The Case of Richard Meynell by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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Flaxman looked up.

"I haven't the least idea."

"But of course we must all know some time," said Rose discontentedly.
"Catharine knows already."

* * * * *

Meynell passed that evening in his study, after some hours spent in the
Christmas business of a large parish. His mind was full of agitation, and
when midnight struck, ushering in Christmas Eve, he was still undecided
as to his precise course.

Among the letters of the day lying scattered beside him on the floor
there was yet further evidence of the power of Barron's campaign. There
were warm expressions indeed of sympathy and indignation to be found
among them, but on the whole Meynell realized that his own side's belief
in him was showing some signs of distress, while the attack upon him was
increasing in violence. His silence even to his most intimate friends,
even to his Bishop; the disappearance from England of the other persons
named in the scandal; the constant elaborations and embellishments of the
story as it passed from mouth to mouth--these things were telling against
him steadily and disastrously.

As he hung over the fire, he anxiously reconsidered his conduct toward
the Bishop, while Catharine's phrase--"He, too, has his rights!" lingered
in his memory. He more than suspected that his silence had given pain;
and his affection for the Bishop made the thought a sore one.

But after all what good would have been done had he even put the Bishop
in possession of the whole story? The Bishop's bare denial would have
been added to his; nothing more. There could have been no explanation,
public or private; nothing to persuade those who did not wish to be
persuaded.

His thought wandered hither and thither. From the dim regions of the past
there emerged a letter....

"My dear old Meynell, the thing is to be covered up. Ralph will
acknowledge the child, and all precautions are to be taken. I think
what he does he will do thoroughly. Alice wishes it--and what can I do,
either for her or for the child? Nothing. And for me, I see but one way
out--which will be the best for her too in the end, poor darling. My
wife's letter a week ago destroyed my last hope. I am going out
to-night--and I shall not come back. Stand by her, Richard. I think this
kind of lie on which we are all embarked is wrong (not that you had
anything to do with it!) But it is society which is wrong and imposes it
on us. Anyway, the choice is made, and now you must support and protect
her--and the child--for my sake. For I know you love me, dear boy--little
as I deserve it. It is part of your general gift of loving, which has
always seemed to me so strange. However--whatever I was made for, you
were made to help the unhappy. So I have the less scruple in sending you
this last word. She will want your help. The child's lot in that
household will not be a happy one; and Alice will have to look on. But,
help her!--help her above all to keep silence, for this thing, once done,
must be irrevocable. Only so can my poor Alice recover her youth--think,
she is only twenty now!--and the child's future be saved. Alice, I
hope, will marry. And when the child marries, you may--nay, I think you
must--tell the husband. I have written this to Ralph. But for all the
rest of the world, the truth is now wiped out. The child is no longer
mine--Alice was never my love--and I am going to the last sleep. My
sister Fanny Meryon knows something; enough to make her miserable; but no
names or details. Well!--good-bye. In your company alone have I ever
seemed to touch the life that might have been mine. But it is too late.
The will in me--the mainspring--is diseased. This is a poor return--but
forgive me!--my very dear Richard! Here comes the boat; and there is a
splendid sea rising."

* * * * *

There, in a locked drawer, not far from him, lay this letter. Meynell's
thought plunged back into the past; into its passionate feeling, its
burning pity, its powerless affection. He recalled his young hero-worship
for his brilliant kinsman; the hour when he had identified the battered
form on the shore of the Donegal Lough; the sight of Alice's young
anguish; and all the subsequent effort on his part, for Christ's sake,
for Neville's sake, to help and shield a woman and child, effort from
which his own soul had learnt so much.

Pure and sacred recollections!--mingled often with the moral or
intellectual perplexities that enter into all things human.

Then--at a bound--his thoughts rushed on to the man who, without pity,
without shame, had dragged all these sad things, these helpless,
irreparable griefs, into the cruel light of a malicious publicity--in the
name of Christ--in the name of the Church!

To-morrow! He rose, with a face set like iron, and went back to his table
to finish a half-written review.

* * * * *

"Theresa--after eleven--I shall be engaged. See that I am not disturbed."

Theresa murmured assent, but when her father closed the door of her
sitting-room, she did not go back immediately to her household accounts.
Her good, plain face showed a disturbed mind.

Her father's growing excitability and irritation, and the bad accounts of
Maurice, troubled her sorely. It was only that morning Mr. Barron had
become aware that Maurice had lost his employment, and was again adrift
in the world. Theresa had known it for a week or two, but had not been
allowed to tell. And she tried not to remember how often of late her
brother had applied to her for money.

Going back to her accounts with a sigh, she missed a necessary receipt
and went into the dining-room to look for it. While she was there the
front door bell rang and was answered, unheard by her. Thus it fell out
that as she came back into the hall she found herself face to face with
Richard Meynell.

She stood paralyzed with astonishment. He bowed to her gravely and passed
on. Something in his look seemed to her to spell calamity. She went back
to her room, and sat there dumb and trembling, dreading what she might
see or hear.

Meanwhile Meynell had been ushered into Barron's study by the old butler,
who was no less astonished than his mistress.

Barron rose stiffly to meet his visitor. The two men stood opposite each
other as the door closed.

Barron spoke first.

"You will, I trust, let me know, Mr. Meynell, without delay to what I owe
this unexpected visit. I was of course quite ready to meet your desire
for an interview, but your letter gave me no clue--"

"I thought it better not," said Meynell quietly. "May we sit down?"

Barron mechanically waved the speaker to a chair, and sat down himself.
Meynell seemed to pause a moment, his eyes on the ground. Then suddenly
he raised them.

"Mr. Barron, what I have come to say will be a shock to you. I have
discovered the author of the anonymous letters which have now for nearly
three months been defiling this parish and diocese."

Barron's sudden movement showed the effect of the words. But he held
himself well in hand.

"I congratulate you," he said coldly. "It is what we have all been trying
to discover."

"But the discovery will be painful to you. For the author of these
letters, Mr. Barron--is--your son Maurice."

At these words, spoken with an indescribable intensity and firmness,
Barron sprang from, his seat.

"It was not necessary, I think, sir, to come to my house in order to
insult my family and myself! It would have been better to write. And you
may be very sure that if you cannot punish your slanderers we can--and
will!"

His attitude expressed a quivering fury. Meynell took a packet from his
breast-pocket and quietly laid it on the table beside him.

"In this envelope you will find a document--a confession of a piece of
wrongdoing on Maurice's part of which I believe you have never been
informed. His poor sister concealed it--and paid for it. Do you remember,
three years ago, the letting loose of some valuable young horses from
Farmer Grange's stables--the hue and cry after them--and the difficulty
there was in recapturing them on the Chase?"

Barron stared at the speaker--speechless.

"You remember that a certain young fellow was accused--James Aston--one
of my Sunday school teachers--who had proposed to Grange's daughter,
and had been sent about his business by the father? Aston was in fact
just about to be run in by the police, when a clue came to my hands. I
followed it up. Then I found out that the ringleader in the whole affair
had been your son Maurice. If you remember, he was then at home, hanging
about the village, and he had had a quarrel with Grange--I forget about
what. He wrote an anonymous post-card accusing Aston. However, I got on
the track; and finally I made him give me a written confession--to
protect Aston. Heavy compensation was paid to Grange--by your
daughter--and the thing was hushed up. I was always doubtful whether I
ought not to have come to you. But it was not long after the death of
your wife. I was very sorry for you all--and Maurice pleaded hard. I did
not even tell Stephen; but I kept the confession. I came upon it a night
or two ago, in the drawer where I had also placed the letter to Dawes
which I got from you. Suddenly, the likeness in the handwritings struck
me; and I made a very careful comparison."

He opened the packet, and took out the two papers, which he offered to
Barron.

"I think, if you will compare the marked passages, you will see at least
a striking resemblance."

With a shaking hand Barron refused the papers.

"I have no doubt, sir, you can manufacture any evidence you please!--but
I do not intend to follow you through it. Handwriting, as we all know,
can be made to prove anything. Reserve your documents for your solicitor.
I shall at once instruct mine."

"But I am only at the beginning of my case," said Meynell with the same
composure. "I think you had better listen ... A passage in one of the
recent letters gave me a hint--an idea. I went straight to East the
publican, and taxed him with being the accomplice of the writer. I
blustered a little--he thought I had more evidence than I had--and at
last I got the whole thing out of him. The first letter was written"--the
speaker raised his finger, articulating each word with slow precision,
"by your son Maurice, and posted by East, the day after the cage-accident
at the Victoria pit; and they have pursued the same division of labour
ever since. East confesses he was induced to do it by the wish to revenge
himself on me for the attack on his license; and Maurice occasionally
gave him a little money. I have all the dates of the letters, and a
statement of where they were posted. If necessary, East will give
evidence."

A silence. Barron had resumed his seat, and was automatically lifting a
small book which lay on a table near him and letting it fall, while
Meynell was speaking. When Meynell paused, he said thickly--

"A plausible tale no doubt--and a very convenient one for you. But allow
me to point out, it rests entirely on East's word. Very likely he wrote
the letters himself, and is attempting to make Maurice the scapegoat."

"Where do you suppose he could have got his information from?" said
Meynell, looking up. "There is no suggestion that _he_ saw Judith Sabin
before her death."

Barron's face worked, while Meynell watched him implacably. At last he
said:

"How should I know? The same question applies to Maurice."

"Not at all. There the case is absolutely clear. Maurice got his
information from you."

"A gratuitous statement, sir!--which you cannot prove."

"From you"--repeated Meynell. "And from certain spying operations that he
and East undertook together. Do you deny that you told Maurice all that
Judith Sabin told you--together with her identification of myself?"

The room seemed to wait for Barron's reply. He made none. He burst out
instead--

"What possible motive could Maurice have had for such an action? The
thing isn't even plausible!"

"Oh, Maurice had various old scores to settle with me," said Meynell,
quietly. "I have come across him more than once in this parish--no need
to say how. I tried to prevent him from publicly disgracing himself
and you; and I did prevent him. He saw in this business an easy revenge
on a sanctimonious parson who had interfered with his pleasures."

Barron had risen and was pacing the room with unsteady steps. Meynell
still watched him, with the same glitter in the eye. Meynell's whole
nature indeed, at the moment, had gathered itself into one avenging
force; he was at once sword and smiter. The man before him seemed to him
embodied cruelty and hypocrisy; he felt neither pity nor compunction. And
presently he said abruptly--

"But I am afraid I have much more serious matter to lay before you than
this business of the letters."

"What do you mean?"

Taking another letter from his pocket, Meynell glanced at it a moment,
and then handed it to Barron. Barron was for an instant inclined to
refuse it, as he had refused the others. But Meynell insisted.

"Believe me, you had better read it. It is a letter from Mr. Flaxman to
myself, and it concerns a grave charge against your son. I bring you a
chance of saving him from prosecution; but there is no time to be lost."

Barron took the letter, carried it to the window, and stood reading it.
Meynell sat on the other side of the room watching him, still in the same
impassive "possessed" state.

Suddenly, Barron put his hand over his face, and a groan he could not
repress broke from him. He turned his back and stood bending over the
letter.

At the same instant a shiver ran through Meynell, like the return to life
of some arrested energy, some paralyzed power. The shock of that sound of
suffering had found him iron; it left him flesh. The spiritual habit of a
lifetime revived; for "what we do we are."

He rose slowly, and went over to the window.

"You can still save him--from the immediate consequences of this at
least--if you will. I have arranged that with Flaxman. It was my seeing
him enter the room alone where the coins were, the night of the party,
that first led to the idea that he might have taken them. Then, as you
see, certain dealers' shops were watched by a private detective. Maurice
appeared--sold the Hermes coin--was traced to his lodgings and
identified. So far the thing has not gone beyond private inquiry; for the
dealer will do what Flaxman wants him to do. But Maurice still has the
more famous of the two coins; and if he attempts to sell that, after the
notices to the police, there may be an exposure any day. You must go up
to London as soon as you can--"

"I will go to-night," said Barron, in a tone scarcely to be heard. He
stood with his hands on his sides, staring out upon the wintry garden
outside, just as a gardener's boy laden with holly and ivy for the
customary Christmas decorations of the house was passing across the lawn.

There was silence a little. Meynell walked slowly up and down the room.
At last Barron turned toward him; the very incapacity of the plump and
ruddy face for any tragic expression made it the more tragic.

"I propose to write to the Bishop at once. Do you desire a public
statement?"

"There must be a public statement," said Meynell gravely. "The thing has
gone too far. Flaxman and I have drawn one up. Will you look at it?"

Barron took it, and went to his writing-table.

"Wait a moment!" said Meynell, following him, and laying his hand on the
open page. "I don't want you to sign that by _force majeure_. Dismiss--if
you can--any thought of any hold I may have upon you, because of
Maurice's misdoing. You and I, Barron, have known each other some years.
We were once friends. I ask you--not under any threat--not under any
compulsion--to accept my word as an honest man that I am absolutely
innocent of the charge you have brought against me."

Barron, who was sitting before his writing-table, buried his face in his
hands a moment, then raised it.

"I accept it," he said, almost inaudibly.

"You believe me?"

"I believe you."

Meynell drew a long breath. Then he added, with a first sign of
emotion--"And I may also count upon your doing henceforth what you can to
protect that poor lady, Miss Puttenham, and her kinsfolk, from the
consequences of this long persecution?"

Barron made a sign of assent. Meynell left him to read and sign the
public apology and retraction, which Flaxman had mainly drawn up; while
the Rector himself took up a Bradshaw lying on the table, and walked to
the window to consult it.

"You will catch the 1.40," he said, as Barron rose from the
writing-table. "Let me advise you to get him out of the country for a
time."

Barron said nothing. He came heavily toward the window, and the two men
stood looking at each other, overtaken both of them by a mounting wave of
consciousness. The events, passions, emotions of the preceding months
pressed into memory, and beat against the silence. But it was Meynell who
turned pale.

"What a pity--to spoil the fight!" he said in a low voice. "It would have
been splendid--to fight it--fair."

"I shall of course withdraw my name from the Arches suit," said Barron,
leaning over a chair, his eyes on the ground.

Meynell did not reply. He took up his hat; only saying as he went toward
the door:

"Remember--Flaxman holds his hand entirely. The situation is with you."
Then, after a moment's hesitation, he added simply, almost shyly--"God
help you! Won't you consult your daughter?"

Barron made no answer. The door opened and shut.

BOOK IV

MEYNELL AND MARY

".... but Life ere long
Came on me in the public ways and bent
Eyes deeper than of old; Death met I too,
And saw the dawn glow through."

CHAPTER XX

A mild January day on the terrace of St. Germains. After a morning of
hoar-frost the sun was shining brightly on the terrace, and on the
panorama it commands. A pleasant light lay on the charming houses that
front the skirts of the forest, on the blue-gray windings of the Seine,
on the groves of leafless poplars interwoven with its course, on the
plain with its thickly sown villages, on the height of Mont Valerien,
behind which lay Paris. In spite of the sunshine, however, it was winter,
and there was no movement in St. Germains. The terrace and the road
leading from it to the town were deserted; and it was easy to see from
the aspect of the famous hotel at the corner of the terrace that,
although not closed, it despaired of visitors. Only a trio of French
officers in the far distance of the terrace, and a white-capped
_bonne_ struggling against the light wind with a basket on her arm,
offered any sign of life to the observant eyes of a young man who was
briskly pacing up and down that section of the terrace which abuts on the
hotel.

The young man was Philip Meryon. His dark tweed suit and fur waistcoat
disclosed a figure once singularly agile and slender, on which
self-indulgence was now beginning to tell. Nevertheless, as the _bonne_
passed him she duly noted and admired his pictorial good looks, opining
at the same time that he was not French. Why was he there? She decided in
her own mind that he was there for an assignation, by which she meant, of
course, a meeting with a married woman; and she smiled the incorrigible
French smile.

Assignation or no, she would have seen, had she looked closer, that the
young man in question was in no merely beatific or expectant frame of
mind. Meryon's look was a look both of excitement--as of one under the
influence of some news of a startling kind--and of anxiety.

Would she come? And if she came would he be able to bring and hold her to
any decision, without--without doing what even he shrank from doing?

For that ill chance in a thousand which Meynell had foreseen, and hoped,
as mortals do, to baffle, had come to pass. That morning, a careless
letter enclosing the payment of a debt, and written by a young actor, who
had formed part of one of the bohemian parties at the Abbey, during the
summer, and had now been playing for a week in the Markborough theatre,
had given Meryon the clue to the many vague conjectures or perplexities
which had already crossed his mind with regard to Hester's origin and
history.

* * * * *

"Your sanctified cousin, Richard Meynell" [wrote the young man] "seems
after all to be made of the common clay. There are strange stories going
the round about him here; especially in a crop of anonymous letters of
which the author can't be found. I send you a local newspaper which has
dared to print one of them with dashes for the names. The landlord of the
inn told me how to fill them up, and you will see I have done it. The
beauteous maiden herself has vanished from the scene--as no doubt you
know. Indeed you probably know all about it. However, as you are abroad,
and not likely to see these local rags, and as no London paper will print
these things, you may perhaps be interested in what I enclose. Alack, my
dear Philip, for the saints! They seem not so very different from you and
me."

* * * * *

The eagerness with which Philip had read the newspaper cutting enclosed
in the letter was only equalled by the eagerness with which afterward he
fell to meditating upon it; pursuing and ferreting out the truth, through
a maze of personal recollection and inference.

Richard!--nonsense! He laughed, from a full throat. Not for one moment
was Philip misled by Judith Sabin's mistake. He was a man of great
natural shrewdness, blunted no doubt by riotous living; but there was
enough of it left, aided by his recent forced contacts with his cousin
Richard all turning on the subject of Hester, to keep him straight. So
that without any demur at all he rejected the story as it stood.

But then, what was the fact behind it? Impossible that Judith Sabin's
story should be all delusion! For whom did she mistake Richard?

Suddenly, as he sat brooding and smoking, a vision of Hester flashed upon
him as she had stood laughing and pouting, beneath the full length
picture of Neville Flood, which hung in the big hall of the Abbey. He had
pointed it out to her on their way through the house--where she had
peremptorily refused to linger--to the old garden behind.

He could hear his own question: "There!--aren't you exactly like him?
Turn and look at yourself in the glass opposite. Oh, you needn't be
offended! He was the handsome man of his day."

Of course! The truth jumped to the eyes, now that one was put in the way
of seeing it. And on this decisive recollection there had followed a rush
of others, no less pertinent: things said by his dead mother about the
brother whom she had loved and bitterly regretted. So the wronged lady
whom he would have married but for his wife's obstinacy was "Aunt Alice!"
Philip remembered to have once seen her from a distance in the Upcote
woods. Hester had pointed her out, finger on lip, as they stood hiding in
a thicket of fern; a pretty woman still. His mother had never mentioned a
name; probably she had never known it; but to the love-affair she had
always attributed some share in her brother's death.

From point to point he tracked it, the poor secret, till he had run it
down. By degrees everything fitted in; he was confident that he had
guessed the truth.

Then, abruptly, he turned to look at its bearing on his own designs and
fortunes.

He supposed himself to be in love with Hester. At any rate he was
violently conscious of that hawk-like instinct of pursuit which he was
accustomed to call love. Hester's mad and childish imprudences, which the
cooler self in Meryon was quite ready to recognize as such, had made the
hawking a singularly easy task so far. Meynell, of course, had put up
difficulties; with regard to this Scotch business it had been necessary
to lie pretty hard, and to bribe some humble folk in order to get round
him. But Hester, by the double fact that she was at once so far removed
from the mere _ingenue_, and so incredibly ready to risk herself, out of
sheer ignorance of life, both challenged and tempted the man whom a
disastrous fate had brought across her path, to such a point that he had
long since lost control of himself, and parted with any scruples of
conscience he might possess.

At the same time he was by no means sure of her. He realized his
increasing power over her; he also realized the wild, independent streak
in her. Some day--any day--the capricious, wilful nature might tire,
might change. The prey might escape, and the hawk go empty home. No
dallying too long! Let him decide what to risk--and risk it.

Meantime that confounded cousin of his was hard at work, through some
very capable lawyers, and unless the instructions he--Philip--had
conveyed to the woman in Scotland, who, thank goodness, was no less
anxious to be rid of him than he to be rid of her, were very shrewdly
and exactly carried out, facts might in the end reach Hester which would
give even her recklessness pause. He knew that so far Meynell had been
baffled; he knew that he carried about with him evidence that, for the
present, could be brought to bear on Hester with effect; but things were
by no means safe.

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