathy far more intimate. It was not only that he scorned the slander, but, hour by hour, he seemed to walk in the same cloud with Meynell.
After some further discussion, the Bishop took up Barron's letter again. "I see there is likely to be a most painful scene at the Church Council meeting—which of course will be also one of their campaign meetings—the day after to-morrow. Barron declares that he means to challenge Meynell publicly to vindicate his character. Can I do anything?"
Dornal did not see anything could be done. The parish was already in open rebellion.
"It is a miserable, miserable business!" said the Bishop unhappily. "How can I get a report of the meeting—from some one else than Barron?"
"Mr. Flaxman is sure to be there?"
"Ah!—get him to write to me?"
"And you, my lord—will send for Meynell?"
"I think"—said the Bishop, with returning soreness—"that as he has neither written to me, nor consulted me, I will wait a little. We must watch—we must watch. Meanwhile, my dear fellow!"—he laid his hand on Dornal's shoulder—"let us think how to stop the talk! It will spoil everything. Those who are fighting with us must understand there are weapons we cannot stoop to use!"
* * * * *
As Dornal left the Palace, on his way past the Cathedral, he met young Fenton, the High Churchman who some months earlier had refused to recognize Meynell after the first Modernist meeting in Markborough. Fenton was walking slowly and reading the local newspaper—the same which contained the anonymous letter. His thin, finely modelled face, which in a few years would resemble the Houdon statue of St. Bruno, expressed an eager excitement that was not unlike jubilation. Dornal was practically certain that he was reading the paragraph that concerned Meynell, and certain also that it gave him pleasure. He hurriedly passed over to the other side of the street, that Fenton might not accost him.
Afterward, he spent the evening, partly in writing urgently in Meynell's defence to certain of his own personal friends in the diocese, and partly in composing an anti-Modernist address, full of a sincere and earnest eloquence, to be delivered the following week at a meeting of the Church party in Cambridge.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Cyril Fenton had also spent the evening in writing. He kept an elaborate journal of his own spiritual state; or rather he had begun to keep it about six months before this date, at the moment when the emergence of the Modernist Movement had detached him from his nascent friendship with Meynell, and had thrown him back, terrified, on a more resolute opposition than ever to the novelties and presumptions of free inquiry. The danger of reading anything, unawares, that might cause him even a moment's uneasiness had led to his gradually cutting himself off entirely from modern newspapers and modern books, in which, indeed, he had never taken any very compelling interest. His table was covered by various English and French editions of the Fathers—of St. Cyprian in particular, for whom he had a cult. On the bare walls of his study were various pictures of saints, a statuette of the Virgin, and another of St. Joseph, both of them feebly elegant in the Munich manner. Through his own fresh youthfulness, once so winning and wholesome, something pinched and cloistered had begun to thrust itself. His natural sweetness of temper was rapidly becoming sinful in his own eyes, his natural love of life also, and its harmless, even its ideal, pleasures.
It was a bitter winter day, and he had not allowed himself a greatcoat. In consequence he felt depressed and chilled; yet he could not make up his mind to go to bed earlier than usual, lest he should be thereby pampering the flesh. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with his own spiritual condition during the day, and had just made ample confession thereof in the pages of his diary. A few entries from that document will show the tone of a mind morbid for lack of exercise:
"D. came to see me this morning. We discussed war a good deal. In general, of course, I am opposed to war, but when I think of this ghastly plague of heresy which is sweeping away so many souls at the present moment, I feel sometimes that the only war into which I could enter with spirit would be a civil war…. In a great deal of my talk with D. I posed abominably. I talked of shooting and yachting as though I knew all about them. I can't be content that people should think me 'out' of anything, or a dull fool. It was the same with my talk to S. about church music. I talked most arrogantly; and in reality I know hardly anything about it.
"As to my vow of simplicity in food, I must keep my attention more on the alert. Yet to-day I have not done so badly; some cold ends of herring at breakfast, and a morsel of mackerel at lunch are the only things I have to reproach myself with; the only lapses from the strict rule of simplicity. But the quantity was deplorable—no moderation—not even a real attempt at it. Whenever I am disgusted with myself for having eaten too much at dinner, I constantly fail to draw the proper inference—that I should eat less at tea….
"I feel that this scandal about poor Meynell is probably providential. It must and will weaken the Modernist party enormously. To thank God for such a thing sounds horrible, but after all, have we any right to be more squeamish than Holy Writ? 'Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered.' The warnings and menaces of what are called the Imprecatory Psalms show us plainly that His enemies must be ours."
He closed his book, and came to shiver over the very inadequate fire which was all he allowed himself. Every shilling that he could put aside was being saved in order to provide his church with a new set of altar furniture. The congregation of the church was indeed fast ebbing away, and his heart was full of bitterness on the subject. But how could a true priest abate any fraction of either his Church principles, or his sound doctrine, to appease persons who were not and could not be judges of what was necessary to their own spiritual health?
As he warmed his thin hands, his bodily discomfort increased his religious despondency. Then, of a sudden, his eyes fell upon the portrait of a child standing on the mantelpiece—his sister's child, aged four. The cloud on the still boyish brow lightened at once.
"Tommy's birthday to-morrow," he said to himself. "Jolly little chap!Must write to him. Here goes!"
And reaching out his hand for his writing-case he wrote eagerly, a letter all fun and baby-talk, and fantastic drawings, in the course of which Tommy grew up, developed moustaches, and became a British Grenadier.
When he had finished it and put it up, he lay back laughing to himself, a different being.
But the gleam was only momentary. A recurring sense of chill and physical oppression dispersed it. Presently he rose heavily, glanced at his open diary, reread the last page with a sigh, and closed it. Then, as it was nearly midnight, he retreated upstairs to his bare and icy bedroom, where half-an-hour's attempt to meditate completed the numbness of body and mind, in which state ultimately he went to bed, though not to sleep.
* * * * *
The meeting of the Church Council of Upcote was held in the Church House of the village a few days after the Bishop's conversation with Canon Dornal. It was an evening long remembered by those who shared in it. The figure of Meynell instinct with a kind of fierce patience; the face rugged as ever, but paler and tenderer in repose, as of one who, mystically sustained, had been passing through deep waters; his speech, sternly repressed, and yet for the understanding ear, enriched by new tones and shades of feeling—on those who believed in him the effect of these slight but significant changes in the man they loved was electrical.
And five-sixths of those present believed in him, loved him, and were hotly indignant at the scandals which had arisen. They were, some of them, the élite of the mining population, men whom he had known and taught from childhood; there were many officials from the surrounding collieries; there was a miners' agent, who was also one of the well-known local preachers of the district; there were half a dozen women—the schoolmistress, the wife of the manager of the coöperative store, and three or four wives of colliers—women to whom other women in childbirth, or the girl who had gone astray, or the motherless child, might appeal without rebuff, who were in fact the Rector's agents in any humanizing effort.
All these persons had come to the meeting eagerly expecting to hear from the Rector's own lips the steps he proposed to take for the putting down of the slanders circulating in the diocese, and the punishment of their authors. In the rear of the Council—who had been themselves elected by the whole parish—there were two or three rows of seats occupied by other inhabitants of the village, who made an audience. In the front row sat the strange spinster, Miss Nairn, a thin, sharp nosed woman of fifty, in rusty black clothes, holding her head high; not far from her the dubious publican who had been Maurice Barron's companion on a certain walk some days before. There too were Hugh and Rose Flaxman. And just as the proceedings were about to begin, Henry Barron opened the heavy door, hat in hand, came in with a firm step, and took a seat at the back, while a thrill of excitement went through the room.
It was an ancient room, near the church, and built like it, of red sandstone. It had been once the tiny grammar school of the village. Meynell had restored and adapted it, keeping still its old features—the low ceiling heavily beamed with oak, and the row of desks inscribed with the scholars' names of three centuries. Against the background of its white walls he stood thrown out in strong relief by the oil lamp on the table in front of him, his eyes travelling over the rows of familiar faces.
He spoke first of the new Liturgy of which copies had been placed on the seats. He reminded them they were all—or nearly all—comrades with him in the great Modernist venture; that they had given him the help of their approval and support at every step, and were now rebels with him against the authorities of the day. He pointed to his approaching trial, and the probability—nay the certainty—of his deprivation. He asked them to be steadfast with him, and he dwelt on the amazing spread of the Movement, the immense responsibility resting upon its first leaders and disciples, and the need for gentleness and charity. The room was hushed in silence.
Next, he proceeded to put the adoption of the new Liturgy to the vote. Suddenly Barron rose from his seat at the back. Meynell paused. The audience looked in suppressed excitement from one to the other.
"I regret," said the Rector, courteously, "that we cannot hear Mr. Barron at this moment. He is not a member of the Church Council. When the proceedings of the Council are over, this will become an open meeting, and Mr. Barron will then of course say what he wishes to say."
Barron hesitated a moment; then sat down.
The revised Liturgy was adopted by twenty-eight votes to two. One of the two dissentients was Dawes, the colliery manager, a sincere and consistent evangelical of the Simeon School, who made a short speech in support of his vote, dwelling in a voice which shook on the troubles coming on the parish.
"We may get another Rector," he said as he sat down. "We shall never get another Richard Meynell." A deep murmur of acquiescence ran through the room.
Meynell rose again from his seat.
"Our business is over. We now become an open meeting. Mr. Barron, I believe, wishes to speak."
The room was, at this point, densely crowded and every face turned toward the tall and portly form rising from the back. In the flickering lamplight it could be seen that the face usually so ruddy and full was blanched by determination and passion.
"My friends and neighbours!" said Barron, "it is with sorrow and grief that I rise to say the few words that I intend to say. On the audacity and illegality of what you have just done I shall say nothing. Argument, I know, would be useless. ButthisI have come to say: You have just been led—misled—into an act of heresy and rebellion by the man who should be your pastor in the Faith, who is responsible to God for your souls.Whyhave you been misled?—whydo you follow him?" He flung out his hand toward Meynell.
"Because you admire and respect him—because you believe him a good man—a man of honest and pure life. And I am here to tell you, or rather to remind you, for indeed you all know it—that your Rector lies at this moment under a painful and disgraceful charge; that this charge has been circulated—in a discreditable way—a way for which I have no defence and of which I know nothing—throughout this diocese, and indeed throughout England; that your fair fame, as well as his are concerned; and, nevertheless, he refuses to take the only steps which can clear his character, and repay you for the devotion you have shown him! I call upon you, sir!"—the speaker bent forward, pointing impressively to the chairman of the meeting and emphasizing every word—"to take those steps at once! They are open to you at any moment. Take them against myself! I have given, I will give, you every opportunity. But till that is done do not continue, in the face of the congregation you have deceived and led astray, to assume the tone of hypocritical authority in which you have just spoken! You have no moral right to any authority among us; you never had any such right; and in Christian eyes your infidel teaching has led to its natural results. At any rate, I trust that now, at last, even these your friends and dupes will see the absolute necessity, before many weeks are over, of eitherforcingyou to resign your living, orforcingyou to take the only means open to honest men of protecting their character!"
He resumed his seat. The audience sat petrified a moment. Then Hugh Flaxman sprang to his feet, and two or three others, the local preacher among them. But Meynell had also risen.
"Please, Mr. Flaxman—my friends—!"
He waved a quiet hand toward those who had risen, and they unwillingly gave way. Then the Rector looked round the room for a few silent instants. He was very white, but when he spoke it was with complete composure.
"I expected something of this kind to happen, and whether it had happened or no I should have spoken to you on this matter before we separated. I know—you all know—to what Mr. Barron refers—that he is speaking of the anonymous letters concerning myself and others which have been circulated in this neighbourhood. He calls upon me, I understand, to take legal action with regard both to them and to the reports which he has himself circulated, by word of mouth, and probably by letter. Now I want you plainly to understand"—he bent forward, his hands on the table before him, each word clear and resonant—"that I shall take no such action! My reasons I shall not give you. I stand upon my life among you and my character among you all these years. This only I will say to you, my friends and my parishioners: The abominable story told in these letters—the story which Mr. Barron believes, or tries to make himself believe—is untrue. But I will say no more than that—to you, or any one else. And if you are to make legal action on my part a test of whether you will continue to follow me religiously—to accept me as your leader, or no—then my friends, we must part! You must go your way, and I must go mine. There will be still work for me to do; and God knows our hearts—yours and mine."
He paused, looking intently into the lines of blanched faces before him.Then he added:
"You may wish to discuss this matter. I recognize it as natural you should wish to discuss it. But I shall not discuss it with you. I shall withdraw. Mr. Dawes—will you take the chair?"
He beckoned to the colliery manager, who automatically obeyed him. The room broke into a hubbub, men and women pressing round Meynell as he made his way to the door. But he put them aside, gently and cheerfully.
"Decide it for yourselves!" he said with his familiar smile. "It is your right."
And in another moment, the door had opened and shut, and he was gone.
* * * * *
He had no sooner disappeared than a tumultuous scene developed in theChurch room.
Beswick, the sub-agent and local preacher, a sandy-haired, spectacled, and powerfully built man, sprang on to the platform, to the right hand of Dawes, and at last secured silence by a passionate speech in defence of Meynell and in denunciation of the men who in order to ruin him ecclesiastically were spreading these vile tales about him "and a poor lady that has done many a good turn to the folk of this village, and nothing said about it too!"
"Don't you, sir"—he said, addressing Barron with a threatening finger—"don't you come here, telling us what to think about the man we've known for twenty years in this parish! The people that don't know Richard Meynell may believe these things if they please—it'll be the worse for them! But we've seen this man comforting and uplifting our old people in their last hours—we've seen him teaching our children—and giving just a kind funny word now an' again to keep a boy or a girl straight—aye, an' he did it too—they knew he had his eye on 'em! We've seen him go down these pits, when only a handful would risk their lives with him, to help them as was perhaps past hope. We've seen him skin himself to the bone that other men might have plenty—we've heard him Sunday after Sunday. Weknowhim!" The speaker brought one massive hand down on the other with an emphasis that shook the room. "Don't you go talking to us! If Richard Meynell won't go to law with you and the likes of you, sir, he's got his reasons, and his good ones, I'll be bound. And don't you, my friends"—he turned to the room—"don't you be turned back from this furrow you've begun to plough. You stick to your man! If you don't, you're fools, aye, and ungrateful fools too! You know well enough that Albert Beswick isn't a parson's man! You know that I don't hold with Mr. Meynell in many of his views. There's his views about 'election,' and the like o' that—quite wrong, in my 'umble opinion. But what does that matter? You know that I never set foot in Upcote Church till three years ago—that bishops and ceremonies are nought to me—that I came to God, as many of you did, by the Bible class and the penitent form. But I declare to you that Richard Meynell, and the men with him, areout for a big thing!They're out for breaking down barriers and letting in light. They're out for bringing Christian men together and letting them worship freely in the old churches that our fathers built. They're out for giving men and women new thoughts about God and Christ, and for letting them put them into new words, if they want to. Well, I say again, it'sa big thing! And Satan's out, too, for stopping it! Don't you make any mistake about it! This bad business—of these libels that are about—is one of the obstacles in our race he'll trip us up on, if he can. Now I put it to you—let us clear it out o' the way this very night, as far as we're concerned! Let us send the Rector such a vote of confidence from this meeting as'll show him fast enough where he stands in Upcote—aye, and show others too! And as for these vile letters that are going round—I'd give my right hand to know the man who wrote them!—and the story that you, sir"—he pointed again to Barron—"say you took from poor Judith Sabin when her mind was clouded and she near her end—why, it's base minds that harbour base thoughts about their betters! He shall be no friend of mine—that I know—that spreads these tales. Friends and neighbours, let us keep our tongues from them—and our children's tongues! Let us show that we can trust a man that deserves our trust. Let us stand by a good man that's stood by us; and let us pray God to show the right!"
The greater part of the audience, sincerely moved, rose to their feet and cheered. Barron endeavoured to reply, but was scarcely listened to. The publican East sat twirling his hat in his hands, sarcastic smiles going out and in upon his fat cheeks, his furtive eyes every now and then consulting the tall spinster who sat beside him, grimly immovable, her spectacled eyes fixed apparently on the lamp above the platform.
Flaxman wished to speak, but was deterred by the reflection that as a newcomer in the district he had scarcely a valid right to interfere. He and Rose stayed till the vote of confidence had been passed by a large majority—though not so large as that which had accepted the new Liturgy—after which they drove home rather depressed and ill at ease. For in truth the plague of anonymous letters was rather increasing than abating. Flaxman had had news that day of the arrival of two more among their own country-house acquaintance of the neighbourhood. He sat down, in obedience to a letter from Dornal, to write a doleful report of the meeting to the Bishop.
* * * * *
Meynell received the vote of confidence very calmly, and wrote a short note of thanks to Beswick. Then for some weeks, while the discussion of his case in its various aspects, old and new, ran raging through England, he went about his work as usual, calm in the centre of the whirlwind, though the earth he trod seemed to him very often a strange one. He prepared his defence for the Court of Arches; he wrote for theModernist; and he gave as much mind as he could possibly spare to the unravelling of Philip Meryon's history.
In this matter, however, he made but very slow and disappointing progress. He became more and more convinced, and his solicitor with him, that there had been a Scotch marriage some eighteen months before this date between Meryon and the sister of a farmer in the Lothians, with whom he had come in contact during a fishing tenancy. But what appeared in the course of investigation was that the woman concerned and all her kindred were now just as anxious—aided by the ambiguities of the Scotch marriage law—to cover up and conceal the affair as was Meryon himself. She could not be got to put forward any claim; her family would say nothing; and the few witnesses hitherto available were tending to disappear. No doubt Philip was at work corrupting them; and the supposed wife was evidently quite willing, if not eager, to abet him.
Every week he heard from Mary, letters which, written within bounds fully understood by them both and never transgressed, revealed to him the tremulous tenderness and purity of the heart he knew—though he would not confess it to himself—he had conquered. These letters became to him the stay of life, the manna which fed him, the water of healing and strength. It was evident that, according to his wish, she did not know and was determined not to know the details of his struggle; and nothing helped him more than the absolute trust of her ignorance.
He heard also constantly from Alice Puttenham. She, too, poor soul—but how differently!—was protecting herself as best she could from an odious knowledge.
"Edith writes to me, full of terrible things that are being said in England; but as I can do nothing, and must do nothing according to you, I do not read her letters. She sends me a local newspaper sometimes, scored with her marks and signs that are like shrieks of horror, and I put it in the fire. What I suffer I will keep to myself. Perhaps the worst part of every day comes when I take Hester out and amuse her in this gay Paris. She is so passionately vital herself, and one dreads to fail her in spirits or buoyancy.
"She is very well and wonderfully beautiful; at present she is having lessons in dancing and elocution, and turning the heads of her teachers. It is amusing—or would be amusing, to any one else than me—to see how the quiet family she is with clucks after her in perpetual anxiety, and how cavalierly she treats them. I think she is fairly happy; she never mentions Meryon's name; but I often have a strange sense that she is looking for some one—expects some one. When we turn into a new street, or a new alley of the Bois, I have sometimes seemed to catch a wildlisteningin her face. I live only for her—and I cannot feel that it matters to her in the least whether I do or not. Perhaps, some day. Meanwhile you may be sure I think of nothing else. She knows nothing of what is going on in England—and she says she adores Paris."
* * * * *
One night in December Meynell came in late from a carpentering class of village boys. The usual pile of letters and books awaited him, and he began upon them reluctantly. As he read them, and put them aside, one by one, his face gradually changed and darkened. He recalled a saying of Amiel's about the French word "consideration"—what it means to a man to have enjoyed unvarying and growing "consideration" from his world; and then, suddenly, to be threatened with the loss of it. Life and consciousness drop, all in a moment, to a lower and a meaner plane.
Finally, he lit on a letter from one of his colleagues on the Central Modernist Committee. For some months it had been a settled thing that Meynell should preach the sermon in Dunchester Cathedral on the great occasion in January when the new Liturgy of the Reform was to be inaugurated with all possible solemnity in one of England's most famous churches.
His correspondent wrote to suggest that after all the sermon would be more fitly entrusted to the Modernist Bishop of Dunchester himself. "He has worked hard, and risked much for us. I may say that inquiries have been thrown out, and we find he is willing."
No apology—perfunctory regrets—and very little explanation! Meynell understood.
He put the letter away, conscious of a keenly smarting mind. It was now clear to him that he had made a grave misreckoning; humiliating, perhaps irreparable. He had counted, with a certain confident simplicity, on the power of his mere word, backed by his character and reputation, to put the thing down; and they were not strong enough. Barron's influence seemed to him immense and increasing. A proud and sensitive man forced himself to envisage the possibility of an eventual overthrow.
He opened a drawer in order to put away the letter. The drawer was very full, and in the difficulty of getting it out he pulled it too far and its contents fell to the floor. He stooped to pick them up—perceived first the anonymous letter that Barron had handed to him, the letter addressed to Dawes; and then, beneath it, a long envelope deep in dust—labelled "M.B.—Keep for three years." He took up both letter and envelope with no distinct intention. But he opened the anonymous letter, and once more looked searchingly at the handwriting.
Suddenly an idea struck him. With a hasty movement, he lifted the longenvelope and broke the seal. Inside was a document headed, "AConfession." And at the foot of it appeared a signature—"MauriceBarron."
Meynell put the two things together—the "confession" and the anonymous letter. Very soon he began to compare word with word and stroke with stroke, gradually penetrating the disguise of the later handwriting. At the end of the process he understood the vague recollection which had disturbed him when he first saw the letter.
He stood motionless a little, expressions chasing each other across his face. Then he locked up both letters, reached a hand for his pipe, called a good night to Anne, who was going upstairs to bed, and with his dogs about him fell into a long meditation, while the night wore on.
It was in the week before Christmas that Professor Vetch—the same Professor who had been one of the Bishop's Commission of Inquiry in Richard Meynell's case—knocked one afternoon at Canon France's door to ask for a cup of tea. He had come down to give a lecture to the Church Club which had been recently started in Markborough in opposition to the Reformers' Club; but his acceptance of the invitation had been a good deal determined by his very keen desire to probe the later extraordinary developments of the Meynell affair on the spot.
France was in his low-ceiled study, occupied as usual with drawers full of documents of various kinds; most of them mediaeval deeds and charters which he was calendaring for the Cathedral Library. His table and the floor were littered by them; a stack of the Rolls publications was on his right hand; a Dugdale's "Monasticon" lay open at a little distance; and curled upon a newspaper beside it lay a gray kitten. The kitten had that morning upset an inkstand over three sheets of the Canon's laborious handwriting. At the time he had indeed dropped her angrily by the scruff of the neck into a wastepaper basket to repent of her sins; but here she was again, and the Canon had patiently rewritten the sheets.
There were not many softnesses in the Canon's life. The kitten was one; of the other perhaps only his sister, nearly as old as himself, who lived with him, was aware. Twenty years before—just after his appointment to the canonry—he had married a young and—in the opinion of his family—flighty wife, who had lived a year and then died. She had passed like a spring flower; and after a year or two all that was remembered about her was that she had chosen the drawing-room paper, which was rather garishly pink, like her own cheeks. In the course of time the paper had become so discoloured and patchy that Miss France was ashamed of it. For years her brother turned a deaf ear to her remarks on the subject. At last he allowed her to repaper the room. But she presently discovered that close to the seat he generally occupied in the drawing-room of an evening there was a large hole in the new paper made by the rubbing and scraping of the Canon's fingers as he sat at tea. Through it the original pink reappeared. More than once Miss France caught her brother looking contentedly at his work of mischief. But she dared not speak of it to him, nor do anything to repair the damage.
As France perceived the identity of the visitor whom his old manservant was showing into the study, a slight shade of annoyance passed over his face. But he received the Professor civilly, cleared a chair of books in order that he might sit down, and gave a vigorous poke to the fire.
The Professor did not wish to appear too inquisitive on the subject of Meynell, and he therefore dallied a little with matters of Biblical criticism. France, however, took no interest whatever in them; and even an adroit description of a paper recently read by the speaker himself at an Oxford meeting failed to kindle a spark. Vetch found himself driven upon the real object of his visit.
He desired to know—understanding that the Canon was an old friend ofHenry Barron—where the Meynell affair exactly was.
"Am I an old friend of Henry Barron?" said France slowly.
"He says you are," laughed the Professor. "I happened to go up to town in the same carriage with him a fortnight ago."
"He comes here a good deal—but he never takes my advice," said France.
The Professor inquired what the advice had been.
"To let it alone!" France looked round suddenly at his companion. "I have come to the conclusion," he added dryly, "that Barron is not a person of delicacy."
The Professor, rather taken aback, argued on Barron's behalf. Would it have been seemly or right for a man—a Churchman of Barron's prominence—to keep such a thing to himself at such a critical moment? Surely it had an important bearing on the controversy.
"I see none," said France, a spark of impatience in the small black eyes that shone so vividly above his large hanging cheeks. "Meynell says the story is untrue."
"Ah! but let him prove it!" cried the Professor, his young-old face flushing. "He has made a wanton attack upon the Church; he cannot possibly expect any quarter from us. We are not in the least bound to hold him immaculate—quite the contrary. Men of that impulsive, undisciplined type are, as we all know, very susceptible to woman."
France faced round upon his companion in a slow, contemptuous wonder.
"I see you take your views from the anonymous letters?"
The Professor laughed awkwardly.
"Not necessarily. I understand Barron has direct evidence. Anyway, let Meynell take the usual steps. If he takes them successfully, we shall all rejoice. But his character has been made, so to speak, one of the pieces in the game. We are really not bound to accept it at his own valuation."
"I think you will have to accept it," said France.
There was a pause. The Professor wondered secretly whether France too was beginning to be tarred with the Modernist brush. No!—impossible. For that the Canon was either too indolent or too busy.
At last he said:
"Seriously, I should like to know what you really think."
"It is of no importance what I think. But what suggests itself, of course, is that there is some truth in the story, but that Meynell is not the hero. And he doesn't see his way to clear himself by dishing other people."
"I see." The obstinacy in the smooth voice rasped France. "If so, most unlucky for him! But then let him resign his living, and go quietly into obscurity. He owes it to his own side. For them the whole thing is disaster. Hemusteither clear himself or go."
"Oh, give him a little time!" said France sharply, "give him a little time." Then, with a change of tone—"The anonymous letters, of course, are the really interesting things in the case. Perhaps you have a theory about them?"
The Professor shrugged his shoulders.
"None whatever. I have seen three—including that published in thePost. I understand about twenty have now been traced; and that they grow increasingly dramatic and detailed. Evidently some clever fellow—who knows a great deal—with a grudge against Meynell?"
"Ye—es," said France, with hesitation.
"You suspect somebody?"
"Not at all. It is a black business."
Then with one large and powerful hand, France restrained the kitten, who was for deserting his knee, and with the other he drew toward him the folio volume on which he had been engaged when the Professor came in.
Vetch took the hint, said a rather frosty good-bye, and departed.
"A popinjay!" said France to himself when he was left alone, thinking with annoyance of the Professor's curly hair, of his elegant serge suit, and the gem from Knossos that he wore on the little finger of his left hand. Then he took up a large pipe which lay beside his books, filled it, and hung meditatively over the fire. He was angry with Vetch, and disgusted with himself.
"Why haven't I given Meynell a helping hand? Why did I talk like that to Barron when he first began this business? And why have I let him come here as he has done since—without telling him what I really thought of him?"
He fell for some minutes into an abyss of thought; thought which seemed to range not so much over the circumstances connected with Meynell as over the whole of his own past.
But he emerged from it with a long shake of the head.
"My habits are my habits!" he said to himself with a kind of bitter decision, and laying down his pipe he went back to his papers.
* * * * *
Almost at the same moment the Bishop was interviewing Henry Barron in the little book-lined room beyond the main library, which he kept for the business he most disliked. He never put the distinction into words, but when any member of his clergy was invited to step into the farther room, the person so invited felt depressed.
Barron's substantial presence seemed to fill the little study, as, very much on his defence, he sattête-à-têtewith the Bishop. He had recognized from the beginning that nothing of what he had done was really welcome or acceptable to Bishop Craye. While he, on his side, felt himself a benefactor to the Church in general, and to the Bishop of Markborough in particular, instinctively he knew that the Bishop's taste ungratefully disapproved of him; and the knowledge contributed an extra shade of pomposity to his manner.
He had just given a sketch of the church meeting at Upcote, and of the situation in the village up to date. The Bishop sat absently patting his thin knees, and evidently very much concerned.
"A most unpleasant—a most painful scene. I confess, Mr. Barron, I think it would have been far better if you had avoided it."
Barron held himself rigidly erect.
"My lord, my one object from the beginning has been to force Meynell into the open. For his own sake—for the parish's—the situation must be brought to an end, in some way. The indecency of it at present is intolerable."
"You forget. The trial is only a few weeks off. Meynell will certainly be deprived."
"No doubt. But then there is the Privy Council Appeal. And even when he is deprived, Meynell does not mean to leave the village. He has made all his arrangements to stay and defy the judgment. Wemustprove to him, even if we have to do it with what looks like harshness, that until he clears himself of this business this diocese at least will have none of him!"
"Why, the great majority of the people adore him!" cried the Bishop. "Andmeanwhile I understand the other poor things are already driven away.They tell me the Fox-Wiltons' house is to let, and Miss Puttenham gone toParis indefinitely."
Barron slightly shrugged his shoulders. "We are all very sorry for them, my lord. It is indeed a sad business. But we must remember at the same time that all these persons have been in a conspiracy together to impose a falsehood on their neighbours; and that for many years we have been admitting Miss Puttenham to our house and our friendship—to the companionship of our daughters—in complete ignorance of her character."
"Oh, poor thing! poor thing!" said the Bishop hastily. "The thought of her haunts me. She must know what is going on—or a great deal of it—though indeed I hope she doesn't—I hope with all my heart she doesn't! Well, now, Mr. Barron—you have written me long letters—and I trust that you will allow me a little close inquiry into some of these matters."
"The closer the better, my lord."
"You have not as yet come to any opinion whatever as to the authorship of these letters?"
Barron looked troubled.
"I am entirely at a loss," he said, emphatically. "Once or twice I have thought myself on the track. There is that man East, whose license Meynell opposed—"
"One of the 'aggrieved parishioners'," said the Bishop, raising his hands and eyebrows.
"You regret, my lord, that we should be mixed up with such a person? So do I. But with a whole parish in a conspiracy to support the law-breaking that was going on, what could we do? However, that is not now the point. I have suspected East. I have questioned him. He showed extraordinary levity, and was—to myself personally—what I can only call insolent. But he swore to me that he had not written the letters; and indeed I am convinced that he could not have written them. He is almost an illiterate—can barely read and write. I still suspect him. But if he is in it, it is only as a tool of some one else."
"And the son—Judith Sabin's son?"
"Naturally, I have turned my mind in that direction also. But John Broad is a very simple fellow—has no enmity against Meynell, quite the contrary. He vows that he never knew why his mother went abroad with Lady Fox-Wilton, or why she went to America; and though she talked a lot of what he calls 'queer stuff' in the few hours he had with her before my visit, he couldn't make head or tail of a good deal of it, and didn't trouble his head about it. And after my visit, he found her incoherent and delirious. Moreover, he declared to me solemnly that he knew nothing about the letters; and I certainly have no means of bringing it home to him."
The Bishop's blue eyes were sharply fixed upon the speaker. But on the whole Barron's manner in these remarks had favourably impressed his companion.
"We come then"—he said gravely—"to the further question which you will, of course, see will be asked—must be asked. Can you be certain that your own conversation—of course quite unconsciously on your part—has not given hints to some person, some unscrupulous third person, an enemy of Meynell's, who has been making use of information he may have got from you to write these letters? Forgive the inquiry—but you will realize how very important it is—for Church interests—that the suit against Meynell in the Church Courts should not be in any way mixed up with this wretched and discreditable business of the anonymous letters!"
Barron flushed a little.
"I have of course spoken of the matter in my own family," he said proudly. "I have already told you, my lord, that I confided the whole thing to my son Stephen very early in the day."
The Bishop smiled.
"We may dismiss Stephen I think—the soul of honour and devoted toMeynell. Can you remember no one else?"
Barron endeavoured to show no resentment at these inquiries. But it was clear that they galled.
"The only other members of my household are my daughter Theresa, and occasionally, for a week or two, my son Maurice. I answer for them both."
"Your son Maurice is at work in London."
"He is in business—the manager of an office," said Barron stiffly.
The Bishop's face was shrewdly thoughtful. After a pause he said:
"You have, of course, examined the handwriting? But I understand that recently all the letters have been typewritten?"
"All but two—the letter to Dawes, and a letter which I believe was received by Mrs. Elsmere. I gave the Dawes letter to Meynell at his request."
"Having failed to identify the handwriting?"
"Certainly."
Yet, even as he spoke, for the first time, a sudden misgiving, like the pinch of an insect, brushed Barron's consciousness. He had not, as a matter of fact, examined the Dawes letter very carefully, having been, as he now clearly remembered, in a state of considerable mental excitement during the whole time it was in his possession and thinking much more of the effect of the first crop of letters on the situation, than of the details of the Dawes letter itself. But he did remember, now that the Bishop pressed him, that when he first looked at the letter he had been conscious of a momentary sense of likeness to a handwriting he knew; to Maurice's handwriting, in fact. But he had repelled the suggestion as absurd in the first instance, and after a momentary start, he angrily repelled it now.
The Bishop emerged from a brown study.
"It is a most mysterious thing! Have you been able to verify the postmarks?"
"So far as I know, all the letters were posted at Markborough."
"No doubt by some accomplice," said the Bishop. He paused and sighed.Then he looked searchingly, though still hesitatingly, at his companion.
"Mr. Barron, I trust you will allow me—as your Bishop—one little reminder. As Christians, we must be slow to believe evil."
Barron flushed again.
"I have been slow to believe it, my lord. But in all things I have put the Church's interest first."