"Through the night of doubt and sorrow."
"Through the night of doubt and sorrow."
The organ pealed out, the congregation rose, and the hymn began. It so happened that as Vane was passing the chairs on which Enid and her husband were sitting with several friends, the last verse but one was reached.
"Onward therefore, pilgrim brothers,Onward, with the Cross our aid!Bear its shame, and fight its battle,Till we rest beneath its shade."
"Onward therefore, pilgrim brothers,Onward, with the Cross our aid!Bear its shame, and fight its battle,Till we rest beneath its shade."
At the words "Bear its shame and fight its battle," she looked up. Her eyes met Vane's for a moment; but there was no look of recognition in them. A sudden dart of pain seemed to shoot into her heart. This man, this prophet-priest, as he seemed to her now, had once been hers, her promised husband. How far away from her, how far above her was he now!
She had listened to the sermon with a double interest, interest in the man as well as in the wonderful words he had just spoken—words so simple in themselves, and yet spoken with such terrible force, a force so terrible that within the space of a few minutes it had shattered all her worldly ideals and destroyed the faith that she had been brought up in, changing her whole outlook upon the world.
She had been educated on the ordinary lines of conventional Christianity, and, until now, she had, like thousands of others, honestly believed herself to be a good Christian woman, just as she believed her mother to be. But, as it happened, there was that within her soul which instantly responded to the truth which she had heard to-day for the first time; and she saw that Vane was right, hopelessly, piteously right.
And then as the procession passed she looked at her husband. He had already sat down, and was getting his hat from under the seat. The procession streamed slowly out of sight into the vestry, and the congregation moved out into the aisles with much soft rustling and swishing of skirts and a subdued, buzzing hum of eager conversation.
As the three streams of well-dressed men and women converged towards the great doorway which led out into the street many began to ask themselves and each other if any one would obey the preacher's exhortation and send their carriages away. The carriages were lined up in the street just as they would be outside a theatre. Some of their owners got in and drove away, making very pointed remarks on the impropriety of bringing such subjects as carriages and horses into sermons and the length that young curates would go now-a-days to obtain notoriety. Others dismissed theirs and went away trying to look unconcerned; while other people stared after them, some smiling and others looking serious.
The Garthornes' victoria, drawn by a pair of beautiful light bays, drew up, and Garthorne put out his hand to help Enid in, but she drew back and said:
"No, thanks, I think I'll walk."
"Oh, nonsense, Enid!" he said impatiently. "Time is getting on, and we must have our turn in the Park. Everybody will be there, and this is about the last Sunday in the season. We haven't over much time either."
"I am not going into the Park, Reginald," she said decidedly. "I am going to walk straight home. You can go and do Church Parade if you like."
"All right, Tomkins, you can go home," he said to the coachman. "Mrs. Garthorne prefers to walk."
The coachman and footman touched their hats, and the victoria drove away.
"Surely to goodness, Enid," said Garthorne almost angrily, as they walked away together, "you are not doing this because Maxwell said it was wrong to use carriages on a Sunday! Good heavens, if we were to translate sermons into everyday life it would be rather a funny world to live in."
"Then what is the use of going to hear them, if they are not to be taken seriously?" she said, looking up quickly at him. "Why should they be preached, or why should we go to church at all?"
"Because it is the proper thing to do, I suppose, and because Society, whose slaves we are, makes it one of the social functions of the week," repliedGarthorne, who had as much real religion in his composition as a South African Bushman. "We men go because you women do, and you women go to show others how nicely you can dress, and to see what they have got on."
"My dear Reginald, that is about as true as it is original, and that is not saying very much for it. If we don't go to church for any other reasons than those it is merely mockery and wickedness to go at all. I was very glad to see that a great many people did send their carriages away. Next Sunday I hope they will have the decency to walk."
"Especially if the British climate, as it probably will, ends up the season with a pouring wet Sunday!" laughed Garthorne. "No, dear, those godly precepts are all very well when you read them in Sunday School books or hear them from the pulpit, and I am sure Vane put them most admirably to-day, although I confess I was slightly surprised to hear a really clever fellow like him preaching such hopelessly impossible nonsense. Of course I don't mean any offence to him—far from it, but really, you know, if theories like those could be put into practice they would simply turn the world upside down."
"I think you might have found a better word than nonsense," she replied a trifle sharply; "but the world of to-day certainly would have to be turned upside down or inside out to make it anything like Christian. That, at least, Vane—I mean Mr. Maxwell—taught us this morning."
"Christian according to the Reverend Vane Maxwell," he said, with the suspicion of a sneer. "Fortunately the Churches have agreed that such a violent operation is not necessary. By the way, though, won't Maxwell get himself into a howling row with the ecclesiastical powers that be! Justimagine the bench of Bishops standing anything like that!"
"Yes," she said quietly, "the preaching of the Sermon on the Mount in a fashionable London church! It does sound very terrible, doesn't it? And yet, after all, I suppose they can't take his orders away from him even for that. I wonder what would happen? It is sure to be in the papers to-morrow, and of course everybody will be talking about it."
"Yes," said Garthorne; "but if Master Vane thinks he is going to play Savanarola to this generation he will find that he has taken on a pretty large order. Are you quite sure you won't take a turn in the Park, even on foot?"
"No, I'd rather not, but don't let me keep you if you would like a stroll. I can get home all right."
"Well, if you don't mind, Enid, I think I will. There are one or two fellows I want to see particularly about something, so bye-bye for the present."
He raised his hat and turned back, and she went on towards the house in Queen's Gate with many strange thoughts in her heart.
Enid and her husband were by no means the only members of the congregation of St. Chrysostom who discussed Vane's sermon on their way home. In fact, whether people walked or rode home, it was the universal topic. Some discussed it with timorous sympathy; others, perhaps with more worldly wisdom, talked of it quietly and cynically as the outburst of a half-fledged clerical enthusiast who would very soon find out that his superiors, on whom he depended for preferment, regarded the doctrines of Christianity as one thing and the practises of the Church as something entirely different.
"He's a clever fellow, a very clever fellow and very earnest," said Lord Canore, who was a patron of several fat livings, to her ladyship and his two daughters as they drove home, "but he'll soon get those rough corners knocked off him. If they are wise they will give him a good living, and then make him a canon as soon as possible. There's nothing like preferment to sober a man down in the Church."
"Yes," sighed Lady Caroline Rosse, the elder daughter, who was getting somewhatpassée, and was deeply interested in Church work; "what a beautiful voice he has, and such a wonderful face! Really, he looked almost inspired at times. He would make quite an ideal bishop, and, you know, some quite young men are being made bishops now-a-days."
"Yes," chuckled his lordship, as he lay back against the cushions, "that is the sort of thing I mean. You don't catch bishops preaching the Sermon on the Mount and sub-editing it as they go on."
"My dear Canore," said her ladyship frigidly, "I think we had better change the subject; that last remark of yours was almost blasphemous."
"Never heard such rubbish preached from a respectable pulpit in my life," said Mr. Horace Faustmann, a member of the Stock Exchange, director of several limited companies and a most liberal contributor to the offertories, and all Church effort in the parish of St. Chrysostom, to his wife as they rolled smoothly in their cee-spring, rubber-tyred victoria towards Hyde Park Corner.
"Why, if you can't make plenty of money and still be a Christian, where are subscriptions coming from, and what price the Church endowments? It seems absolutely absurd to me. I wonder what onearth Baldwin was thinking about to let him preach a sermon like that in the smartest church in the West End. If he goes on in that style he will just ruin the show. Anyhow, he gets no more of my money if he is going to insult rich people in the pulpit. Any more of that sort of thing, my dear, and we'll go somewhere else, won't we?"
"I should think so," said the beautiful Mrs. Faustmann. She was the daughter of a poor aristocrat, and had made a very good social and financial bargain. She was one of the smartest women and most successful entertainers in London. There was another man eating his heart out on her account in the Burmese jungle, and sometimes, in her tenderest moment, she gave him a thought and a little sigh—about as much thought and sigh as her engagements permitted.
"Yes, Father Baldwin will really ruin the Church if he allows that sort of thing. Of course all the good people will give it up. In fact, you saw the Steinways, the Northwicks, the Athertons and several more leave the church before he was half way through his harangue, for really you could hardly call it a sermon. All the same, the church will be thronged to-night and next Sunday, because people will go there just for the sensation of the thing, and to see if anything else is going to happen; but poor Father Baldwin will simply be inundated with letters from the best of his people, and I don't think he'll find them very pleasant reading. I am going to write, and, although I respect the dear man very much, I shall tell him exactly what I think."
"Quite right," said her husband, as they turned into the Park. "You give it to him straight. If you don't, I shall drop him a line myself and tell him that if he wants any more of my money, andhe has had a good bit, he will have to keep his half-broken clerical colts a bit better in hand; I'm not going to support a church to be insulted in it."
Many other similar conversations were going on just then in the Park, in fact, Vane and his sermon were already being discussed by half fashionable London, so fast does the news of so startling an event travel from lip to lip when a crowd of somewhatblasépeople, who have nothing in particular to talk about, get together. Most of the comments were quite similar to those just quoted, for Society felt generally by dinner time that night that it had been deliberately insulted, outraged, in fact, through its representatives in the congregation of St. Chrysostom.
Nevertheless the church was packed to its utmost capacity at evening service. It was known that Father Baldwin was to preach, but it was hoped that Vane would take some part in the service, and of course everyone wanted to see him; still, the audience went away disappointed. Vane was far away, helping Ernshaw at his mission in Bethnal Green, and was telling his congregation truths just as uncompromising and perhaps as unpalatable as those he had told to his wealthy and aristocratic hearers in the morning.
Father Baldwin preached, but his sermon was rather a homily on the duties of the rich towards the poor, especially at a time when the rich were about to migrate like gay-plumaged birds of passage to other lands and climes in search of pleasure, leaving behind the millions of their fellow mortals and fellow Christians, whose ceaseless life-struggle left no leisure for the delights which they had come to look upon as the commonplaces of their existence.
He only made one brief allusion to Vane'ssermon. He knew perfectly well that these thronging hundreds of people had not come to hear him. He felt, not without sorrow, that quite half of them had come to hear, or at least see, the man whose name was already the talk of fashionable London.
"Some of you," he said, "who are present now heard this morning from this pulpit words which must have sunk deep into the heart of every man and woman who feels an earnest desire to follow in the footsteps of the Master as closely as imperfect human nature will permit you. It is not for me to tell you to what extent those words must be taken literally. They were spoken earnestly and from the inmost depths of the preacher's own soul—may they sink into the inmost depths of yours! They put the most vital interest of human life plainly, nay, uncompromisingly before you; how far you can or will follow them in your daily lives is a matter which rests between yourselves and your Redeemer."
The next morning nearly all the papers contained more or less lengthy reports of a sermon of which half London was already talking. Ernest Reed, a smart young reporter with strong freethought tendencies, who made a Sunday speciality of reporting sermons of all sorts, especially the extreme ones, and who wrote caustically impartial comments on them in the rationalist papers, had instantly grasped the true significance of such a sermon being preached to such a congregation, and, moreover, he had himself been deeply affected by the solemn earnestness with which the momentous words had been spoken.
"A Daniel come to judgment! A parson who believes in his own creed at last!" was his mentalcomment, as he closed his note-book. "That chap's worth following. I wonder where he is going to preach to-night. I'll find out."
Of course he did find out and followed Vane to Bethnal Green, with the result that he made what is professionally termed "a scoop," since he was the only reporter who was able to give both sermons verbatim. TheDaily Chroniclewas the only morning paper smart enough to print them word for word in parallel columns under the title:
WEIGHTY WORDS TO RICH AND POOR.The Rev. Vane MaxwellAsks Mayfair and Bethnal GreenIf they are Christian?
The consequence was, that all London and a very considerable part of England too, stared wonderingly over its breakfast table and asked itself whether there was really anything in these plain, almost homely, and yet terribly pregnant words. Certainly there was no getting away from the pitiless logic of them. If Vane Maxwell was right, England wasnota Christian country, save in name, and its citizens were Christians only because they had been baptized into one or other of the churches and so called themselves Christians by a sort of courtesy title. For the moment at least, Christianity assumed a shape as tangible and a meaning almost as serious as party politics. In other words Vane's sermon, even when read in cold print, put the question: Are you really a Christian? so plainly, so uncompromisingly, and so unavoidably to every man or woman calling himself or herself a Christian, that hundreds of thousands of people all over the country, to saynothing of a million or two in London, felt a sudden, and, as it seemed to them, somewhat unaccountable obligation to give an equally plain answer to it. What was the answer to be?
"Yes or no?"
It certainly was a very serious matter to millions who had never thought of asking the question for themselves, and whose pastors and spiritual masters had mostly contented themselves with lecturing and teaching in soul-soothing, instead of soul-searching, words.
They, good folk, had really never troubled themselves very much about the matter. They had their business affairs to attend to, their wives and families to keep out of the workhouse or to maintain in comfort or luxury, as the case might be, and a good many of them had certain social duties to perform; and so they had got into the way of letting the churches and chapels, the bishops, priests, deacons and so forth, look after these things.
They were paid to do so. That was rather an ugly thought. At least, it seemed to be so, after reading the words of Jesus Christ, and His servant Vane Maxwell; but still itwasa fact; and some of them were very highly paid. They were living in charming houses and had very comfortable investments in companies which made money anyhow, so long as they made it. Others were wretchedly paid, it was true, mostly half-starved and inevitably in debt; but still, neither of these facts affected the main question, which, of course, was the personal one: Are you—rich man or poor man—you who read these words, a Christian? Are you, as the preacher had asked in those five terrible words, honest before God and man?
Then to the scores and hundreds of thousandsof people who read this, came, in a whispering terror, the further question:
"Do you think you can cheat God, even if you are cheating yourself and other people like you—the God Whom you have been taught to believe in as knowing all things, the God to whom all secrets are known?"
It was a distinctly ugly question to answer, and more Bibles were searched throughout the United Kingdom than had been for many a long year past; but no searcher found any answer that satisfied his own soul, if he had one, save the one that was given from the Mount of Olives:
"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
As the young preacher had said, there was no compromise. There was certainly the alternative of being honest one way or the other; but that sort of honesty had a very appalling prospect to the respectable British citizen, especially those, who, in any way, resembled the young man who came to Christ and asked Him what he should do to be saved. It was, in short, a case of becoming comparative paupers, and only having the bare necessaries of life, or keeping what they had, and saying honestly to themselves, the world, and God:
"I can't be a Christian at that price, and so, instead of remaining a Christian humbug, I will be an honest atheist."
A very terrible dilemma, certainly, and yet, if the Gospels were true, and if the Son of God had really preached the Sermon on the Mount, it was one from which there was no escape but this. It was a plain matter of belief or disbelief, honesty or dishonesty, and, if they believed in God, dishonesty was impossible, save under the penalty of eternal damnation.
That day the clergy-house of St. Chrysostom was, of course, deluged with newspapers and cuttings, and the flood continued for two or three days, during which Vane, unconscious or careless of the fact that he was already the clerical lion of London, and, perhaps, the most discussed man for the time being in England and the sister kingdoms, was working hard helping his friend, Ernshaw, to organize an entirely unsectarian twentieth century crusade throughout the poorer districts of London. He seldom read newspapers, for he preferred the living fact to the written word, and, besides, such work as his left little time for reading. He had seen his name on the placards of the morning and evening papers, and he had bought some which he had not found time to do more than glance over.
He was, of course, glad that his sermon had attracted so much attention, but he knew enough of newspapers and their readers not to hope for too much on this account, and so he was not a little surprised when Father Baldwin said to him on his return to the clergy-house on the Friday evening:
"Well, Maxwell! glad to see you back, although you have brought a nice hornet's nest about our ears, and started something like a social and religious earthquake in Kensington and the adjacent lands of Mayfair and Belgravia, to say nothing of a distinct fluttering in what I may, perhaps, without irreverence call the upper and more spacious dove-cotes of the Church."
"Have I really?" said Vane, quietly, "I didn't know I had, but if I have done so, I am very glad. It was exactly what I intended to do, though I confess I had little hope of doing so. What is the matter? I hope I haven't gotyouinto any unpleasantness, Father Baldwin."
"It doesn't very much matter if you have," replied the older priest, leaning back in his chair and looking at him keenly from under his thick, iron-grey eyebrows. "You only said what has been in the hearts and souls of a good many of us for a long time, but it was given to you to say it and, let us hope, also the inspiration to say it in the proper way."
"Please God!" said Vane. "And now what have I done; I mean as regards yourself and St. Chrysostom?"
"To begin with," replied Father Baldwin, "about half the wealthiest members of the congregation, men and women, but mostly men, have written to say that if they are to be publicly insulted from the pulpit, and told that they are liars and hypocrites, and not Christians, save in name, they will leave the church and withdraw all their subscriptions—which, of course, from quite a worldly point of view, would be somewhat a serious matter for the church."
"That simply proves that they are not Christians," said Vane, "and the church is better without their money. They practically confess that they never have been giving their money honestly for the service of God, but merely for self-advertisement or as a social obligation. It would be no loss to us, and little gain to anybody else they gave it to."
"Yes, I believe you are right," replied Father Baldwin. "It seems rather a hard thing to say, but people who would leave a church because the Sermon on the Mount was preached from its pulpit, must be a strange sort of Christians."
"They are not Christians at all!" exclaimed Vane, with a burst of righteous wrath, "they are the bane and curse of Christianity, and have been ever since Constantine made it official and fashionable. They are responsible for every corruption that has crept into the Church, for every blot that defiles the purity of the Creed. They are not Christians, and they never have been, for they cannot be what they are and followers of Christ at the same time. They and the wealthy clergy of all the churches are responsible for the unfaith, tacit and avowed, of what we are pleased to call the lower classes; the classes who compose the majority of Christ's Congregation; and they are responsible for all the cynicism of the open and active enemies of our faith. It is they who make it possible for the infidel and the atheist to point the finger of scorn at us and say, 'See how these Christians love to do the Will of their Master.'"
"I fully appreciate everything you say, Maxwell," replied Father Baldwin, with some little hesitation in his tone; for, although he was as good a Christian as ever gave up everything to serve his Master, and as earnest a priest as ever stood before the altar, yet he was getting on in years and found it hard to break away from thetraditions amidst which he had grown up, and which he had accepted as a young man with little or no inquiry. "At the same time, I must candidly admit that I was a trifle startled by your absolutely uncompromising rendering of our Lord's words. Did you really intend that they should be taken literally?"
"It is not what I intended, Father Baldwin," replied Vane, rising from his seat and beginning to walk up and down the plainly furnished, book-lined common-room, "the question is whatHeintended, and surely no Christian in his senses could believe for a moment that our Lord intended to quibble with words and to play with double meanings. If He did not mean what He said, and intend those who followed Him to do what He said, what becomes of our faith? If that is not so, surely there is nothing left for us but to give up the doctrine of the Trinity altogether, and go back to the old Hebrew creed—which certainly did not forbid the accumulation of riches."
"May I come in?" said Sir Arthur Maxwell's voice through the open door, "they told me you were here, Vane. Good evening, Father Baldwin. Well, this is a nice sort of commotion that this son of mine has been kicking up. Do you know, Sir," he went on, turning to Vane, "that you have suddenly made yourself one of the most famous, or, perhaps, I should say notorious, persons in London by that sermon of yours? It was very fine I admit, and most desperately to the point, but I suppose you know that all the world and the newspapers are asking where does that point point to?"
"That is just what I was asking your son, Sir Arthur," said Father Baldwin. "Granted that he is right in his contention that the Sermon on theMount is to be taken literally, it means nothing short of a religious as well as a social revolution."
"That is exactly what the papers and everybody are saying," said Sir Arthur. "In fact, people are beginning to look at one another and ask some very awkward questions. For instance, here am I, that boy's father, I am not a rich man, but I have worked hard and my old age is comfortably provided for, and when I die what I have would naturally go to Vane, who, on his own showing, couldn't have it; in fact, as you know, he has given up about a thousand a year as it is that he had from my brother Alfred."
"You will not get much sympathy from Father Baldwin on that score, father," laughed Vane, "you know he gave up nearly twice as much."
"There is nothing in that," said Father Baldwin, hastily, as though he would stop them saying any more, "that is a point on which I entirely agree with you. When a man has money of his own, and devotes himself to the service of the Church, he should devote his money to it also. As a Christian and a priest he can have no lawful use for it, save in the work of the Church."
"Unless he happens to be married and have a family," said Sir Arthur. "What ought he to do then, Father Baldwin?"
"In that case, Sir Arthur," he replied, "I think he would do better to keep out of the ministry and devote himself honestly to the affairs of his own household. You remember, of course, what the Apostle Paul tells us, that the man who neglects those is worse than an infidel. Of course, it is not a good translation, and it reads very badly now that infidel has come to mean one who does not believe in creeds. It should, of course, read unfaithful, Imean, unfaithful to the solemn responsibilities he has taken upon himself; and, although I may be wrong, I find it difficult to see how a man can faithfully discharge those obligations and those of a priest of the Church, but that opens a very wide question, and there is a very great deal to be said on both sides of it."
"There I quite agree with you," said Sir Arthur, "you know, of course, better than I do, that there are hundreds of hard-worked parsons in this country—especially in poor parishes—who can't afford curates, who simply couldn't get on without their wives, and I know one or two myself who say that their wives are worth a couple of curates. I'm fairly certain that in most poor country parishes the parson's wife is the good angel of the place."
"There is not the slightest doubt about it," replied Father Baldwin, "I have seen quite enough of church work to convince me of that, and this is, of course, the very strongest argument, and a very convincing one, too, in a certain degree, against the celibacy of the clergy. But, still, Sir Arthur," he went on, with a change of tone, "I suppose you didn't come here to discuss theology and church matters. Of course, you want to see your son. My study is quite at your service, if you want to have a talk."
"Thanks, very much, Father," said Sir Arthur, "what I really came for was to ask Vane to come round and have a bit of dinner with me. I have a good many things to talk over with him, and I have a guest or two coming whom I am anxious for him to meet. What do you say, Vane, can you come?"
"Of course I can, dad," replied Vane. "I am taking a holiday till Sunday, and I couldn't spendit much better than at the old place. On Sunday I am going to deliver two lectures at the Hall of Science, Old Street, the head-quarters of the National Secular Society."
"Thewhat, Maxwell?" exclaimed Father Baldwin, with a note of something more than astonishment in his voice, "the Hall of Science—why, that was Bradlaugh's place—the head-centre of London infidelity."
"Excuse me, Father," said Vane, gravely, "do you not think that is a word we are accustomed to use too vaguely? Is it quite fair or logical to call these people infidels? Are they not rather faithful to their convictions, however wrong they may be? Surely we must, at least, give them the credit of believing in their disbelief. Last night I heard an informal confession—one of the strangest, perhaps, that a priest ever heard—from a young fellow, of about twenty-two, who reported my sermon here, and then followed me to Bethnal Green and sent in both accounts to the papers.
"He is well educated, very clever, and the son of a clergyman. He is also what people call an infidel, and yet he made a confession of faith to me that would have melted the soul of a financier, if he had one. After that I shall never hear these people called infidels without a protest. And, besides, is it not a good thing that a priest of God should speak the truth that is in him in the temple of the unbelievers? How many of our churches would permit one of their lecturers to speak from the pulpit, or even from the platform of one of our schoolrooms."
"You are quite right, Maxwell," said Father Baldwin, "I used the word unthinkingly, therefore conventionally. I am very glad you are going, but I am afraid if your friends advertise it at all,half Kensington and Mayfair will be off to Old Street, and crowd them out of their own place. As I tell you, they didn't like what you said, but for all that, they are dying to hear what you are going to say next."
"Exactly," said Sir Arthur, "that is the worst of becoming suddenly notorious, Vane. You have made yourself, in a most righteous manner, the talk of London, and London will follow you now wherever you go. However, that can't be helped, it is one of the penalties of fame, and now if you have nothing more to say to Father Baldwin, you might put on your hat, and come, I have got a hansom at the door."
On the way from the Clergy-House to Warwick Gardens Vane tried more than once to get his father to tell him something about the evening's entertainment which he had invited him for, but Sir Arthur only laughed, albeit somewhat seriously, and said:
"My dear boy, I am not going to let you spoil a pleasant little surprise. I don't say that it will be altogether a pleasant one, yet I know that it will not be an entirely unpleasant one. To a certain extent, as you will find afterwards, it is one of the many results of that precious sermon of yours, and, as certain things had to be done, I thought they would be better done at home than elsewhere."
And in reply to Vane's second attempt his father said simply:
"No, Vane, this is a surprise party, as they say in the States, and I am not going to give the names of my guests away. You really must possess your soul in patience for the present. Meanwhile tell me what Father Baldwin thinks of the position you have taken up?"
"You mean, of course, about this new heresy of mine?" replied Vane with a laugh—"a heresy, by the way, which is as old as Christianity. Well, dad, to tell you the truth I think the dear old Father isa little bit frightened, but he is too strong a man to go back from the position, and too good a Christian to want to do so. He sees that I am right, or, I should say of course, that this is after all the only possible doctrine and belief for a Christian. He gave me permission to preach that sermon from his pulpit, but I don't think he quite realised, as a matter of fact I didn't myself, what an effect it would have, and perhaps the consequences have worried him a little; but he is perfectly staunch, and so are Moran and Webley."
"And so, I suppose," replied Sir Arthur, "St. Chrysostom's will not be a pleasant Sunday morning and evening resort for rich people any longer. That is, perhaps, a somewhat flippant way of putting it, but of course you know what I mean."
"Yes, I quite see what you mean, dad," said Vane rather more seriously. "I don't think it will be, but I do think that before very long we shall have a better congregation of Christians than we have ever had before, people who, I mean, will have lost their delusions about fashionable Christianity—just as if there could be such a thing!—and who come to hear the Word of God as it is, and not as most people would like it to be. By the way, have you heard that the Canon, I mean Canon Thornton-Moore, of Worcester, a man that I met at dinner at the Abbey, has accepted the presentation of All Saints, Densmore Square? It is supposed to be a little higher even than St. Chrysostom, and if possible the congregation is even more disgustingly rich and fashionable and everything that is not Christian."
"I must say, Vane, that you have all the uncompromising severity of the true enthusiast, and the way in which you include your old father with these hopeless sinners is really almost unfilial. I thinkI can tell you this much, that to-night you are going to meet a very much greater sinner than I am, a sinner to the extent of millions, and yet, from what I have learned of him on the best possible authority, as honest a man, as good-hearted a fellow, as ever fought the world single-handed and beat it."
"Just as you did, dad," said Vane in a tone which reminded his father of the old days. "I suppose there is nothing to be said of the other two persons of the Infernal Trinity."
"Not at present," said Sir Arthur, with a sudden change in his voice which made Vane look round at him. His face had changed with his tone. He was leaning with his arms on the door of the cab, staring up at the sky over the roofs of the houses. Vane noticed a little twitching of the lip under the long grey moustache, and thought it well to hold his peace.
Fortunately, perhaps, for both, the cab at that moment swung round out of the main road into Warwick Gardens. Vane looked at the familiar corner at which he had stopped that other hansom cab on that memorable Boat Race night and got out, after Carol had denied him the kiss he asked for, to meet his father on the pavement. Sir Arthur remembered it too, and he had good reasons to, for he said as the cab swung round:
"Vane, when my lease is up I am going to leave this place. I never can pass that corner without thinking of what no man ought to be obliged to think of."
"I know what you mean, dad," cried Vane. "It was horrible enough, or at least it might have been and yet it wasn't, and because it wasn't——"
"Well, at any rate," interrupted Sir Arthur as the cab pulled up, "let us thank God that it wasn't."
As they got out another cab drove up just behind theirs, and somewhat to his astonishment Vane saw Ernshaw get out.
"My dear Ernshaw," he said, as they shook hands, "isn't this great extravagance?"
"Only a shilling's worth," laughed Ernshaw in reply, "and I think justifiable; a little kiddy was knocked down in Addison Road there by a butcher's cart, and I picked her up and took her to the hospital in Hammersmith Road, and this good fellow won't charge me more than a shilling for both journeys, although it is out of the radius."
"Oh, he won't, won't he?" said Sir Arthur, putting his hand into his pocket and pulling out a couple of half-crowns.
"You take that, my man, not for yourself if you won't have it, but for your wife and your children if you have got any; you can't say no for them."
"No, sir, thankee, I won't say no to them," said the cabby, taking the half-crowns and touching his hat. "It's the best fare I've earned to-day. Good-night, sir, and thank you, sir. Come up, old girl."
The whip flicked, and the old mare went round to begin another of those endless journeys through London streets which horses, if they reason at all, must find so utterly incomprehensible and aimless.
"Is this the beginning of the surprises, dad?" said Vane, as the two cabs drove away. "This is certainly one of the last places in London that I should have expected to meet Ernshaw in, after seeing him up to his neck in work at Bethnal Green yesterday. It must have been a pretty strong attraction, Ernshaw, that got you as far west as this."
"My dear Maxwell," said Ernshaw, "surely the worst of us are entitled to a holiday now and then. Why, even Father Philip goes to Norway for a fortnight every year, to say nothing of an occasional run up to Town now and then, and he confessed to me not very long ago that he enjoys no earthly pleasure better than a good 'Varsity match at Lord's."
"There is nothing better," said Sir Arthur, "except a good Indian polo match. Well, come in. I have just got time for a wash and a change before our other guests arrive. You clerics don't want a change, so you can have a wash and a cigarette if you want one in the Den."
As the door opened Koda Bux came along the hall and made his salaam; his grave, deep eyes made no sign as he recognised Vane in his clerical garb; he only salaamed again and welcomed Vane back to the house of his father and his mother. That was Koda Bux's way of putting it in his Indian fashion. He would have put it otherwise if he had known what such a welcome meant to him.
"This is the place of thedebacle," said Vane to Ernshaw when they met in the Den after they had had their wash; "there's the hearthrug—yes, and there's the same spirit-case. It is a curious thing, Ernshaw, but since then, or rather, since that other ghastly collapse at Oxford, I've lectured in club rooms reeking with alcohol; I've gone with you as you know where everyone was sodden with the gin and stank of it, and even into bars where you could smell nothing but liquor and unwashed humanity, and yet that intoxication has never come back to me."
"Of course not," said Ernshaw; "you have prayed and fought since then, and as you have won your battles your prayers have been answered."
"Yes," said Vane, "I hope you are right; in fact, I am sure you are. I don't suppose a sniff at thatwhiskey decanter would affect me any more than a few drops of eau de cologne on my handkerchief."
As he said this he went towards the spirit-case on the little old oak sideboard and took out the whiskey decanter.
"Take care, Vane!" said Ernshaw. "I hope you are not forgetting the old doctrine of association. Remember what you were saying just now about this room. There is a sense, you know, in which places are really haunted."
"My dear Ernshaw, I believe you are even more ideal than I am," laughed Vane, as he took the stopper out and raised the decanter to his nostrils. As he did so the front door bell tinkled, and the hand of a practised footman played a brief fantasia on the knocker. In the middle of an inhalation Vane stopped and put the bottle down; but even as he did so the mysterious force of association against which Ernshaw had warned him had begun to work upon his imagination. The familiar room, with its pictures and furniture and simple ornaments, the feel of the cut-glass decanter, which was the same one that he had held in his hand that fatal night, the smell of the whiskey—all these elements were rapidly combining in those few moments to produce an effect partly mental and partly physical which might have more than justified Ernshaw's sudden fear.
"Ah, there are the mysterious guests, I suppose!" he said, putting the decanter back into the case. "I suppose you don't happen to know who they really are, Ernshaw?"
"My dear fellow, if I did I shouldn't tell you," was the distinctly non-committal reply. "I think it will be very much more interesting for you to find out yourself."
By this time Koda Bux, in his capacity of major-domo and general factotum to Sir Arthur, had opened the door, and at the same moment Sir Arthur himself came downstairs. Vane heard him say:
"Good evening, ladies; I am sorry that I have no hostess to receive you, but Mrs. Saunders, who helps Koda Bux to take care of me, will take you upstairs."
Then there was a low murmur of a woman's voice, a rustle of skirts up the stairs, and Sir Arthur went on:
"Now, Mr. Rayburn, if you will come with me I will show you where to put your hat and coat and have a rinse if you like."
"Thanks, Sir Arthur," replied a voice which was strange to Vane.
"And who might Mr. Rayburn be?" he said to Ernshaw. "I didn't know the governor knew anyone of that name. Still, from the sound of his voice he is a gentleman, and, I should say, a man."
"I think when you meet him you will find him both," said Ernshaw.
"Ah," laughed Vane, "I think I caught you out there. So you are in this conspiracy of mystery, are you? Now, look here, Ernshaw, what is it all about?"
"Guilty, but shan't tell," replied his friend. "Now here comes Sir Arthur; perhaps he will tell."
"Vane," said Sir Arthur as the door opened, "this is Mr. Cecil Rayburn, and I want you to be very good friends; you will soon find out why."
Vane looked up and saw a man apparently a year or two older than himself, about the same height and build, but harder and stronger, and possessing that peculiar erectness of carriage and alertness of movement that is owned only by those who have worked or fought, or done both, in the outlands ofthe earth. But a glance at his face confirmed Vane in the opinion he had formed when he heard his voice; he was undeniably both a gentleman and a man. He held out his hand and said:
"Good evening, Mr. Rayburn. Of course a friend of my father's has to be my friend also."
To his astonishment Cecil Rayburn made no movement to take his hand; on the contrary he drew back half a pace and said with a note of something like nervousness in his voice—a note which sounded strangely in the speech of a man who had never known what fear was:
"Thank you, Mr. Maxwell; I hope we shall be friends, but I am afraid I can't shake hands with you yet—I mean, I shouldn't like you to regret it afterwards."
Before Vane had found any words to shape a reply, Sir Arthur said:
"Mr. Ernshaw, suppose we go into the drawing-room to receive the ladies, and leave these two to have it out. We shan't have dinner for half an hour, and I think they will manage to understand each other before then."
"Well, Mr. Rayburn," said Vane, "this is a rather curious sort of introduction, but I see that you are—I mean that I am quite satisfied that you must have some very good reason for refusing to shake hands with me. You are the first man who has ever done so, and as you have come here as my father's guest, I may presume that it is not a personal objection."
Vane could not help speaking formally; there was a strangeness about the situation which forced him to do so.
"That would be impossible, Mr. Maxwell," replied the other, in a low, hesitating tone. "I knew that I should meet you here when I accepted Sir Arthur's invitation; in fact, we—I mean I came here on purpose to meet you, and, to shorten matters, the reason why your father has left us alone, is that I have a very serious and I am afraid a very difficult confession to make to you."
"A confession!" said Vane, drawing himself up and looking Rayburn straight in the eyes. "Do you wish me to hear it as a man, or a priest, because if I am to hear it as a priest, it would be better kept for a more suitable time and place?"
"I want you to hear it both as man and priest," replied Rayburn, returning his look with perfectsteadiness, "and I want you to hear it—and, in fact, unless we are to go away at once, you must hear it now."
"Very well," said Vane, a dim suspicion of the truth beginning to steal into his soul, "it is a little mysterious to me, but I daresay we shall soon understand each other."
He paused for a moment, and then, with a visible effort which made Rayburn love and honour him from that moment forth, he went on:
"And perhaps it would simplify matters for both of us if you began by telling me whoweare?"
"Your sister, or rather your half-sister," Rayburn began falteringly, and then stopped.
He saw Vane wince and heard his teeth come together with a snap, and he saw his hands clench up into fists and his face pale, already turned ashen grey white that denotes utter bloodlessness. It was the face of a corpse with living eyes that looked at him with an expression which could not be translated into human words. Rayburn had looked death in the face many a time and laughed at it, but he didn't laugh now. As he said afterwards, he would have given anything to be a couple of miles away from Vane just then. He didn't speak because he had nothing to say, his thoughts would not be translated into language, and so there was nothing for it but to wait for Vane to speak.
For a few moments more the two men faced each other in silence, yet each reading the other's thoughts as accurately as though they had been talking with perfect frankness. Then Vane spoke in a slow, hard, grating voice which none of the congregation of St. Chrysostom would have recognised as that of the eloquent preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, to which Rayburn, whohad heard that sermon, listened with a shock, which, as he told Carol later, sent a shiver through him from head to foot.
"Yes, Mr. Rayburn, I think I understand more fully now. My sister Carol—she has come here with you to-night, and I suppose I am right in thinking that you were to some extent responsible, quite innocently no doubt, for her disappearance about a year ago. Is that so?"
"Yes," said Rayburn, "that's so, and that's why I wouldn't shake hands with you. I did take her away. She has been round the world with me, travelling with me as my wife, and she isn't my wife, and—well, that is about all there is."
"And why isn't she your wife?" exclaimed Vane, with an unreasoning burst of anger. Then, after a little pause, he went on in a tone that was almost humble.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Rayburn, that was a foolish thing to say, as most things said in haste and anger are. You only did what any other man with no ties and plenty of money would have done under the circumstances. Forgive me! Only the hand of Providence itself saved me from committing, without knowledge, an infinitely greater sin than yours. I suppose Carol has told you how I met her and what happened, and, of course, my father has told you about my getting out of the cab that night at the top of the Gardens? No, no, I have nothing to forgive, nothing to say except, as Carol's brother, to ask you why you have brought her here? That, at least, I think I am entitled to ask."
"Maxwell," replied Rayburn, pulling himself together as a man might do after being badly beaten in a fight, "I have been in a good many bad places in my lifetime, but this has been aboutthe worst, and I'd a damned sight sooner—I beg your pardon, you know what I mean—I would very much rather been talking to a South American Dago with a pistol at my head, than having this talk with you, but it's got to be done.
"You know, I suppose, or at any rate your father knows, how I met Carol and how we fixed it up to go away together. I admit, without any reserve, that I did take her just as any man like myself, who had had a pretty hard time for a few years and had come back with a ridiculous superfluity of money, would have taken such a girl under such circumstances; that is brutal, but at any rate, it is honest. Well, we went round the world together, and it was only a fortnight ago—we've been back three weeks now—that I found out who she was."
"Not from her?" exclaimed Vane, with almost pitiful eagerness.
"No," replied Rayburn, "she would have died first. Over and over again I tried to get her to tell me who and what she was, because of course it was perfectly easy to see—well, you know what I mean—but she wouldn't. It was the one confidence that she never gave me; in fact, when I was trying to insist upon it, she told me if I opened the subject again, she would leave me there and then, whatever happened to her."
"Then how did you find out?" asked Vane, in the same dry, hard voice. "I more than believe you when you say she would never have told you."
"Through the merest accident," replied Rayburn. "A day or two after we landed, we went to dinner at Verrey's, and we had hardly sat down before a friend of hers, Miss Russell, came in—well—with a friend, as they say. She came and spoke to Carol, and the four of us dined together.The next day Miss Russell came to see Carol, and you know, or perhaps you don't know, that it was Miss Russell's friend who introduced me to Carol. I got hold of Miss Russell afterwards—she's as clean-hearted a girl as ever the Fates—however, you won't agree with me there perhaps, you don't believe in Fate, I do. But that's neither here nor there. I told her what I am going to tell you, and she told me Carol's story, and that is why I am here to-night."
There was a good deal of meaning in the words, but for Vane there was infinitely more in Rayburn's voice and the half-shamed manner in which he spoke. Vane felt that if this talk went on much longer, the strain would be too much for him to bear, for it was his sister, or at least the daughter of his own mother that this man was talking about. He put out his hand again and said:
"I think I know now, Mr. Rayburn, what you were going to say, and if I am right, let me, her brother, say it for you and for her, you won't refuse my hand this time, will you?"
"No," said Rayburn, "I won't, and for the matter of that," he went on as their hands met, "I don't think there is much more for either of us to say, except just for me to ask you one question."
"Yes," said Vane, "and what is that?"
"You are her brother and a priest. Will you take me for your brother-in-law and marry us?"
Their hands were still clasped; each was looking straight into the other's eyes, and the two faces, so different individually, and yet for the moment so strangely alike, fronted each other in silence. Then Vane dropped Rayburn's hand, put his hands on his shoulders, and said:
"You cannot be lying, you haven't the mouth orthe eyes of a man who tells lies. You have sinned, sinned deeply, for you have bought with your money what should have no other price than lawful love; but love has come to you, and love has made lawful and right what was sinful before. You told me at first that you wanted to confess to me both as man and priest. Very well, as man, as Carol's brother I forgive you, if you have done anything that I have to forgive, and as a priest of God I will marry you, and when you have taken the Sacrament of Matrimony from my hands, as a priest, I will absolve you from your sin. It is a miracle——"
"Yes," said Rayburn, "it is. I am not altogether of your way of thinking, you know, but there, I am with you; it is a miracle in more ways than one. I know I am expressing myself horribly badly, but, to put it as shortly as I can, it is the sort of miracle that only a good, clean-souled, pure-hearted girl like Carol, could have worked upon a fellow like myself. I tell you, Maxwell, honestly, that if she wouldn't have me now, I'm damned if I know what I should do. She is everything that is good to me. I am worth nearly a couple of millions, and not a cent of it would be worth anything to me if I lost her. And so you really will marry us?"
"I will," said Vane. "Thank God and you into whose heart He has put this saving thought of righteousness."
"Yes," said Rayburn, "I see what you mean, but really, the credit isn't mine at all, it is all Carol's. Do you know, Maxwell, that I am going to have one of the most delightful wives man ever won? If I could only tell you just exactly how I fell in love with her—but of course a man could never tell another man that, and after all itdoesn't matter. I've got the one girl in the world I want——"
There was another little pause, and then Rayburn went on, speaking as shyly and hesitatingly as a schoolboy confessing a peccadillo:
"There's one other thing I should like to say, Maxwell, but I hardly know how to say it."
He stopped again, and Vane said, smiling for the first time during the interview:
"Then say it, as one man would say it to another. I think we understand each other now. What is it?"
"Well, it's this," replied Rayburn, flushing like a girl under the tan of his skin, "you know Carol and I met quite by chance, and I took her away just as what she seemed to be. Then, after a month or two—you'll hardly believe me, but it is the Lord's own truth—I began to fall in love with her, honestly I mean, and in quite a different way. One evening, it was in Japan, and we were coming back from a trip to Fuji. I couldn't stand it any longer, I felt such a hopeless sweep, and I told her. It was a queer sort of courtship, and it took me about six weeks to bring her round—and then at last—we were in the Rockies then—she gave in and confessed that she loved me in the same way that I loved her. I kissed her. I could never tell you how different that kiss was from all the others."
"Of course it was," said Vane, gently. "It was a pure one, a holy one, and God was very near you, Rayburn, in that moment."
"I believe He was," replied Rayburn, simply, "for from that moment, we were both absolutely changed. Since that kiss, Carol has been as sacred to me as my own sister would be if I had one. That is what I wanted to tell you."
"And God bless you for telling me!" said Vane, solemnly. "If I had any doubts before, I have none now. After that, knowing all I do, I would give you the blessed Sacrament to-morrow."
"On Sunday I hope you will give it to us both," replied Rayburn.
At that moment the door opened, and Sir Arthur came in.
"Dinner is nearly ready," he said. "Are you about ready for it? Ah, yes, I see, you understand each other, don't you?"
"Yes, Sir Arthur," said Rayburn, swinging round with an almost military precision of movement. "I've made my confession, and I am to receive absolution when the happiest moment of my life comes, and you know when that will be."
"I think I do," said Sir Arthur, with a look at Vane, who was staring vacantly down into the flower-filled fireplace. "Then you have settled it all between you, is that so, Vane?"
"Yes, with God's help, we have," he replied, and then, with a swift change of tone and manner he went on: "and now as we have got our family affairs settled to a certain extent, I suppose we can go and join the ladies. I am longing to see Carol again."
"And so am I," said Rayburn, "let us go."
Rayburn went out first and Vane followed him, feeling, as he said to himself afterwards, as though he was walking across the boundary between one world and another. He knew that Carol and Dora were in the drawing-room. Dora he had never seen before. Carol he had not seen since the night of the University Boat Race. Ernshaw, with the memory of what he had said in Vane's room at Oxford fresh in his mind, caught him by the arm and said:
"Maxwell, I believe I am going to meet my fate to-night as you met yours in another way. Was there ever such a complication in the life-affairs of little mortals like ourselves?"
"I don't know," said Vane, "and I don't care," gripping his arm hard as they crossed the hall. "Wait, it may be the Providence that shapes our ends."
"Rough-hew them as we will," said Rayburn, looking backward.
"Ah, well, since we understand each other, as I think we do now,Vogue la galère!And, Mr. Ernshaw," he went on, "I have heard things and things. I am not giving any confidences away, but by the same token you and I will soon be sailing in the same boat or something very like it——"
"Oh, yes," said Ernshaw, "I see what you mean!" Then he gripped his arm a little harder before they went into the drawing-room. Vane went on with his father, and Ernshaw said:
"Look here, Maxwell, you have passed your crisis, you and Rayburn, I'm only getting near mine. What am I to do, what can I do?"
"That I can't tell you. You see, to put it into the twentieth-century language, the Eternal Feminine is here, and you have got to reckon with her just as Rayburn has done. Come now, if you've made your mind up, go and meet your fate."
As he said this Vane pushed the door of the drawing-room open. Sir Arthur and Rayburn had gone in just before him.
"Carol!"
"Vane! and is it really you—you?"
"Yes," he said, taking a few swift strides towards her and for the first time putting his arms round her. "Yes, dear, your brother."
"Really brother, Vane? Do you truly mean it—will you really take me for your sister now that you know everything—I mean all about Cecil and myself?"
"Yes, Carol, and because I do know, because he as a man has told me everything. I am going to marry you soon, and no man, no priest could marry his sister to his friend with more hope for happiness than I shall marry you and Rayburn."
He took hold of her left hand, and stretched out his hand to Rayburn and said:
"Come now, sister and brother, as you are going to be!"
He took their two hands and joined them. Over the two hands he clasped his own, and looking swiftly from one to the other he said:
"Afterwards I will say the words that I cannotspeak here." And then, with a sudden change of tone and manner which came as a quick surprise to both Carol and Rayburn, he went on:
"Rayburn, this is my sister. Carol, Rayburn tells me that he wants to marry you, and I suppose——"
"You needn't suppose anything at all, Vane. I've said yes already. If you and Sir Arthur will only say yes too——"
Vane drew back from her, and looked round toward Sir Arthur and Dora. Rayburn, having gone through the formalities of introduction which Vane's tact had made necessary, held out his hand and they shook hands.
"It is rather unceremonious, Miss Maxwell," he said, addressing her for the first time by a name that was not her own, "but——"
"But, my dear Carol, you are forgetting that you are hostess to-night," said Sir Arthur, "and I think there are two of our guests who have not been, as one would say in Society, properly introduced."
"Oh, of course; I'm so sorry," said Carol. "Dora, forgive me. I know you will. I was too happy just now to think of anything else. Mr. Ernshaw, this is Dora. Dora, this is Mr. Ernshaw. I hope you will be very good friends. That's a rather unconventional way of introduction, I must say."
As the last words left her laughing lips, and she was looking exquisitely dainty and desirable in a quietly magnificent costume which had cost as much as many much advertised wedding dresses, Dora and Ernshaw faced each other for the first time. She had seen him with Vane at the ordination service in Worcester Cathedral, but they had never met before under the sanction of social acquaintance.
She looked at him and he looked at her, and as their eyes met some impulse in the soul of both made them hold out their hands as people do not usually do when they are introduced in ordinary drawing-room style. Ernshaw's went out straight.
"Miss Russell," he said, even while her hand was moving slowly towards his.
"My dear Mr. Ernshaw, whatever you have to say, I'm afraid I will have to ask you to keep it just for a little," said Sir Arthur, as the door swung open. "Here is Koda Bux, and he does not allow me to be late for dinner; he has many virtues, but that is the best of them. Mr. Rayburn, you will take Carol in? Mr. Ernshaw, will you give your arm to Miss Russell, and Vane and I will bring up the rear."
"Dad," said Vane, as he gripped his father's arm, "you have helped to do God's work to-night; look at them!"
"You did more when you got out of the cab at the top of the gardens here," he whispered in reply.
"I didn't do that, dad; she did. She knew, and I didn't. God bless her."
"Amen," said his father. "And now we will return to earth and go and eat."
There were not many more delightful dinners eaten in London that night than what Cecil Rayburn called his betrothal feast. He and Carol now understood each other thoroughly. Vane and his father also knew the circumstances so far as they were concerned, and a little more. Ernshaw and Dora, each knowing just a little more than the others did, began to make friends fast, and therefore rapidly, but Dora was stilldeclassée. Carol had already been lifted beyond the confines of that half-sphere which is inhabited by so many thousands of women who are neither maiden, wife, nor widow. Dora was still a dweller in it, knowing all its infamy and shame, and knowing, too, that awful necessity which is so often at once the equivalent and the excuse for sin.
Everyone took Sir Arthur's hint, and the conversation rattled on around the table as lightly as it might have around any other dinner table in London. Carol and Sir Arthur and Rayburn had it mostly to themselves at first, but after a little the conversation grew more general. Dora and Carol engaged in a really brilliant discussion on the subject of Mrs. Lynn Linton's last book, with the result that Carol said that she wouldn't live for ever at any price, to which Dora replied with just a suspicion of a note of sadness in her voice.
"Yes, Carol, I quite agree with you, or at least if I were you I should do."
"Which," said Ernshaw, "is, I think, as nearly as possible the same thing. Surely if one cannot agree with one's self——"
"No, Mr. Ernshaw," said Dora, putting her elbows on the table and her chin between her hands. "No, I'm afraid I can hardly agree with you there. After all, our worst enemies are those of our own household, by which of course I mean our immediate surroundings. It is this awful necessity to live, to eat and to have a place to sleep in. Of course you are thinking of what Talleyrand said to the young aristocrat who wanted to live for nothing."
"Yes," said Ernshaw, "I know that. He said he didn't see the necessity, and I am not altogether certain that he was wrong, but you——"
"Yes, I," she replied in a tone that had a thrill of angry reproach running through it, "I, as you know, am—well—a superfluous woman, one whoisn't wanted, a sort of waste product of the factory that we call civilisation."
"I am afraid you people are getting far too serious in your conversation," said Carol from her end of the table opposite Sir Arthur. "No, Dora, I really can't allow it; social problems are not in the menu to-night, and you and Mr. Ernshaw will have to keep them for some other time. Meanwhile, suppose we leave the rest for their smokes, and you come with me and run through that song you are going to sing; we haven't tried it together for quite a long time, as Mr. Rayburn said when we were on the other side of the Atlantic. Come along."
As she rose from her chair, Koda Bux, who had been standing immovable behind his master, opened the door, and as Carol, daintily and yet most plainly dressed, passed through, his sombre eyes lit up as though by an inspiration of long past days, and his teeth came together and he said in his soul:
"It is the daughter of the Mem Sahib; what marvel is this! If there is vengeance to be done, may mine be the hand. Inshallah! I should die content, even if it was only a minute afterwards. He has his kismet, and I have mine. Allah will give it to me; but they may be the same. Once the roomal round his neck, and his breath would be already in his mouth. Dog and son of a dog, he would be better dead!"
It had been arranged that Carol and Dora should take up their abode with Sir Arthur, so that Carol might be married from her father's house. Under the circumstances it was only natural that the wedding was to be absolutely private, and it was already decided that immediately after the wedding Rayburn and Carol should leave for a month in Paris, and then go on to Western Australia, wheremost of Rayburn's mining properties were. He also owned one side of a street in Perth and a country estate with a big bungalow-built house on the eastern hills overlooking the Swan River.
The only difficulty appeared ahead to Sir Arthur was some mysterious connection with the Raleighs and the Garthornes. It was, of course, impossible that the wedding could take place without their knowledge, if Sir Arthur was to give Carol away as he intended to do, and yet the moment that Garthorne's name was mentioned Carol had turned white to the lips and a look of deadly fear had come into her eyes.
"No, no," she said, "not them, I can't tell you why, and you mustn't ask me. You have been very good to me, and you are going to do more for me than ever was done to a girl like me before, but sooner than meet them I would run away again as I did from Melville Gardens. I would, really, but you must not ask me why; there are some things that cannot be told."
After this Sir Arthur, finding it impossible to get any inkling of the mystery from Carol, asked Dora if she could tell him the meaning of it, and she too turned white. She did not reply for a few moments, and then she said:
"No, Sir Arthur, I cannot tell you. All I can say is that Carol is perfectly right. It would be utterly impossible for her to meet either Sir Reginald Garthorne or his son, and of course she could not meet Mrs. Garthorne without meeting her husband. There is a reason, and a very solemn one, too, for this, but I can assure you, Sir Arthur——"