CHAPTER III(1)Great things were vouchsafed on Saturday, the 14th of December, 1832, to Mrs. Polly White, sister and correspondent of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, for, it being the day on which she went to "do" at the Rectory, she was enabled to combine the fine drawing of a tablecloth (an art in which she was proficient) with the sight of the arrival of Miss Horatia and the Rector, the precious babe and her own sister. Mr. Grenville had gone to Dover to meet the packet, and the party was expected from Oxford, by chaise, some time in the afternoon.The village was all agog about Horatia's return, and some spirits, lacking delicacy rather than enthusiasm, had entertained the idea of an evergreen arch across the Rectory gate, to bear the words "Welcome Home," and to be adorned with such decorations as had survived from the Coronation festivities fifteen months before. The impropriety of so receiving a newly-made widow having been pointed out, gossip had then spent itself in speculations as to how Miss 'Ratia would look, not only in her weeds, poor dear, but in the status of a French countess, or whatever she was, for it was felt that in some way she would be a different person from the Miss 'Ratia they had known. One old man, however, dratting them all, announced his unalterable intention of putting a couple of lighted candles in his window, for if his darter had taken and married a Frenchy, and had come home again after so disastrous a step, widder or no widder, he should consider it a clear case of "This my darter wur dead, and be alive again; and wur lost and be found." Such was indeed the general feeling in Compton Regis, where only a few impressionable damsels were found to remark that Miss 'Ratia's husband had been a proper young man, and that 'twas a gurt pity he had been killed in them foreign wars.Mrs. White deplored all this chatter though she would fain have contributed to it. When, therefore, about four o'clock, Ellen rushed into the room where she was working to say that the chaise was turning in at the gate, she flew with the rest of the domestics to the front door. And thus, curtseying like them, she was privileged to see the black and yellow post-chaise from theAngelat Oxford draw up at the steps, to behold the Rector emerge and assist to alight, first a lady in the deepest mourning, a long crape veil such as Mrs. White had never seen covering her from head to foot, secondly, a foreign-looking nurse or nursemaid (disliked by Mrs. White on the spot, though bearing a priceless burden), and lastly her own dear comfortable, capable sister, not changed a bit. And she saw the Comtesse put back her long veil, and come up the steps on her father's arm, looking that sweet, but so sad! The Rector, poor dear gentleman, seemed moved, as who wouldn't be. Miss 'Ratia, when you saw her in the light, was older, a little, and thin in the cheeks, but the weeds set off her hair and complexion beautiful. As for the lovely infant, he was asleep, and Mrs. White preferred in any case to view him when Martha could act as show-woman. And so, as the party mounted the stairs, she returned to her napery, hoping that her sister would shortly appear.But Martha was indeed unchanged, and it was not until things were "to her liking," the nurse properly installed, the child in bed, her mistress's trunks unpacked, and her mistress at table with his Reverence, that she permitted herself to seek out and to embrace her sister. Then, due greeting and inquiries having passed, Mrs. Kemblet, seated in a restful chair, began her desired narration."I wish I could have got my lamb to go to bed at once, and have her dinner there. However, she's a sight stronger than she was, and has stood the journey wonderful, considering. Rough it was, too, and the packet rolling something horrible. But here we all are safely, thanks to One Above, and the infant none the worse, though a trifle fractious, bless his heart!""Ah, but whatshemust have been through, Martha!" said Mrs. White feelingly.This was a whip to a willing horse. "You may well say that, Polly," responded her sister. "What with being fetched like that all sudden at night, to find the poor young gentleman weltering in an agony—for he was shot something terrible, they said—and him dying in her arms (all unprepared, too, I'm afraid), and then going back to Paris with his body, and the household off their heads, and the funeral—I don't know what we should have done without the elder one, the Marquis as they call him...""Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. White, as the narrator paused for breath. "And where was the poor young man buried, then?""At the grand family place where we was during the cholera time.... Well, to go back to the dreadful occurrence" (impossible to deny that there was relish in Mrs. Kemblet's tone over these words) "when Miss Horatia gets this letter and rushes off to this place, St. Clair, without even telling me where she was going, we couldn't none of us do anything till the Marquis comes back next morning early. Off he goes then to St. Clair; then he comes back and says his brother is lying dead in the big house there, having been shot in the wood by the Government soldiers, and that he is going to have him brought away, and to fetch Miss Horatia too. And, by and by, they brought him, carrying him on a bier with a flag over him, not that red, white, and blue thing they use now in France, but the old one, the white one. And they laid him in the chapel at his own place, where we was, with candles all burning; hardly Christian in a way, not being in a coffin, but I must say he looked beautiful, and when I went in to see him, I cried like a baby; for though I always begrudged him having Miss Horatia, and never trusted him, it did seem dreadful him being cut off like that, so young; and I daresay he would have settled down if he had been spared."Mrs. White wiped her sympathetic eyes, but caught at the last words. "He wasn't what you'd call a good husband to Miss Horatia then?""I don't say that," returned Martha, slightly stiffening. "All them young men over there are wild," she explained, with an air of profound acquaintance with Gallic youth. "The less said about it the better, that's my motto. And really I begun to wonder if I'd not been mistook, seeing the state my poor lamb was in after he was killed. For weeks after we got back to Paris she could not sleep without I was in the little room off hers—always seeing him in her dreams she was, and calling out that he was bleeding to death, and begging him to forgive her—the Lord knows why—and imploring someone to go to him. She fainted on the day of the funeral; a grand funeral it was, with a Bishop to bury him, and a sermon saying he was a martyr for the altar and the throne, whatever that meant. The old Madam nearly went out of her mind over it all, she was that fond of the Count. Then when she—the old one—was quieted down a bit nothing would serve but she must be having the child up in her nasty stuffy bedroom at all hours of the day, saying it was all that was left her, and things like that.""But surely Miss Horatia had something to say to that?"Martha leant forward very impressively. "You mark my words, Polly, there's going to be a tussle over that child! You and me thinks he's English, bless him, because he's Miss Horatia's, but by law he's French, and belongs over there, and you wouldn't believe the difficulty there's been about our leaving Paris. I've not been told, and it's not for me to ask, whether we're coming here on long visits, or whether my Lady will make her home here. But this I do say, they've got their eye on him, the poor innocent, and it'll be worse as he grows up.""What a shame!" said Mrs. White indignantly. "And he no older than my Harriet's Willy!"Mrs. Kemblet rose with majesty, and with majesty she replied, "That's as it may be, but I don't think you realise, Polly, that when the old Duke and his son dies, there'll be only one life between the Count asleep upstairs and the dukedom.""Lor!" ejaculated Mrs. White.And by the child upstairs there stood his grandfather and his mother, looking down at him in his rosy abandonment of slumber."Papa, he was very fond of him," said Horatia at last, and turning, she threw herself weeping into her father's arms.CHAPTER IV(1)All through the falling of the leaves—the creeper leaves that dropped slowly, resplendent in death, from college walls, the narrow willow leaves that were whirled floating on to the streams, the leaves that made a carpet, the leaves that were like rain, the leaves that laughed as they fell, the leaves that fluttered to the ground like wounded birds—Tristram wrestled with the angel of bewilderment.Not even Dormer could help him. He had known that from the night at the Rectory. The matter was too intimately between himself and God; he must struggle through alone. And though, when he was back in Oxford, Dormer had come and sought him out in his lodgings, in order to tell him that he thought he was overworking, and ought to spare himself a little more, Tristram merely said that he was quite well, and let him go without a sign.He was in a mist of anguish and perplexity. If he could only see the path, he told himself, he was ready to follow it, however sharp its flints. But where lay his road? If that reawakened desire of his, hidden from his own eyes till the wind of the Downs had rent the curtain, were sin, then he would cut it from him, at whatever cost. For even then the self that prayed with such intensity for happiness was so much the captive of a surrendered will that at the last it had struggled towards obedience withNon voluntas mea....But how could his desire be sin? He was not a Roman Catholic priest; he was a member of a body where marriage was almost expected. Even if, at his ordination, his intention had been plain to himself, he had taken no formal vow of celibacy. Newman, in spite of his ascetic views, thought that vows were foolish, and showed a lack of trust in Providence. Moreover, might not Horatia's sudden liberation be a sign that she was meant for him after all? And how could she hinder him in his work?—she would be a help to any man. He thought of what she might be as a companion, as an inspiration. And he wanted her for herself; he wanted the warm and ordered joys of home. Was that wrong? How could such desires be wrong, when God Himself had implanted them? Had not Jeremy Taylor called marriage "the nursery of heaven?"But he knew now that this very exaltation of marriage by the Christian Church was only the other side of her exaltation of virginity. This lost truth, the heart of early asceticism—positive offence though it was even to persons who prided themselves on taking literally every other Gospel precept—he had learnt unwillingly enough. He too had found it a hard saying, but like his friends at Oriel, having once admitted it, he could not conveniently forget it. And though these men, because of their intense belief in the Divine plan for every individual life, would never presume to demand from him that he should not marry, yet, with their severe ideals, they would certainly expect that he should not go back on a line once chosen. And he had chosen; no use to deny that. He knew, if no other human being knew, how deeply he was committed to the idea of the life without ties. It was impossible for him to blink the fact that, had Horatia not become free, he would have gone on in the direction in which his mind was set. This present hesitation meant, then, that when, in his heart, he had made a dedication of his life to God, it was only because the one woman he wanted had been taken from him—an offering, as he had always felt, but little worth, though the best that he could bring. But now, now that the offering was to cost him more dear, he was desirous of taking it back again. And he reflected how such conduct would appear in worldly matters. It did not seem to him that its transference to another plane of values would render it any the more creditable.Yes, said another voice, but you cannot set your relations with the Almighty on a sort of business footing. Do you imagine that the Architect of the Universe keeps a strict ledger account with the dust he has called into being, that he does not know the weak and childish heart of it, and accept its poor offerings, not like a merchant, but like a king?To and fro went the warring armies in his soul, while his body carried him about his business among the poor of St. Thomas's. But all the time the tide of combat was setting in one direction, and at last he knew it.There was a certain old woman in one of the courts to whom he used to read every day. Though dirty and illiterate she was methodical and self-willed, and, oblivious of the lessons of the day, selected what book of the Bible she pleased to be read straight through to her. In this way, after a course of Deuteronomy, she had pitched upon St. Mark."You was reading yesterday, Sir, how we should cut off our 'ands and feet and cast them into 'ell fire," she observed one morning as Tristram sat down in her little room. "It seems a 'ard thing to be told to do, don't it?"Scarcely encouraged by this result of his ministrations, Tristram promptly turned to the end of the ninth chapter and re-read the passage, trying to explain as simply as possible its meaning. But the attitude of the old dame was that of one taking her stand on the rock of the Word—"the Good Book says so, and it don't become us to say otherwise"—and after a while, seeing that his exegesis was making no impression, he desisted, and went on to the tenth chapter. He was reading it, truth to tell, without attending much to the words, his mind occupied half unconsciously with the eternal conflict, when he found that he was in the midst of the story of the young ruler, and that his lips were repeating the familiar words, "One thing thou lackest ... sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ... and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."All the rest of the day the story kept running in his head. He could not quite think why, except that it was one of those scenes in the Gospel, dealing with an individual, which had always interested him. With his mother's charity he had often hoped that the young ruler came back after all. He remembered once having a talk with Dormer, who said that there was some sort of tradition that he returned, but that he, Dormer, thought there was very little ground for such a hope. On the same occasion he had enunciated a theory which Tristram had thought rather austere—that certain people, often good people, who had kept the commandments from their youth up, could only be saved at all by enduring hardness. Such people were constantly asked to make decisions involving sacrifice, and whereas others seemed able to compass the heavenly ascent by a tolerably easy road, they, if they were to reach the same summit, must climb by a very different path.And somehow Tristram began to apply these conditions to himself. He had kept the commandments, he had great possessions—friends, enough to live upon, perhaps the possession that he had coveted all these years. What if he were in the position of the young ruler, although he had already begun to obey the command. He had thought that God was perhaps calling him to the single life because he could serve the poor better in that state. He had found how happy he could be at St. Thomas's, and experience had convinced him that for such work a man must be single. It was not just the fact of marrying Horatia. He would have responsibilities which would clash with what he hoped to do. He could not take her to live in the midst of dirt and poverty to risk her health, and the health of their children. If he married her he would be turning his back on his work. According to Dormer's theory he might be turning his back on Christ.And so, in no romantic surroundings but among the trying adornments of his little room in Hollybush Row—the waxen bouquets springing from woolwork mats and shrined under domes of glass, the very bad engraving of the entry of the Allies into Paris, the lustre jugs, the framed announcement of the Oxford coaches and the wall-paper that oppressed the very soul—he fought his way through to the conclusion that Horatia was not for him now any more than she had been two years ago. He must take the harder path, he must go on as he had begun.The stuffed parrot in the centre of his mantelpiece, at which, unknowing, he had been staring fixedly for the last hour, regarded him with a cynical and leering eye. "So this is religion!" it seemed to say. "And this is a man!"Tristram, though appreciating the taunt, got up and put the critic outside the door.(2)Three weeks later, at two o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he was stepping into the post-chaise which was to take him out to Compton Regis to see Horatia for the first time since her return. He had been ordained priest only yesterday. The Rector had been in the Cathedral, and Tristram, touched by his presence, had accepted his urgent invitation to come over to Compton on the morrow, Christmas Eve though it was. For this summons he had, indeed, been preparing himself, since whatever course he should afterwards decide upon, he must at least go out and see Horatia once.Yesterday afternoon, amid the frightful Christmas bustle outside theMitre, in the clamour of departing coaches laden with geese and turkeys, he had said farewell to Dormer, who had stayed thus late in Oxford for his sake, and was posting to Whitchurch, where he would catch the London and Exeter mail in the morning. Even so his expectant nephews and nieces at Colyton would all be in bed long before he reached his brother's house on Christmas Eve. Tristram had deprecated this sacrifice, but Dormer had insisted on staying to see him ordained.Down past the front of Christ Church went the chaise, over the river, and towards the hill—ways so familiar. But the self that travelled them to-day was different. The tortures of indecision were over. Yesterday had put the seal on his dedication. Wonderfully, unbelievably, the choice had been offered to him after all—the reality of sacrifice, not mere acquiescence in past suffering, and because his attitude was no more that of a loveless obedience, he almost longed to feel the pain which he knew was before him. And, even if there was combat to come, he would know now on which side he fought, he would not go away sorrowful.The drawing-room at Compton Rectory was not empty, as he had at first thought, for in a chair before the fire, with her back to him, was seated Horatia herself. On a fold of her black dress lay some immature woolly object which he could not identify, and in the crook of her right arm rested a little motionless head clothed, none too thickly, with curling rings of bronze-gold hair.Tristram stopped in his advance. And at that she lifted her head and spoke."Tristram! Is that you already? He is asleep. Come round here, if you will." He came to her other side, and his lips met the wedding ring on the hand which she tendered to him, smiling."Dear Tristram!" she said, in the same soft tones of welcome, looking up at him. "How kind of you to come! Will you get yourself a chair?"He obeyed, still rather speechless, and when he had sat down she asked him if he had ridden or driven, whether the Rector knew that he was there, all in a quiet and unembarrassed manner. Then she suddenly bent her head and said, "Maurice, it is time that you woke up and spoke to this gentleman."Long lashes as black as night lay on the cheeks of Maurice-Victor-Stanislas de la Roche-Guyon, and one hand grasped firmly a string of jet beads hanging from his mother's neck. His slumber was profound and determined. Tristram gazed at him, his mind in something of a whirl."He got tired, playing with his lamb," vouchsafed Horatia, and as she looked down at the sleeping child a most divine little smile came over her face.The revelation of that look, and the presence of her son somehow almost deprived Tristram of the power to ask her the thousand questions about herself that were on his lips. He got out a few, in a lowered tone, and then, with little warning but a sudden drowsy stretching, Maurice awoke, and out of Armand's eyes: but bluer and more innocent, looked up straight at the visitor.The effect was disconcerting to both. Tristram disguised his feelings, but the younger person, giving way to whatever emotion he may have felt, silently buried his head in his mother's arm.Horatia smiled that new smile of hers, and put a kiss on the curls."I was so sorry that I could not come to your ordination yesterday, Tristram," she was beginning. "Papa would not let me take the long drive, but I wished very much to come..."But just then the Rector entered, and the talk became general, even, on Horatia's side, rather disjointed, for the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, demanding to be put down, crawled meanwhile with an extraordinary rapidity about the floor, addressing in obscure terms every object that he encountered on his route, footstools, hearthrug, even the flora of the carpet. Finally he embraced with fervour one of Tristram's legs, and Tristram, after a moment or two, stooped and lifted him on to his knee. After all, he might as well accustom himself to children, though he would rather have gone to school with the child of someone else. Maurice smiled."Up!" he observed pertinently, and kicked out his feet with happy vigour, somewhat endangering his balance."He doesn't often take to people like that!" observed his mother and grandfather simultaneously, and with the usual amount of truth...It was over. And as the post-chaise jolted him back in the darkness to Oxford, Tristram's whole heart was so swamped with the thought of Horatia, what she must have gone through, how miraculously she had changed, that there was little room for the contemplation of himself. She had now what she wanted; he was sure of it; she held it in her arms. The great surprise of it, after Paris, only made him the more convinced. God had given her compensation for what she had suffered. Yet the more he thought, with all a man's touch of sentiment, about the little group in the firelight, the more that it seemed to him wonderful, beautiful, and, for Horatia, consummatory, the more did he realise the cost of selling that great possession which he might have had. Just as he had stood and looked on at mother and child this evening, so must he always stand now and look on—no more—at the sanctities of home.And he had a sudden vision, too, of Dormer, surrounded to-morrow in church by the fair heads of his brother's many children, kneeling in the midst of a bevy who were none of his. He had once told Tristram of the whispered communications that were wont to be made to him in service-time, of the happy terror in the eyes that would follow the small pointing finger up "Little Choke-a-bone Alley" to the tomb of the girl of royal lineage choked, hundreds of years ago, "by a fish-bone, Uncle Charles!"—to the effigy which had thrilled him himself as a boy.... There are veils which the hand of a close friend is the last to touch, and whether Dormer had ever suffered as he had suffered, or whether the vision which he had always followed shone with a light so effulgent that no other joys had radiance, Tristram could never pity him. But, remembering his long patience and hope, he desired suddenly to give him a Christmas gift, and though the letter could not reach him on the feast itself, and though it cost him something to do it, he sat down, when he got back, and told him what he had kept from him yesterday, that he had indeed, at last, sold whatsoever he had.And, when he offered the Eucharist for the first time on Christmas morning, he made his own oblation, mingled of pain and joy.CHAPTER V(1)The Rector had just closed the door of his study on the retreating form of Mary Straker, a blushing village damsel who had come to impart to him the news of approaching matrimony. Mr. Grenville had a peculiar interest in the announcement, for some three years previously he had intervened to shield her inamorato from the consequences of a poaching adventure, and had emigrated him up to Yorkshire as a groom. The grateful swain had now written to his betrothed to inform her that he had saved enough money to marry upon, and that he intended to return this spring for the ceremony, and would Mary please tell his Reverence so, and he hoped, with his best respects, as his Reverence would say the words over them come Easter.Mr. Grenville was pleased, and went smiling to the window. Drumming on the pane a moment, he looked out at the young green of March, and hoped Tom Hollings and little Polly would be happy. In his parish the Rector was something of a matchmaker. He had an obscure conviction that one had only to put two people together and they would hit it off somehow; in fact he had always taken a rosy view of marriage—until the marriage of his own daughter. He thought of that now, and, suddenly sighing, came away from the window.He was really worried about Horatia, in spite of the fact that she looked distinctly better since her return three months ago. But she seemed sometimes as if she would never recover from her sadness. She had lost her habit of teasing him; she was, for her, rather too sweetly reasonable. And yet he could not help her. Poor darling! he could not bear to think that she knew so much of evil, and had grown so much older in such a short time. In some ways the thing that he most resented in the whole unhappy affair was the smirching of her innocence. While he was in Paris he had been really shocked at the Duchesse's broad views when, with her accustomed frankness, she had laid before him the reason for his grandson's premature arrival, emphasising the fact that she was annoyed not with Armand's conduct in itself, but with his carelessness. And though he was half unwilling to listen to Martha, there were things which she insisted on telling him, prefacing them with "And I think you ought to know, Sir."But because Armand was dead he thought of him now as "that poor young man," and, to his mind, his tragic removal somehow whitewashed his conduct and made it "better not to think of it." At the same time he did not fail, in his inmost heart, to feel that removal a direct work of Providence, and was deeply ashamed of this feeling, especially when he considered Maurice's fatherless condition. Often, indeed, watching him with his mother, was Mr. Grenville struck with the pathos of the situation. He loved to see them together, especially when Horatia did not know that he was looking at them; she seemed to him so beautifully maternal, and he could hardly believe that there had been a time when she did not care for the child.Mr. Grenville began to pace up and down, his hands behind his back, and not for the first time did he wonder whether the comfort which he was powerless to give Horatia might not, after all, come from another quarter. He had, for his part, a distinct objection to second marriages, and had acted on it in his own case, but he would be easier to Horatia than he had been to himself. Horatia was still so young, the fatherless Maurice so tiny, her married life—her unhappy married life—had been so short ... eighteen months! Then the presence of Tristram, still unmarried and, as far as he knew, unchanged in his feelings towards Horatia, seemed to him almost providential. Tristram Hungerford indeed was steadfastness incarnate; he could not conceive of his changing. But, of course, he did not know what Tristram thought of second marriages. In any case, however, his present attitude was very proper, not intruding upon Horatia's grief. Besides, he was probably waiting till he had a living. Yet, second marriages...Mr. Grenville stopped in his promenade, and with a look on his face as of one about to drink medicine, took down Jeremy Taylor from a shelf and turned over the pages till he came to that divine's remarks on the widowed state. Tightening his lips, he shut up the book after a moment with something like a bang, and replaced it. Yes, second marriages ... But, after all, he was going on rather fast.(2)When the Rector returned, late that afternoon, from visiting his parishioners, he was rather surprised to find Horatia sitting on a stool in front of his study fire, which had only just been lit. As soon as he had sat down beside her she put her head on his knee, and said, with the directness of a child,"Papa, dear, I want to talk to you. I am so unhappy! I must talk to someone."The Rector put his hand on her hair, half alarmed, half pleased that she had come to him. "What is it, my love?" he said tenderly. "Only this morning I was thinking of you and wishing I could comfort you.""O Papa, I can't say it to you. I am so wicked!" And she began to cry."My dearest child," said the Rector, astonished, "what do you mean? How can you have been wicked? Come, then, tell me all about it. There is nothing you cannot say to me. I can understand how you loved him in spite—in spite of many things.""But that is just it," answered Horatia, sobbing. "I did not really love him." Then she went on in an outburst, "You think now that I'm grieving for him because I loved him. It isn't true. I'm grieving just because I didn't love him. I want to say to people, Don't be sorry for me, don't look at my black dress! I am a wicked woman, I did not love my husband. I did not even do my duty."Mr. Grenville put an arm round his daughter's shoulders and bent over her. "My child, you mustn't talk like this. We know that poor Armand was not all that he might have been to you, and I daresay I know more than you think. You married him for better or for worse, and in some ways ... for although he is dead we must face facts ... I have little doubt it was for worse. It was a shock to your innocence to find out much that you ought never to have known. I ought to have warned you more, to have told you more. My darling child, your old father has been greatly to blame. If only your dear mother had been alive!""Papa, you did warn me," she said, drying her eyes. "I was very wilful; I thought I knew best. But it seemed then as if Armand came and opened a new world to me, and I thought it was love ... but it could not have been ... and then I began to hear things ... and before Maurice was born...""I know, my dear," said the Rector, smoothing her hair."And Maurice, the darling, I was so wicked I would not look at him ... and as for Armand, I believe I almost hated him ... and I told him he was dead to me ... and now he is dead really ... and how can I say I loved him!"The Rector reflected a little before replying."I would not think too much, Horatia, of whether you loved him or did not love him. I understand that you are trying to be honest with yourself, but now you have told me do not fret about that part of it. You made mistakes, and it is all very sad, but try to remember that we are in the hands of a merciful Creator. 'He knoweth whereof we are made; He remembereth that we are but dust.""If only I could be like you, Papa, and could have your trust! It frightens me to think about him.""Tell me, my dear.""O, he did not want to die. He was so young, and he loved life. He said one thing that I shall never forget: 'If they tell you that I was resigned, do not believe them.'""Poor boy, poor boy!" murmured the Rector huskily."And the way he died was so dreadful! I had never seen anyone die before, and I did not know how awful it could be. O, I have been so frightened!" said Horatia, now almost incoherent. "I see him always with the blood spreading through the linen, and I hear him always calling in that terrible voice, 'Laurence, Laurence! ...""Ah!" said the Rector, compressing his lips. He made an effort to control himself. "Don't go on, Horatia; don't distress yourself! I know all about it. We must try not to judge the dead—and may God have mercy on us all!"There was a pause, during which Mr. Grenville blew his nose violently."Dear, dear," he resumed at length, "you ought never to have suffered this—and to think of your being alone at such a time! I have been much to blame, much to blame! ... There, there, my child, you will stay with me, now, and you are young, and in time you will forget——""Never, never!" exclaimed Horatia, raising her head."No; well, perhaps, I should not say that, but the old know that we must forget even if we do not want to, and as I said, you are young, and there is Maurice. He can help you more than anyone else.—You will stay with me, Horatia?"She flung her arms tightly round his neck. "Oh, yes. Papa, if you will keep me. Two or three months every year I must go back to France, but for the rest there is no reason why I should not stay with you if you will have me." She sat still for a moment, leaning against her father's knee, and when she was a little calmer, went on, "You remember that I wrote and told you about the will, that Armand wished Maurice to go to an English school. He was very fond of him, Papa.""Yes, my dear."A pause."The more I think of it, Horatia," began Mr. Grenville solemnly, "the more I believe that you ought to find your comfort in this provision of your husband's will. It seems to me to prove that, far from doubting your affection, he felt that he owed something to you, and that this was the way he tried to make up to you. Poor young man, there was much good in him! Try to think of this, my love, and say your prayers and do your duty—and now, dear me, it is nearly dinner-time!"CHAPTER VI(1)"Want!" observed the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, stretching out a fat hand from his wheeled bassinette towards the huge red poppy nodding in the flowerbed beside him. "Want, want, want!" he repeated beating with the same member upon the satin coverlet.Grimes the gardener, clipping the hedge near by, looked round. "And so you shall, my pretty!" quoth he. Turning, he broke off the object of Maurice's desires, and presented it to him, and Maurice, after tearing off the flaming petals, inserted the fascinating remainder into his mouth.He had not time, however, to try his newest teeth upon the green dainty before it was torn from him and flung whirling into the bed as Martha—who had but left her charge for a moment—emptied the vials of her wrath upon the luckless donor. "And you a married man not to know better than that! You might have poisoned the precious child under his mother's very eyes! Come away, my beautiful ... now don't cry after the nasty thing!"As the hand of indignation wheeled Maurice away from the vicinity of the unworthy Grimes it removed him also out of Horatia's field of vision, where she sat under the acacia tree on the lawn, a book on her lap and a workbasket by her side. Horatia flew something of her old colour in her cheeks. Her father, after her outburst in the spring, had told her to say her prayers and to do her duty. To do her duty, or what she knew that her father would conceive to be her duty, was easy—anything was easy that served to take her mind off herself. She did all she could for Maurice, and was unaware that Martha generally did it all over again. She paid visits and went to local shows, proceedings that before her marriage had been very distasteful to her. The Rector thought her so brave, and wonderfully softened, for now she seemed to suffer fools gladly. She did, for any company was better than her own.But to say her prayers was a different matter, for though she repeated a form of words she could not pray, and she hated being in church, for there her mind invariably became clear, and all that she had shut away in a box marked "Paris" would emerge, and be, not a dream of the past, but a present reality. At any moment this box was not over-securely fastened. Inside were remorse and hatred. Every letter from France shook the lid—though such letters were not very frequent—one or two melancholy epistles from the Duc, a few kind notes from Emmanuel, some, not so benevolent, from the Dowager, and one malicious communication from the Marquise de Beaulieu, informing her that Madame de Vigerie had not been seen in society this year, and that every one was wondering why.... How she hated the Vicomtesse! It was she who had cast the first poisoned fruit into their Eden, it was she who had deceived her with a show of friendship, she who had caused her to condemn Armand innocent, she who had lured him on—lured him on to his death. Merely to think of her was to revive, in its fadeless colours, that picture or dream of him, lying dead in her arms....Better than saying her prayers or doing her duty were Tristram's visits.She did not take them as a matter of course, but looked forward to them almost eagerly, comparing them with the many times he had come in old days. She was changed, she knew, but so was he. The fact of his becoming a clergyman might have been expected to make him more sedate, but it had had the opposite effect. At times he was quite lighthearted and full of hope, and seemed to find no little enjoyment in the prospect of a fight to come. The hope and the joy of battle were for the Church, for the Church was in danger, and yet Horatia no longer wanted to laugh at him or to tease him. He would tell her that he and his friends at Oriel were conspirators, and that one day the conspiracy would break out, that Oxford was going to lead another hope, and not a forlorn one. In July he had said that they only waited for Newman to come back from Italy, that Froude was full of fire, and that if Keble could only be got to move he would be more potent than anyone.Horatia had watched eagerly to see what the Reformed Parliament would do, and, when the bill for the suppression of the Irish bishoprics was introduced, she was pleasurably thrilled at the thought then presented to her that perhaps an era of persecution had really begun. She was full of elation when Mr. Keble preached his stirring Assize sermon in July and of regret that she herself had not heard it. In August she felt the futility of the meeting at Hadleigh, and she was as convinced as Tristram could have wished that no great movement was ever successfully conducted by an association; she was sure that it must be the work of individuals. And now she was waiting for the appearance of the first-fruits of that idea—the projected series of Tracts.It was like an exciting game, for Horatia's interest was, after all, purely intellectual. And her instinct told her that even if Mr. Froude could speak jestingly of a conspiracy, and the friends could use, out of reverence for holy things, a "little language" which to the outsider appeared merely flippant, there was within them a spirit which made her shrink. She knew that they had a profound belief in Providence, that they believed they had a work to do, and were but tools for its execution. This alone was a disturbing thought. And she perceived in them a moral force, a severity and a relentlessness which she had never met before. If, as people said, they wished to copy the Roman Catholics, she was at a loss to know where in that body, as she knew it, they had found their exemplar, for not even in Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, reputed and sincerely believed by her to be a saint, had she seen any trace of this spirit. But it was to be found, no doubt, in the religious orders. It also occurred to Horatia that this reformation of the Church for which Tristram's friends were so eager would mean a change in the lives of the clergy. It would mean the disappearance of the hunting parson, of the prosperous rector of the "three-bottle school," even, she supposed, of the fashionable Evangelical preacher. But it might mean, too, a change in the people who were taught by the clergy.... She much preferred not to hear about this sort of thing from Tristram, and yet he was so eager, when once set on to talk, that she often started him for the mere pleasure of watching him. She could laugh at its absurdity, yet she felt a lurking sympathy with Lord Melbourne's plaint, that things were coming to a pretty pass if religion was to invade the affairs of daily life, for thought hovering round this connection was apt to become personal in its application, and that which served generally as a diversion would end by making her conscience still more uneasy.Tristram might come any day now in his round of distributing these new Tracts. As Maurice was wheeled away Horatia took up the August number of the "British Magazine" on her knee to look at the "Lyra Apostolica" for that month, which she had not yet read. It would be interesting to see whether she could guess the authorship of each of these unsigned poems, and to tell Tristram her surmise. She suspected Mr. Newman, who edited them, of writing most of them himself.There were only three poems under that heading last month, she found, and they all referred in some way or other to "the Golden Keys." The first, short and somewhat cryptic, was called "The Three Absolutions."What were the three absolutions? Two she knew of; a little note said that the third was to be found in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. She must look it up one day.... Then, suddenly remembering that there was an old Prayer Book somewhere in her workbasket, she stopped and found it, and, turning up the place, suffered considerable amazement....She looked again at the poem—"Full of the past, all shuddering thought,Man waits his hour with upward eye—The Golden Keys in love are broughtThat he may hold by them and die."In her own Church then she could have Absolution if she were dying. She felt that when she came to die she would like to have it, and remembered that there had been a time when she had thought that, if she were to go on living, she must have it, a time when she had not excused herself, but when, in the first weeks of horror and misery, she had taken all the blame, had been too much overwhelmed with self-accusation and remorse even to taste perfectly her hatred of Madame de Vigerie.And with the thought the gates opened, and the whole tide of memory burst upon her, full-waved, bearing her out of the safe and quiet English garden to a little church in Paris, holding a warm incense-burdened air, and flooded with a soft dusk in which the winking light before the altar seemed doubly alive and significant, and the irregular concourse of candles by the statue of the Madonna burnt with a speaking radiance. And she was kneeling in a rush-bottomed kneeling-chair, weighed down by her deep mourning, unable to pray, her mind a maze of inarticulate pain, not knowing how or why she had strayed into this place, except that it was peaceful. A few persons scattered about among the disordered chairs got up one by one, moved away, and after a while knelt down again, and there was a murmur of voices. In a moment or two Horatia realised that they were making their confessions, an idea which had once been full of a fascinated horror. Now it suddenly seemed reasonable. That woman, for instance, a widow like herself, coming back from the confessional to her place, what had she been saying, what had she been told to do, what was she feeling like now? Supposing it had been she herself ... for no one could say hard enough things to her, nor could any penance equal the anguish that it would be to put her self-accusation into words, and to acknowledge her wrongdoing. Yet anguish she would have welcomed. Had she been of the faith of these people she could have comfort too.... But that was impossible.And there came for the hundredth time the vision of Armand going in bitterness and agony down the slope to death, with the ironic little smile on his wryed mouth, the livid circles round the eyes which once had held for her all the light in the world. For she knew now—and the knowledge was only an added pang—that the reawakened feeling of that terrible night was only a transient emotion. She buried her face in her hands, and the heartrending pity of it surged over her, the horror and the tragedy of death, of his death, young and reluctant. Kneeling there, her face hidden, every voice of her soul went out suddenly to plead for him, though she knew not what to plead... "O God, it was my doing! The blame was not his, not his, O God.... He was kind to me, always. Have mercy, have mercy...."So, after many days, had she prayed—but not for herself.
CHAPTER III
(1)
Great things were vouchsafed on Saturday, the 14th of December, 1832, to Mrs. Polly White, sister and correspondent of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, for, it being the day on which she went to "do" at the Rectory, she was enabled to combine the fine drawing of a tablecloth (an art in which she was proficient) with the sight of the arrival of Miss Horatia and the Rector, the precious babe and her own sister. Mr. Grenville had gone to Dover to meet the packet, and the party was expected from Oxford, by chaise, some time in the afternoon.
The village was all agog about Horatia's return, and some spirits, lacking delicacy rather than enthusiasm, had entertained the idea of an evergreen arch across the Rectory gate, to bear the words "Welcome Home," and to be adorned with such decorations as had survived from the Coronation festivities fifteen months before. The impropriety of so receiving a newly-made widow having been pointed out, gossip had then spent itself in speculations as to how Miss 'Ratia would look, not only in her weeds, poor dear, but in the status of a French countess, or whatever she was, for it was felt that in some way she would be a different person from the Miss 'Ratia they had known. One old man, however, dratting them all, announced his unalterable intention of putting a couple of lighted candles in his window, for if his darter had taken and married a Frenchy, and had come home again after so disastrous a step, widder or no widder, he should consider it a clear case of "This my darter wur dead, and be alive again; and wur lost and be found." Such was indeed the general feeling in Compton Regis, where only a few impressionable damsels were found to remark that Miss 'Ratia's husband had been a proper young man, and that 'twas a gurt pity he had been killed in them foreign wars.
Mrs. White deplored all this chatter though she would fain have contributed to it. When, therefore, about four o'clock, Ellen rushed into the room where she was working to say that the chaise was turning in at the gate, she flew with the rest of the domestics to the front door. And thus, curtseying like them, she was privileged to see the black and yellow post-chaise from theAngelat Oxford draw up at the steps, to behold the Rector emerge and assist to alight, first a lady in the deepest mourning, a long crape veil such as Mrs. White had never seen covering her from head to foot, secondly, a foreign-looking nurse or nursemaid (disliked by Mrs. White on the spot, though bearing a priceless burden), and lastly her own dear comfortable, capable sister, not changed a bit. And she saw the Comtesse put back her long veil, and come up the steps on her father's arm, looking that sweet, but so sad! The Rector, poor dear gentleman, seemed moved, as who wouldn't be. Miss 'Ratia, when you saw her in the light, was older, a little, and thin in the cheeks, but the weeds set off her hair and complexion beautiful. As for the lovely infant, he was asleep, and Mrs. White preferred in any case to view him when Martha could act as show-woman. And so, as the party mounted the stairs, she returned to her napery, hoping that her sister would shortly appear.
But Martha was indeed unchanged, and it was not until things were "to her liking," the nurse properly installed, the child in bed, her mistress's trunks unpacked, and her mistress at table with his Reverence, that she permitted herself to seek out and to embrace her sister. Then, due greeting and inquiries having passed, Mrs. Kemblet, seated in a restful chair, began her desired narration.
"I wish I could have got my lamb to go to bed at once, and have her dinner there. However, she's a sight stronger than she was, and has stood the journey wonderful, considering. Rough it was, too, and the packet rolling something horrible. But here we all are safely, thanks to One Above, and the infant none the worse, though a trifle fractious, bless his heart!"
"Ah, but whatshemust have been through, Martha!" said Mrs. White feelingly.
This was a whip to a willing horse. "You may well say that, Polly," responded her sister. "What with being fetched like that all sudden at night, to find the poor young gentleman weltering in an agony—for he was shot something terrible, they said—and him dying in her arms (all unprepared, too, I'm afraid), and then going back to Paris with his body, and the household off their heads, and the funeral—I don't know what we should have done without the elder one, the Marquis as they call him..."
"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. White, as the narrator paused for breath. "And where was the poor young man buried, then?"
"At the grand family place where we was during the cholera time.... Well, to go back to the dreadful occurrence" (impossible to deny that there was relish in Mrs. Kemblet's tone over these words) "when Miss Horatia gets this letter and rushes off to this place, St. Clair, without even telling me where she was going, we couldn't none of us do anything till the Marquis comes back next morning early. Off he goes then to St. Clair; then he comes back and says his brother is lying dead in the big house there, having been shot in the wood by the Government soldiers, and that he is going to have him brought away, and to fetch Miss Horatia too. And, by and by, they brought him, carrying him on a bier with a flag over him, not that red, white, and blue thing they use now in France, but the old one, the white one. And they laid him in the chapel at his own place, where we was, with candles all burning; hardly Christian in a way, not being in a coffin, but I must say he looked beautiful, and when I went in to see him, I cried like a baby; for though I always begrudged him having Miss Horatia, and never trusted him, it did seem dreadful him being cut off like that, so young; and I daresay he would have settled down if he had been spared."
Mrs. White wiped her sympathetic eyes, but caught at the last words. "He wasn't what you'd call a good husband to Miss Horatia then?"
"I don't say that," returned Martha, slightly stiffening. "All them young men over there are wild," she explained, with an air of profound acquaintance with Gallic youth. "The less said about it the better, that's my motto. And really I begun to wonder if I'd not been mistook, seeing the state my poor lamb was in after he was killed. For weeks after we got back to Paris she could not sleep without I was in the little room off hers—always seeing him in her dreams she was, and calling out that he was bleeding to death, and begging him to forgive her—the Lord knows why—and imploring someone to go to him. She fainted on the day of the funeral; a grand funeral it was, with a Bishop to bury him, and a sermon saying he was a martyr for the altar and the throne, whatever that meant. The old Madam nearly went out of her mind over it all, she was that fond of the Count. Then when she—the old one—was quieted down a bit nothing would serve but she must be having the child up in her nasty stuffy bedroom at all hours of the day, saying it was all that was left her, and things like that."
"But surely Miss Horatia had something to say to that?"
Martha leant forward very impressively. "You mark my words, Polly, there's going to be a tussle over that child! You and me thinks he's English, bless him, because he's Miss Horatia's, but by law he's French, and belongs over there, and you wouldn't believe the difficulty there's been about our leaving Paris. I've not been told, and it's not for me to ask, whether we're coming here on long visits, or whether my Lady will make her home here. But this I do say, they've got their eye on him, the poor innocent, and it'll be worse as he grows up."
"What a shame!" said Mrs. White indignantly. "And he no older than my Harriet's Willy!"
Mrs. Kemblet rose with majesty, and with majesty she replied, "That's as it may be, but I don't think you realise, Polly, that when the old Duke and his son dies, there'll be only one life between the Count asleep upstairs and the dukedom."
"Lor!" ejaculated Mrs. White.
And by the child upstairs there stood his grandfather and his mother, looking down at him in his rosy abandonment of slumber.
"Papa, he was very fond of him," said Horatia at last, and turning, she threw herself weeping into her father's arms.
CHAPTER IV
(1)
All through the falling of the leaves—the creeper leaves that dropped slowly, resplendent in death, from college walls, the narrow willow leaves that were whirled floating on to the streams, the leaves that made a carpet, the leaves that were like rain, the leaves that laughed as they fell, the leaves that fluttered to the ground like wounded birds—Tristram wrestled with the angel of bewilderment.
Not even Dormer could help him. He had known that from the night at the Rectory. The matter was too intimately between himself and God; he must struggle through alone. And though, when he was back in Oxford, Dormer had come and sought him out in his lodgings, in order to tell him that he thought he was overworking, and ought to spare himself a little more, Tristram merely said that he was quite well, and let him go without a sign.
He was in a mist of anguish and perplexity. If he could only see the path, he told himself, he was ready to follow it, however sharp its flints. But where lay his road? If that reawakened desire of his, hidden from his own eyes till the wind of the Downs had rent the curtain, were sin, then he would cut it from him, at whatever cost. For even then the self that prayed with such intensity for happiness was so much the captive of a surrendered will that at the last it had struggled towards obedience withNon voluntas mea....
But how could his desire be sin? He was not a Roman Catholic priest; he was a member of a body where marriage was almost expected. Even if, at his ordination, his intention had been plain to himself, he had taken no formal vow of celibacy. Newman, in spite of his ascetic views, thought that vows were foolish, and showed a lack of trust in Providence. Moreover, might not Horatia's sudden liberation be a sign that she was meant for him after all? And how could she hinder him in his work?—she would be a help to any man. He thought of what she might be as a companion, as an inspiration. And he wanted her for herself; he wanted the warm and ordered joys of home. Was that wrong? How could such desires be wrong, when God Himself had implanted them? Had not Jeremy Taylor called marriage "the nursery of heaven?"
But he knew now that this very exaltation of marriage by the Christian Church was only the other side of her exaltation of virginity. This lost truth, the heart of early asceticism—positive offence though it was even to persons who prided themselves on taking literally every other Gospel precept—he had learnt unwillingly enough. He too had found it a hard saying, but like his friends at Oriel, having once admitted it, he could not conveniently forget it. And though these men, because of their intense belief in the Divine plan for every individual life, would never presume to demand from him that he should not marry, yet, with their severe ideals, they would certainly expect that he should not go back on a line once chosen. And he had chosen; no use to deny that. He knew, if no other human being knew, how deeply he was committed to the idea of the life without ties. It was impossible for him to blink the fact that, had Horatia not become free, he would have gone on in the direction in which his mind was set. This present hesitation meant, then, that when, in his heart, he had made a dedication of his life to God, it was only because the one woman he wanted had been taken from him—an offering, as he had always felt, but little worth, though the best that he could bring. But now, now that the offering was to cost him more dear, he was desirous of taking it back again. And he reflected how such conduct would appear in worldly matters. It did not seem to him that its transference to another plane of values would render it any the more creditable.
Yes, said another voice, but you cannot set your relations with the Almighty on a sort of business footing. Do you imagine that the Architect of the Universe keeps a strict ledger account with the dust he has called into being, that he does not know the weak and childish heart of it, and accept its poor offerings, not like a merchant, but like a king?
To and fro went the warring armies in his soul, while his body carried him about his business among the poor of St. Thomas's. But all the time the tide of combat was setting in one direction, and at last he knew it.
There was a certain old woman in one of the courts to whom he used to read every day. Though dirty and illiterate she was methodical and self-willed, and, oblivious of the lessons of the day, selected what book of the Bible she pleased to be read straight through to her. In this way, after a course of Deuteronomy, she had pitched upon St. Mark.
"You was reading yesterday, Sir, how we should cut off our 'ands and feet and cast them into 'ell fire," she observed one morning as Tristram sat down in her little room. "It seems a 'ard thing to be told to do, don't it?"
Scarcely encouraged by this result of his ministrations, Tristram promptly turned to the end of the ninth chapter and re-read the passage, trying to explain as simply as possible its meaning. But the attitude of the old dame was that of one taking her stand on the rock of the Word—"the Good Book says so, and it don't become us to say otherwise"—and after a while, seeing that his exegesis was making no impression, he desisted, and went on to the tenth chapter. He was reading it, truth to tell, without attending much to the words, his mind occupied half unconsciously with the eternal conflict, when he found that he was in the midst of the story of the young ruler, and that his lips were repeating the familiar words, "One thing thou lackest ... sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor ... and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."
All the rest of the day the story kept running in his head. He could not quite think why, except that it was one of those scenes in the Gospel, dealing with an individual, which had always interested him. With his mother's charity he had often hoped that the young ruler came back after all. He remembered once having a talk with Dormer, who said that there was some sort of tradition that he returned, but that he, Dormer, thought there was very little ground for such a hope. On the same occasion he had enunciated a theory which Tristram had thought rather austere—that certain people, often good people, who had kept the commandments from their youth up, could only be saved at all by enduring hardness. Such people were constantly asked to make decisions involving sacrifice, and whereas others seemed able to compass the heavenly ascent by a tolerably easy road, they, if they were to reach the same summit, must climb by a very different path.
And somehow Tristram began to apply these conditions to himself. He had kept the commandments, he had great possessions—friends, enough to live upon, perhaps the possession that he had coveted all these years. What if he were in the position of the young ruler, although he had already begun to obey the command. He had thought that God was perhaps calling him to the single life because he could serve the poor better in that state. He had found how happy he could be at St. Thomas's, and experience had convinced him that for such work a man must be single. It was not just the fact of marrying Horatia. He would have responsibilities which would clash with what he hoped to do. He could not take her to live in the midst of dirt and poverty to risk her health, and the health of their children. If he married her he would be turning his back on his work. According to Dormer's theory he might be turning his back on Christ.
And so, in no romantic surroundings but among the trying adornments of his little room in Hollybush Row—the waxen bouquets springing from woolwork mats and shrined under domes of glass, the very bad engraving of the entry of the Allies into Paris, the lustre jugs, the framed announcement of the Oxford coaches and the wall-paper that oppressed the very soul—he fought his way through to the conclusion that Horatia was not for him now any more than she had been two years ago. He must take the harder path, he must go on as he had begun.
The stuffed parrot in the centre of his mantelpiece, at which, unknowing, he had been staring fixedly for the last hour, regarded him with a cynical and leering eye. "So this is religion!" it seemed to say. "And this is a man!"
Tristram, though appreciating the taunt, got up and put the critic outside the door.
(2)
Three weeks later, at two o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he was stepping into the post-chaise which was to take him out to Compton Regis to see Horatia for the first time since her return. He had been ordained priest only yesterday. The Rector had been in the Cathedral, and Tristram, touched by his presence, had accepted his urgent invitation to come over to Compton on the morrow, Christmas Eve though it was. For this summons he had, indeed, been preparing himself, since whatever course he should afterwards decide upon, he must at least go out and see Horatia once.
Yesterday afternoon, amid the frightful Christmas bustle outside theMitre, in the clamour of departing coaches laden with geese and turkeys, he had said farewell to Dormer, who had stayed thus late in Oxford for his sake, and was posting to Whitchurch, where he would catch the London and Exeter mail in the morning. Even so his expectant nephews and nieces at Colyton would all be in bed long before he reached his brother's house on Christmas Eve. Tristram had deprecated this sacrifice, but Dormer had insisted on staying to see him ordained.
Down past the front of Christ Church went the chaise, over the river, and towards the hill—ways so familiar. But the self that travelled them to-day was different. The tortures of indecision were over. Yesterday had put the seal on his dedication. Wonderfully, unbelievably, the choice had been offered to him after all—the reality of sacrifice, not mere acquiescence in past suffering, and because his attitude was no more that of a loveless obedience, he almost longed to feel the pain which he knew was before him. And, even if there was combat to come, he would know now on which side he fought, he would not go away sorrowful.
The drawing-room at Compton Rectory was not empty, as he had at first thought, for in a chair before the fire, with her back to him, was seated Horatia herself. On a fold of her black dress lay some immature woolly object which he could not identify, and in the crook of her right arm rested a little motionless head clothed, none too thickly, with curling rings of bronze-gold hair.
Tristram stopped in his advance. And at that she lifted her head and spoke.
"Tristram! Is that you already? He is asleep. Come round here, if you will." He came to her other side, and his lips met the wedding ring on the hand which she tendered to him, smiling.
"Dear Tristram!" she said, in the same soft tones of welcome, looking up at him. "How kind of you to come! Will you get yourself a chair?"
He obeyed, still rather speechless, and when he had sat down she asked him if he had ridden or driven, whether the Rector knew that he was there, all in a quiet and unembarrassed manner. Then she suddenly bent her head and said, "Maurice, it is time that you woke up and spoke to this gentleman."
Long lashes as black as night lay on the cheeks of Maurice-Victor-Stanislas de la Roche-Guyon, and one hand grasped firmly a string of jet beads hanging from his mother's neck. His slumber was profound and determined. Tristram gazed at him, his mind in something of a whirl.
"He got tired, playing with his lamb," vouchsafed Horatia, and as she looked down at the sleeping child a most divine little smile came over her face.
The revelation of that look, and the presence of her son somehow almost deprived Tristram of the power to ask her the thousand questions about herself that were on his lips. He got out a few, in a lowered tone, and then, with little warning but a sudden drowsy stretching, Maurice awoke, and out of Armand's eyes: but bluer and more innocent, looked up straight at the visitor.
The effect was disconcerting to both. Tristram disguised his feelings, but the younger person, giving way to whatever emotion he may have felt, silently buried his head in his mother's arm.
Horatia smiled that new smile of hers, and put a kiss on the curls.
"I was so sorry that I could not come to your ordination yesterday, Tristram," she was beginning. "Papa would not let me take the long drive, but I wished very much to come..."
But just then the Rector entered, and the talk became general, even, on Horatia's side, rather disjointed, for the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, demanding to be put down, crawled meanwhile with an extraordinary rapidity about the floor, addressing in obscure terms every object that he encountered on his route, footstools, hearthrug, even the flora of the carpet. Finally he embraced with fervour one of Tristram's legs, and Tristram, after a moment or two, stooped and lifted him on to his knee. After all, he might as well accustom himself to children, though he would rather have gone to school with the child of someone else. Maurice smiled.
"Up!" he observed pertinently, and kicked out his feet with happy vigour, somewhat endangering his balance.
"He doesn't often take to people like that!" observed his mother and grandfather simultaneously, and with the usual amount of truth...
It was over. And as the post-chaise jolted him back in the darkness to Oxford, Tristram's whole heart was so swamped with the thought of Horatia, what she must have gone through, how miraculously she had changed, that there was little room for the contemplation of himself. She had now what she wanted; he was sure of it; she held it in her arms. The great surprise of it, after Paris, only made him the more convinced. God had given her compensation for what she had suffered. Yet the more he thought, with all a man's touch of sentiment, about the little group in the firelight, the more that it seemed to him wonderful, beautiful, and, for Horatia, consummatory, the more did he realise the cost of selling that great possession which he might have had. Just as he had stood and looked on at mother and child this evening, so must he always stand now and look on—no more—at the sanctities of home.
And he had a sudden vision, too, of Dormer, surrounded to-morrow in church by the fair heads of his brother's many children, kneeling in the midst of a bevy who were none of his. He had once told Tristram of the whispered communications that were wont to be made to him in service-time, of the happy terror in the eyes that would follow the small pointing finger up "Little Choke-a-bone Alley" to the tomb of the girl of royal lineage choked, hundreds of years ago, "by a fish-bone, Uncle Charles!"—to the effigy which had thrilled him himself as a boy.... There are veils which the hand of a close friend is the last to touch, and whether Dormer had ever suffered as he had suffered, or whether the vision which he had always followed shone with a light so effulgent that no other joys had radiance, Tristram could never pity him. But, remembering his long patience and hope, he desired suddenly to give him a Christmas gift, and though the letter could not reach him on the feast itself, and though it cost him something to do it, he sat down, when he got back, and told him what he had kept from him yesterday, that he had indeed, at last, sold whatsoever he had.
And, when he offered the Eucharist for the first time on Christmas morning, he made his own oblation, mingled of pain and joy.
CHAPTER V
(1)
The Rector had just closed the door of his study on the retreating form of Mary Straker, a blushing village damsel who had come to impart to him the news of approaching matrimony. Mr. Grenville had a peculiar interest in the announcement, for some three years previously he had intervened to shield her inamorato from the consequences of a poaching adventure, and had emigrated him up to Yorkshire as a groom. The grateful swain had now written to his betrothed to inform her that he had saved enough money to marry upon, and that he intended to return this spring for the ceremony, and would Mary please tell his Reverence so, and he hoped, with his best respects, as his Reverence would say the words over them come Easter.
Mr. Grenville was pleased, and went smiling to the window. Drumming on the pane a moment, he looked out at the young green of March, and hoped Tom Hollings and little Polly would be happy. In his parish the Rector was something of a matchmaker. He had an obscure conviction that one had only to put two people together and they would hit it off somehow; in fact he had always taken a rosy view of marriage—until the marriage of his own daughter. He thought of that now, and, suddenly sighing, came away from the window.
He was really worried about Horatia, in spite of the fact that she looked distinctly better since her return three months ago. But she seemed sometimes as if she would never recover from her sadness. She had lost her habit of teasing him; she was, for her, rather too sweetly reasonable. And yet he could not help her. Poor darling! he could not bear to think that she knew so much of evil, and had grown so much older in such a short time. In some ways the thing that he most resented in the whole unhappy affair was the smirching of her innocence. While he was in Paris he had been really shocked at the Duchesse's broad views when, with her accustomed frankness, she had laid before him the reason for his grandson's premature arrival, emphasising the fact that she was annoyed not with Armand's conduct in itself, but with his carelessness. And though he was half unwilling to listen to Martha, there were things which she insisted on telling him, prefacing them with "And I think you ought to know, Sir."
But because Armand was dead he thought of him now as "that poor young man," and, to his mind, his tragic removal somehow whitewashed his conduct and made it "better not to think of it." At the same time he did not fail, in his inmost heart, to feel that removal a direct work of Providence, and was deeply ashamed of this feeling, especially when he considered Maurice's fatherless condition. Often, indeed, watching him with his mother, was Mr. Grenville struck with the pathos of the situation. He loved to see them together, especially when Horatia did not know that he was looking at them; she seemed to him so beautifully maternal, and he could hardly believe that there had been a time when she did not care for the child.
Mr. Grenville began to pace up and down, his hands behind his back, and not for the first time did he wonder whether the comfort which he was powerless to give Horatia might not, after all, come from another quarter. He had, for his part, a distinct objection to second marriages, and had acted on it in his own case, but he would be easier to Horatia than he had been to himself. Horatia was still so young, the fatherless Maurice so tiny, her married life—her unhappy married life—had been so short ... eighteen months! Then the presence of Tristram, still unmarried and, as far as he knew, unchanged in his feelings towards Horatia, seemed to him almost providential. Tristram Hungerford indeed was steadfastness incarnate; he could not conceive of his changing. But, of course, he did not know what Tristram thought of second marriages. In any case, however, his present attitude was very proper, not intruding upon Horatia's grief. Besides, he was probably waiting till he had a living. Yet, second marriages...
Mr. Grenville stopped in his promenade, and with a look on his face as of one about to drink medicine, took down Jeremy Taylor from a shelf and turned over the pages till he came to that divine's remarks on the widowed state. Tightening his lips, he shut up the book after a moment with something like a bang, and replaced it. Yes, second marriages ... But, after all, he was going on rather fast.
(2)
When the Rector returned, late that afternoon, from visiting his parishioners, he was rather surprised to find Horatia sitting on a stool in front of his study fire, which had only just been lit. As soon as he had sat down beside her she put her head on his knee, and said, with the directness of a child,
"Papa, dear, I want to talk to you. I am so unhappy! I must talk to someone."
The Rector put his hand on her hair, half alarmed, half pleased that she had come to him. "What is it, my love?" he said tenderly. "Only this morning I was thinking of you and wishing I could comfort you."
"O Papa, I can't say it to you. I am so wicked!" And she began to cry.
"My dearest child," said the Rector, astonished, "what do you mean? How can you have been wicked? Come, then, tell me all about it. There is nothing you cannot say to me. I can understand how you loved him in spite—in spite of many things."
"But that is just it," answered Horatia, sobbing. "I did not really love him." Then she went on in an outburst, "You think now that I'm grieving for him because I loved him. It isn't true. I'm grieving just because I didn't love him. I want to say to people, Don't be sorry for me, don't look at my black dress! I am a wicked woman, I did not love my husband. I did not even do my duty."
Mr. Grenville put an arm round his daughter's shoulders and bent over her. "My child, you mustn't talk like this. We know that poor Armand was not all that he might have been to you, and I daresay I know more than you think. You married him for better or for worse, and in some ways ... for although he is dead we must face facts ... I have little doubt it was for worse. It was a shock to your innocence to find out much that you ought never to have known. I ought to have warned you more, to have told you more. My darling child, your old father has been greatly to blame. If only your dear mother had been alive!"
"Papa, you did warn me," she said, drying her eyes. "I was very wilful; I thought I knew best. But it seemed then as if Armand came and opened a new world to me, and I thought it was love ... but it could not have been ... and then I began to hear things ... and before Maurice was born..."
"I know, my dear," said the Rector, smoothing her hair.
"And Maurice, the darling, I was so wicked I would not look at him ... and as for Armand, I believe I almost hated him ... and I told him he was dead to me ... and now he is dead really ... and how can I say I loved him!"
The Rector reflected a little before replying.
"I would not think too much, Horatia, of whether you loved him or did not love him. I understand that you are trying to be honest with yourself, but now you have told me do not fret about that part of it. You made mistakes, and it is all very sad, but try to remember that we are in the hands of a merciful Creator. 'He knoweth whereof we are made; He remembereth that we are but dust."
"If only I could be like you, Papa, and could have your trust! It frightens me to think about him."
"Tell me, my dear."
"O, he did not want to die. He was so young, and he loved life. He said one thing that I shall never forget: 'If they tell you that I was resigned, do not believe them.'"
"Poor boy, poor boy!" murmured the Rector huskily.
"And the way he died was so dreadful! I had never seen anyone die before, and I did not know how awful it could be. O, I have been so frightened!" said Horatia, now almost incoherent. "I see him always with the blood spreading through the linen, and I hear him always calling in that terrible voice, 'Laurence, Laurence! ..."
"Ah!" said the Rector, compressing his lips. He made an effort to control himself. "Don't go on, Horatia; don't distress yourself! I know all about it. We must try not to judge the dead—and may God have mercy on us all!"
There was a pause, during which Mr. Grenville blew his nose violently.
"Dear, dear," he resumed at length, "you ought never to have suffered this—and to think of your being alone at such a time! I have been much to blame, much to blame! ... There, there, my child, you will stay with me, now, and you are young, and in time you will forget——"
"Never, never!" exclaimed Horatia, raising her head.
"No; well, perhaps, I should not say that, but the old know that we must forget even if we do not want to, and as I said, you are young, and there is Maurice. He can help you more than anyone else.—You will stay with me, Horatia?"
She flung her arms tightly round his neck. "Oh, yes. Papa, if you will keep me. Two or three months every year I must go back to France, but for the rest there is no reason why I should not stay with you if you will have me." She sat still for a moment, leaning against her father's knee, and when she was a little calmer, went on, "You remember that I wrote and told you about the will, that Armand wished Maurice to go to an English school. He was very fond of him, Papa."
"Yes, my dear."
A pause.
"The more I think of it, Horatia," began Mr. Grenville solemnly, "the more I believe that you ought to find your comfort in this provision of your husband's will. It seems to me to prove that, far from doubting your affection, he felt that he owed something to you, and that this was the way he tried to make up to you. Poor young man, there was much good in him! Try to think of this, my love, and say your prayers and do your duty—and now, dear me, it is nearly dinner-time!"
CHAPTER VI
(1)
"Want!" observed the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, stretching out a fat hand from his wheeled bassinette towards the huge red poppy nodding in the flowerbed beside him. "Want, want, want!" he repeated beating with the same member upon the satin coverlet.
Grimes the gardener, clipping the hedge near by, looked round. "And so you shall, my pretty!" quoth he. Turning, he broke off the object of Maurice's desires, and presented it to him, and Maurice, after tearing off the flaming petals, inserted the fascinating remainder into his mouth.
He had not time, however, to try his newest teeth upon the green dainty before it was torn from him and flung whirling into the bed as Martha—who had but left her charge for a moment—emptied the vials of her wrath upon the luckless donor. "And you a married man not to know better than that! You might have poisoned the precious child under his mother's very eyes! Come away, my beautiful ... now don't cry after the nasty thing!"
As the hand of indignation wheeled Maurice away from the vicinity of the unworthy Grimes it removed him also out of Horatia's field of vision, where she sat under the acacia tree on the lawn, a book on her lap and a workbasket by her side. Horatia flew something of her old colour in her cheeks. Her father, after her outburst in the spring, had told her to say her prayers and to do her duty. To do her duty, or what she knew that her father would conceive to be her duty, was easy—anything was easy that served to take her mind off herself. She did all she could for Maurice, and was unaware that Martha generally did it all over again. She paid visits and went to local shows, proceedings that before her marriage had been very distasteful to her. The Rector thought her so brave, and wonderfully softened, for now she seemed to suffer fools gladly. She did, for any company was better than her own.
But to say her prayers was a different matter, for though she repeated a form of words she could not pray, and she hated being in church, for there her mind invariably became clear, and all that she had shut away in a box marked "Paris" would emerge, and be, not a dream of the past, but a present reality. At any moment this box was not over-securely fastened. Inside were remorse and hatred. Every letter from France shook the lid—though such letters were not very frequent—one or two melancholy epistles from the Duc, a few kind notes from Emmanuel, some, not so benevolent, from the Dowager, and one malicious communication from the Marquise de Beaulieu, informing her that Madame de Vigerie had not been seen in society this year, and that every one was wondering why.... How she hated the Vicomtesse! It was she who had cast the first poisoned fruit into their Eden, it was she who had deceived her with a show of friendship, she who had caused her to condemn Armand innocent, she who had lured him on—lured him on to his death. Merely to think of her was to revive, in its fadeless colours, that picture or dream of him, lying dead in her arms....
Better than saying her prayers or doing her duty were Tristram's visits.
She did not take them as a matter of course, but looked forward to them almost eagerly, comparing them with the many times he had come in old days. She was changed, she knew, but so was he. The fact of his becoming a clergyman might have been expected to make him more sedate, but it had had the opposite effect. At times he was quite lighthearted and full of hope, and seemed to find no little enjoyment in the prospect of a fight to come. The hope and the joy of battle were for the Church, for the Church was in danger, and yet Horatia no longer wanted to laugh at him or to tease him. He would tell her that he and his friends at Oriel were conspirators, and that one day the conspiracy would break out, that Oxford was going to lead another hope, and not a forlorn one. In July he had said that they only waited for Newman to come back from Italy, that Froude was full of fire, and that if Keble could only be got to move he would be more potent than anyone.
Horatia had watched eagerly to see what the Reformed Parliament would do, and, when the bill for the suppression of the Irish bishoprics was introduced, she was pleasurably thrilled at the thought then presented to her that perhaps an era of persecution had really begun. She was full of elation when Mr. Keble preached his stirring Assize sermon in July and of regret that she herself had not heard it. In August she felt the futility of the meeting at Hadleigh, and she was as convinced as Tristram could have wished that no great movement was ever successfully conducted by an association; she was sure that it must be the work of individuals. And now she was waiting for the appearance of the first-fruits of that idea—the projected series of Tracts.
It was like an exciting game, for Horatia's interest was, after all, purely intellectual. And her instinct told her that even if Mr. Froude could speak jestingly of a conspiracy, and the friends could use, out of reverence for holy things, a "little language" which to the outsider appeared merely flippant, there was within them a spirit which made her shrink. She knew that they had a profound belief in Providence, that they believed they had a work to do, and were but tools for its execution. This alone was a disturbing thought. And she perceived in them a moral force, a severity and a relentlessness which she had never met before. If, as people said, they wished to copy the Roman Catholics, she was at a loss to know where in that body, as she knew it, they had found their exemplar, for not even in Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, reputed and sincerely believed by her to be a saint, had she seen any trace of this spirit. But it was to be found, no doubt, in the religious orders. It also occurred to Horatia that this reformation of the Church for which Tristram's friends were so eager would mean a change in the lives of the clergy. It would mean the disappearance of the hunting parson, of the prosperous rector of the "three-bottle school," even, she supposed, of the fashionable Evangelical preacher. But it might mean, too, a change in the people who were taught by the clergy.... She much preferred not to hear about this sort of thing from Tristram, and yet he was so eager, when once set on to talk, that she often started him for the mere pleasure of watching him. She could laugh at its absurdity, yet she felt a lurking sympathy with Lord Melbourne's plaint, that things were coming to a pretty pass if religion was to invade the affairs of daily life, for thought hovering round this connection was apt to become personal in its application, and that which served generally as a diversion would end by making her conscience still more uneasy.
Tristram might come any day now in his round of distributing these new Tracts. As Maurice was wheeled away Horatia took up the August number of the "British Magazine" on her knee to look at the "Lyra Apostolica" for that month, which she had not yet read. It would be interesting to see whether she could guess the authorship of each of these unsigned poems, and to tell Tristram her surmise. She suspected Mr. Newman, who edited them, of writing most of them himself.
There were only three poems under that heading last month, she found, and they all referred in some way or other to "the Golden Keys." The first, short and somewhat cryptic, was called "The Three Absolutions."
What were the three absolutions? Two she knew of; a little note said that the third was to be found in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. She must look it up one day.... Then, suddenly remembering that there was an old Prayer Book somewhere in her workbasket, she stopped and found it, and, turning up the place, suffered considerable amazement....
She looked again at the poem—
"Full of the past, all shuddering thought,Man waits his hour with upward eye—The Golden Keys in love are broughtThat he may hold by them and die."
"Full of the past, all shuddering thought,Man waits his hour with upward eye—The Golden Keys in love are broughtThat he may hold by them and die."
"Full of the past, all shuddering thought,
Man waits his hour with upward eye—
Man waits his hour with upward eye—
The Golden Keys in love are brought
That he may hold by them and die."
That he may hold by them and die."
In her own Church then she could have Absolution if she were dying. She felt that when she came to die she would like to have it, and remembered that there had been a time when she had thought that, if she were to go on living, she must have it, a time when she had not excused herself, but when, in the first weeks of horror and misery, she had taken all the blame, had been too much overwhelmed with self-accusation and remorse even to taste perfectly her hatred of Madame de Vigerie.
And with the thought the gates opened, and the whole tide of memory burst upon her, full-waved, bearing her out of the safe and quiet English garden to a little church in Paris, holding a warm incense-burdened air, and flooded with a soft dusk in which the winking light before the altar seemed doubly alive and significant, and the irregular concourse of candles by the statue of the Madonna burnt with a speaking radiance. And she was kneeling in a rush-bottomed kneeling-chair, weighed down by her deep mourning, unable to pray, her mind a maze of inarticulate pain, not knowing how or why she had strayed into this place, except that it was peaceful. A few persons scattered about among the disordered chairs got up one by one, moved away, and after a while knelt down again, and there was a murmur of voices. In a moment or two Horatia realised that they were making their confessions, an idea which had once been full of a fascinated horror. Now it suddenly seemed reasonable. That woman, for instance, a widow like herself, coming back from the confessional to her place, what had she been saying, what had she been told to do, what was she feeling like now? Supposing it had been she herself ... for no one could say hard enough things to her, nor could any penance equal the anguish that it would be to put her self-accusation into words, and to acknowledge her wrongdoing. Yet anguish she would have welcomed. Had she been of the faith of these people she could have comfort too.... But that was impossible.
And there came for the hundredth time the vision of Armand going in bitterness and agony down the slope to death, with the ironic little smile on his wryed mouth, the livid circles round the eyes which once had held for her all the light in the world. For she knew now—and the knowledge was only an added pang—that the reawakened feeling of that terrible night was only a transient emotion. She buried her face in her hands, and the heartrending pity of it surged over her, the horror and the tragedy of death, of his death, young and reluctant. Kneeling there, her face hidden, every voice of her soul went out suddenly to plead for him, though she knew not what to plead... "O God, it was my doing! The blame was not his, not his, O God.... He was kind to me, always. Have mercy, have mercy...."
So, after many days, had she prayed—but not for herself.