“You hardly ever come to town, I know, my dear Sidney,” his letter ran, “but I really wish you would come now. It would make you prouder than you have ever been of both your children, if you saw them here. London, I am speaking quite seriously, has gone off its head about them. And, indeed, I’m sure I don’t wonder. They are absolutely entrancing; their enjoyment of it all is the most infectious thing I ever saw, and we play ridiculous round games after dinner instead of grumbling at each other over Bridge. And their looks! Helen has taken the shine out of all thedébutantes, and yet not one of them seems to hate her for it.“This, however, is frivolous; but I want to tell you very seriously what an extraordinary impression Martin’s musical abilities have made. He played the other night at Yorkshire’s house, and I assure you all the musical lights of London simply hung on his hands. I know nothing about it myself; but when you find a great pianist and a great musician like Karl Rusoff listening, absorbed, to a young man of twenty-three, whom nobody has hitherto ever heard of, one cannot help attaching some weight to it. Others, too, so Frank tells me, have been no less enthusiastic about him, but they are only names to you and me.“Well, this is not entirely unasked advice, for I remember at Chartries a fortnight ago you consulted me about Martin and hisfuture. And now it seems to me there is really no choice. He must be a musician; you cannot take the responsibility of trying to render unfruitful a gift like his. Nor would it be any good; he is bound to be one.“Now, my dear Sidney, if there is any difficulty about expense, for I gather he must study exclusively for some time, pray do not give a thought to it. I will most gladly defray all expenses connected with him. Pray let me hear from you as soon as possible on the subject; and if you can run up to town for a day or two, you will see for yourself, and be a most welcome guest at the house of“Your affectionate brother,“Flintshire.”
“You hardly ever come to town, I know, my dear Sidney,” his letter ran, “but I really wish you would come now. It would make you prouder than you have ever been of both your children, if you saw them here. London, I am speaking quite seriously, has gone off its head about them. And, indeed, I’m sure I don’t wonder. They are absolutely entrancing; their enjoyment of it all is the most infectious thing I ever saw, and we play ridiculous round games after dinner instead of grumbling at each other over Bridge. And their looks! Helen has taken the shine out of all thedébutantes, and yet not one of them seems to hate her for it.
“This, however, is frivolous; but I want to tell you very seriously what an extraordinary impression Martin’s musical abilities have made. He played the other night at Yorkshire’s house, and I assure you all the musical lights of London simply hung on his hands. I know nothing about it myself; but when you find a great pianist and a great musician like Karl Rusoff listening, absorbed, to a young man of twenty-three, whom nobody has hitherto ever heard of, one cannot help attaching some weight to it. Others, too, so Frank tells me, have been no less enthusiastic about him, but they are only names to you and me.
“Well, this is not entirely unasked advice, for I remember at Chartries a fortnight ago you consulted me about Martin and hisfuture. And now it seems to me there is really no choice. He must be a musician; you cannot take the responsibility of trying to render unfruitful a gift like his. Nor would it be any good; he is bound to be one.
“Now, my dear Sidney, if there is any difficulty about expense, for I gather he must study exclusively for some time, pray do not give a thought to it. I will most gladly defray all expenses connected with him. Pray let me hear from you as soon as possible on the subject; and if you can run up to town for a day or two, you will see for yourself, and be a most welcome guest at the house of
“Your affectionate brother,“Flintshire.”
But, in spite of these appeals and assaults, Mr. Challoner shewed as yet no definite signs of yielding. To Lady Sunningdale his punctilious answers seemed mere frigid stupidity, and she had not the smallest or vaguest comprehension of the struggle that was going on in his mind. She could not understand that there was any choice to be made, still less that the choice could be a hard one, in determining whether Martin should once and for all close his dictionaries and open his piano, nor, had Mr. Challoner troubled to explain to her the deep mortification that Martin’s ill-success in classical fields had given him, would she have been able to understand it. Karl Rusoff beckoned to him, and it passed her comprehension that his father should not, so to speak, throw him into the musician’s arms. She could not, in fact, with all her acuteness, imagine in faintest outline any picture of the deep and real perplexity which Mr. Challoner was going through, a perplexity which for hours together tightened his mouth and ruled deep creases between the thick, black lines of his eyebrows. The serious talks, too, whichhe had with his sister evening after evening, between dinner and prayers, and the temporary abolition of Patience, would have seemed to her, if she had heard them, meaningless; they might as well have been conducted in a foreign tongue of which she knew neither alphabet, grammar, or vocabulary.
One such occurred on the evening when his brother’s letter arrived.
“I have heard from Rupert,” he said, “who wants me to run up to town. That, I am afraid, is impossible. I have too much to do, with Mr. Wilkins away for his holiday and the confirmation classes coming on. All the same, I should be glad if I could. His letter has troubled me rather.”
“What does he say?” asked his sister, folding her very dry, thin hands in front of her.
“He says such extraordinary things. He says London has gone mad about them. They are amusing themselves enormously, it appears,—at which, of course, I am rejoiced; but I can’t help feeling a little anxious, a little nervous. They are so young, so thoughtless. I don’t like the idea of people putting all sorts of foolish notions into their heads, making them think they are exceptional. I understand what people feel about them well enough. Dear children, I don’t wonder at everybody liking them. But I gravely doubt whether it is the best of them that people find attractive, whether it is not their thoughtlessness, their unthinking high spirits, their looks, which attract others. That is so dangerous for them.”
Clara Challoner put the pack of cards, which had been laid out ready for her Patience, back into their case. She did this without a sigh, because it was herduty to talk to her brother if he wanted to talk, and duty came before pleasure.
“That is exactly what I should be afraid of,” she said. “The qualities that you and I, Sidney, were taught, and rightly, to consider weaknesses and blemishes, such as irresponsible high spirits and careless gayety, seem to me now to be regarded as virtues. The younger generation shun earnestness and purpose in life as they would shun physical pain. Now, look at Lady Sunningdale, with whom Helen is staying——“
“Ah, give her her due,” said Mr. Challoner; “she is a very clever woman.”
“But to what does she devote her cleverness? To the mere pursuit of frivolity. I wondered, as I told you before, whether you were wise to let Helen go under her wing. She will be among people whose only aim in life is amusement. That is the one thing they take any trouble to secure.”
Mr. Challoner shook his head.
“I hope, I pray, I have not done wrong to let them go,” he said. “I did it with a definite purpose, in order to let them see that sort of life. Helen is not naturally frivolous. Look at her work here with her classes. How admirable she is, how they adore her, how her heart is in it. And to bring a girl up in ignorance of what the world is like does no good. Sometimes I wonder whether I have not sheltered her too much, kept her too much in this sweet place with all her duties and pleasures round her. But it is not of her that I am most thinking. She will come back unspoiled, with just the memory of a great deal of laughter and innocent amusement. No; it is of Martin. Rupert speaks chiefly of him.”
He took from his pocket the letter he had just received and read it to her.
“It is a great puzzle, a great difficulty to know what to do,” he said. “Even at Cambridge, where he is surrounded by all those grave, industrious influences, Martin does not seem to me to gain in depth or in set purpose of life. And if I consent to this, he is plunged into surroundings that so much more conduce to shallowness, to indulgence of the senses. Thank God, I believe my son is pure. But he is so impressionable, so easily stirred by enjoyment into thoughtlessness, that I am very much afraid.”
He got up and moved over to the window, where he stood looking out. In front the ground sloped sharply away down to the church-yard, where in the last fading light of evening the grey tower stood like a shepherd watching over its flock among the gravestones, below which rested the bodies of those entrusted in sure and certain hope to its hallowed care. Like all strong, hard-working men, Mr. Challoner was far too much occupied in the duties of his strenuous life to give much thought to death, except as to some dim, quiet friend whose hand some day he would take without fear or regret. But how terrible death could be, and how terrible it would be to him if through carelessness or biassed judgment he had chosen wrongly for one so dear to him, so peculiarly entrusted to his care. How terrible, again, would be that quiet friend if, through want of wideness in sympathy, he had tried to nip, to starve, to stifle a gift with which God had endowed his son.
Then suddenly with a wave of bitterness all that he had planned in long, sweet day-dreams, years ago,for Martin filled his mind as the harsh salt-water fills a creek. He had seen him a scholar, minute, painstaking, absorbed, perfecting himself in accuracy and subtlety of mind by the study of the great classical authors. He would be a fellow of his college, and his father, so he pictured to himself, would live over again his own college-days, which perhaps were the happiest in his life, when he saw Martin seated at the high-table among the masters of learning, or in professorial gown crossing the dear familiar grass of the quadrangle to the grave grey chapel on summer afternoons when the sun made jewels of the western panes, or in winter when the soft, mellow glow of candles shone dimly by the dark oak stalls and scarcely reached to the vaulted fans of the roof.
Then the picture took large lines. With the wealth and position that would one day be his, there was no limit to the influence that Martin might have in an England which even now seemed to him to be dozing in a stupor of contented unreligious, unintellectual enjoyment. There was need of a scholar, a man with a great position, a man of strong Christian faith to arise who, with a life unselfish in its aims, liberal, charitable, encouraging all sorts of godly learning and scholarship, should give to the world a strenuous, intellectual ideal again. How often in his prayers had that vision risen before him, that future which he desired so eagerly for his son, and which, so he believed, was humanly possible for him. Chartries should be again what it had been four generations ago, the centre of the scholarly, intellectual men of England. The accounts of those days in the history of Chartries read to him like a wonderful true fairy-story. Three or four timesin the year the house was filled by his great-grandfather with men of learning, and after breakfast and morning service in the chapel they would meet and discuss till dinner-time some exquisite point of scholarship or hear from some expert of the latest discoveries in the Roman forum. At these discussions his great-grandmother, a woman of culture and knowledge, had always been present. She had once even read a paper on the Elgin marbles, then but lately come to England, in which with a marvellous subtlety and accuracy of observation she had upheld the view, in the face of strong attack, that they were Greek originals, not Roman copies. This and all other papers read there were preserved among the printed “Horæ aureæ Chartrienses,” which was the record of these gatherings.
For Martin, then, he had dreamed a life like that,—the life of a cultured, scholarly, Christian gentleman, not monkish, but with a brood of growing children round him, busy at his books, busy in all matters of education, instant in prayer, and a churchman staunch to uphold the rights and the glory and the privileges of the Mother of his faith. Instead, he was asked to give permission that Martin, after years of expensive education, which had ended in utter failure, should devote himself to music, or as Mr. Challoner put it to himself, to playing the piano,—a profession which, to his mind, was akin to a sort of mountebank’s. Nor was that all. If it was only in intellectual attainment that Martin had shewn himself desultory and idle his father would, it is true, have deeply regretted it; but it would have been as nothing compared to the anxiety he felt with regard to that slackness and indolence of characterwhich he thought he saw in him. Left to himself, he would lounge the day away, not only without acquiring knowledge of any kind, but without a thought as to the strengthening and building up of his own character. He would scribble amusing sketches by the score, play on the piano by the hour, or, as like as not, lie on the grass and smoke, in purposeless waste of these infinitely precious hours of youth. Had he ever shewn interest in matters naval, military, or political, his father would gladly have seen him a soldier or a member of Parliament. But he was purposeless, desultory, without aims or interests, and so utterly unlike himself in every point of character that he could scarcely believe he was his son. And this estimate was no new one; ever since Martin was a little boy, through his school life and through his three years at the University, he had noticed the same drifting weakness, the same tendency to take any amount of trouble to save trouble. Nothing had made any impression on him,—not his confirmation, nor his growing responsibilities as he rose in the school, nor the duties attaching to the sixth form when he was dragged up into it, nor the widened life at Cambridge. It was all one to him. He had the pleasant smile when things went well, the yawn when effort was demanded of him, the eternal drifting towards the piano.
All this passed through his mind with the rapidity of long and bitterly familiar thought.
“They all urge me to do it, Clara,” he said; “yet they don’t know him as I do, and they are in no position of responsibility with regard to him. I can’t see my way at all. It is no use his continuing to waste his time at Cambridge,—and yet London for my poor,rudderless Martin! What influences may he not come under? Who is Rusoff, of whom Rupert speaks? But I must settle. It is no use putting off a decision that has to be made.”
He turned away with a sigh from the window.
“In any case, he had better come home for a day or two before he goes up to Cambridge,” he said, “so that I can talk it all over with him. In fact, they had both better come home. They have been in town a fortnight,—a fortnight of pure amusement. Besides, the Parish library wants looking after.”
“I can manage that, if you would like Helen to stop a little longer,” said his sister.
“No, dear, your hands are full enough already. Besides, Rupert’s letter has made me altogether a little uneasy. It is time they both came home.”
Helenwas seated at a big plain deal table in the village Room with a large array of volumes in hospital spread in front of her. Some wanted covers,—the cover peculiar to the books in the library of the Room was brown holland of a strangely discouraging hue, stitched over the back and sides, and turned down inside; others wanted stamp-paper over torn edges, and most wanted labels, bearing the title, gummed on to their backs. True, the very magnitude of the repairs needed was evidence that the library was at any rate appreciated by the parishioners, but the thought that her nimble hands were employed on a useful work did not at the present moment succeed in consoling her for the extremely distasteful nature of the occupation. Dispiriting, too, were her surroundings. On the walls hung the hateful maps of Hampshire and the Holy Land, scientific diagrams of the construction of flowers, and several charts of geological strata, shewing old sandstone, new sandstone, blue lias in which diamonds occur, and yellow bands of auriferous reef. A large, black, cast-iron stove stood in one corner, a bagatelle-board with torn cloth and tipless cues—these, too, would have to be mended after the library—occupied another table, and standing against the wall were low deal bookcases. The floor was covered with an affair of oil-cloth pattern and of corky texture, so indestructible as to be practically eternal, and a harmonium,happily not at all eternal but in advanced senile decay of cypher and dumb-notes and strange noises like a death-rattle, stood near the door. In spite of the wide-open windows, the characteristic smell of the Room hung heavy and stale on the air in this oppressive heat of an August day.
Helen had been back from London some three weeks, but in spite of her endeavours to settle down again into the village life, she had not been very successful in doing so. Duties which before had seemed tolerable enough had become frightfully tedious, while those which before had seemed tedious had become intolerable. Only the evening before her father had spoken to her about her general behaviourà proposof what he called the “falling-off” of the village choir. This meant that on the previous Sunday the organist had played one tune and the choir had sung another, which had displeased his unmusical ear, though Martin, who had been home from Cambridge for the Sunday, had listened with rapt attention, and said to Helen that he thought it extremely Wagnerian. This opinion, it may be remarked, he had not expressed to his father.
“I am afraid your pleasure-trip to London has unsettled you, Helen,” her father had said, “and you should really take yourself in hand, and make up your mind to recapture your habits of industry again. One is often disposed to be impatient with what one calls ‘little duties,’ but, dear girl, there is no such thing as a little duty. There is no such scale possible; duty is duty, and it is all great; and your eager and willing performance of all those things which may seem to you small is just as much a part of real life as tothe emperor the discharge of the cares of his empire. For instance, the hymn at the morning service on Sunday——“
“But it isn’t my fault if Mr. Milton plays the wrong hymn,” said Helen.
“But it ought to be impossible that such accidents should occur,” said her father. “You should think, dear Helen, in Whose Honour it is that we stand up to sing in church, and that knowledge constantly with you, you will find must elevate the smallest duty and raise the most insignificant piece of work into an act of praise and worship.”
“I will try, father,” said she.
“I know you will. Your holiday, all the mirth and innocent pleasure you have had in London, ought to help you to it. Those times of refreshment are given us not to make us discontented with our work, but to enable us to bring to it a rested and more active industry.”
But this morning it seemed to have brought to Helen nothing of the kind, but only a rested and more active doubt as to whether any of the things that filled her day could possibly, in the doing, be good for her, or when done for others. The “Sunday Magazine,” for instance, of which at this moment she was pasting the torn pages, seemed to her to be singularly ill adapted to do anything for anybody. There was an essay on the habits of mice, another on the temptations of engine-drivers; answers to correspondents dealt with lotions for the hair and the best treatment for burns; while in the forefront of each number was an instalment of a serial story connected with incredible ranches and mining in California. But, in spite of her conscientious doubts, her fingers movedapace, and the stack of healed and mended volumes at her right hand grew quickly tall.
She worked on till about twelve without pause, and then pushed back her chair and began carrying the mended volumes to their shelves. If only she could have entertained any hopes as to the utility of what she was doing she would have accepted her occupation with cheerfulness, for her nature was one of that practical kind which finds almost any pursuit, so long as it has definite and profitable aim, congenial. This afternoon again she would have to take choir-practice in the Room, and even with the eager desire to find “good in everything” she could not see who profited by the cacophonous result. And to add to her labours, the ill-inspired ambitions of Mr. Milton had caused him to learn with infinite pains and groanings of the organ in evening hours nothing less than an anthem for the Harvest Festival, and it remained for her to teach the choir. Hours would go to the repetition of it before that unmelodious festival; and even if it had been possible that relentless practice could make the choir tolerably secure of their notes (which it could not), yet the result, even if it were faultlessly performed, would be deplorable, since it was an anthem of that peculiarly depressing kind produced by minor organists, contained a fugal passage which was not a fugue, and, musically speaking, was of the most suburban and jerry-built construction.
Helen pushed back her hair, and, slightly amused at the greyness of her own thoughts, smiled to herself as she went backward and forward between table and bookcase. If only she had some one, another sister, to share in these farthing woes of a rector’sdaughter, she could have laughed at them; she and a friend, at any rate, could have read each other striking extracts from the mended leaves of the “Sunday Magazine.” Then suddenly she heard a step on the gravel outside, a step not her father’s, but strangely familiar, and the door opened.
“Why, Lord Yorkshire,” she said. “How delightful! Do come in.”
Frank had the enviable faculty of keeping comparatively cool on very hot days, just as on occasions heating and stirring to the spirit his nature seldom boiled. But to-day he was much hotter spiritually than physically, and Helen’s genuine pleasure to see him, which shone in her eyes and her smile and vibrated in her voice, did not reduce this genial heat.
“I have not done wrong,” he asked, “to come and interrupt you? They told me at the vicarage that you were here.”
“No, indeed, you have not,” said she, shaking hands. “Really, I was longing for an interruption. Look!” and she pointed to the titles of her mended stack of books.
He glanced at them with a smile.
“Really, without undue conceit, I don’t wonder,” he said. “And so this is the Room you told me about in London?”
His eyes wandered round, looking at the maps and the colored chart of geological formation, at the harmonium, the bagatelle-board. Then suddenly all the girl’s loyalty to her father rose in her.
“Ah, don’t laugh,” she said. “I can’t bear that you should laugh.”
He looked at her quite gravely.
“Heaven forbid,” he said. “Here, as in that map of geological strata, there is an auriferous reef. There is to be found a little belt of gold in everything which we may have to do, as long as it is not—not nasty. The trouble sometimes is to find it. Haven’t you struck it this morning?”
Helen sat down with a little sigh.
“No. Help me to dig a little,” she said. “Look at the soil! ‘Sunday Magazine.’ A serial. Then ‘Round the tea-table,’ with a receipt for muffins. ‘Muffins’ is torn. I must mend it. Missionary work among the aborigines of Somaliland. Oh, dear! What has it all got to do with me—this me?” she cried.
“Perhaps you have not yet mended enough to find out,” he suggested.
“That is possible. All the same I have mended a good deal. Now I am going to talk ‘Lady Sunningdale’ for two minutes; at least there are fifty distinct and separate things I want to say in one breath. First of all, please smoke; the Room smells of Sunday-school. Yes, and give me one,—if my father appears suddenly you must say it was you. Next, I suppose you have come from Fareham. How is Lady Sunningdale? And you’ll stop for lunch, of course. Next, Martin. He is going to leave Cambridge at the end of the long. He is going to settle in London in the autumn and study under Monsieur Rusoff. Oh, why wasn’t I born a boy? I suppose you can’t tell me. So once again about Martin, thanks. What a good time we had in London! I have never enjoyed a fortnight more. Is every one as kind as that always?”
“I think they always will be to you,” said he. “You two took London by storm. We all went intomourning and retirement into the country when you left.”
Helen laughed.
“You don’t look as if any grief particularly weighed on you,” she said.
“Clearly not now,” said he.
This was a little clumsily obvious, and it made her for the moment slightly embarrassed. She dabbed a label somewhat crooked on to the back of a work about missionary enterprise.
“Can you write a legible hand, Lord Yorkshire?” she said. “If so, and if you will be kind enough, please write ‘Sunday Magazine’ very clearly on twelve labels, with ordinal numbers, one to twelve, below the title. And when I’ve pasted them on, I shall have finished, and we’ll go out. Martin isn’t here, I am afraid. He is up at Cambridge till the end of the month.”
Frank obediently took a pen. He had suffered a slight repulse.
“A notable charm of life,” he remarked, “is its extreme unexpectedness. If I had been told by a chiromantist that I should shortly be writing the words ‘Sunday Magazine’—is that legible enough?—twelve times over with numerals beneath I should have distrusted everything else he said. Yet, here we go.”
Helen laughed. She was not quite certain whether she was pleased or not at the success with which she had turned the conversation on to topics so alien from herself as the “Sunday Magazine.”
“Quite so,” she said. “And if I had been told that I should be telling you to do so, I should haveconsidered it too wildly improbable to be even funny. Yet, as you say, here we go. Oh!”
Her ear had caught the sound of a step outside, and with a quick sweep of her arm she threw her cigarette out of the window.
“It’s you, remember,” she said, with whispered emphasis.
Frank’s cigarette, however, was still unlit, but he obligingly remedied this, and hurriedly blew out a cloud of smoke and silent laughter. Next moment the vicar entered. He paused for a second on the threshold, his nostrils surprised by this unusual aroma in the Room, but Frank instantly rose.
“How are you, Mr. Challoner?” he said. “I called at the vicarage, but every one was out. But hopes were held out to me that I might find some of you here, so I came. And behold me,” he added, rather felicitously, “a lay helper,” and he pointed to his half-written labels.
The vicar’s somewhat grim face relaxed. There was a neatness about Frank’s speech which his classical tastes approved.
“It is too kind of you, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. “Helen has impressed you into the service, I suppose. But—I am sure you will excuse me—would you mind finishing your cigarette outside? Our rules about smoking in the Room are stringent. You will excuse me.”
His eye glanced rather sternly, as he spoke, at Helen. This was one of the laxities he deplored in his children. She knew quite well that smoking was not allowed in the Room. The most infinitesimal moral courage on her part could have stopped it. Andhe himself knew how she would excuse herself, saying that she did not think it mattered in the morning when there was no one there. It was a rule of the place, however. He had made it; she knew it.
Frank instantly threw his cigarette out of the window.
“I am so sorry,” he said, “and I am afraid I never asked leave.”
“You have no idea what difficulties we have with even quite the small boys of the village,” continued Mr. Challoner. “Children of eight and nine think it manly to pull at an inch of bad tobacco. So I am sure you will not even mentally accuse me of faddiness. I gave up smoking myself entirely for that reason. You are too kind to help my daughter. You will lunch with us, of course.”
“Thanks, very much. I came over in the motor from Fareham, and Miss Helen had already been so good as to suggest——“
“Of course Martin is away from home, I am sorry to say. Helen has no doubt told you what has been decided.”
He glanced again at her as her quick, nimble fingers plied the work which an hour ago had seemed so distasteful. Certainly now there was in her no trace of that listlessness and want of application and vitality that a few days before had occasioned his loving rebukes. She was all vivid and alert; the fresh, bright colour shone like a sunlit banner in her cheeks, and, as he looked, he realised for the first time this was no longer “my little girl,” but a woman in her own right. Then like an echo to this came the thought that he was not the proprietor of his children. Adviser,corrector, pruner, cultivator he might be, but he could not make nor stop growth if “my little girl” decided otherwise.
This was something of a shock, though only momentary, and there was no perceptible pause before he spoke again.
“So you will bring Lord Yorkshire home to lunch, Helen,” he said. “I must go on to the village. I only looked in on my way. Half-past one, Lord Yorkshire. And afterwards you must try a cigar that I can give you. A year ago they wanted keeping, and now they have got it.”
For a little while after he had left neither spoke. A label had been put on crookedly and required readjustment; something else also had gone crookedly, and Helen had to readjust that, too.
“I’m afraid I must tell him I had been smoking,” she said. “Oh, dear, what a bore!”
“Is not that too transcendental honesty?” he said.
Her eyes flashed their wide light into his.
“Ah, no; there is neither less nor greater in honesty,” she said. “It is a great bore to be honest. I wish I wasn’t. No, I don’t wish that. It is one of the uncomfortable things which one can’t get on without.”
Suddenly he knew that a moment which for weeks had been approaching slowly rushed into the immediate future. He sat upright in his chair and quite unconsciously moved it nearer hers. His upper teeth closed on his lower lip, dragging it upward till it was white. Some mad current of blood sang in his ears, some sudden mistiness obscured his eyes, and she was but a dim, wavering form close to him.
“Honesty! honesty!” he said. “Helen!”
A long-drawn breath rose in her bosom, filling it, filling her, filling everything. A “Sunday Magazine” dropped from her hand, and she stood up. He too stood, and they faced each other for a long moment, and the new certainty became the only certainty there was.
“Oh, are you sure, are you sure?” she cried.
And there was no more need of words just then.
“Since you took the hare out of the trap,” she said. “I think I loved you for that.”
“Since you caught my finger in the trap——“
“And it bled,” said she.
“But you bound it up for me.”
She raised her face and held him by the shoulders, arms outstretched.
“And I remember saying to Martin that this was the sort of room in which nothing nice could happen. Oh, Frank, how has it happened? How has it happened?” she said.
“I don’t know how, my darling, but I know why.”
“Why, then?”
“Because it had to happen as far as I was concerned. Because it was you, in fact. How could it have been otherwise?”
Her eyes dropped a moment, and then looked full at him again.
“Is it real?” she asked. “And if it hadn’t happened, what would have become of us? Supposing you had not said ‘Helen’?”
“What else could I have said?”
“You might have said nothing.”
“Nothing? You and I here together, and nothing? I had been saying nothing too long,” he cried.
“No, not too long. It has all been perfect. And—and the ‘Sunday Magazine,’ and—and twelve labels, each with their numbers. Oh, I surrender,” she said.
“When you have utterly conquered?”
“Yes, both. And both of us.”
“There is only one.”
It was no descent to return to the unfinished work; the business of label-pasting rather was illuminated and made glorious, the putting of the books back in the shelves was a procession of love. Then came the return to the vicarage under the benediction of the sun and the intrusion of the presence of others; but as some telegraph from lover to lover throbs across hundreds of miles of arid and desert country that does not know what secret and blissful tenderness has passed over it, so from each to the other passed unnoticed glances that sent the electric current to and fro, and the words of common life were to them a cypher charged with intimate meaning.
It had been settled between the two that her father should be told at once, and accordingly, after lunch, when he went into his study to get Frank the promised cigar, with a view to coffee on the shady croquet-lawn, the latter followed him, while the two ladies went out, and told him.
“It is the happiest day of my life, Mr. Challoner,” he said, very simply. “Your daughter has accepted my devotion and love.”
Mr. Challoner turned to him quickly.
“Helen?” he said. “You? Lord Yorkshire, this is most unexpected. But I am charmed, delighted, at your news. And I risk the imputation of a father’s partiality when I say that I congratulate you most heartily.”
He shook hands warmly with the young man, and an emotion, very deep and heart-felt, vibrated in his voice.
“May the blessings of God be on you both,” he said.
For a single moment Frank felt as if the thermometer had dropped suddenly, but the sensation was so instantaneous that before he could analyze it it had passed, and Mr. Challoner still held his hand in his strong, firm grasp.
“And I think, I believe, she is a very fortunate girl,” he added. “When—when did you speak to her?”
“This morning only. We settled to tell you at once.”
“Thank you. That was right of you. How the years pass; why it seems only yesterday—— Well, well,—let us join them outside. Ah, a cigar for you. I declare I had forgotten.”
They crossed the lawn together, and as they approached the group of chairs underneath the box-hedge, Mr. Challoner quickened his step a little and advanced to Helen with hands outstretched.
“Helen, my dearest girl,” he said.
The glorified hours of the golden afternoon passed too quickly. Parish work soon claimed the vicar, who, as he passed through the village, gave noticein the school that the choir-practice was postponed till the next day; Aunt Clara betook herself to district-visiting, and the two were left alone again while the shadows began to grow tall on the grass. Sweet words and sweeter silence sang duets together, and from talk and silence they learned each other. For their falling in love had been an instinctive inevitable thing, and now that the gracious deed was accomplished, they explored each other’s nature in the excellent brightness of the love-light.
“Lazy, frightfully lazy,” said he. “Will you take that in hand for me? With the unaccountable delusion, by the way, that I am extremely hard-worked. I lie in bed in the morning, and groan at the thought of all that I shall have to do before I go to bed again. After a very long time I get up—and don’t do it. Helen, how could you have been in the world all these years and I not know it?”
“Oh, what does it matter now? For here we are, and for all the rest of the years we shall both know it. Yes, you shall get up at seven every morning. I will wake you myself.”
“That will be nice. And I needn’t get up at once? And what am I to do when I do get up?”
“Why, all the things you lie groaning about,” she said.
“But there aren’t any, really. At least nothing to groan about.”
“Now you’re talking nonsense. I don’t mind, though. You talked a good deal of nonsense on that Sunday, the hare-Sunday, you and Lady Sunningdale. How is she?”
“I forget. I forget everything but—this!”
She bent towards him.
“Am I really all that to you?” she asked.
“Yes, all. More than all.”
After a while she spoke again.
“And you have no back-thought? There is no dark place at all, no shadow of any kind?”
He looked up quickly.
“Yes, a possible shadow,” he said.
“Religion?”
“Yes; it had occurred to you, too, then. What do you expect?”
Helen sat with her chin resting on her hand a moment without replying.
“I don’t know,” she said, at length. “Don’t let us think about it just now, Frank. Let this afternoon be perfect. But I can tell you this, that though it may possibly be very painful, it will make no difference to me. I shall be very sorry—very, very sorry, but—— That ‘but’ is you, if you understand.”
“Thank you, my darling,” said he.
Mr. Challoner carried a very thankful heart with him as he went on his various errands that afternoon. To see Helen happily married was a constant desire and prayer of his, and though he would with willingness and thankfulness have given her to the keeping of any good man who could support her and a family, he did not attempt to disguise from himself the satisfaction he felt at her having made what is vulgarly called “a great match.” She had the gifts which should enable her to fill a great position, and to play a great part worthily was a bigger and a finer thing,—though he had said “duty was duty and there isneither less nor greater” than to work on a smaller scale. More than that, he had, with all his personal unworldliness, a good deal of pride of race, which Frank with his undeniable birth and breeding gratified. For the man himself, also, he felt a very decided liking and respect; he was an admirable landlord, in spite of his avowed laziness; he was generally considered to get through the day’s work with credit. In the House of Lords, also, he had already achieved a certain reputation for eminent common sense; and though to advocates of extremes his speeches might appear commonplace, that was rather the fault of those who held an extreme view. In other words, he lent his wealth and position to the support of moderation, much as Lord Flintshire had done.
Another matter dearer to Mr. Challoner’s heart than the obscurities of fiscal affairs was that Frank was, if not a pillar, at any rate a very sound piece of the fabric in the twin-towered building called “Church and State.” His patronage was always given to clergy of moderate views who did not indulge in what Mr. Challoner called “idolatrous and Romish practices,” while, on the other hand, he always voted dead against any attempt to subtract from the power or position of the English Church as by law established. “A staunch Churchman,” said Mr. Challoner to himself, as he walked with his long, rapid strides through the pathway hedged about with the yellowing corn.
For the time his disappointments about Martin were forgotten. There, it is true, his dreams about his boy’s future had been dispelled by a rude and bitter awakening, but here, at any rate, was something which he had never dreamed being realised, and withoutoverestimating the force and value of education and the influences which spring from environment and mode of life, he believed that Helen would assuredly live her mature and wider life on the lines in which she had been brought up. So in this marriage he saw a strong weapon forged of steel and wielded by a loyal hand in defence of his mistress the Church. He knew well the immense power which in England a territorial magnate is possessed of; how by the mere fact of his wealth and position he can control the course of wide issues. Hitherto Frank had done just that; he had always ranged himself on the side of education and religion, or rather he had ranged the inert weight of all he represented there, while he himself had keenly pursued the artistic things of life. But now Helen, with all the influence of her home and upbringing strong within her, would come to add life to this solid weight, making it an active and potent instead of a passive instrument of good. He almost envied the girl,—such opportunity was given to few only, and on her would the responsibility and the glory rest.
His district-visiting that afternoon had taken him into the farthest limits of his parish, and a three-mile walk into the glories of the sunset lay before him when he turned homewards. A flush of colour, vivid and delicate as the cheek of youth, incarnadined the west, over which a few light fleeces of crimson cloud hung like flames, and further up from the horizon a belt of aqueous green melted into the transparent blue of the sky overhead. The sun had already sunk behind the tawny line of swelling down, and the water-meadows by the Itchen, where his path lay, were fullof dusky and deepening shadows. Right down the centre ran the lucent stream, reflecting on its surface the blue and the green and the flush of the sunset sky. Rooks cawed their way homeward to where the elms of Chartries showed black against the luminous west, and to the left of the long gabled façade of house-roof rose the grey gothic tower of his church, the lodestar of his life, the mistress of his heart. That was the realest thing in all the world to him; all that was beautiful at this magic hour in earth and sky was but a path that conducted his soul thither; all that he loved on earth was only the shadow and faint similitude of the great love of his which centred there. Nothing had any real existence except in its relation to that; everything else was but an avenue to an anti-chamber in the house of many mansions. And as his eye first caught sight of the grey, cross-surmounted tower, he stopped a moment, uncovered his head, and with closed eyes stood still in a Presence more poignantly there with him than any. Through his impatience with ways and methods not his own, through his intolerance of that of which he had no ability of comprehension, through his instinctive dismissal of all that seemed to him unessential in life, whether it was the benediction of the evening hour, the piano-playing of Martin, the sweet eyes of Helen, through all, at moments like these, when his human emotions were most aroused, his view pierced triumphant and saw only the cross of Christ pointing heavenward. Towards that, and that alone, the essential nature of the man was directed, even as the compass-needle, though deflected and distracted by other neighbouring agencies, is essentially undeviating and loyal in its allegiance tothe north. His disapprovals, his censorious judgments, his want of sympathy for what he did not understand were only the husk of the man, and it was the very strength of his central devotion that made him intolerant of any who seemed to lapse in things great or small from his own measure of fervour. Extreme cases, indeed, the case of the Jew, the Turk, the infidel, he left with faith to the mercy of God, though his human comprehension did not see how they could be capable of receiving it. He did not know; he left them before the throne of Infinite Compassion, and turned his thoughts elsewhere, to his own work of ministering to the sick and needy, to the cultivation of the intellect, the usury of that sterling talent given to man, and all that should make a man more capable of worship, a fitter instrument in the hand of the great Artificer.
The rose colour in the west faded to the nameless and indescribable hue of the hour after sunset, a single spangle of a star flashed in the vault of velvet sky, and dusk, like the slow closing of tired eyes, fell layer after layer over field and copse and river. Lights began to twinkle in the cottages of the village; day with its joys and its work and its rewards was over, and rest was ordained for the world and its myriads. Instinctively the mood of the tranquil hour gained on him, his foot abated a little from the vigour of its stride, the active fervour of his brain cooled a little, and a very human tenderness rose and suffused his thoughts. Here in the church-yard, which he was now crossing, stood the plain marble slab with its lettering, now twenty-four years old, below which lay the remains of her who had been the one passion,short and sweet and bitter, of his life. How often in those years had he wondered, with aching longing for light, what was the design of that interlude, what was the correct reading, so to speak, of the passion that had for a year so absorbed and mastered and overwhelmed him. His wife and he had no spiritual affinity; his love for her had not raised and inspired him, and he, strong and loving as he had been, had not helped her with any success towards the strenuous and active service which he knew to be the bounden duty of every living soul. Had his passion, then, been merely a casual, carnal longing, a frailty of the flesh? Often and often he had been afraid to answer that question honestly, but to-night, as he paused for a moment by the grave, that doubt assailed him no longer, and instead a strange yearning and regret for a missed opportunity took its place. Had he dealt wisely and gently with that sun-lit child? Had he failed to realise what a child she was, and been harsh and deficient in tenderness to a little one?
His head drooped for a moment as he stood there, and then, with all the honesty of a nature as upright as a fir-tree, he answered it. He could not justly condemn himself: he had done his best according to the light that was given him. He had acted in a way he would have advised another to act,—he would act so again now. It had not been easy. Often he had longed to kiss her face into smiles again, and had been stern instead.
Then briskly again he left the grave, and in the gloaming stepped across the lawn into the long window of his study. The lamp was already there, trimmed and lit, his work was spread on the table inorderly array. There were still ten minutes remaining to him before he need dress for dinner, and from habit long-engrained he sat down at once to use them. He found his place, composed his mind to the topic on hand, and dipped his pen in the ink. But, contrary to habit, his attention wandered, and strayed back to the church-yard and until the dressing-bell sounded he sat there looking out of the window with unseeing eyes, questioning, questioning.
Threeglasses of claret during dinner and one of port with his dessert was Mr. Challoner’s usual allowance of alcoholic fluid, and, as a rule, neither his sister nor Helen took any. But to-night, in honour of the occasion, a half-bottle of champagne, to drink a toast in which two names were coupled, made its unusual appearance, and the vicar proposed the health in a voice which shook a little with feeling.
“God bless you both, my dearest girl,” he said, and drained his glass.
Afterwards, as if to endorse the felicity of the occasion, the malignancy of the cards was abated, and Aunt Clara’s Patience “came out” twice before prayers without a semblance of cheating on her part. Why she cared to play at all, if she cheated, had long been to Helen an unanswerable riddle, and was so still. But, in her dry and passionless way, to get out without cheating was a satisfaction to Aunt Clara. She was pleased also with the engagement of her niece, but her comparative reticence on that, as on the subject of Patience (she had said only “Fancy, Sidney, Miss Milligan came out twice!”), was due not, as in her brother’s case, to excess of feeling, but to the inability to feel anything at all acutely. The performance of her duties in the house and in the parish had been for years a sufficient emotional diet; from other influences, like a freshly-vaccinated person in respect of smallpox, she was immune. She alwayssaid “Good-night” the moment prayers were over, and did so on this occasion. But she kissed Helen twice. That corresponded to her observation to her brother about the Patience.
To-night, however, contrary to custom, the vicar lingered in the drawing-room instead of going back to his study, and, when her aunt was gone, Helen took this opportunity of getting her little confession made. He had beckoned her to the arm of the long, deep chair in which he was sitting, when she would naturally have followed her aunt upstairs, and took her hand in his, stroking it softly. Such a spontaneous caress was rare with him, and in spite of the enormity of her confession, she needed no large call on her courage to make it.
“There is one thing I want to tell you, father,” she said. “I hope you will not be very angry with me.”
Mr. Challoner pressed her hand gently. Now, as always, the confidence of his children was a thing immensely sweet to him, to get it unasked, pathetically so.
“What is it, dear?” he said. “I don’t think you need be afraid of that.”
“Do you remember this morning requesting Lord Yorkshire—Frank—not to smoke in the Room?” she asked.
“Yes, perfectly. And since I feel sure I know what you want to tell me, it did occur to me that you might, with a little courage, have asked him not to. You knew my feeling about it. But you have told me of your own accord, dear. So that is finished, quite finished.”
The temptation to say no more was extraordinarily strong, and to end this beautiful day quite happily withevery one—Aunt Clara had kissed her twice, which she usually only did on Christmas morning—was the childish impulse dominant in her. To-morrow she would deal with other things, one perfect pearl of a day would be hers,—an imperishable treasure. But the necessity of honesty, consecrated, as it were, by what had passed between her and Frank on the subject, conquered. For the last year she had occasionally smoked, and had never in the least desired to tell her father that she did. Yet now, somehow, perhaps because it was connected with him, she must. So she spoke.
“No, it is not quite finished,” she said. “I had been smoking, too.”
For a moment he almost failed to grasp this simple statement, then a school-master voice rapped out a question.
“You smoke?” he asked.
“Not often; not much,” she said, with the old childish awe of him suddenly returning.
“And who—— Did Martin teach you?” he asked, with an ironic emphasis on “teach,” at that fine word being put to such base uses.
“No; I asked him for a cigarette,” she said.
“And he gave it you?”
There was no reply necessary. He had dropped her hand, as if it had been a cigarette-end, but now he took it again.
“My dearest girl,” he said, “I do not want you for a moment to think that I make much out of a little; do not think that I regard it as morally wrong in any way. But think, Helen,—a girl like you smoking. Is it seemly? Is it not a horrid, a nasty habit? And inthe Room, too! There, there, don’t tremble, my dear. I am not angry.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“Let us dismiss it altogether, Helen,” he said. “You told me, anyhow, and I know it was hard for you to do that. But”—and he was father, responsible father, when he should have been friend—“but you knew my feeling about it. It was disobedient.”
All the time his heart was warmed by the thought that she had told him, yet his sense of duty, his responsibility towards his children, which was one of the most constant motives of his acts, made him say more. He did not want to preach, but he was incapable of not doing so.
“Yes, disobedient,” he said, “to what you knew I felt. And that Martin should give you a cigarette is as bad.”
“Ah, do not bring him into it,” she said. “I am stronger than Martin,—he had to give it me. Martin would always do what I asked him. Please do not write to him or speak to him about it.”
Then, at the thought of Martin, and of the constant, continual misunderstandings between him and her father, her own great happiness urged her to try to help him.
“I am much worse than Martin is, dear father,” she said; “much more disobedient, much,—‘The Mill on the Floss,’ for instance. I had been reading it.”
“And he had lent it you?” asked Mr. Challoner, quietly.
“No. I found it in his bedroom and took it. Oh, father—--“
The issues for each had deepened. The meaning of that exclamation was understood by him: it pleaded with him for Martin.
“I have always tried to be a good father to you both,” he said.
Then all that Helen had suppressed and striven not to have thought for years rose to the surface on this her first day of liberty. She had not let herself know how heavy the yoke had been till now, when her manumission was signed. But Martin still was in subjection. She stood up.
“I know that,” she said. “If I had not always known that I should not have cared. It is just that which makes it so sad. But we have both been afraid of you. We have concealed things from you because we were afraid of your displeasure. You know, Martin is awfully timid; he shrinks from what hurts. And we do not tell you everything even now.”
The thrill of pleasure that her unasked confidence had given him had pretty well died out. He felt also that there was something more coming.
“You or Martin?” he asked.
The tide was irresistible, sweeping her away. A thing which must be horribly painful to him had to be told her father to-day, to-morrow, or some time, and she suddenly knew that she must tell him now. Besides, here was a burden she could voluntarily bear for her lover, a pain, a difficult thing she could take on herself. And, woman all through, as she would have saved him anything from a toothache to a heartache, especially if the saving it from him meant the transference of it to her, she felt, in spite of the pain, an inward thrill and warmth at the thought that it wouldbe spared to Frank. A few minutes before, when Aunt Clara left the room, she would have gone too, if she had known that the little confession would lead on to this, but now the burning of her love, as when a furnace-door is thrown open, glowed with a whiteness that consumed all else.
“I, anyhow,” she said. “I have something which you must be told. And I choose to tell you instead of Frank.”
Her father got up also facing her. He was very grave, very still.
“Does it concern him?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it disgraceful?”
“No.”
He made one futile attempt to stop in the middle of the rapids into which he or she, he did not know which, had steered.
“Then, tell me nothing, Helen,” he said. “You say it is not disgraceful. That is quite sufficient for me when it comes from your mouth. I do not wish to be told either by him or you. There is no past that can be raked up—ah, I need not have asked you that. You would have turned from him with loathing if there had been that. For the rest I am satisfied. He has artistic tastes of which I have no knowledge, and with which no sympathy. He is honourable and of a great name, he is liked, respected; he is a man whom I would have chosen myself for you, and he has the interests and welfare of the church close to his heart——“
He stopped suddenly, arrested by the sudden whiteness of her face.
“Or what?” he asked.
“He is not even a Christian,” said Helen, simply.
Mr. Challoner did not reply at once. The habit of tidiness in him, unconsciously asserting itself, led him to put square the case of cards which his sister had used for her Patience. Then he turned down with his foot the corner of the hearth-rug which Helen’s dress, as she walked to the fireplace, had disarranged. Indeed, it had distressed him for some time; it was easy to trip on it. Then he spoke.
“And did you know that when you promised to be his wife?” he asked, with a scrupulous desire to be absolutely fair.
“Yes,” said she.
“Then, what are his religious opinions?” asked he, still scrupulous. “Does he believe in God?”
“No.”
“And you knew that all along?”
“I knew it on the day when, I think, I began to love him,” she said.
A sudden, superficial flow of bitterness, just as a light breeze will ruffle the surface of some huge wave, passed over her father.
“For that reason?” he asked.
Helen looked at him in amazement.
“I did not know you could have asked me that,” she said.
“And I, too, have much to learn about my children,” said he.
Helen’s eye flashed back at him. She was afraid no longer. The talk she had had with Frank on that memorable Sunday afternoon she had put away like stored provisions; often since it had been food to herthoughts, and it was now all eaten, digested, assimilated. The instinct of individualism had no doubt often been present to her mind before, but what he said then had made it blossom and fructify. He had said, in fact, perhaps no more than she had known, though without knowing she knew it; his words had been a taper to a gas-jet already turned on. Without the taper it might have continued to escape; the taper made flame of it. And in the light of it the figure “father” was shewn her as a man only, capable of using one vote, in opposition it might be to her own, but, however dear and intimate he was to her, and in spite of her parentage, education, and upbringing, he was still only somebody, not herself. And she, Helen, had to be herself.
“Yes; you are learning that they are people,” she said, in answer to his bitterness. “Martin and I are people. I must think for myself and feel for myself. Yes; I knew that Frank is what he is,—an atheist. And I love him.”
Mr. Challoner looked at her a moment with terrible, alien eyes, meeting her full gaze. Then he turned and went towards the door.
Instantly the daughter in her awoke.
“Father,” she cried, holding out her hands to him, “Father.”
But he passed out without turning, and she heard the door of his study opposite close behind him, and the click of a lock.
The finality, the sharpness of that click of well-oiled wards, brought home to the girl, even more than the bitter and burning words which had been said, what had happened, the unbridgeable breach that had openedbetween herself and her father. For, even now, distraught as she was with the agitation of the scene, so that she felt almost physically sick, she knew that she had acted in compulsory obedience to an instinct which was irresistible; she could not call back into her own control the love she had given. Whatever else beckoned, that to her was the strongest call. And equally well-known to her was the instinct in obedience to which her father had acted. Dear as his children were to him, there was something infinitely dearer, that which from the tower of the church had pointed upwards into the clear, sunset sky. No assertion of individualism made its voice heard there; the one immutable love claimed all allegiances.
Infinitely shocked and distressed as he was, Mr. Challoner did not suffer during the next half-hour nearly as keenly as Helen, for the idea that she would not eventually—after pain and struggle, no doubt—see as he saw never entered his mind. Indeed, after a few minutes the emotion predominant in him was pity for her at the necessity of the rejection of the human love offered to and accepted by her. She would be led to the light—not for a moment did he doubt that—and the suffering would ennoble and not embitter her. Then, out of pity for her, compunction at what he had done rose within him. Again he had been harsh and peremptory; not even the sacred cause he championed could justify that nor excuse his lack of gentleness. He had left her in anger, anger as he now acknowledged to himself partly personal in its origin. So, before half an hour was passed, he unlocked his door, and going upstairs to her bedroom, tapped softly.
Helen had had no more thought of going to bed than he, and she let him in at once.
“We did not say good-night, Helen,” he said. “We were both——“
She raised her eyes to him.
“Ah, don’t let us discuss it any more to-night,” she said.
“No, dear. I only wanted to say good-night to you, to—to say that I am sorry for leaving in the manner I did. You look very tired. Will you not go to bed.”
“Yes; soon perhaps.”
She kissed him, and stood silent a moment, fingering the lappel of his coat.
“If we did not care for each other it would be easier,” she said. “Poor father! Good-night, dear. Thank you for coming.”
It had been arranged that Frank should bring the motor over again next morning and drive Helen back to Fareham to lunch with Lady Sunningdale, and he made his appearance rather sooner than expected, having driven, as he acknowledged, a little over the regulation two miles an hour. Helen had heard the approach of wheels, and met him at the door. One glance at her face was enough to tell him that something, and what that was he easily guessed, had happened.
“Father is in,” she said; “he waited in on purpose to see you. Yes; he knows.”
“You told him? Well?”
“He said very little, but enough. Oh, Frank, it is very dreadful. He is my father. But all I said to you holds. He, you; that is what hurts so. It was awful telling him, too. But I had to.”
“My darling, why?” he asked. “You should have left it to me.”
Her eye brightened.
“Ah, that was one of the reasons why I didn’t,” she said.
“Oh, Helen! But you look tired, knocked up.”
“That doesn’t much matter,” she said. “Go to see him now, dear. You will find me on the lawn when you have finished. And, remember, it all holds. It was never shaken, not for a moment, even last night. And he came to say good-night to me afterwards; poor, dear father! I have always envied him for his strength till now; but now it is just that which will make him suffer so horribly.”
Frank felt in his coat pocket, and took a note out of it.
“From Lady Sunningdale,” he said. “She is delighted, and is telling everybody how she managed and contrived it all from the beginning.”
Helen took the note.
“Go now, Frank,” she said. “I can think of nothing till this is over.”
She strolled out on to the lawn again, and sat down in the warm shade of the box-hedge to read Lady Sunningdale’s ecstatic and desultory raptures. The scene the evening before, followed by a very restless night, full of half-conscious sleep and wide-eyed awakenings, had so tired her that weariness had brought a sort of healing of its own, dulling the keenest edge of her capacity for suffering. Breakfast had been a meal of ghastly silence, broken only by noises of knives and forks, loud in the stillness. Her father had only addressed her directly once, and that to say thathe wished to see Lord Yorkshire when he arrived. Breakfast over, she had written to Martin to tell him all that had happened; then Frank had come.
All sorts of awful, impossible situations flapped like horrible bats about her as she waited. She pictured her father insulting her lover; she pictured Frank, stung by some intolerable taunt, striking him; she pictured, with dreadful vividness, a hundred things that could not possibly be. All round her hummed the myriad noises of the summer noon, and the myriad scents of the flower-garden, where still the industrious sweet-peas were prolific, mingled, and were wafted in web of fragrant smell round her. It was a day of high festival in sound and smell and light and colour, a day of a brilliance that had again and again been sufficient to make her half crazy with the pure joy of living and sight of joyous life so abundantly manifested. But this morning she was deaf and blind to the myriad-voiced noon; for in these last twenty-four hours there had come to her a happiness transcending all she had ever felt and a bitterness of sorrow, marching side by side, and inextricably mingled with it, that was as immeasurably more poignant than any she had ever known as her joy transcended all the other joys of her very happy years. Whatever might happen, life could never again be enjoyed by her with theinsoucianceof girlhood: some finger had touched her as she smiled and dreamed in her twenty years of sleep and had awakened her. And a voice had said, “Wake; you are a woman; you shall love and suffer.” Yet, even now, while she shrank and winced under the pain, some secret fibre of her being welcomed it. She—her essential self—was the richer for it; life atlast had touched her sad, bitter, imperfect, but admirable life. Like a plant, she had been moved suddenly out of the warm shelter of a green-house. Hereafter the sun might scorch her, the wind tear her, the frost wither her, the rain lash her, but she was to know what it was to be rooted in the great earth, to grow, with no shelter in between, upward towards the heavens.
All this was certainly happening to her, but as yet she guessed but a small part of it. All that her reverie, when she had read Lady Sunningdale’s letter, told her was that she was acutely unhappy because her father would suffer; and in some tremulous, aërial way happy beyond all that she had ever guessed to be possible because she loved and was loved. The two feelings were inextricably intertwined; neither, as she knew them, could have existence without the other. And out of this tangled thicket of rose and thorn there emerged this new self of hers, in no selfish or egoistic mood, but very conscious, very vital, bleeding from the thorns, but breathing the inimitable odour of the roses.
A maid-servant with a message from the vicar roused her. Would she please to come into his study for a moment. She got up with a vague, dreadful sense that this had all happened before, but she could not remember the outcome, and as she walked across the lawn the terrible, impossible pictures again flashed through her head, like scenes of a magic-lantern staring out of blackness.
The aroma of tobacco as she opened the study door gave her a sudden, shallow thrill of comfort. But this was scarcely endorsed by the next impression.Mr. Challoner, always courteous, had no doubt suggested one of his excellent cigars, and Frank had accepted it. But the good-fellowship tacitly implied by the act was here omitted. The vicar stood with his back to the fireplace, flinty-faced; Frank sat in a big chair drawn close to the writing-table, the chair in which times without number Helen and Martin had sat together looking at Bible pictures after tea on Sunday. All the furniture of the study, the aromatic smell of leather bindings that hung there, the uncompromising tidiness of it, its orderly severity, the picture of the Roman forum, the glass paper-weight on the table, brought a sudden rush of associations into the girl’s mind now that she saw Frank there too; they were all so closely knit into the fabric of her life, so intimately suggestive of that stern, tall figure by the fireplace. And somewhere far away back in her brain her own voice, in a little childish pipe, whispered to Martin, “Papa’s cross about something. Is it you or me?”
She took a seat in silence, and the silence lengthened ominously. Frank was looking at her with a quiet, level gaze, full of love and full of pity, and she turned her eyes away, fearing that she would scream with tears or laughter if she allowed herself to look at him. And the voice that broke the silence was quiet and level also; the whole thing was deplorably well-bred. Insults, violence, all that she had pictured to herself, would have been a relief, a safety-valve for the bursting pressure that she knew existed beneath. But as yet there was none.
“I have sent for you, Helen,” said her father, “to choose.” He paused a moment. “Lord Yorkshire ison the one side,” he said, “I am on the other. We have settled it so.”