Horatia came back as one wakens from a painful dream, and, as sometimes in such an awakening, there were tears on her cheeks. She sprang up wildly from her chair. No, it was past, and here was reality, and comfort, and things of the safe, ordinary life—the sound of the gardener's shears, the smell of cut box, a horse trotting along the road, someone opening a window in an upper storey, the voice of Dash in the kitchen garden yelping after a bird. She drew a long breath, and put out a hand to touch something palpable and present, the rough trunk of the acacia-tree."Please, ma'am, Reverend 'Ungerford," said the voice of Ellen behind her."Ask him to come out here," said Horatia. Going back to her chair she passed her handkerchief quickly over her eyes, and snatched a small garment and needle and thread from her basket.And Tristram, looking unusually elated, almost boyish, and also rather hot, approached her over the grass pulling something from a wallet."I'm too dusty to come near you," he said, coming nevertheless. "This is the sixth parsonage I've descended on this afternoon. I think I may say without vanity that 'the dun deer's hide on fleeter foot was never tied'—except that the foot in question belongs to a livery stable." He almost threw into her lap a small bundle of pamphlets, and crossed the lawn to get another chair.Horatia looked at his back with a curious expression, but when he turned her gaze was on the uppermost Tract."Fellow-Labourers," began the first of its four small pages, "I am but one of yourselves—a Presbyter....""Newman's," said Tristram, sitting down beside her. "We're going to make a row in the world at last!"(2)For the next six weeks or so, while various persons, clerical and lay, of the same opinions as Tristram Hungerford were riding about the country to the same end, or packing up for distribution large parcels of the newTracts for the Times by Residents in Oxford, while the clergy thus bombarded were recovering from the shock of being told by "A Presbyter" of their apostolical descent, while Hurrell Froude, ordered to Barbados in the vain pursuit of health, was showing, as usual, his daring spirit by urging Newman to break an impossible alliance with the conservative High Church—while all these portents were taking place Horatia de la Roche-Guyon was paying a number of visits. Though sorry to leave the neighbourhood of Oxford just as the fiery cross was going round, she did not altogether regret the change of scene, for she was beginning to wonder whither these pleasant conversations with Tristram were leading, and she thought that absence might enable her to gain a clearer view of the situation.By the end of October she found herself staying with her friend Emilia Strangways (whom once she had declared she would not go to see again for seven years) at the house in Devonshire to which her husband had succeeded on the death of an uncle. Only one more visit remained, a short sojourn with the Puseys at Oxford on her way home. Maurice, who had accompanied her on her first visits nearer Compton, had not been brought so far, but, with or without her son, Horatia was now able to bear an honoured part in the continual and detailed conversations on the uprearing of children (Emilia being by now the parent of a boy and girl) and threw herself with zest into discussions on the dangers of teething and the proper thickness of infantile winter clothing, feeling sure, with something of her old insight, that Mrs. Strangways commented to her husband upon "the improvement in dear Horatia." On the wheels of these domestic conferences the visit passed away, uneventful until its last day, when Henry Strangways descended to breakfast with a set face, and a saucer upon which reposed a minute fleck of something flabby and green."In my shaving water, Emilia," he said in a tense voice. "I have questioned the servants most closely. They are positive that it did not occur in the kitchen. So that means it has all begun again!"Emilia rose with concern from behind the coffee cups, while Horatia lightly asked the nature of the intruder."I think," replied her host very seriously, bringing round the saucer for her inspection, "that it is cabbage. At least I fear that it is cabbage. Having in the first place been cooked, and having also been a long time in the water, it is not readily distinguishable. Whatever it is fever will probably come of it. And the Mother Superior promised me most solemnly that it should not happen again."Horatia lifted puzzled eyes from the sodden speck."The nuns up at the Manor, dear," explained Emilia. "Our water comes through the Manor grounds, and they will throw things from the kitchen into it. Henry has written twice; at last he went himself and had an interview with the Mother Superior. Since then it has been better.""I think I shall see the Lord Lieutenant about it," said Mr. Strangways. "That I and my family should succumb to fever because these misguided women—foreigners, too, most of them—have been brought up without the most elementary notions of sanitation is preposterous. The whole thing is preposterous, that they should be established in this country at all, polluting at once our water supply and the faith of the villagers!""But you will write again, Henry, will you not?" urged his wife. "Or perhaps you would go again and see the Mother?""No, I shall not consent to another interview of that kind," returned Mr. Strangways. "I shall now put the matter in the hands of the proper authorities.Mother, indeed! But I shall certainly write as well, and at once. I think I shall enclose this ... this vegetable matter. Would it not be rather to the point, Emilia, if I sent up the saucer with my compliments, and nothing else?"Horatia burst out laughing, and then perceived that she had done the wrong thing. Her host did not mean to be funny; he never did. Finally it was settled that he should write a letter of protestation, and that, instead of its being sent by a menial hand, Emilia and her guest should walk up with it."I thought you might like to see the outside of the Manor," said Mrs. Strangways, as they started out over the fallen leaves. "You see, it once belonged to Henry's uncle, and he most unfortunately sold it, at the time of the French Revolution, to these nuns. As Henry says, he ought not to have been allowed to do it. The grounds are rather fine, much better than ours, and I don't know what they can want with them, for they never go out, and it is really very terrible to feel that they are throwing all sorts of refuse into the water, and might any day poison the children.""But the convents I have seen in France were so very clean," objected Horatia. "And these are French nuns, you say? Why do they not go back?""I don't know," replied her informant. "I suppose they find themselves better off here. Besides, it may not be clean inside; nobody knows, for no one is allowed further than the parlour. I daresay awful things go on, for they are said to be a very severe order. I have heard that they sleep on plank beds, and hardly ever speak, and live on bread and water....""And cabbage!""Yes, I suppose so. Anyhow it is a fact that no meat ever goes in there. And they do nothing but pray—I mean, they don't embroider, or make lace, or anything useful, but just pray all day long. But Henry says it isn't tedious to them because, of course, after a few months of it, they go out of their minds.""What do they pray for?" asked Horatia.A shade of enjoyable horror appeared on the fair face under the beaver bonnet. "They call it Perpetual Intercession. That means praying for wicked people. I know they pray for the dead too—think of that, Horatia! Henry says it's worse than idolatry."And on this theological dictum of Mr. Strangways they turned through a wide gateway and saw before them, through a fading glory of beech-trees, a large Elizabethan house of mellowed brick. To its left stood the chapel, an incongruous late Georgian building, and up to the main entrance led an ugly covered way of still more modern construction, topped by a statue of the Virgin and Child. Along this way Emilia preceded her guest, for it was barred only by a low oaken gate, which at the moment stood open, perhaps because a novice was scrubbing the stone floor within. Horatia glanced curiously as she passed at the grey-clad figure on its hands and knees, noticing that the hands in question were very small and white, and seemed to have had no past connection with bristles or soapsuds. She would rather have liked to see what sort of a face went with those hands.The aged portress who took the note from Emilia revealed, as she opened the door, a glimpse of the square Tudor hall that had once known song and carousing but was now lamentably bare and empty. Facing all who entered, and stretching up from the floor against the whitewashed panelling, was a gigantic crucifix in relief, rather more than life-size, of the most startling realism, a realism that had gone so far as to suggest that the base of the cross was sunk in the floor of the hall, for it appeared to be fixed there with large wedges. A skull lay at its foot."Is it not horrible?" whispered Emilia as the door shut once more. "The first time I saw it I had nightmare.... I think it is sowrongto remind oneself like that ... Oh, merci, ma soeur!"For the novice, who had now reached the middle of the passage had risen from her knees, and, removing her bucket out of their way, stood aside with downcast eyes for them to pass. And so Horatia's idle wish was gratified, and she saw her face—the face of Laurence de Vigerie.CHAPTER VII(1)"More particularly am I bound to pray for the good estate of Oriel College, and herein for the Reverend the Provost, Fellows, Clerks, and all other members of that society...."It was not the first time that Horatia had listened to the bidding prayer which prefaces a sermon before the University of Oxford, nor even the first time that she had heard mentioned therein "the munificence of founders and benefactors, such as were King Edward the Second, the Founder of Oriel College, Adam de Brome, his almoner, and other benefactors of the same." But it was the first occasion on which she had heard the prayer from the lips of the preacher who, two mornings afterwards, occupied the pulpit of St. Mary-the-Virgin. And as she sat down by Mrs. Pusey's side, behind the Heads and Doctors in their scarlet and crimson, and looked up at Charles Dormer, she felt a curious accession of interest, as though she had never seen him before. In the black gown and bands he seemed, she thought, absurdly young to be addressing that august assembly. Then she remembered that, being just Tristram's age, he must be a year older than the Vicar of St. Mary's, who so often addressed them. But he did not look it.The congregation settled down in the peculiarly arranged nave, and in rather a low voice Dormer gave out his text, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."And Horatia's momentarily excited interest sank again. She felt that she knew the kind of sermon which would be preached on that text, and she did not want to hear it. She wished with all her heart that she were not in church at all. She had not wanted to come to hear Mr. Dormer; she had only done so to fulfil a promise made to Tristram. If it had been Mr. Newman now—or Mr. Keble preaching his Assize sermon—she would have listened.... Laurence de Vigerie scrubbing a stone floor.... In the coach, at the Puseys at Christ Church, here now in St. Mary's—Laurence, the shapeless figure, the veil, the rough dress....A miracle had happened to Horatia, and she hardly knew it for a miracle. What religion and conscience could not bring about, human feeling and Protestant indignation had accomplished. That one moment's contact with a—to her—shocking reality had swept away, on a flood of horrified pity, not only her hatred but even the thought of forgiveness as a duty. She knew nothing of either now, only that her heart (preparing as it was to welcome a happiness of its own) was aching with compassion. Why was Laurence doing this awful thing? It was not right to punish herself like that, why had she not spoken to her! "Laurence, I am so sorry. It was more his fault than yours; I know it. Don't, don't make yourself so unhappy. It is all wrong ... all a mistake...."Her brain worked on, and the tears came hot into her eyes. She must concentrate her mind on something else, or she would really cry. Definite words in a clear voice came to her, and she remembered that she was supposed to be listening to Mr. Dormer, and that he must be three parts through by now. She looked up at him again, over the distinguished heads in front of her, this man not so very much older than herself, who was Tristram's greatest friend, and whom she had never liked, as he stood, using no gestures, in the new wooden pulpit that reared itself up against a slender column of nave, the rows of Masters of Arts below. A pillar in front of her, somewhat to her left, and the edge of the north gallery for undergraduates, beneath which she sat, made two sides of a square to frame him, as if for herself alone. She listened."What is a pure heart? A German mystic has said that it is a heart which finds its whole and only satisfaction in God, whose thoughts and intents are ever occupied with God, which makes all joys and griefs, all outward cares and anxieties work together for the glory of God."How far does such a temper of mind seem to be from all of us who call ourselves Christians! and yet our Lord has definitely contemplated a class of persons who are capable of this peculiar consecration, and to whom is as definitely promised the vision of Him Whom the saints desire to see. This same teacher, taking St. John as the type of the pure in heart, would seem to indicate that all Christians are given the opportunity of making by degrees a gradual and more perfect response to the Divine Call, and that, as our Lord revealed Himself to the beloved disciple in a threefold manner, as His Master, his Friend, and his God, so He still shows Himself to those who surrender themselves, not only to the joy of His friendship but also to the fellowship of His sufferings."As our Lord thus called St. John, He calls us out of the world. And, like His beloved disciple, the darlings of His love, sheltered in the life of the Church, hear a gracious invitation, and so abide with Him that day and many days. But there are others with the same capacity for purity of heart, who, in sin or unbelief, have wandered far from their true home, and for these a different call is needed."In the frustration of hopes and ambitions, in the sudden fear that for us life has no meaning, in the realisation that death is coming, and after death the judgment, God is calling to us. We have gone on for a long way in our loves and hates, our vanities and pleasures, our imaginations and our sins, and one day the road crumbles beneath us. The beloved is dead, youth is dead, pleasure is dead. Nothing matters now. Why plan for the morrow, when the only reality is death?"Dormer paused, moved a little, and said, still more quietly, "It is true that for us this is the only reality—the death of the soul."There was no doubt about Horatia's interest now. How was it that he knew the very horror that gripped her, the fear of death, the fear of life? She held her hands tightly together in her muff, wishing with all her heart that she had listened earlier. He went on, speaking of the ways that God uses to save a soul from death, but, because of her very anxiety to hear, his utterance, exquisite as it was, dulled for a moment or two to a mere buzz in her ears. Then her senses cleared, and she heard him say:"And, to save us from this death, it may be that God will use, as His last weapon, loneliness. In loneliness He asks us, 'What seek ye?' In loneliness we confess that we do not know His dwelling-place; in loneliness, at last, we can no longer escape the challenge of His merciful displeasure that bids us 'Come and see.' If still we hesitate, it may be our very honesty that makes us afraid to go and see where He dwells, for if we go with Him we must admit His claim, we must acknowledge our fault, we must forgive the friend who has done us irreparable wrong, we can never be as we were before."But if in the Divine mercy we yield ourselves captives to His love, and loosed from sin we know Him in Whom we have believed, yet we may not rest in this, the first sight of Jesus, for, like St. John, we are called to a yet more intimate knowledge—the friendship of the Lord. And here sincerity that is to become purity will pass into singleness of heart. For if the surrender of ourselves to the Divine Will has to be made over and over again before God can be glorified in us, still our intention must be pure, our purpose must be sincere. He calls us, indeed, to communion with Himself in sacrament and prayer while as yet the work of transformation is hardly begun. And those who live with Him day by day may still be a prey to resentment and to pride, to jealousy and to ambition, and those who rest on His heart may fail to watch with Him, may even forsake Him when wicked men lay hold on Him. But if, like St. John, greatly, though dimly, desiring the Beatific Vision, they grasp the cup of His Passion, crying out that they are able to drink of it, our Lord, it may be, will take them at their word, and the power of His Cross shall do for them what the joy of His Presence could never do."Who are the pure in heart, and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb."(2)Horatia emerged with her hostess between the twisted pillars of the porch into the High, to a crowd of people, and the prospect of an Oxford Sunday such as she loved. But she would have given anything to go back, alone, into the emptying church, to pray to this new Christ, who had called her—her—and to Whom she had not come. But she would come, she would come, if only she could find the way.... "Where dwellest Thou?""Excuse me a moment," said Mrs. Pusey, stopping to speak to someone, and Horatia, waiting in the momentary press, heard one gentleman commoner say to another, "Couldn't make anything of the sermon. Are all your Fellows as unintelligible as that?" To which his companion, evidently an Oriel man, responded, "I don't often hear them. But I can stand 'Mercy and Judgment' because he is at least short.—By Gad, there he is, with Mr. Denison!" And he capped the two Fellows as they crossed the street. Dormer was smiling as he returned the salute.Horatia followed them with her eyes. Did he then know the friendship of the Lord, walking in sober academic garb along an Oxford street? Could people other than those in stained glass windows, dressed in reds and blues against a background of palm-tree and lake, hear His call, know His friendship, carry His cross? ..."Pray forgive me!" said Mrs. Pusey's voice at her side. "Shall we go past Oriel; it is shortest. No doubt we shall encounter Edward on his way to meet us, if Cathedral is over, as I should guess it to be. Then we might perhaps take a turn in the Broad Walk. It will do Edward good, for his health is so precarious just now that I do not know how he is to get on to the end of term."As Horatia murmured her sympathy the two gowns disappeared under Oriel gateway."Where dwellest Thou?" All through the remainder of the day the question persisted, wrecking everything she did in the pleasant, dignified atmosphere of Mr. Pusey's house. Were these kind, learned people who sat round the Sunday dinner-table, were they the captives of His love; had they been loosed from sin? She wished that Tristram could have been there, sitting opposite to her. His familiar presence would have steadied her. Even if he knew the meaning of all these phrases there was nothing disturbing about him.Later in the afternoon she watched Mr. Newman, the friend of the family, sitting with the two elder children on his knee, while he put his spectacles on their noses, or told them a story. What would happen if she suddenly interrupted the story with her insistent question—"Doyouknow where He dwells?"The interminable day came to an end at last, and she was alone in her room. Without waiting to undress she flung herself down beside the bed. "Where dwellest Thou, where dwellest Thou?" There was no one to answer, nothing to see, only the rose and jasmine of the wall-paper, distorted through the rain of tears.She woke next morning in a very different frame of mind, more than a little ashamed of her emotion of the day before. She might have been a Methodist! It was not for her, this enthusiasm, and she ought not to have been so discomposed. To have been carried away, against her will, by the words of a man whom she disliked! She disliked, too, some of what he had said, now that more of it came back to her. Life was made for happiness; though sorrow intruded it was an incident to be forgotten, not to be dwelt upon. Comfortably eating her breakfast in her well-appointed room she felt sure of this, and knew that she, who was certainly not ignorant of suffering, did not approve of its glorification. What did Mr. Dormer know about it?And yet ... she knew that she should not forget St. Mary's.CHAPTER VIII(1)Mr. Dormer of Oriel was accustomed to assert that he felt no ill effects from his Italian carriage accident, but, as a matter of fact, he never went up or down any prolonged flight of stairs without being reminded of the slight muscular weakness which it had left. So that when, about six weeks after his sermon at St. Mary's, he came rather fast down the sixty-five steps of the Bodleian library, and at the end of every group of five arrived with some force upon his injured leg, he was so reminded.Outside, in the archway facing the Radcliffe and St. Mary's, their gowns blown about by the wind which commonly sweeps through that passage, he came on Newman and his curate, Isaac Williams, in converse with Mr. Pusey."Wait a minute, Dormer," exclaimed the first-named, catching at him as he was about to pass. "We are having a most interesting conversation.""I was just saying to Mr. Newman," said the Canon, smiling and wrapping his gown round him after a habit he had, "that I think you are all too hard upon the Evangelicals. You should conciliate the Peculiars, as you would call them. I am thinking of writing a letter myself for that purpose.""Were you!" exclaimed Newman. "Well, suppose you let us have that for one of the Tracts?"The young Regius Professor smiled his particularly sweet smile. "Oh, no!" he replied, "I will not be one of you!" and they all moved out of the archway together, Dormer taking the opportunity to ask Isaac Williams for news of Keble.Meanwhile Newman seemed to be arguing with his friend, and at last, as they stood on the steps, he could be heard saying, "Suppose you let us have that letter of yours, which you intend writing, and attach your own name or signature to it? You would then not be mixed up with us, or be in any way responsible for the Tracts.""Well," said Pusey after a little hesitation, "if you will let me do that I will."He gave them a smiling farewell, and went off, in his usual rather abstracted fashion, down Brasenose Lane."Come out with me to Littlemore, Dormer," urged Newman. "It is a beautiful day. Isaac has some business of his own, I don't know what, in Oxford. Come along, and we will sing pæans of thanksgiving for the great victory obtained by the Apostolicals over the Regius Professor of Hebrew."And he set out with his curious swift gait, as if walking in heelless slippers, along the side of All Souls, where two years ago a daring hand had painted "No Bristol Riots.""I must write to Froude at once," he continued. "How I wish we dared take his advice and throw the Establishment men overboard! I am sure that if he knew the trouble I have had with that good Palmer, on the question of continuing the Tracts, he would pity me.""If Pusey should end by casting in his lot with us," observed Dormer thoughtfully, "it might make a difference.""You mean that if we had him we could venture to row our own little boat, because he could be all that Rose might be?""Well, yes, with his influence and his easy relations with the University authorities.—Excuse me a moment, there's Mr. Grenville of Compton Regis. I must just go across."For they had by this time come abreast of the Angel in High Street, where an elderly cleric was about to enter a post-chaise."Ah, Mr. Dormer," said the Rector heartily, "That's very kind of you to come and speak to an old man. I'm just returned from a jaunt, I suppose you may call it, to London, to my sister-in-law's. Oxford is looking its best this morning. Yes, thanks, I'm very well, too, although I am so bombarded with these Tracts—rather a turning of the tables, you know, for we clergy are more accustomed to distributing than to receiving such things. And I ought to obtain a meed of praise from you, too, for I have just arranged a meeting next week, to get signatures to the address to the Archbishops—though I think it rather a milk-and-water thing myself ... Well, good-day.""I hope Madame de la Roche-Guyon is well," observed Dormer, in the tones of convention, as he opened the chaise door for him."Yes, quite well, thank you," replied the Rector, his foot on the step. He hesitated, withdrew that member, and glancing round lowered his voice to a confidential tone: "When I see how she welcomesour friend'svisits, I really begin to hope that it will all come right in the end! So perhaps what has happened has been for the best!" His face beamed. "How little we trust in Providence, Mr. Dormer! But there, I mustn't keep you. Good-day!"John Henry Newman had a rather silent companion on his walk to Littlemore.(2)The chaise conveying Mr. Grenville from Oxford to Compton was, unknown to Tristram, but a few miles in advance of him as he trotted along the frosty Berkshire lanes that afternoon, revolving in his mind the points in his tract on "The Church the Home of the Poor," of which he had left the proofs with Horatia—proofs which he was going to reclaim before he left next week for a "missionary tour" in Northamptonshire on business connected with the Tracts.Last Christmas, when he had come to think over his afternoon at Compton, he knew that he would rather not see Horatia often. And a gradual abstention would have been possible, though a little awkward, but the Rector had insisted so much on the cheering effect of his visits, and the necessity for Horatia of some outside interest that, as always where she was concerned, he allowed his own feelings to be overridden. This was not the time to consider himself, when she was in a situation so poignantly pathetic, and when, for the first time in his life, he was really able to be of some use to her. That there should be any talk in the neighbourhood about his going to the Rectory seemed very unlikely, seeing that it had been a second home to him since boyhood. Had he suddenly kept away, there might have been something to talk about. And that there should be any wrong impression left upon her mind was quite unthinkable after he had once seen her. Never, in her teasing days, had she seemed so remote as now in her kindness, and her sadness and her motherhood. Nearly always, when he got back to Oxford, one or other of the different strands of pain would ache almost unbearably, but since the call to arms in July, and still more since the forging of weapons was begun in September, this great interest which she shared with him had made things easier for him. His going out there was no longer an emotional strain, but almost a soldier's visit to a comrade at an outpost, woman though she was. And this was indeed the spirit in which he rode out to her to-day to reclaim his proofs.But Mr. Grenville, blowing his nose very hard, met him in the hall. "Horatia is greatly distressed," he said huskily. "She has had sad news from France. I've only just got back myself and heard it. That child—but there, I think you had better go in to her."In the dining-room, her head on the table, which was strewn with sewing materials, Horatia was crying as if her heart would break."It is poor little Claude-Edmond," she said between her sobs. "He's dead ... poor darling ... poor dear little boy..." And she broke into fresh weeping."Dead!" exclaimed Tristram horrified. "Emmanuel's son—that little fellow! How..."She could give him no answer for a moment, and in that pause, rent with sobbing, he knew without acknowledging it that the sight of her grief meant immeasurably more to him than its cause. He could not bear to see her cry!After a moment she raised her head and dabbed at her eyes, and lifted them, all reddened and swollen, to his."You remember him, Tristram—such a dear little boy, so solemn and polite? He was riding in the Bois de Boulogne a few days ago when his horse took fright, and he was thrown—against a tree ... He only lived a few hours.... O Tristram, when I think ... and he was such a comfort to me once ... and they say he asked for me ... I can't bear it!"And during this short recital of that almost intolerable tragedy, a child's death, every vestige of colour ebbed from Tristram's face. Before she had ended he had turned it from her."And does this ... this very sad news ... will it make any difference to you, Horatia?""Any difference?" repeated she, not catching his real meaning, so completely was she absorbed in thoughts of the dead boy. "Oh, you mean Maurice being the heir now." Utterance failed her and she began to cry again. "O, I can't bear to think of it!""Yes," said Tristram's voice, curiously insistent and toneless, "but will it make any difference to you personally ... will you have to go away—to live in France? I thought perhaps...""No, O, no, I don't think so." She sighed heavily. "I can do as I please, I think. I suppose I shall be there more often, perhaps ... O Tristram, why is God so cruel?"He did not take up the challenge, but he looked at her very gravely."I do not know," he said. "I ... I must go back and write to poor Emmanuel. I will come for those proofs again, or you can send them. I am going away next week ... when I come back, perhaps..."The Oxford road saw that evening the return of a man who, in all good faith, had attempted a task beyond his strength, and who was now paying bitterly enough for the discovery.CHAPTER IX(1)From the bottom of Maurice's crib, wherein he lay fast asleep, his favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against the rails, stared at him reproachfully, for the little boy had taken to bed with him, against all precedent, an old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his own. The rag soldier probably felt his world tumbling around him.And, indeed, the whole night-nursery was rather topsy-turvy. Maurice's bath things were not cleared away, though the water was long cold, and in the midst of downflung towels, soap, sponge and powder-puffs, sat his mother herself, doing nothing. It was she who was responsible for the disorder, for that dislocation in fact of the whole day which had been so pleasant to Maurice. He was certainly not likely to complain when, after breakfast, Mamma had sent Martha away and announced that she was going to have him to herself, for a special reason. The reason was less than nothing to Maurice, but the fact was delightful, implying a free hand with the coal-box, while Mamma, instead of wanting to change his frock, kept herself quiet with a piece of paper covered with black marks, on which she from time to time let fall those tears which Maurice himself could produce, though seldom so silently. The culmination of being bathed by Mamma had led to a great deal of splashing, and to the exhibition, which Martha would never let him complete, of his powers of drinking water from his sponge. That his mother was quite incapable of clearing up the mess which he and she had made together was not likely to trouble him either, indeed he fell asleep too soon to realise this deficiency.And Horatia sat in the midst of the confusion, her eyes full of tears, her chin on her hand, watching the sleeping child. She could not get poor little Claude-Edmond out of her head. Most clearly of all she remembered him at Plaisance, confiding to her his desire to resemble Armand, to be able to ride, to fence.... Now they would neither of them ever ride again.... And the death of the little boy had thrown across her own life a shadow not only of regret, but of menace. For in her lap lay the testimony to the triumph of the indomitable spirit of an old lady over the Code Napoléon, under whose ægis Horatia had fondly imagined herself and Maurice to be sheltering.The letter had come yesterday morning, the third day after her interview with Tristram. It was quite simple. The Duchesse's lawyer wrote that his venerable client was about to make her will for the last time, a course necessitated by the recent unfortunate death of the little heir. As Madame la Comtesse was no doubt aware, the ancient and noble family of La Roche-Guyon was extremely impoverished. Nothing indeed but the great private fortune of the Dowager Duchess had enabled it to keep up the appearance due to its rank. The bulk of this fortune the Duchesse was now proposing to settle upon the child of her late dearly-beloved younger grandson—on one condition. Madame la Comtesse must renounce entirely her plan of bringing him up in England; with or without her he must return to France by the time he was five—though in deference to the last wishes of her dear grandson he should be allowed to pass some years at an English school. But he must be brought up as a Frenchman, as the heir of the family which he would one day represent, and Madame la Comtesse was to signify her willingness to return to Paris for three or four months as early as possible in the New Year. If she refused to comply with these conditions the Duchesse's money, after the deaths of her son and elder grandson, would be left to distant relatives of her own family, and the future Duc de la Roche-Guyon would find himself the almost penniless inheritor of his great name and position.Stunning though this ultimatum was, it had not taken Horatia long to decide that Maurice must go. She could not be the means of beggaring her child. He must go—but was she to go too? It was true that the Duchesse had not had the brutality to suggest an immediate separation from his mother, but the two years and ten months which lay between him and his fifth birthday would soon pass. If she went, good-bye to all her old home life, taken up again and found so peaceful and so dear; good-bye to her father who had recovered her with so much joy.And good-bye to Tristram.....But if she stayed, good-bye to that head of curls on the pillow. O no, no, she could never do that! She slipped to her knees and clutched at the cot rails. "My darling! I could not! I could not!"And yet, on the other side of the crib seemed to stand Tristram, looking at her as he had looked three mornings ago, his voice fallen to that strange tone, "Will it make any difference to you, Horatia?" the only real evidence that she had of his wanting her—since his visits and his obvious pleasure in them could all be accounted for by their long friendship—but evidence enough. Yes, it had actually come to the choice, all unforeseen, between her child and the man ... she loved. The issue must be decided, too, within a week, for the Duchesse insisted on an immediate answer. This was why she had spent the day with Maurice, "to help her to decide"—a proceeding not free from the charge of indulgence in sentiment.(2)And yet she had not made up her mind when she heard her father, who had been out all day, coming heavily up the nursery stairs."My dear," he said, astonished, "why are you up here alone? Martha is wandering about outside waiting to come in to you. It is too much for you to do all this for the child by yourself, and why should you?"To which his daughter responded, in an appealing tone not far from tears, "O Papa, I can't leave him, I can't leave him!""Well, my dear," remarked Mr. Grenville, approaching the crib, "you can leave him now, at any rate, for he is fast asleep, and Martha can sit with him instead of catching cold on the landing. Come, come, we will go down into the library and leave her to clear up. Yes, come in!" And as Martha entered and fell to work on the disorder he put Horatia's hand through his arm and led her out.In the library she settled down in her favourite attitude on a stool at his feet, and for a time nothing much was said, except that the Rector, as he stroked her hair, would mutter, "It is very hard, very difficult, my love," and, at intervals, "I should never have expected it of them, never!"At last Horatia broke out passionately, "I can't let Maurice be a pauper! He will have to go, and I—I think I must go with him." With that she escaped from her father's caress, and putting her head in her hands began to cry.The Rector got up, found a box of Prometheans, went successfully through the process of pinching out the sulphuric acid, at the end, on to the chlorate of potash and sugar (in which he generally burnt his fingers), obtained a flame and lit a couple of candles. Then he sighed heavily, sat down again, and drawing his chair up close to Horatia took hold of a hand and made her rest her head on his knee."Now, my dearest child," he began, "I am going to speak very plainly to you. I do not think these tears are for me. No, don't say anything about that! It's all quite right. I should not wish them to be. I think Tristram is at the bottom of this."For answer he saw her getting crimson behind the ears, and heard her murmur faintly, "O Papa!""Well, my dear, it's very right and natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. I have thought that I have seen signs, for some time, and I have been very thankful, very thankful. He is the right husband for you.""I thought, Papa," came a stifled voice, "that you did not approve of second marriages.""Perhaps not," replied the Rector, "but this is different, and Tristram has wanted you all his life.""But how do I know that he wants me now?""That," said the Rector with conviction, "is very apparent; in fact, I was on the verge of speaking to him about it last week.""Papa!" ejaculated his daughter, sitting up."Yes, we understand one another," went on Mr. Grenville, smiling, for there was unmistakably more pleasure than horror in her protest. "I have known more about all this, my dear, than you have. You never knew, because Tristram would not allow me to tell you, but he was going to propose to you, the very week that poor Armand came to visit him.""Tristram was going to propose to me again," said Horatia slowly, "and yet he made the way easy for me to marry Armand!""One of his extraordinary notions, my dear. 'If she wanted the moon, I would get it for her,' he said. I have often thought that it was not for nothing that he had a fanatic for a father. He is one in a thousand, but of course, before now, he has seemed to me unnecessarily quixotic. I have meant to tell you this, Horatia, but I thought things were best without my interference. Still it is but right, now that the crisis has come, for you to know all that I do. It is my belief that Tristram is only hindered at this very moment from speaking by some idea of propriety. Or perhaps he feels that his prospects are not yet assured. Still, it is clear that he must declare himself in the near future, unless he wants to lose you altogether. If only it were possible to give him a little encouragement!""Icouldn't give him encouragement!" exclaimed Horatia in a tone of horror."I was not suggesting such a thing for a moment, my love. I was only saying if it were possible. I feel something could be done, ought to be done ... Let me see, how much time have we?"Horatia had twisted round on her footstool and was now facing him with flushed cheeks. "A week. And, O Papa, even if he did ... if he wanted me to marry him, how could I let Maurice go without me?"The Rector bent forward. He had the air of thorough and pleasurable mastery of the situation."My dear, let us be quite clear about that anyhow! I'm as fond of the boy as if he were my own, but I think you would do very wrong to deprive him of a stepfather like Tristram. After all, if you take him to France for a few months next year you may keep him until he is five years old. It was the Jesuits who said, 'Give us a child until he is five and we will make anything of him.' (No, now I come to think of it, it is 'until he is seven,' but no matter.) Very well then, until that age you and Tristram can bring him up, and you see already how he takes to Tristram. After that the parting will be hard for you, I do not doubt, but the time will soon come for him to return to England to school, and, if you agree in the main to the conditions, the Duchesse is not likely to wish to drive such a hard bargain that you cannot occasionally have him for his holidays ... Besides, we may hope that you will have other children.""Papa, do you really mean all this?" asked Horatia thoughtfully. "I have never looked at it in that light.""I do indeed mean it, but the question is, what is to be done? There is not too much time," said the Rector, pursing his lips. "This needs careful consideration." And, apparently, he considered, and Horatia too. At any rate she was silent, looking into the fire.Finally Mr. Grenville gave an exclamation. "I have it! Did you not say, my dear, that you had to send back a proof of Tristram's to him? What more natural than to enclose the letter from the Duchesse's lawyer, and say that you would value his advice, or something of the sort?"Horatia turned over and over the locket with the little curl of Maurice's hair that she wore.Then she said, very quietly, "Yes, I will do it."
Horatia came back as one wakens from a painful dream, and, as sometimes in such an awakening, there were tears on her cheeks. She sprang up wildly from her chair. No, it was past, and here was reality, and comfort, and things of the safe, ordinary life—the sound of the gardener's shears, the smell of cut box, a horse trotting along the road, someone opening a window in an upper storey, the voice of Dash in the kitchen garden yelping after a bird. She drew a long breath, and put out a hand to touch something palpable and present, the rough trunk of the acacia-tree.
"Please, ma'am, Reverend 'Ungerford," said the voice of Ellen behind her.
"Ask him to come out here," said Horatia. Going back to her chair she passed her handkerchief quickly over her eyes, and snatched a small garment and needle and thread from her basket.
And Tristram, looking unusually elated, almost boyish, and also rather hot, approached her over the grass pulling something from a wallet.
"I'm too dusty to come near you," he said, coming nevertheless. "This is the sixth parsonage I've descended on this afternoon. I think I may say without vanity that 'the dun deer's hide on fleeter foot was never tied'—except that the foot in question belongs to a livery stable." He almost threw into her lap a small bundle of pamphlets, and crossed the lawn to get another chair.
Horatia looked at his back with a curious expression, but when he turned her gaze was on the uppermost Tract.
"Fellow-Labourers," began the first of its four small pages, "I am but one of yourselves—a Presbyter...."
"Newman's," said Tristram, sitting down beside her. "We're going to make a row in the world at last!"
(2)
For the next six weeks or so, while various persons, clerical and lay, of the same opinions as Tristram Hungerford were riding about the country to the same end, or packing up for distribution large parcels of the newTracts for the Times by Residents in Oxford, while the clergy thus bombarded were recovering from the shock of being told by "A Presbyter" of their apostolical descent, while Hurrell Froude, ordered to Barbados in the vain pursuit of health, was showing, as usual, his daring spirit by urging Newman to break an impossible alliance with the conservative High Church—while all these portents were taking place Horatia de la Roche-Guyon was paying a number of visits. Though sorry to leave the neighbourhood of Oxford just as the fiery cross was going round, she did not altogether regret the change of scene, for she was beginning to wonder whither these pleasant conversations with Tristram were leading, and she thought that absence might enable her to gain a clearer view of the situation.
By the end of October she found herself staying with her friend Emilia Strangways (whom once she had declared she would not go to see again for seven years) at the house in Devonshire to which her husband had succeeded on the death of an uncle. Only one more visit remained, a short sojourn with the Puseys at Oxford on her way home. Maurice, who had accompanied her on her first visits nearer Compton, had not been brought so far, but, with or without her son, Horatia was now able to bear an honoured part in the continual and detailed conversations on the uprearing of children (Emilia being by now the parent of a boy and girl) and threw herself with zest into discussions on the dangers of teething and the proper thickness of infantile winter clothing, feeling sure, with something of her old insight, that Mrs. Strangways commented to her husband upon "the improvement in dear Horatia." On the wheels of these domestic conferences the visit passed away, uneventful until its last day, when Henry Strangways descended to breakfast with a set face, and a saucer upon which reposed a minute fleck of something flabby and green.
"In my shaving water, Emilia," he said in a tense voice. "I have questioned the servants most closely. They are positive that it did not occur in the kitchen. So that means it has all begun again!"
Emilia rose with concern from behind the coffee cups, while Horatia lightly asked the nature of the intruder.
"I think," replied her host very seriously, bringing round the saucer for her inspection, "that it is cabbage. At least I fear that it is cabbage. Having in the first place been cooked, and having also been a long time in the water, it is not readily distinguishable. Whatever it is fever will probably come of it. And the Mother Superior promised me most solemnly that it should not happen again."
Horatia lifted puzzled eyes from the sodden speck.
"The nuns up at the Manor, dear," explained Emilia. "Our water comes through the Manor grounds, and they will throw things from the kitchen into it. Henry has written twice; at last he went himself and had an interview with the Mother Superior. Since then it has been better."
"I think I shall see the Lord Lieutenant about it," said Mr. Strangways. "That I and my family should succumb to fever because these misguided women—foreigners, too, most of them—have been brought up without the most elementary notions of sanitation is preposterous. The whole thing is preposterous, that they should be established in this country at all, polluting at once our water supply and the faith of the villagers!"
"But you will write again, Henry, will you not?" urged his wife. "Or perhaps you would go again and see the Mother?"
"No, I shall not consent to another interview of that kind," returned Mr. Strangways. "I shall now put the matter in the hands of the proper authorities.Mother, indeed! But I shall certainly write as well, and at once. I think I shall enclose this ... this vegetable matter. Would it not be rather to the point, Emilia, if I sent up the saucer with my compliments, and nothing else?"
Horatia burst out laughing, and then perceived that she had done the wrong thing. Her host did not mean to be funny; he never did. Finally it was settled that he should write a letter of protestation, and that, instead of its being sent by a menial hand, Emilia and her guest should walk up with it.
"I thought you might like to see the outside of the Manor," said Mrs. Strangways, as they started out over the fallen leaves. "You see, it once belonged to Henry's uncle, and he most unfortunately sold it, at the time of the French Revolution, to these nuns. As Henry says, he ought not to have been allowed to do it. The grounds are rather fine, much better than ours, and I don't know what they can want with them, for they never go out, and it is really very terrible to feel that they are throwing all sorts of refuse into the water, and might any day poison the children."
"But the convents I have seen in France were so very clean," objected Horatia. "And these are French nuns, you say? Why do they not go back?"
"I don't know," replied her informant. "I suppose they find themselves better off here. Besides, it may not be clean inside; nobody knows, for no one is allowed further than the parlour. I daresay awful things go on, for they are said to be a very severe order. I have heard that they sleep on plank beds, and hardly ever speak, and live on bread and water...."
"And cabbage!"
"Yes, I suppose so. Anyhow it is a fact that no meat ever goes in there. And they do nothing but pray—I mean, they don't embroider, or make lace, or anything useful, but just pray all day long. But Henry says it isn't tedious to them because, of course, after a few months of it, they go out of their minds."
"What do they pray for?" asked Horatia.
A shade of enjoyable horror appeared on the fair face under the beaver bonnet. "They call it Perpetual Intercession. That means praying for wicked people. I know they pray for the dead too—think of that, Horatia! Henry says it's worse than idolatry."
And on this theological dictum of Mr. Strangways they turned through a wide gateway and saw before them, through a fading glory of beech-trees, a large Elizabethan house of mellowed brick. To its left stood the chapel, an incongruous late Georgian building, and up to the main entrance led an ugly covered way of still more modern construction, topped by a statue of the Virgin and Child. Along this way Emilia preceded her guest, for it was barred only by a low oaken gate, which at the moment stood open, perhaps because a novice was scrubbing the stone floor within. Horatia glanced curiously as she passed at the grey-clad figure on its hands and knees, noticing that the hands in question were very small and white, and seemed to have had no past connection with bristles or soapsuds. She would rather have liked to see what sort of a face went with those hands.
The aged portress who took the note from Emilia revealed, as she opened the door, a glimpse of the square Tudor hall that had once known song and carousing but was now lamentably bare and empty. Facing all who entered, and stretching up from the floor against the whitewashed panelling, was a gigantic crucifix in relief, rather more than life-size, of the most startling realism, a realism that had gone so far as to suggest that the base of the cross was sunk in the floor of the hall, for it appeared to be fixed there with large wedges. A skull lay at its foot.
"Is it not horrible?" whispered Emilia as the door shut once more. "The first time I saw it I had nightmare.... I think it is sowrongto remind oneself like that ... Oh, merci, ma soeur!"
For the novice, who had now reached the middle of the passage had risen from her knees, and, removing her bucket out of their way, stood aside with downcast eyes for them to pass. And so Horatia's idle wish was gratified, and she saw her face—the face of Laurence de Vigerie.
CHAPTER VII
(1)
"More particularly am I bound to pray for the good estate of Oriel College, and herein for the Reverend the Provost, Fellows, Clerks, and all other members of that society...."
It was not the first time that Horatia had listened to the bidding prayer which prefaces a sermon before the University of Oxford, nor even the first time that she had heard mentioned therein "the munificence of founders and benefactors, such as were King Edward the Second, the Founder of Oriel College, Adam de Brome, his almoner, and other benefactors of the same." But it was the first occasion on which she had heard the prayer from the lips of the preacher who, two mornings afterwards, occupied the pulpit of St. Mary-the-Virgin. And as she sat down by Mrs. Pusey's side, behind the Heads and Doctors in their scarlet and crimson, and looked up at Charles Dormer, she felt a curious accession of interest, as though she had never seen him before. In the black gown and bands he seemed, she thought, absurdly young to be addressing that august assembly. Then she remembered that, being just Tristram's age, he must be a year older than the Vicar of St. Mary's, who so often addressed them. But he did not look it.
The congregation settled down in the peculiarly arranged nave, and in rather a low voice Dormer gave out his text, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
And Horatia's momentarily excited interest sank again. She felt that she knew the kind of sermon which would be preached on that text, and she did not want to hear it. She wished with all her heart that she were not in church at all. She had not wanted to come to hear Mr. Dormer; she had only done so to fulfil a promise made to Tristram. If it had been Mr. Newman now—or Mr. Keble preaching his Assize sermon—she would have listened.... Laurence de Vigerie scrubbing a stone floor.... In the coach, at the Puseys at Christ Church, here now in St. Mary's—Laurence, the shapeless figure, the veil, the rough dress....
A miracle had happened to Horatia, and she hardly knew it for a miracle. What religion and conscience could not bring about, human feeling and Protestant indignation had accomplished. That one moment's contact with a—to her—shocking reality had swept away, on a flood of horrified pity, not only her hatred but even the thought of forgiveness as a duty. She knew nothing of either now, only that her heart (preparing as it was to welcome a happiness of its own) was aching with compassion. Why was Laurence doing this awful thing? It was not right to punish herself like that, why had she not spoken to her! "Laurence, I am so sorry. It was more his fault than yours; I know it. Don't, don't make yourself so unhappy. It is all wrong ... all a mistake...."
Her brain worked on, and the tears came hot into her eyes. She must concentrate her mind on something else, or she would really cry. Definite words in a clear voice came to her, and she remembered that she was supposed to be listening to Mr. Dormer, and that he must be three parts through by now. She looked up at him again, over the distinguished heads in front of her, this man not so very much older than herself, who was Tristram's greatest friend, and whom she had never liked, as he stood, using no gestures, in the new wooden pulpit that reared itself up against a slender column of nave, the rows of Masters of Arts below. A pillar in front of her, somewhat to her left, and the edge of the north gallery for undergraduates, beneath which she sat, made two sides of a square to frame him, as if for herself alone. She listened.
"What is a pure heart? A German mystic has said that it is a heart which finds its whole and only satisfaction in God, whose thoughts and intents are ever occupied with God, which makes all joys and griefs, all outward cares and anxieties work together for the glory of God.
"How far does such a temper of mind seem to be from all of us who call ourselves Christians! and yet our Lord has definitely contemplated a class of persons who are capable of this peculiar consecration, and to whom is as definitely promised the vision of Him Whom the saints desire to see. This same teacher, taking St. John as the type of the pure in heart, would seem to indicate that all Christians are given the opportunity of making by degrees a gradual and more perfect response to the Divine Call, and that, as our Lord revealed Himself to the beloved disciple in a threefold manner, as His Master, his Friend, and his God, so He still shows Himself to those who surrender themselves, not only to the joy of His friendship but also to the fellowship of His sufferings.
"As our Lord thus called St. John, He calls us out of the world. And, like His beloved disciple, the darlings of His love, sheltered in the life of the Church, hear a gracious invitation, and so abide with Him that day and many days. But there are others with the same capacity for purity of heart, who, in sin or unbelief, have wandered far from their true home, and for these a different call is needed.
"In the frustration of hopes and ambitions, in the sudden fear that for us life has no meaning, in the realisation that death is coming, and after death the judgment, God is calling to us. We have gone on for a long way in our loves and hates, our vanities and pleasures, our imaginations and our sins, and one day the road crumbles beneath us. The beloved is dead, youth is dead, pleasure is dead. Nothing matters now. Why plan for the morrow, when the only reality is death?"
Dormer paused, moved a little, and said, still more quietly, "It is true that for us this is the only reality—the death of the soul."
There was no doubt about Horatia's interest now. How was it that he knew the very horror that gripped her, the fear of death, the fear of life? She held her hands tightly together in her muff, wishing with all her heart that she had listened earlier. He went on, speaking of the ways that God uses to save a soul from death, but, because of her very anxiety to hear, his utterance, exquisite as it was, dulled for a moment or two to a mere buzz in her ears. Then her senses cleared, and she heard him say:
"And, to save us from this death, it may be that God will use, as His last weapon, loneliness. In loneliness He asks us, 'What seek ye?' In loneliness we confess that we do not know His dwelling-place; in loneliness, at last, we can no longer escape the challenge of His merciful displeasure that bids us 'Come and see.' If still we hesitate, it may be our very honesty that makes us afraid to go and see where He dwells, for if we go with Him we must admit His claim, we must acknowledge our fault, we must forgive the friend who has done us irreparable wrong, we can never be as we were before.
"But if in the Divine mercy we yield ourselves captives to His love, and loosed from sin we know Him in Whom we have believed, yet we may not rest in this, the first sight of Jesus, for, like St. John, we are called to a yet more intimate knowledge—the friendship of the Lord. And here sincerity that is to become purity will pass into singleness of heart. For if the surrender of ourselves to the Divine Will has to be made over and over again before God can be glorified in us, still our intention must be pure, our purpose must be sincere. He calls us, indeed, to communion with Himself in sacrament and prayer while as yet the work of transformation is hardly begun. And those who live with Him day by day may still be a prey to resentment and to pride, to jealousy and to ambition, and those who rest on His heart may fail to watch with Him, may even forsake Him when wicked men lay hold on Him. But if, like St. John, greatly, though dimly, desiring the Beatific Vision, they grasp the cup of His Passion, crying out that they are able to drink of it, our Lord, it may be, will take them at their word, and the power of His Cross shall do for them what the joy of His Presence could never do.
"Who are the pure in heart, and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb."
(2)
Horatia emerged with her hostess between the twisted pillars of the porch into the High, to a crowd of people, and the prospect of an Oxford Sunday such as she loved. But she would have given anything to go back, alone, into the emptying church, to pray to this new Christ, who had called her—her—and to Whom she had not come. But she would come, she would come, if only she could find the way.... "Where dwellest Thou?"
"Excuse me a moment," said Mrs. Pusey, stopping to speak to someone, and Horatia, waiting in the momentary press, heard one gentleman commoner say to another, "Couldn't make anything of the sermon. Are all your Fellows as unintelligible as that?" To which his companion, evidently an Oriel man, responded, "I don't often hear them. But I can stand 'Mercy and Judgment' because he is at least short.—By Gad, there he is, with Mr. Denison!" And he capped the two Fellows as they crossed the street. Dormer was smiling as he returned the salute.
Horatia followed them with her eyes. Did he then know the friendship of the Lord, walking in sober academic garb along an Oxford street? Could people other than those in stained glass windows, dressed in reds and blues against a background of palm-tree and lake, hear His call, know His friendship, carry His cross? ...
"Pray forgive me!" said Mrs. Pusey's voice at her side. "Shall we go past Oriel; it is shortest. No doubt we shall encounter Edward on his way to meet us, if Cathedral is over, as I should guess it to be. Then we might perhaps take a turn in the Broad Walk. It will do Edward good, for his health is so precarious just now that I do not know how he is to get on to the end of term."
As Horatia murmured her sympathy the two gowns disappeared under Oriel gateway.
"Where dwellest Thou?" All through the remainder of the day the question persisted, wrecking everything she did in the pleasant, dignified atmosphere of Mr. Pusey's house. Were these kind, learned people who sat round the Sunday dinner-table, were they the captives of His love; had they been loosed from sin? She wished that Tristram could have been there, sitting opposite to her. His familiar presence would have steadied her. Even if he knew the meaning of all these phrases there was nothing disturbing about him.
Later in the afternoon she watched Mr. Newman, the friend of the family, sitting with the two elder children on his knee, while he put his spectacles on their noses, or told them a story. What would happen if she suddenly interrupted the story with her insistent question—"Doyouknow where He dwells?"
The interminable day came to an end at last, and she was alone in her room. Without waiting to undress she flung herself down beside the bed. "Where dwellest Thou, where dwellest Thou?" There was no one to answer, nothing to see, only the rose and jasmine of the wall-paper, distorted through the rain of tears.
She woke next morning in a very different frame of mind, more than a little ashamed of her emotion of the day before. She might have been a Methodist! It was not for her, this enthusiasm, and she ought not to have been so discomposed. To have been carried away, against her will, by the words of a man whom she disliked! She disliked, too, some of what he had said, now that more of it came back to her. Life was made for happiness; though sorrow intruded it was an incident to be forgotten, not to be dwelt upon. Comfortably eating her breakfast in her well-appointed room she felt sure of this, and knew that she, who was certainly not ignorant of suffering, did not approve of its glorification. What did Mr. Dormer know about it?
And yet ... she knew that she should not forget St. Mary's.
CHAPTER VIII
(1)
Mr. Dormer of Oriel was accustomed to assert that he felt no ill effects from his Italian carriage accident, but, as a matter of fact, he never went up or down any prolonged flight of stairs without being reminded of the slight muscular weakness which it had left. So that when, about six weeks after his sermon at St. Mary's, he came rather fast down the sixty-five steps of the Bodleian library, and at the end of every group of five arrived with some force upon his injured leg, he was so reminded.
Outside, in the archway facing the Radcliffe and St. Mary's, their gowns blown about by the wind which commonly sweeps through that passage, he came on Newman and his curate, Isaac Williams, in converse with Mr. Pusey.
"Wait a minute, Dormer," exclaimed the first-named, catching at him as he was about to pass. "We are having a most interesting conversation."
"I was just saying to Mr. Newman," said the Canon, smiling and wrapping his gown round him after a habit he had, "that I think you are all too hard upon the Evangelicals. You should conciliate the Peculiars, as you would call them. I am thinking of writing a letter myself for that purpose."
"Were you!" exclaimed Newman. "Well, suppose you let us have that for one of the Tracts?"
The young Regius Professor smiled his particularly sweet smile. "Oh, no!" he replied, "I will not be one of you!" and they all moved out of the archway together, Dormer taking the opportunity to ask Isaac Williams for news of Keble.
Meanwhile Newman seemed to be arguing with his friend, and at last, as they stood on the steps, he could be heard saying, "Suppose you let us have that letter of yours, which you intend writing, and attach your own name or signature to it? You would then not be mixed up with us, or be in any way responsible for the Tracts."
"Well," said Pusey after a little hesitation, "if you will let me do that I will."
He gave them a smiling farewell, and went off, in his usual rather abstracted fashion, down Brasenose Lane.
"Come out with me to Littlemore, Dormer," urged Newman. "It is a beautiful day. Isaac has some business of his own, I don't know what, in Oxford. Come along, and we will sing pæans of thanksgiving for the great victory obtained by the Apostolicals over the Regius Professor of Hebrew."
And he set out with his curious swift gait, as if walking in heelless slippers, along the side of All Souls, where two years ago a daring hand had painted "No Bristol Riots."
"I must write to Froude at once," he continued. "How I wish we dared take his advice and throw the Establishment men overboard! I am sure that if he knew the trouble I have had with that good Palmer, on the question of continuing the Tracts, he would pity me."
"If Pusey should end by casting in his lot with us," observed Dormer thoughtfully, "it might make a difference."
"You mean that if we had him we could venture to row our own little boat, because he could be all that Rose might be?"
"Well, yes, with his influence and his easy relations with the University authorities.—Excuse me a moment, there's Mr. Grenville of Compton Regis. I must just go across."
For they had by this time come abreast of the Angel in High Street, where an elderly cleric was about to enter a post-chaise.
"Ah, Mr. Dormer," said the Rector heartily, "That's very kind of you to come and speak to an old man. I'm just returned from a jaunt, I suppose you may call it, to London, to my sister-in-law's. Oxford is looking its best this morning. Yes, thanks, I'm very well, too, although I am so bombarded with these Tracts—rather a turning of the tables, you know, for we clergy are more accustomed to distributing than to receiving such things. And I ought to obtain a meed of praise from you, too, for I have just arranged a meeting next week, to get signatures to the address to the Archbishops—though I think it rather a milk-and-water thing myself ... Well, good-day."
"I hope Madame de la Roche-Guyon is well," observed Dormer, in the tones of convention, as he opened the chaise door for him.
"Yes, quite well, thank you," replied the Rector, his foot on the step. He hesitated, withdrew that member, and glancing round lowered his voice to a confidential tone: "When I see how she welcomesour friend'svisits, I really begin to hope that it will all come right in the end! So perhaps what has happened has been for the best!" His face beamed. "How little we trust in Providence, Mr. Dormer! But there, I mustn't keep you. Good-day!"
John Henry Newman had a rather silent companion on his walk to Littlemore.
(2)
The chaise conveying Mr. Grenville from Oxford to Compton was, unknown to Tristram, but a few miles in advance of him as he trotted along the frosty Berkshire lanes that afternoon, revolving in his mind the points in his tract on "The Church the Home of the Poor," of which he had left the proofs with Horatia—proofs which he was going to reclaim before he left next week for a "missionary tour" in Northamptonshire on business connected with the Tracts.
Last Christmas, when he had come to think over his afternoon at Compton, he knew that he would rather not see Horatia often. And a gradual abstention would have been possible, though a little awkward, but the Rector had insisted so much on the cheering effect of his visits, and the necessity for Horatia of some outside interest that, as always where she was concerned, he allowed his own feelings to be overridden. This was not the time to consider himself, when she was in a situation so poignantly pathetic, and when, for the first time in his life, he was really able to be of some use to her. That there should be any talk in the neighbourhood about his going to the Rectory seemed very unlikely, seeing that it had been a second home to him since boyhood. Had he suddenly kept away, there might have been something to talk about. And that there should be any wrong impression left upon her mind was quite unthinkable after he had once seen her. Never, in her teasing days, had she seemed so remote as now in her kindness, and her sadness and her motherhood. Nearly always, when he got back to Oxford, one or other of the different strands of pain would ache almost unbearably, but since the call to arms in July, and still more since the forging of weapons was begun in September, this great interest which she shared with him had made things easier for him. His going out there was no longer an emotional strain, but almost a soldier's visit to a comrade at an outpost, woman though she was. And this was indeed the spirit in which he rode out to her to-day to reclaim his proofs.
But Mr. Grenville, blowing his nose very hard, met him in the hall. "Horatia is greatly distressed," he said huskily. "She has had sad news from France. I've only just got back myself and heard it. That child—but there, I think you had better go in to her."
In the dining-room, her head on the table, which was strewn with sewing materials, Horatia was crying as if her heart would break.
"It is poor little Claude-Edmond," she said between her sobs. "He's dead ... poor darling ... poor dear little boy..." And she broke into fresh weeping.
"Dead!" exclaimed Tristram horrified. "Emmanuel's son—that little fellow! How..."
She could give him no answer for a moment, and in that pause, rent with sobbing, he knew without acknowledging it that the sight of her grief meant immeasurably more to him than its cause. He could not bear to see her cry!
After a moment she raised her head and dabbed at her eyes, and lifted them, all reddened and swollen, to his.
"You remember him, Tristram—such a dear little boy, so solemn and polite? He was riding in the Bois de Boulogne a few days ago when his horse took fright, and he was thrown—against a tree ... He only lived a few hours.... O Tristram, when I think ... and he was such a comfort to me once ... and they say he asked for me ... I can't bear it!"
And during this short recital of that almost intolerable tragedy, a child's death, every vestige of colour ebbed from Tristram's face. Before she had ended he had turned it from her.
"And does this ... this very sad news ... will it make any difference to you, Horatia?"
"Any difference?" repeated she, not catching his real meaning, so completely was she absorbed in thoughts of the dead boy. "Oh, you mean Maurice being the heir now." Utterance failed her and she began to cry again. "O, I can't bear to think of it!"
"Yes," said Tristram's voice, curiously insistent and toneless, "but will it make any difference to you personally ... will you have to go away—to live in France? I thought perhaps..."
"No, O, no, I don't think so." She sighed heavily. "I can do as I please, I think. I suppose I shall be there more often, perhaps ... O Tristram, why is God so cruel?"
He did not take up the challenge, but he looked at her very gravely.
"I do not know," he said. "I ... I must go back and write to poor Emmanuel. I will come for those proofs again, or you can send them. I am going away next week ... when I come back, perhaps..."
The Oxford road saw that evening the return of a man who, in all good faith, had attempted a task beyond his strength, and who was now paying bitterly enough for the discovery.
CHAPTER IX
(1)
From the bottom of Maurice's crib, wherein he lay fast asleep, his favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against the rails, stared at him reproachfully, for the little boy had taken to bed with him, against all precedent, an old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his own. The rag soldier probably felt his world tumbling around him.
And, indeed, the whole night-nursery was rather topsy-turvy. Maurice's bath things were not cleared away, though the water was long cold, and in the midst of downflung towels, soap, sponge and powder-puffs, sat his mother herself, doing nothing. It was she who was responsible for the disorder, for that dislocation in fact of the whole day which had been so pleasant to Maurice. He was certainly not likely to complain when, after breakfast, Mamma had sent Martha away and announced that she was going to have him to herself, for a special reason. The reason was less than nothing to Maurice, but the fact was delightful, implying a free hand with the coal-box, while Mamma, instead of wanting to change his frock, kept herself quiet with a piece of paper covered with black marks, on which she from time to time let fall those tears which Maurice himself could produce, though seldom so silently. The culmination of being bathed by Mamma had led to a great deal of splashing, and to the exhibition, which Martha would never let him complete, of his powers of drinking water from his sponge. That his mother was quite incapable of clearing up the mess which he and she had made together was not likely to trouble him either, indeed he fell asleep too soon to realise this deficiency.
And Horatia sat in the midst of the confusion, her eyes full of tears, her chin on her hand, watching the sleeping child. She could not get poor little Claude-Edmond out of her head. Most clearly of all she remembered him at Plaisance, confiding to her his desire to resemble Armand, to be able to ride, to fence.... Now they would neither of them ever ride again.... And the death of the little boy had thrown across her own life a shadow not only of regret, but of menace. For in her lap lay the testimony to the triumph of the indomitable spirit of an old lady over the Code Napoléon, under whose ægis Horatia had fondly imagined herself and Maurice to be sheltering.
The letter had come yesterday morning, the third day after her interview with Tristram. It was quite simple. The Duchesse's lawyer wrote that his venerable client was about to make her will for the last time, a course necessitated by the recent unfortunate death of the little heir. As Madame la Comtesse was no doubt aware, the ancient and noble family of La Roche-Guyon was extremely impoverished. Nothing indeed but the great private fortune of the Dowager Duchess had enabled it to keep up the appearance due to its rank. The bulk of this fortune the Duchesse was now proposing to settle upon the child of her late dearly-beloved younger grandson—on one condition. Madame la Comtesse must renounce entirely her plan of bringing him up in England; with or without her he must return to France by the time he was five—though in deference to the last wishes of her dear grandson he should be allowed to pass some years at an English school. But he must be brought up as a Frenchman, as the heir of the family which he would one day represent, and Madame la Comtesse was to signify her willingness to return to Paris for three or four months as early as possible in the New Year. If she refused to comply with these conditions the Duchesse's money, after the deaths of her son and elder grandson, would be left to distant relatives of her own family, and the future Duc de la Roche-Guyon would find himself the almost penniless inheritor of his great name and position.
Stunning though this ultimatum was, it had not taken Horatia long to decide that Maurice must go. She could not be the means of beggaring her child. He must go—but was she to go too? It was true that the Duchesse had not had the brutality to suggest an immediate separation from his mother, but the two years and ten months which lay between him and his fifth birthday would soon pass. If she went, good-bye to all her old home life, taken up again and found so peaceful and so dear; good-bye to her father who had recovered her with so much joy.
And good-bye to Tristram.....
But if she stayed, good-bye to that head of curls on the pillow. O no, no, she could never do that! She slipped to her knees and clutched at the cot rails. "My darling! I could not! I could not!"
And yet, on the other side of the crib seemed to stand Tristram, looking at her as he had looked three mornings ago, his voice fallen to that strange tone, "Will it make any difference to you, Horatia?" the only real evidence that she had of his wanting her—since his visits and his obvious pleasure in them could all be accounted for by their long friendship—but evidence enough. Yes, it had actually come to the choice, all unforeseen, between her child and the man ... she loved. The issue must be decided, too, within a week, for the Duchesse insisted on an immediate answer. This was why she had spent the day with Maurice, "to help her to decide"—a proceeding not free from the charge of indulgence in sentiment.
(2)
And yet she had not made up her mind when she heard her father, who had been out all day, coming heavily up the nursery stairs.
"My dear," he said, astonished, "why are you up here alone? Martha is wandering about outside waiting to come in to you. It is too much for you to do all this for the child by yourself, and why should you?"
To which his daughter responded, in an appealing tone not far from tears, "O Papa, I can't leave him, I can't leave him!"
"Well, my dear," remarked Mr. Grenville, approaching the crib, "you can leave him now, at any rate, for he is fast asleep, and Martha can sit with him instead of catching cold on the landing. Come, come, we will go down into the library and leave her to clear up. Yes, come in!" And as Martha entered and fell to work on the disorder he put Horatia's hand through his arm and led her out.
In the library she settled down in her favourite attitude on a stool at his feet, and for a time nothing much was said, except that the Rector, as he stroked her hair, would mutter, "It is very hard, very difficult, my love," and, at intervals, "I should never have expected it of them, never!"
At last Horatia broke out passionately, "I can't let Maurice be a pauper! He will have to go, and I—I think I must go with him." With that she escaped from her father's caress, and putting her head in her hands began to cry.
The Rector got up, found a box of Prometheans, went successfully through the process of pinching out the sulphuric acid, at the end, on to the chlorate of potash and sugar (in which he generally burnt his fingers), obtained a flame and lit a couple of candles. Then he sighed heavily, sat down again, and drawing his chair up close to Horatia took hold of a hand and made her rest her head on his knee.
"Now, my dearest child," he began, "I am going to speak very plainly to you. I do not think these tears are for me. No, don't say anything about that! It's all quite right. I should not wish them to be. I think Tristram is at the bottom of this."
For answer he saw her getting crimson behind the ears, and heard her murmur faintly, "O Papa!"
"Well, my dear, it's very right and natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. I have thought that I have seen signs, for some time, and I have been very thankful, very thankful. He is the right husband for you."
"I thought, Papa," came a stifled voice, "that you did not approve of second marriages."
"Perhaps not," replied the Rector, "but this is different, and Tristram has wanted you all his life."
"But how do I know that he wants me now?"
"That," said the Rector with conviction, "is very apparent; in fact, I was on the verge of speaking to him about it last week."
"Papa!" ejaculated his daughter, sitting up.
"Yes, we understand one another," went on Mr. Grenville, smiling, for there was unmistakably more pleasure than horror in her protest. "I have known more about all this, my dear, than you have. You never knew, because Tristram would not allow me to tell you, but he was going to propose to you, the very week that poor Armand came to visit him."
"Tristram was going to propose to me again," said Horatia slowly, "and yet he made the way easy for me to marry Armand!"
"One of his extraordinary notions, my dear. 'If she wanted the moon, I would get it for her,' he said. I have often thought that it was not for nothing that he had a fanatic for a father. He is one in a thousand, but of course, before now, he has seemed to me unnecessarily quixotic. I have meant to tell you this, Horatia, but I thought things were best without my interference. Still it is but right, now that the crisis has come, for you to know all that I do. It is my belief that Tristram is only hindered at this very moment from speaking by some idea of propriety. Or perhaps he feels that his prospects are not yet assured. Still, it is clear that he must declare himself in the near future, unless he wants to lose you altogether. If only it were possible to give him a little encouragement!"
"Icouldn't give him encouragement!" exclaimed Horatia in a tone of horror.
"I was not suggesting such a thing for a moment, my love. I was only saying if it were possible. I feel something could be done, ought to be done ... Let me see, how much time have we?"
Horatia had twisted round on her footstool and was now facing him with flushed cheeks. "A week. And, O Papa, even if he did ... if he wanted me to marry him, how could I let Maurice go without me?"
The Rector bent forward. He had the air of thorough and pleasurable mastery of the situation.
"My dear, let us be quite clear about that anyhow! I'm as fond of the boy as if he were my own, but I think you would do very wrong to deprive him of a stepfather like Tristram. After all, if you take him to France for a few months next year you may keep him until he is five years old. It was the Jesuits who said, 'Give us a child until he is five and we will make anything of him.' (No, now I come to think of it, it is 'until he is seven,' but no matter.) Very well then, until that age you and Tristram can bring him up, and you see already how he takes to Tristram. After that the parting will be hard for you, I do not doubt, but the time will soon come for him to return to England to school, and, if you agree in the main to the conditions, the Duchesse is not likely to wish to drive such a hard bargain that you cannot occasionally have him for his holidays ... Besides, we may hope that you will have other children."
"Papa, do you really mean all this?" asked Horatia thoughtfully. "I have never looked at it in that light."
"I do indeed mean it, but the question is, what is to be done? There is not too much time," said the Rector, pursing his lips. "This needs careful consideration." And, apparently, he considered, and Horatia too. At any rate she was silent, looking into the fire.
Finally Mr. Grenville gave an exclamation. "I have it! Did you not say, my dear, that you had to send back a proof of Tristram's to him? What more natural than to enclose the letter from the Duchesse's lawyer, and say that you would value his advice, or something of the sort?"
Horatia turned over and over the locket with the little curl of Maurice's hair that she wore.
Then she said, very quietly, "Yes, I will do it."