(3)"My dear Horatia,"I feel with you very much in the difficulty of the decision. It will be hard for the Rector to part with you again so soon, but I know you both too well to imagine that you can hesitate for long where Maurice's interests are concerned."For myself, I need not say how, after this year of renewed friendship, I shall miss your help and sympathy, but I have come to feel that my life is not my own. Wherever you go, whatever you do, may God bless you always!—T.H."This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast four mornings later, and which lay in her pocket all through that meal and for some time afterwards, not because she did not wish her father to see it, since he was away for the night, but because she dared not open it. In her own room, the door locked, she read it at last, once not understanding, the second time unbelieving, the third time understanding too well.Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to hide the scorching blush that, though she was alone, spread itself from the nape of her neck to the roots of her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of fire over her whole body. He had refused her! Under the guise of asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la Roche-Guyon—Horatia Grenville—had, practically, offered herself to a man, and he had refused her! And this man was Tristram!After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took up the letter again, and, reading it for the fourth time, she received yet a new impression. This did not seem to be Tristram at all who wrote to her; it was like the voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a veil hung between her and the man who had penned those words—words which, as she could see, had been chosen to spare her, words which made no reference to what the writer must have known was in her mind. But they were final enough, in all conscience!She put the letter down on her dressing-table. Yes, that was what it was like—a dictated letter, a letter which another person had made him write....There was something that she did not understand. She got up and began to walk about the room, the first biting shame of the repulse a little blunted by contact with her own imperious temper and by a certain bewilderment. She had a feeling that there was, somewhere, what her father would have called "hokey-pokey." And, as she arrived at that conclusion, she saw it all in a flash, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. Tristram had of course been "got hold of" by the Oriel people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on celibacy. That was what he meant by writing that he had come to feel his life not his own. That was, no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable glorification of suffering as a part of Christianity at which her whole soul revolted.Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger. Illogically enough, though she had endured many qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram himself wanted to marry her, that "they" were preventing him. Well, they should see!She carried this fighting mood about with her for an hour or so while she ordered the household and visited Maurice, who this morning was greatly intrigued by the presence of frost on the window-pane, a phenomenon, like many others, still strange to him. But all the while she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was slowly slipping away from her. At half-past ten she returned to her room, took out the letter and read it again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.No, it was not so simple. Something much more was here than the combatting of the influence of others. One thing, if one alone in life, the most ardent fighter should shrink from lifting sword against, a man's conscience. Had she not recently felt the reawakened stirrings of her own? And in this matter, however it came there, was some deep conviction of Tristram's. He could not, otherwise, have written so.And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking of him whom she knew so well, she began to realise what he must be suffering at having to answer her thus. She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion, that would do anything in the world for her, so as it was not against his conscience. Could not she, then, who had never, perhaps, been anything but a source of pain to him, could not she do something for him—take the disturbing element of herself out of his life, because, for his real happiness, she would be better gone, and go, without an attempt to hold him, to that other life where duty was calling her? ... The way was open, if she were strong enough to follow it.But she must be sure that such a renunciation would be for Tristram's happiness. She must be sure that he really had this conviction. In her present mood she could almost have gone and asked Tristram himself, had she not known that he was away from Oxford. And the time was drawing very near when she must answer the Duchesse's letter.But there was one person who could probably tell her as well as Tristram himself—Mr. Dormer, if he had not gone down. She could not write to him on such a matter. She would have to go and see him. The unusualness of the step gave her only a momentary pause. Even though it were not proper for her, a young woman—if a widow—to go and call on an unmarried man in his College rooms she did not care. At the worst she could get the Puseys to ask him to Christ Church and she could talk to him there. But she knew that only the most direct method would really satisfy her. The matter was too pressing and too desperate to admit of considering the proprieties.Nevertheless, some three hours later, as she followed the porter across the quadrangle at Oriel, she was already regretting her precipitancy, and it was with a throbbing heart that she heard him announce her name in the mangled fashion to which she was becoming accustomed in England.But the room was empty. It was undeniable relief, and had the porter, apologising for his mistake, not adjured her to take a seat, as Mr. Dormer could not be long, she would have brought out the words of excuse already on her lips and fled. But that everyday form—its visage not untouched by curiosity—was a barrier to escape more effectual than any sword-girt angel, and she obeyed.So she was left, with a sulky little fire for company, to wait. For some time she was too restless to sit down, and wandered between the fireplace and the window. The room did not strike her as uncomfortable, and it was very orderly, except for the big table in the middle, which was strewn with books and papers, as if the occupant had been interrupted in his work. There was a good deal of old furniture, some of it beautiful, and the walls could not look bare, for they were almost completely lined with books. Indeed the only picture that she noticed was an engraving over the hearth of Velasquez' Christ on the Cross, straight and stark against its background of more than night, the face shadowed by the falling hair. Horatia felt suddenly afraid, she knew not of what, and going as far as possible from the print, sat down by the window.The only thing that comforted her was the sight of some Christmas roses in a saucer, standing among the books and papers, close to their owner's chair.CHAPTER X(1)Dormer, in academical dress, was entering under Oriel gateway when the porter accosted him."If you please, Sir, there's a lady waiting to see you in your rooms. She asked for you, and thinking you was there I showed her up. A French name, I fancy."The young Fellow mechanically took the card held out to him. "A French name" could announce only one lady. But on what errand had she come? For the first time in his life he was afraid. Then he set his face like a flint and crossed the quadrangle towards his staircase.And in his sitting-room, in the low chair by the window where, in his time at least, no woman had ever sat, very pale, clad in black but wearing costly furs, with the light on her hair, was the woman who had wasted Tristram's years, and whose happiness was always to be bought at the cost of his."I must apologise for keeping you waiting, Madam," he said coldly, as he closed the door. "Please do not move! The porter told me you were here." He laid his cap on the table. "There is something particular that you wish to see me about?""Yes," said Horatia, "there is something that I have come to ask you." She turned her head and glanced out of the window, and then looked again at her host, standing with exceeding stiffness in his gown and hood. "But now that I am here I hardly know how to put it into words.""If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate," observed Dormer with icy politeness, and then, seeing that she did not speak, he sat down by the side of his big table and looked away. He felt miserably sure that she had come to say something about Tristram, but that, being a lady, she would not reach the point for another half-hour or so. He was therefore entirely taken by surprise when he heard her say, after a moment:"I am going to ask you a very extraordinary question, Mr. Dormer. I want you to tell me if Tristram—if Mr. Hungerford has come to think that it is better for the clergy not to marry?"Startled though he was, Dormer fell instantly on guard. "Is not that a question, Madam," he returned, "which it would be better for you to ask Mr. Hungerford himself?""Could I bring myself to that," assented Horatia, "it would be better.""He is not in Oxford at present, I know," suggested Dormer, "but he will be back by the sixteenth.""I must know before that," said Horatia gravely.And Dormer had a sudden temptation. He felt more sure than ever that Tristram had got himself into a tangle. Here and now he could probably cut it for him. But he would not play Providence. It was one thing to warn Tristram, quite another to extricate him behind his back and without his consent ... So his tone was even colder than before as he said, "If the matter is urgent I regret that I cannot help you, but I think you can understand that I am unwilling to discuss my friend's affairs, even with another of his friends." And he rose, as if to intimate that the interview was over.But his visitor did not rise. On the contrary she said, with warmth, "Yes, I quite see that, but..." She bit her lip. "If you knew, you would not be so punctilious, Mr. Dormer. Will you not let me tell you?""Really," said Dormer, hesitating a trifle, "I hardly know what to say, but I would much rather not be the recipient of any confidences. Surely, Madam, the matter is not so pressing but that you can wait for Tristram's return."Horatia laughed rather bitterly."Mr. Dormer, you need not be so much afraid. We will not speak of Tristram then. If you will tell me your own views on the subject it will be quite enough. It is not easy for me to come to you—you must know that! I only do it because ... O, well, that does not matter."Dormer sat down with a resigned sigh by the side of the table, and said briefly, "Please tell me anything you wish.""Thank you," said Horatia; collected herself and started. "I am afraid I must trouble you with some personal details. You probably know that a good many years ago Tristram asked me to marry him. I was singularly young and foolish, and I refused him. You may also know that, as I have learnt quite recently, he was on the verge of asking me again in the autumn of 1830." Dormer inclined his head. "What my answer would have been I do not know. But shortly afterwards I married my late husband. Our marriage was an unhappy one."Here she came to a full stop, and got no help from her listener, who was looking down at an ink-pot."It was largely my own fault, but I have suffered, and if ever anyone wanted to forget the past I have wanted to forget it." For a second her voice trembled, then it recovered. "In my old home again, with my father, it seemed sometimes as if I should succeed. And although Tristram was changed, yet he was the same, and latterly it has seemed to me that he was indeed the same, and that ... it is very difficult for me to tell you..."Dormer looked up. "I think I can understand," he said, with something different in his voice."Thank you. I was right ... and I was wrong. I cannot explain it, but I must just ask you to believe that I was not utterly blinded by vanity, and on the other hand that Tristram did and said nothing that could not be accounted for by his long and extraordinary friendship.""That is quite easy for me to believe," replied Dormer; but he seemed to have a slight difficulty in speaking."The end came a week ago," pursued Horatia. And she explained, as shortly as she could, the bombshell which the Dowager Duchesse had cast into her plans, finishing by saying, "I felt almost confident that Tristram only waited for some sign from me ... and yet I could not bring myself to give it. But time was pressing, and I must decide about the boy. My father urged me to send the letter I had received to Tristram, and to ask his advice. It ... it was ... unusual, I know ... but I did so—and this morning I received his answer. I think you had better read it."Dormer got up and took with obvious reluctance the paper which she held out to him. He read it, flushed violently, and became very pale."I don't want you to say anything," said Horatia hurriedly. "When I got this letter this morning I saw it all in a flash. It has only needed your hesitation to make me quite sure that I was right. From time to time I have heard the views of his friends here at Oriel about the marriage of the clergy, but somehow—it was stupid of me—it never occurred to me that he shared them. But that of course is the key to the situation. He is bound by some vow not to marry."Her hearer during this speech had stationed himself by the fire, his head bent, with a hand on the high mantelshelf; his arm, in consequence, hid his face. She could not even see it now, as he said, in a voice noticeably less hostile. "There I think you are wrong. As I see now that it is quite unnecessary for me to keep anything from you, I can tell you that, to my knowledge, he has never taken any kind of vow, but that, even before his ordination as priest, he had a solemn intention to embrace the life of sacrifice to the glory of God. But it was a solemn intention, not a vow.""Intention or vow," returned Horatia, "it would be all the same to Tristram. And please do not speak to me of sacrifice and the glory of God! I do not believe that the Creator is glorified by the self-inflicted suffering of His creatures. But if you speak to me of Tristram's happiness, or of his conscience, which is more than happiness to him, then I can understand you.""You are right about Tristram's conscience," said Tristram's friend."Yet I believe that I can still bring him back to me if I choose to," said Horatia rather defiantly. The challenge drew from Charles Dormer a bow which was more eloquent than many words."But I do not mean to try," she finished. "I am quite sure that Tristram is deluded, yet if this delusion has become a matter of conscience with him, he would not long remain happy with me. What I want to find out is how firmly he is fixed in this idea, and how he would look at his action later on if he married me. This is where you can help me, Mr. Dormer, for I know that you are his second self. In the end he would come to think as you think now. I want you to tell me, first, if in your opinion it would ever be right to go back upon what you call a solemn intention?"Dormer saw now that he was being forced into the position which he had a short time ago rejected almost with regret—that of an executioner. Now, strangely enough, he hated it."Yes," he said, "from our point of view it would be right ... under certain circumstances.""And would you think," asked Horatia, looking down and hesitating, "would you consider the fact that I have become a widow since his resolve was taken an exceptional circumstance?""I am afraid," replied Dormer reluctantly, "that it would entirely depend on how far Tristram had committed himself already to the idea of the single life. You see it is impossible for me to discuss this from any but what I am sure you would call a fanatical standpoint." He smiled fleetingly, without mirth."But supposing he was committed very far ... would it be right to ... to go back?"It had to be done. "No," said Dormer in a low voice. "No, I am afraid it would not."(2)Across the silence there came a faint clattering sound, probably a tray from the buttery being taken to someone's rooms. Stillness fell again. Then the voice of an undergraduate not yet gone down was heard inquiring in a shout what that ass Simpson had done with his carpet bag. Horatia got up from her chair and began to pull down her veil."I do not think you need be afraid of me any longer," she said with a sort of smile. "There is only one way for me to answer the Duchesse's letter. Thank you for speaking so plainly to me. You have been very patient, and I am more than grateful. Would you have the goodness to send to see if my carriage is at the gate?"She stooped for her muff, which had slipped to the floor, but, hearing no movement, glanced round and saw Dormer still standing between the table and the hearth, blocking her exit, his eyes fixed on her. And as with a faint surprise she gazed at him he seemed to alter. The sternness had gone from his face; it looked, if possible, still more sad, but she could hardly believe that this was the man against whom, for the last half-hour, she had been fighting. And she heard him say, with singular gentleness—"'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' May our Lord of His great mercy comfort you!""Don't, don't say that sort of thing to me!" exclaimed Horatia. "I am doing nothing at all heroic. It is only necessity. It has nothing to do with God or religion, or because I believe for one moment in Tristram's foolish ideas—it is because ... because..." It was impossible to go on, for his voice had touched some secret spring in her, some deep-buried self which, suddenly released, was struggling to respond—as once before, at the same voice, it had struggled in St. Mary's. She sat down again and hid her face in her hands."Because," said Dormer, still more gently, "you have found out the secret of love—the willingness to go without the beloved for the beloved's sake.""I do not know what I have found out," said Horatia after a moment, passing her handkerchief over her eyes. "I am only following an instinct. I mean to go back to France, and after that ... I don't care much what happens." She paused again. "With Tristram I should have been safe. He was my hope. I know I have done wrong, very wrong, but am I never to be forgiven, never to be allowed to forget the past?—O!" she broke out passionately, "your God is a cruel God! He is cruel to Tristram and to me. I don't believe what you said in your sermon about suffering—I can't believe it and I won't believe it! ... Why are you making me talk to you?""Because I want to help you. Will you not let me try—for Tristram's sake?"Horatia looked at him for a moment, then she rose and went to the window. When she turned round again, some three minutes later, the buried self had won, and, not ungenerous in victory, had given her composure for its purpose."You are the only person who could help me," she said very simply. "But it is such a long story, and I ought not to take up your time.""I have plenty of time," replied Dormer with equal simplicity. "If you will sit down, and tell me what you can, I daresay I can fill in the gaps.""I thought my marriage was the ... the 'vision splendid,'" began Horatia after a little, "I was mistaken; but there was still something remaining, only I was exacting and foolish, and refused to make the best of what I had ... At last I heard two miserable women speaking of the infidelity of my husband, and the name coupled with his was ... that of my greatest friend. There were proofs with which I need not trouble you ... I taxed him with it, but he denied it. I would not believe him. I told him I hated him and his child. It was then that Maurice was born. For many weeks I visited my hatred of my husband on the child. For a long time I would not let them bring my baby near me ... and I definitely refused to believe my husband, who still protested his innocence, or to have anything more to do with him. I"—her voice began to falter—"practically drove him from me to do the very thing of which I had falsely accused him.... I think I lost all faith in God, and I believe that I wished to die.""It would be at that time," asked Dormer, to help her, "that Tristram and I came to see you?""Yes ... and that was somehow ... a turning point for me. During the cholera I was away with Maurice, and it was then that I began to be a little sorry. I think I meant to take Armand back into favour by degrees. But when I returned to Paris he had already left for Vendée. Soon afterwards I heard that the rising had proved a failure, and that he was in hiding. I followed as quickly as I could to our house in the country ... and it was there that the news was brought to me that he had been shot.""By the Orleanists?""Yes." Horatia hesitated. "He ... he was shot in saving the life of that lady ... who was never what I thought her. His death prevented that.""How do you know this?""Because in his delirium I heard everything.""You were with him when he died?"Horatia made a great effort. "Yes. My friend ... whom he loved ... whom he would have married had he not met me ... took him dying to her house ... and sent for me to be with him at the last.""Yes?" said Dormer.And Horatia went on, more and more agitated. "I shall see him lying in that bed fighting with death until I die ... and it was I who sent him to his death ... it was my hardness that drove him to someone who really loved him.... And ... and," she choked down a sob, "it was for her that he died ... not for me."She came to a full stop."Yes, I see," said the priest, but in the tone of one who thinks there is more to come.Horatia went on again, almost inaudibly. "I hear him crying out, in the night when I wake, 'Leave your scruples, Laurence, she does not believe me,' and then again, 'Why do you send for Horatia ... she would not care ... I am nothing to her now; she told me so.'"Her listener had himself put his hand over his eyes, but he gave no sign, and at last Horatia finished."He would not forgive me ... he said there was nothing to forgive ... and I have felt—I still feel—that God has not forgiven me, that He has punished me, and that He will go on punishing me."She had been speaking in a very low voice, and there was now hardly a sound outside. Inside the room there was the sort of silence that could be cut. It might have been lasting for centuries or for seconds—Horatia could not tell—when Dormer broke it."I will not ask you if you have been able to forgive that unhappy lady, who you say was once your friend, but are you able sometimes to feel compassion for her?""I doubt if I know what you mean by forgiveness," answered Horatia. "I only know that once, perhaps, I hoped that she might suffer, because I had suffered so much, and that now I cannot bear to think of what she is doing at this moment.""What do you mean?""Oh, I did not tell you. I was staying some weeks ago with a friend in Devonshire, and we had to take a letter to a convent near, a convent of French nuns. There was a novice scrubbing some flags; she did not see me, but I saw her, and it was Laurence, Laurence whom I had not seen since ... since...""I understand.""Laurence," went on Horatia fiercely, "who was more sinned against than sinning.... Yes, I know that now! I have always known it, but I tried to excuse my husband. Laurence was rich and admired, and could have everything she wanted, and now she has not enough to eat, and she does menial work, and spends hours in prayer—and all for Armand's soul. It is an order of perpetual intercession. And I who was his wife—I am feeling that life holds very little for me because I cannot marry Tristram! What is there to forgive now!""I should not be quite prepared to say that," replied Dormer, looking rather staggered, "but I am quite certain of one thing. If you have been able to forgive so wholeheartedly the irreparable injury done to you, I do not think that you will have long to wait for the assurance of your own forgiveness." He hesitated, as if he were not sure whether he should say more, and taking up one of the Christmas roses from the saucer, looked at it intently for a moment. Then he went on, "You understand, do you not, that the power of the keys is in the Church of England, and that those who cannot quiet their own consciences (as the Exhortation says) have a right to avail themselves of it. I think you should do so. That God has forgiven you I have no doubt, but even if after absolution you should have to wait for that conviction, you will be able to take it as your penance, remembering that the forgiven soul does not want to escape, it longs for the cleansing fires which alone can fit it for the presence of its Lord.""I should deserve to wait for the feeling of forgiveness, but am I to think that this also is the penalty of sin, that God is pursuing me and tracking me down? He is taking Tristram from me; what more does He want?"Dormer leant forward, and spoke very quietly, but with great intensity. "It is you yourself that He wants. He is stripping you of everything because by love or by fear He will save you. From all eternity you have belonged to the God Who died for you. Everything in your life and in your circumstances has existed in order to bring you nearer to Him. Even now, when you have misused His gifts, your sin and your suffering can be turned by His mercy into the means of bringing you back to Him. But it is on one condition. You must submit. You must give up your will to Him.""But how can I give up my will, when all my life I have followed my own way?""Our Lord will show you how, if you ask Him. He will teach you by degrees, do not doubt that.""I think I hardly understand what you mean," said Horatia with great hesitation, "but if I pray to be able to do this, will He—will our Lord save me from myself, and shall I in the end find rest?"Dormer did not answer at once. He looked up (it seemed to Horatia unconsciously) at the print over the hearth, and she heard him sigh."Yes, He will save you, but it will be by the Cross; for it is only in the Cross that there is safety, and in the Cross that there is rest. If you go back to France, and bring up your son in the best traditions of his family, your life will be full, and not empty. That is where you must look for comfort. Think of what it means to have a child, your own child, to give back to God. It is a high vocation and peace waits for you. I think God has sent you a child to show you where to find it."As he went to open the door for her she said, "Mr. Dormer, there is something else ... I should like you to feel that you can say anything—I mean that you can tell Tristram anything about me which you think can help him. It is worse for him than for me. I shall write to him, of course, but you will know what to say.... He will be so ... so hurt."CHAPTER XI(1)The stone-rimmed basin in the old Physic Garden, fringed with a few yellowing reeds, held water that seemed as black as night, water that reflected, clear and blacker still, the bare interlaced boughs of a great tree beside it. And in this dark net, like a silver fish entangled in waterweeds, lay the shining half-moon, brilliant already, though it was only half-past four of a December afternoon. It was an afternoon, too, of extraordinary radiance, as if to mark that herald day of Christmas when the longing of the Church, no more to be suppressed, bursts through the monitory thoughts of Advent, in pure joy and expectation, with the first of the great antiphons of Magnificat, and hails as the Eternal Wisdom the Child so soon to come.But there was nothing of this in the heart of the man who sat, his head in his hands, on a seat by the little pond. Reading, an hour ago, in his lodgings, the letter which he had just returned from Northamptonshire to find, he had felt that he must get out, away—anywhere—and pushing up the narrow, screaming High Street of St. Thomas's, past the Castle keep, had come, through St. Ebbe's, full on to the front of Christ Church, looking, in the golden light, like the battlements of an ethereal city. But he had gone blindly forward, and found himself, at last, in the old walled garden which had seen so many generations of flower and seed.Horatia's letter had been quite ordinary, speaking of the child, of his future, the necessity of her care, the joy that he was to her. But, of course, she understood ... And three years ago he would willingly have died for her; now he could not even live for her! As for his own letter of last week, he could not think how he had ever brought himself to write it—and yet were it to write again, he must have said the same. He belonged, now, body and soul, to a force whose demands on some lives were so exorbitant as to come into mortal conflict even with the best and holiest human claims.He ought never to have gone to Compton; he ought to have left Oxford, at whatever cost of unkindness. He could not say that it had been only pain to go and see her, and since he could not even now accuse himself of having done or said anything amiss, it must have been that his pleasure was visible.... He felt an outcast, a pariah. How deeply he had sinned against God he could not fathom, but he had sinned, it seemed to him irretrievably, against the code in which he had been brought up. For if he was a Christian and a priest he was a gentleman, too ... or had been.The thought of Dormer came into his mind as he sat there. Dormer would understand—he would despise him, no doubt, but he would understand. He could never tell him. He was sitting among his books in that well-known room scarcely a quarter of a mile away, yet a thousand miles might be between them. He could never tell him, because of Horatia. Besides, he had lost the habit of close intercourse.And in his misery he did not know that Dormer was at that moment standing on the other side of the basin, looking at him, across the drowned moon, with the profoundest tenderness, wondering whether he could speak to him now. Only, after a while, he was conscious of someone on the seat beside him, and felt an arm laid across his shoulders."Tristram, Tristram, don't sit here in the cold like this.... Come to my rooms.... I know all about it—she has told me; I have seen her and she wants me to tell you that she understands.... You must not take it so hardly; it is all quite simple, and ... and wonderful, it seems to me.... My dear, dear fellow, I don't want to pester you, but if you would only come away..." Dormer's voice, ordinarily so cool and restrained, broke suddenly.There was a silence; Tristram did not move. A London coach rolled over the bridge; the chimes of Magdalen struck a quarter to five. Dormer slowly took away his arm.And at that Tristram removed one of his hands from his face, and put it out gropingly towards him."Carissime..."(2)The actual writing of the letter to Tristram had not cost Horatia the effort that she had anticipated. She hardly felt, indeed, what she was renouncing, for everything was swallowed up in the sense of rest, a feeling that was partly a physical reaction, due to the intensity of the emotional strain of her interview with Dormer. She seemed to be floating in a sea of such mental and spiritual relief as she had not known for years. Such peace as she had compassed in the summer—she knew it now—had only been a drugged peace after all.She had had to tell her father. That had not been easy. Yet she had, somehow, dominated his bitter disappointment. She did not show him Tristram's letter, but she did not keep from him the fact that she had been to Oriel. Perfectly calm, and not, apparently, in an exalted state, she yet produced on the Rector the impression of some change so profound as to make her seem another person. He was, if the truth be told, a little alarmed.But it was the letter which, two days later, she was obliged to write to the Duchesse that really showed Horatia what she was losing. Madame de la Roche-Guyon had said that she should have her own establishment if she wished. It occurred to Horatia, rather bitterly, how much to be envied she would seem to her friends—young, titled, rich, her own mistress, with the entrée to the most exclusive society in the world; and yet—and yet, even with the child, all these advantages were as a pinch of dust. Better to be by Tristram's side in some tiny parsonage, in some dull village...And when this really came home to her she suddenly threw down the pen and covered her face, an action which was the cause of the straggling blot on the page which, later, drew forth from the Duchesse strictures on the untidiness of the English.But Horatia, neglecting the blot, took up the pen again and went on without flinching to the end. In spite of the sense of suffering, she had something which she had not before. For the first time in her life she could really pray. And already, on this and the days that followed, she had some inkling of what Dormer had meant, some taste of the peace that truly comes to the resigned will. In this ocean of rest she lived for some days, thinking sometimes how wonderful it was that it should have enclosed her, with all her turbulent desires, in so sudden a gentleness, but not unconscious that its waves broke quietly over a rock of regret.(3)"Darling, what are you doing?" she exclaimed, coming suddenly into the study, and surprising her father on his hands and knees on the hearthrug, surrounded by a medley of objects, and trying to stuff something into a large stocking—trying also, with incomplete success, to hide from her both stocking and litter."Well, my dear, Christmas will be upon us before very long, and I thought I would try whether they will go in," said the Rector, attempting to pull out the bulky object, which, having refused to enter the stocking now equally refused to be extracted.He looked ten years older than he had done at the time of their conversation in the night nursery a few days ago. Horatia's heart smote her as—not for the first time—she realised the change, and her eyes were full of tears when, kneeling down by him she put her arms round him and kissed the white hair by his temple."Dearest Papa, you can't be going to give him all those toys; it will be so bad for him! Keep some of them for next Christmas."She had said it without thinking."And where ... where will he be then?" asked her father rather gulpily. A single tear splashed on to the drum which he had succeeded in pulling from the stocking. Horatia bit her lip hard."I think, dear, that we shall always come home for Christmas. Or else you will come to us. You will have a curate soon; you know we discussed it the other day, and then you will be so free.—What a splendid drum! Where did you get all these things, you secretive old Papa? Surely not in Oxford?""I bought them when I was in London the other day, at the Soho Bazaar. I was thinking that we should have such a pleasant Christmas...."A stab went through Horatia's heart. That broken vision of his was in her mind too—the Christmas hearth, Tristram with the child in his arms, prefigurement of what should be henceforward ... and what would now never be."It will be Maurice's third Christmas," went on the Rector, with an attempt at cheerfulness, thinking from her silence and averted face that he had been too cruel. "I made up my mind last Christmas that he should have——"A knock caused him to scramble hastily from his unwonted position. Horatia jumped up and went to the door. Martha stood there."Please, Mam, would you come to the nursery. I don't think Master Maurice seems quite himself."Horatia was gone before the Rector had got to his chair. She was back in a few minutes."Papa, if I may I shall send Sam Dawes for the doctor. I don't think it is anything serious, at least I hope not, but he seems so drowsy and feverish, and he has been very sick, poor darling.""He was quite well this morning," observed the Rector, astonished. "Indeed, he was making such a great noise in here that I could hardly get on with my sermon."(4)Maurice de la Roche-Guyon, who was to have a drum and many other delights on his third Christmas Day, did not seem likely to receive these now, though as he lay, flushed and brilliant-eyed, chattering to himself, his rambling talk ran sometimes on his small possessions."A child to give back to God." All through the two long agonising nights and days the words echoed in Horatia's head, with those others "He is stripping you of everything." Every few hours the doctor came, and there was never any change, except that Maurice's breathing seemed to get more and more rapid as his lungs consolidated. And Horatia could do nothing, for now she could not even pray."He is stripping you of everything." Then He wanted from her the last thing, the best thing, the thing incomparably the dearest, not the baby she had refused to look at, not the baby who had been a delightful toy at Plaisance, a growing interest in England, but her own child, her very own, to hold through the years against sorrow and change, to be, not her comfort but her existence, not a consolation for what she had lost, but life itself. And set against it all, inexorable, "a child to give back to God"—not hers at all, but only a treasure lent..."O God, save Maurice—take the rest, take everything, I give it willingly, only save Maurice! I will give him back to You in the end, only leave him a little longer!" But she believed that her prayers could not pierce the thick cloud that hung now between her and the Christ she had so lately come to know, though she never doubted that prayer could reach Him—the prayer of a heart that prayed always...Downstairs were the floods of toys, the half-filled stocking, the holly and the mistletoe; up here the gift of gifts was going away from her."O God, make me so that I can pray to You...."But there was only Maurice asking, in his shrunk little voice of delirium, for something to drink.
(3)
"My dear Horatia,
"I feel with you very much in the difficulty of the decision. It will be hard for the Rector to part with you again so soon, but I know you both too well to imagine that you can hesitate for long where Maurice's interests are concerned.
"For myself, I need not say how, after this year of renewed friendship, I shall miss your help and sympathy, but I have come to feel that my life is not my own. Wherever you go, whatever you do, may God bless you always!—T.H."
This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast four mornings later, and which lay in her pocket all through that meal and for some time afterwards, not because she did not wish her father to see it, since he was away for the night, but because she dared not open it. In her own room, the door locked, she read it at last, once not understanding, the second time unbelieving, the third time understanding too well.
Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to hide the scorching blush that, though she was alone, spread itself from the nape of her neck to the roots of her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of fire over her whole body. He had refused her! Under the guise of asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la Roche-Guyon—Horatia Grenville—had, practically, offered herself to a man, and he had refused her! And this man was Tristram!
After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took up the letter again, and, reading it for the fourth time, she received yet a new impression. This did not seem to be Tristram at all who wrote to her; it was like the voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a veil hung between her and the man who had penned those words—words which, as she could see, had been chosen to spare her, words which made no reference to what the writer must have known was in her mind. But they were final enough, in all conscience!
She put the letter down on her dressing-table. Yes, that was what it was like—a dictated letter, a letter which another person had made him write....
There was something that she did not understand. She got up and began to walk about the room, the first biting shame of the repulse a little blunted by contact with her own imperious temper and by a certain bewilderment. She had a feeling that there was, somewhere, what her father would have called "hokey-pokey." And, as she arrived at that conclusion, she saw it all in a flash, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. Tristram had of course been "got hold of" by the Oriel people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on celibacy. That was what he meant by writing that he had come to feel his life not his own. That was, no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable glorification of suffering as a part of Christianity at which her whole soul revolted.
Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger. Illogically enough, though she had endured many qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram himself wanted to marry her, that "they" were preventing him. Well, they should see!
She carried this fighting mood about with her for an hour or so while she ordered the household and visited Maurice, who this morning was greatly intrigued by the presence of frost on the window-pane, a phenomenon, like many others, still strange to him. But all the while she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was slowly slipping away from her. At half-past ten she returned to her room, took out the letter and read it again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.
No, it was not so simple. Something much more was here than the combatting of the influence of others. One thing, if one alone in life, the most ardent fighter should shrink from lifting sword against, a man's conscience. Had she not recently felt the reawakened stirrings of her own? And in this matter, however it came there, was some deep conviction of Tristram's. He could not, otherwise, have written so.
And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking of him whom she knew so well, she began to realise what he must be suffering at having to answer her thus. She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion, that would do anything in the world for her, so as it was not against his conscience. Could not she, then, who had never, perhaps, been anything but a source of pain to him, could not she do something for him—take the disturbing element of herself out of his life, because, for his real happiness, she would be better gone, and go, without an attempt to hold him, to that other life where duty was calling her? ... The way was open, if she were strong enough to follow it.
But she must be sure that such a renunciation would be for Tristram's happiness. She must be sure that he really had this conviction. In her present mood she could almost have gone and asked Tristram himself, had she not known that he was away from Oxford. And the time was drawing very near when she must answer the Duchesse's letter.
But there was one person who could probably tell her as well as Tristram himself—Mr. Dormer, if he had not gone down. She could not write to him on such a matter. She would have to go and see him. The unusualness of the step gave her only a momentary pause. Even though it were not proper for her, a young woman—if a widow—to go and call on an unmarried man in his College rooms she did not care. At the worst she could get the Puseys to ask him to Christ Church and she could talk to him there. But she knew that only the most direct method would really satisfy her. The matter was too pressing and too desperate to admit of considering the proprieties.
Nevertheless, some three hours later, as she followed the porter across the quadrangle at Oriel, she was already regretting her precipitancy, and it was with a throbbing heart that she heard him announce her name in the mangled fashion to which she was becoming accustomed in England.
But the room was empty. It was undeniable relief, and had the porter, apologising for his mistake, not adjured her to take a seat, as Mr. Dormer could not be long, she would have brought out the words of excuse already on her lips and fled. But that everyday form—its visage not untouched by curiosity—was a barrier to escape more effectual than any sword-girt angel, and she obeyed.
So she was left, with a sulky little fire for company, to wait. For some time she was too restless to sit down, and wandered between the fireplace and the window. The room did not strike her as uncomfortable, and it was very orderly, except for the big table in the middle, which was strewn with books and papers, as if the occupant had been interrupted in his work. There was a good deal of old furniture, some of it beautiful, and the walls could not look bare, for they were almost completely lined with books. Indeed the only picture that she noticed was an engraving over the hearth of Velasquez' Christ on the Cross, straight and stark against its background of more than night, the face shadowed by the falling hair. Horatia felt suddenly afraid, she knew not of what, and going as far as possible from the print, sat down by the window.
The only thing that comforted her was the sight of some Christmas roses in a saucer, standing among the books and papers, close to their owner's chair.
CHAPTER X
(1)
Dormer, in academical dress, was entering under Oriel gateway when the porter accosted him.
"If you please, Sir, there's a lady waiting to see you in your rooms. She asked for you, and thinking you was there I showed her up. A French name, I fancy."
The young Fellow mechanically took the card held out to him. "A French name" could announce only one lady. But on what errand had she come? For the first time in his life he was afraid. Then he set his face like a flint and crossed the quadrangle towards his staircase.
And in his sitting-room, in the low chair by the window where, in his time at least, no woman had ever sat, very pale, clad in black but wearing costly furs, with the light on her hair, was the woman who had wasted Tristram's years, and whose happiness was always to be bought at the cost of his.
"I must apologise for keeping you waiting, Madam," he said coldly, as he closed the door. "Please do not move! The porter told me you were here." He laid his cap on the table. "There is something particular that you wish to see me about?"
"Yes," said Horatia, "there is something that I have come to ask you." She turned her head and glanced out of the window, and then looked again at her host, standing with exceeding stiffness in his gown and hood. "But now that I am here I hardly know how to put it into words."
"If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate," observed Dormer with icy politeness, and then, seeing that she did not speak, he sat down by the side of his big table and looked away. He felt miserably sure that she had come to say something about Tristram, but that, being a lady, she would not reach the point for another half-hour or so. He was therefore entirely taken by surprise when he heard her say, after a moment:
"I am going to ask you a very extraordinary question, Mr. Dormer. I want you to tell me if Tristram—if Mr. Hungerford has come to think that it is better for the clergy not to marry?"
Startled though he was, Dormer fell instantly on guard. "Is not that a question, Madam," he returned, "which it would be better for you to ask Mr. Hungerford himself?"
"Could I bring myself to that," assented Horatia, "it would be better."
"He is not in Oxford at present, I know," suggested Dormer, "but he will be back by the sixteenth."
"I must know before that," said Horatia gravely.
And Dormer had a sudden temptation. He felt more sure than ever that Tristram had got himself into a tangle. Here and now he could probably cut it for him. But he would not play Providence. It was one thing to warn Tristram, quite another to extricate him behind his back and without his consent ... So his tone was even colder than before as he said, "If the matter is urgent I regret that I cannot help you, but I think you can understand that I am unwilling to discuss my friend's affairs, even with another of his friends." And he rose, as if to intimate that the interview was over.
But his visitor did not rise. On the contrary she said, with warmth, "Yes, I quite see that, but..." She bit her lip. "If you knew, you would not be so punctilious, Mr. Dormer. Will you not let me tell you?"
"Really," said Dormer, hesitating a trifle, "I hardly know what to say, but I would much rather not be the recipient of any confidences. Surely, Madam, the matter is not so pressing but that you can wait for Tristram's return."
Horatia laughed rather bitterly.
"Mr. Dormer, you need not be so much afraid. We will not speak of Tristram then. If you will tell me your own views on the subject it will be quite enough. It is not easy for me to come to you—you must know that! I only do it because ... O, well, that does not matter."
Dormer sat down with a resigned sigh by the side of the table, and said briefly, "Please tell me anything you wish."
"Thank you," said Horatia; collected herself and started. "I am afraid I must trouble you with some personal details. You probably know that a good many years ago Tristram asked me to marry him. I was singularly young and foolish, and I refused him. You may also know that, as I have learnt quite recently, he was on the verge of asking me again in the autumn of 1830." Dormer inclined his head. "What my answer would have been I do not know. But shortly afterwards I married my late husband. Our marriage was an unhappy one."
Here she came to a full stop, and got no help from her listener, who was looking down at an ink-pot.
"It was largely my own fault, but I have suffered, and if ever anyone wanted to forget the past I have wanted to forget it." For a second her voice trembled, then it recovered. "In my old home again, with my father, it seemed sometimes as if I should succeed. And although Tristram was changed, yet he was the same, and latterly it has seemed to me that he was indeed the same, and that ... it is very difficult for me to tell you..."
Dormer looked up. "I think I can understand," he said, with something different in his voice.
"Thank you. I was right ... and I was wrong. I cannot explain it, but I must just ask you to believe that I was not utterly blinded by vanity, and on the other hand that Tristram did and said nothing that could not be accounted for by his long and extraordinary friendship."
"That is quite easy for me to believe," replied Dormer; but he seemed to have a slight difficulty in speaking.
"The end came a week ago," pursued Horatia. And she explained, as shortly as she could, the bombshell which the Dowager Duchesse had cast into her plans, finishing by saying, "I felt almost confident that Tristram only waited for some sign from me ... and yet I could not bring myself to give it. But time was pressing, and I must decide about the boy. My father urged me to send the letter I had received to Tristram, and to ask his advice. It ... it was ... unusual, I know ... but I did so—and this morning I received his answer. I think you had better read it."
Dormer got up and took with obvious reluctance the paper which she held out to him. He read it, flushed violently, and became very pale.
"I don't want you to say anything," said Horatia hurriedly. "When I got this letter this morning I saw it all in a flash. It has only needed your hesitation to make me quite sure that I was right. From time to time I have heard the views of his friends here at Oriel about the marriage of the clergy, but somehow—it was stupid of me—it never occurred to me that he shared them. But that of course is the key to the situation. He is bound by some vow not to marry."
Her hearer during this speech had stationed himself by the fire, his head bent, with a hand on the high mantelshelf; his arm, in consequence, hid his face. She could not even see it now, as he said, in a voice noticeably less hostile. "There I think you are wrong. As I see now that it is quite unnecessary for me to keep anything from you, I can tell you that, to my knowledge, he has never taken any kind of vow, but that, even before his ordination as priest, he had a solemn intention to embrace the life of sacrifice to the glory of God. But it was a solemn intention, not a vow."
"Intention or vow," returned Horatia, "it would be all the same to Tristram. And please do not speak to me of sacrifice and the glory of God! I do not believe that the Creator is glorified by the self-inflicted suffering of His creatures. But if you speak to me of Tristram's happiness, or of his conscience, which is more than happiness to him, then I can understand you."
"You are right about Tristram's conscience," said Tristram's friend.
"Yet I believe that I can still bring him back to me if I choose to," said Horatia rather defiantly. The challenge drew from Charles Dormer a bow which was more eloquent than many words.
"But I do not mean to try," she finished. "I am quite sure that Tristram is deluded, yet if this delusion has become a matter of conscience with him, he would not long remain happy with me. What I want to find out is how firmly he is fixed in this idea, and how he would look at his action later on if he married me. This is where you can help me, Mr. Dormer, for I know that you are his second self. In the end he would come to think as you think now. I want you to tell me, first, if in your opinion it would ever be right to go back upon what you call a solemn intention?"
Dormer saw now that he was being forced into the position which he had a short time ago rejected almost with regret—that of an executioner. Now, strangely enough, he hated it.
"Yes," he said, "from our point of view it would be right ... under certain circumstances."
"And would you think," asked Horatia, looking down and hesitating, "would you consider the fact that I have become a widow since his resolve was taken an exceptional circumstance?"
"I am afraid," replied Dormer reluctantly, "that it would entirely depend on how far Tristram had committed himself already to the idea of the single life. You see it is impossible for me to discuss this from any but what I am sure you would call a fanatical standpoint." He smiled fleetingly, without mirth.
"But supposing he was committed very far ... would it be right to ... to go back?"
It had to be done. "No," said Dormer in a low voice. "No, I am afraid it would not."
(2)
Across the silence there came a faint clattering sound, probably a tray from the buttery being taken to someone's rooms. Stillness fell again. Then the voice of an undergraduate not yet gone down was heard inquiring in a shout what that ass Simpson had done with his carpet bag. Horatia got up from her chair and began to pull down her veil.
"I do not think you need be afraid of me any longer," she said with a sort of smile. "There is only one way for me to answer the Duchesse's letter. Thank you for speaking so plainly to me. You have been very patient, and I am more than grateful. Would you have the goodness to send to see if my carriage is at the gate?"
She stooped for her muff, which had slipped to the floor, but, hearing no movement, glanced round and saw Dormer still standing between the table and the hearth, blocking her exit, his eyes fixed on her. And as with a faint surprise she gazed at him he seemed to alter. The sternness had gone from his face; it looked, if possible, still more sad, but she could hardly believe that this was the man against whom, for the last half-hour, she had been fighting. And she heard him say, with singular gentleness—
"'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' May our Lord of His great mercy comfort you!"
"Don't, don't say that sort of thing to me!" exclaimed Horatia. "I am doing nothing at all heroic. It is only necessity. It has nothing to do with God or religion, or because I believe for one moment in Tristram's foolish ideas—it is because ... because..." It was impossible to go on, for his voice had touched some secret spring in her, some deep-buried self which, suddenly released, was struggling to respond—as once before, at the same voice, it had struggled in St. Mary's. She sat down again and hid her face in her hands.
"Because," said Dormer, still more gently, "you have found out the secret of love—the willingness to go without the beloved for the beloved's sake."
"I do not know what I have found out," said Horatia after a moment, passing her handkerchief over her eyes. "I am only following an instinct. I mean to go back to France, and after that ... I don't care much what happens." She paused again. "With Tristram I should have been safe. He was my hope. I know I have done wrong, very wrong, but am I never to be forgiven, never to be allowed to forget the past?—O!" she broke out passionately, "your God is a cruel God! He is cruel to Tristram and to me. I don't believe what you said in your sermon about suffering—I can't believe it and I won't believe it! ... Why are you making me talk to you?"
"Because I want to help you. Will you not let me try—for Tristram's sake?"
Horatia looked at him for a moment, then she rose and went to the window. When she turned round again, some three minutes later, the buried self had won, and, not ungenerous in victory, had given her composure for its purpose.
"You are the only person who could help me," she said very simply. "But it is such a long story, and I ought not to take up your time."
"I have plenty of time," replied Dormer with equal simplicity. "If you will sit down, and tell me what you can, I daresay I can fill in the gaps."
"I thought my marriage was the ... the 'vision splendid,'" began Horatia after a little, "I was mistaken; but there was still something remaining, only I was exacting and foolish, and refused to make the best of what I had ... At last I heard two miserable women speaking of the infidelity of my husband, and the name coupled with his was ... that of my greatest friend. There were proofs with which I need not trouble you ... I taxed him with it, but he denied it. I would not believe him. I told him I hated him and his child. It was then that Maurice was born. For many weeks I visited my hatred of my husband on the child. For a long time I would not let them bring my baby near me ... and I definitely refused to believe my husband, who still protested his innocence, or to have anything more to do with him. I"—her voice began to falter—"practically drove him from me to do the very thing of which I had falsely accused him.... I think I lost all faith in God, and I believe that I wished to die."
"It would be at that time," asked Dormer, to help her, "that Tristram and I came to see you?"
"Yes ... and that was somehow ... a turning point for me. During the cholera I was away with Maurice, and it was then that I began to be a little sorry. I think I meant to take Armand back into favour by degrees. But when I returned to Paris he had already left for Vendée. Soon afterwards I heard that the rising had proved a failure, and that he was in hiding. I followed as quickly as I could to our house in the country ... and it was there that the news was brought to me that he had been shot."
"By the Orleanists?"
"Yes." Horatia hesitated. "He ... he was shot in saving the life of that lady ... who was never what I thought her. His death prevented that."
"How do you know this?"
"Because in his delirium I heard everything."
"You were with him when he died?"
Horatia made a great effort. "Yes. My friend ... whom he loved ... whom he would have married had he not met me ... took him dying to her house ... and sent for me to be with him at the last."
"Yes?" said Dormer.
And Horatia went on, more and more agitated. "I shall see him lying in that bed fighting with death until I die ... and it was I who sent him to his death ... it was my hardness that drove him to someone who really loved him.... And ... and," she choked down a sob, "it was for her that he died ... not for me."
She came to a full stop.
"Yes, I see," said the priest, but in the tone of one who thinks there is more to come.
Horatia went on again, almost inaudibly. "I hear him crying out, in the night when I wake, 'Leave your scruples, Laurence, she does not believe me,' and then again, 'Why do you send for Horatia ... she would not care ... I am nothing to her now; she told me so.'"
Her listener had himself put his hand over his eyes, but he gave no sign, and at last Horatia finished.
"He would not forgive me ... he said there was nothing to forgive ... and I have felt—I still feel—that God has not forgiven me, that He has punished me, and that He will go on punishing me."
She had been speaking in a very low voice, and there was now hardly a sound outside. Inside the room there was the sort of silence that could be cut. It might have been lasting for centuries or for seconds—Horatia could not tell—when Dormer broke it.
"I will not ask you if you have been able to forgive that unhappy lady, who you say was once your friend, but are you able sometimes to feel compassion for her?"
"I doubt if I know what you mean by forgiveness," answered Horatia. "I only know that once, perhaps, I hoped that she might suffer, because I had suffered so much, and that now I cannot bear to think of what she is doing at this moment."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, I did not tell you. I was staying some weeks ago with a friend in Devonshire, and we had to take a letter to a convent near, a convent of French nuns. There was a novice scrubbing some flags; she did not see me, but I saw her, and it was Laurence, Laurence whom I had not seen since ... since..."
"I understand."
"Laurence," went on Horatia fiercely, "who was more sinned against than sinning.... Yes, I know that now! I have always known it, but I tried to excuse my husband. Laurence was rich and admired, and could have everything she wanted, and now she has not enough to eat, and she does menial work, and spends hours in prayer—and all for Armand's soul. It is an order of perpetual intercession. And I who was his wife—I am feeling that life holds very little for me because I cannot marry Tristram! What is there to forgive now!"
"I should not be quite prepared to say that," replied Dormer, looking rather staggered, "but I am quite certain of one thing. If you have been able to forgive so wholeheartedly the irreparable injury done to you, I do not think that you will have long to wait for the assurance of your own forgiveness." He hesitated, as if he were not sure whether he should say more, and taking up one of the Christmas roses from the saucer, looked at it intently for a moment. Then he went on, "You understand, do you not, that the power of the keys is in the Church of England, and that those who cannot quiet their own consciences (as the Exhortation says) have a right to avail themselves of it. I think you should do so. That God has forgiven you I have no doubt, but even if after absolution you should have to wait for that conviction, you will be able to take it as your penance, remembering that the forgiven soul does not want to escape, it longs for the cleansing fires which alone can fit it for the presence of its Lord."
"I should deserve to wait for the feeling of forgiveness, but am I to think that this also is the penalty of sin, that God is pursuing me and tracking me down? He is taking Tristram from me; what more does He want?"
Dormer leant forward, and spoke very quietly, but with great intensity. "It is you yourself that He wants. He is stripping you of everything because by love or by fear He will save you. From all eternity you have belonged to the God Who died for you. Everything in your life and in your circumstances has existed in order to bring you nearer to Him. Even now, when you have misused His gifts, your sin and your suffering can be turned by His mercy into the means of bringing you back to Him. But it is on one condition. You must submit. You must give up your will to Him."
"But how can I give up my will, when all my life I have followed my own way?"
"Our Lord will show you how, if you ask Him. He will teach you by degrees, do not doubt that."
"I think I hardly understand what you mean," said Horatia with great hesitation, "but if I pray to be able to do this, will He—will our Lord save me from myself, and shall I in the end find rest?"
Dormer did not answer at once. He looked up (it seemed to Horatia unconsciously) at the print over the hearth, and she heard him sigh.
"Yes, He will save you, but it will be by the Cross; for it is only in the Cross that there is safety, and in the Cross that there is rest. If you go back to France, and bring up your son in the best traditions of his family, your life will be full, and not empty. That is where you must look for comfort. Think of what it means to have a child, your own child, to give back to God. It is a high vocation and peace waits for you. I think God has sent you a child to show you where to find it."
As he went to open the door for her she said, "Mr. Dormer, there is something else ... I should like you to feel that you can say anything—I mean that you can tell Tristram anything about me which you think can help him. It is worse for him than for me. I shall write to him, of course, but you will know what to say.... He will be so ... so hurt."
CHAPTER XI
(1)
The stone-rimmed basin in the old Physic Garden, fringed with a few yellowing reeds, held water that seemed as black as night, water that reflected, clear and blacker still, the bare interlaced boughs of a great tree beside it. And in this dark net, like a silver fish entangled in waterweeds, lay the shining half-moon, brilliant already, though it was only half-past four of a December afternoon. It was an afternoon, too, of extraordinary radiance, as if to mark that herald day of Christmas when the longing of the Church, no more to be suppressed, bursts through the monitory thoughts of Advent, in pure joy and expectation, with the first of the great antiphons of Magnificat, and hails as the Eternal Wisdom the Child so soon to come.
But there was nothing of this in the heart of the man who sat, his head in his hands, on a seat by the little pond. Reading, an hour ago, in his lodgings, the letter which he had just returned from Northamptonshire to find, he had felt that he must get out, away—anywhere—and pushing up the narrow, screaming High Street of St. Thomas's, past the Castle keep, had come, through St. Ebbe's, full on to the front of Christ Church, looking, in the golden light, like the battlements of an ethereal city. But he had gone blindly forward, and found himself, at last, in the old walled garden which had seen so many generations of flower and seed.
Horatia's letter had been quite ordinary, speaking of the child, of his future, the necessity of her care, the joy that he was to her. But, of course, she understood ... And three years ago he would willingly have died for her; now he could not even live for her! As for his own letter of last week, he could not think how he had ever brought himself to write it—and yet were it to write again, he must have said the same. He belonged, now, body and soul, to a force whose demands on some lives were so exorbitant as to come into mortal conflict even with the best and holiest human claims.
He ought never to have gone to Compton; he ought to have left Oxford, at whatever cost of unkindness. He could not say that it had been only pain to go and see her, and since he could not even now accuse himself of having done or said anything amiss, it must have been that his pleasure was visible.... He felt an outcast, a pariah. How deeply he had sinned against God he could not fathom, but he had sinned, it seemed to him irretrievably, against the code in which he had been brought up. For if he was a Christian and a priest he was a gentleman, too ... or had been.
The thought of Dormer came into his mind as he sat there. Dormer would understand—he would despise him, no doubt, but he would understand. He could never tell him. He was sitting among his books in that well-known room scarcely a quarter of a mile away, yet a thousand miles might be between them. He could never tell him, because of Horatia. Besides, he had lost the habit of close intercourse.
And in his misery he did not know that Dormer was at that moment standing on the other side of the basin, looking at him, across the drowned moon, with the profoundest tenderness, wondering whether he could speak to him now. Only, after a while, he was conscious of someone on the seat beside him, and felt an arm laid across his shoulders.
"Tristram, Tristram, don't sit here in the cold like this.... Come to my rooms.... I know all about it—she has told me; I have seen her and she wants me to tell you that she understands.... You must not take it so hardly; it is all quite simple, and ... and wonderful, it seems to me.... My dear, dear fellow, I don't want to pester you, but if you would only come away..." Dormer's voice, ordinarily so cool and restrained, broke suddenly.
There was a silence; Tristram did not move. A London coach rolled over the bridge; the chimes of Magdalen struck a quarter to five. Dormer slowly took away his arm.
And at that Tristram removed one of his hands from his face, and put it out gropingly towards him.
"Carissime..."
(2)
The actual writing of the letter to Tristram had not cost Horatia the effort that she had anticipated. She hardly felt, indeed, what she was renouncing, for everything was swallowed up in the sense of rest, a feeling that was partly a physical reaction, due to the intensity of the emotional strain of her interview with Dormer. She seemed to be floating in a sea of such mental and spiritual relief as she had not known for years. Such peace as she had compassed in the summer—she knew it now—had only been a drugged peace after all.
She had had to tell her father. That had not been easy. Yet she had, somehow, dominated his bitter disappointment. She did not show him Tristram's letter, but she did not keep from him the fact that she had been to Oriel. Perfectly calm, and not, apparently, in an exalted state, she yet produced on the Rector the impression of some change so profound as to make her seem another person. He was, if the truth be told, a little alarmed.
But it was the letter which, two days later, she was obliged to write to the Duchesse that really showed Horatia what she was losing. Madame de la Roche-Guyon had said that she should have her own establishment if she wished. It occurred to Horatia, rather bitterly, how much to be envied she would seem to her friends—young, titled, rich, her own mistress, with the entrée to the most exclusive society in the world; and yet—and yet, even with the child, all these advantages were as a pinch of dust. Better to be by Tristram's side in some tiny parsonage, in some dull village...
And when this really came home to her she suddenly threw down the pen and covered her face, an action which was the cause of the straggling blot on the page which, later, drew forth from the Duchesse strictures on the untidiness of the English.
But Horatia, neglecting the blot, took up the pen again and went on without flinching to the end. In spite of the sense of suffering, she had something which she had not before. For the first time in her life she could really pray. And already, on this and the days that followed, she had some inkling of what Dormer had meant, some taste of the peace that truly comes to the resigned will. In this ocean of rest she lived for some days, thinking sometimes how wonderful it was that it should have enclosed her, with all her turbulent desires, in so sudden a gentleness, but not unconscious that its waves broke quietly over a rock of regret.
(3)
"Darling, what are you doing?" she exclaimed, coming suddenly into the study, and surprising her father on his hands and knees on the hearthrug, surrounded by a medley of objects, and trying to stuff something into a large stocking—trying also, with incomplete success, to hide from her both stocking and litter.
"Well, my dear, Christmas will be upon us before very long, and I thought I would try whether they will go in," said the Rector, attempting to pull out the bulky object, which, having refused to enter the stocking now equally refused to be extracted.
He looked ten years older than he had done at the time of their conversation in the night nursery a few days ago. Horatia's heart smote her as—not for the first time—she realised the change, and her eyes were full of tears when, kneeling down by him she put her arms round him and kissed the white hair by his temple.
"Dearest Papa, you can't be going to give him all those toys; it will be so bad for him! Keep some of them for next Christmas."
She had said it without thinking.
"And where ... where will he be then?" asked her father rather gulpily. A single tear splashed on to the drum which he had succeeded in pulling from the stocking. Horatia bit her lip hard.
"I think, dear, that we shall always come home for Christmas. Or else you will come to us. You will have a curate soon; you know we discussed it the other day, and then you will be so free.—What a splendid drum! Where did you get all these things, you secretive old Papa? Surely not in Oxford?"
"I bought them when I was in London the other day, at the Soho Bazaar. I was thinking that we should have such a pleasant Christmas...."
A stab went through Horatia's heart. That broken vision of his was in her mind too—the Christmas hearth, Tristram with the child in his arms, prefigurement of what should be henceforward ... and what would now never be.
"It will be Maurice's third Christmas," went on the Rector, with an attempt at cheerfulness, thinking from her silence and averted face that he had been too cruel. "I made up my mind last Christmas that he should have——"
A knock caused him to scramble hastily from his unwonted position. Horatia jumped up and went to the door. Martha stood there.
"Please, Mam, would you come to the nursery. I don't think Master Maurice seems quite himself."
Horatia was gone before the Rector had got to his chair. She was back in a few minutes.
"Papa, if I may I shall send Sam Dawes for the doctor. I don't think it is anything serious, at least I hope not, but he seems so drowsy and feverish, and he has been very sick, poor darling."
"He was quite well this morning," observed the Rector, astonished. "Indeed, he was making such a great noise in here that I could hardly get on with my sermon."
(4)
Maurice de la Roche-Guyon, who was to have a drum and many other delights on his third Christmas Day, did not seem likely to receive these now, though as he lay, flushed and brilliant-eyed, chattering to himself, his rambling talk ran sometimes on his small possessions.
"A child to give back to God." All through the two long agonising nights and days the words echoed in Horatia's head, with those others "He is stripping you of everything." Every few hours the doctor came, and there was never any change, except that Maurice's breathing seemed to get more and more rapid as his lungs consolidated. And Horatia could do nothing, for now she could not even pray.
"He is stripping you of everything." Then He wanted from her the last thing, the best thing, the thing incomparably the dearest, not the baby she had refused to look at, not the baby who had been a delightful toy at Plaisance, a growing interest in England, but her own child, her very own, to hold through the years against sorrow and change, to be, not her comfort but her existence, not a consolation for what she had lost, but life itself. And set against it all, inexorable, "a child to give back to God"—not hers at all, but only a treasure lent...
"O God, save Maurice—take the rest, take everything, I give it willingly, only save Maurice! I will give him back to You in the end, only leave him a little longer!" But she believed that her prayers could not pierce the thick cloud that hung now between her and the Christ she had so lately come to know, though she never doubted that prayer could reach Him—the prayer of a heart that prayed always...
Downstairs were the floods of toys, the half-filled stocking, the holly and the mistletoe; up here the gift of gifts was going away from her.
"O God, make me so that I can pray to You...."
But there was only Maurice asking, in his shrunk little voice of delirium, for something to drink.