The Case of Richard Meynell by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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"What discipline in life or what comfort in death can such a faith as
yours bring to any human soul? Do, I beg of you, ask yourself this
question. If the great miracles of the Creed are not true, what have you
to give the wretched and the sinful? Ought you not in common human
charity to make way for one who can offer the consolations, utter the
warnings, or hold out the heavenly hopes from which you are debarred?"

* * * * *

The Rector fixed his gaze upon the sick man. It was as though the
question of the letter were put to him through those parched lips. And as
he looked, Bateson opened his eyes.

"Be that you, Rector?" he said, in a clear voice.

"I've been sitting up with you, Bateson. Can you take a little brandy and
milk, do you think?"

The patient submitted, and the Rector, with a tender and skilful touch,
made him comfortable on his pillows and smoothed the bedclothes.

"Where's my wife?" he said presently, looking round the room.

"She's sleeping downstairs."

"I want her to come up."

"Better not ask her. She seems ill and tired."

The sick man smiled--a slight and scornful smile.

"She'll ha' time enough presently to be tired. You goa an' ask her."

"I'd rather not leave you, Bateson. You're very ill."

"Then take that stick then, an' rap on the floor. She'll hear tha fast
enough."

The Rector hesitated, but only for a moment. He took the stick and
rapped.

Almost immediately the sound of a turning key was heard through the small
thinly built cottage. The door below opened and footsteps came up the
stairs. But before they reached the landing the sound ceased. The two men
listened in vain.

"You goa an' tell her as I'm sorry I knocked her aboot," said Bateson,
eagerly. "An' she can see for hersen as I can't aggravate her no more wi'
the other woman." He raised himself on his elbow, staring into the
Rector's face. "I'm done for--tell her that."

"Shall I tell her also, that you love her?--and you want her love?"

"Aye," said Bateson, nodding, with the same bright stare into Meynell's
eyes. "Aye!"

Meynell made him drink a little more brandy, and then he went out to the
person standing motionless on the stairs.

"What did you want, sir?" said Mrs. Bateson, under her breath.

"Mrs. Bateson--he begs you to come to him! He's sorry for his conduct--he
says you can see for yourself that he can't wrong you any more. Come--and
be merciful!"

The woman paused. The Rector could see the shiver of her thin shoulders
under her print dress. Then she turned and quietly descended the cottage
stairway. Half way down she looked up.

"Tell him I should do him nowt but harm. I"--her voice trembled for the
first time--"I doan't bear him malice; I hope he'll not suffer. But I'm
not comin'."

"Wait a moment, Mrs. Bateson! I was to tell you that in spite of all, he
loved you--and he wanted your love."

She shook her head.

"It's no good talkin' that way. It'll mebbe use up his strength. Tell him
I'd have got Lizzie Short to come an' nurse 'im, if I could. It's her
place. But he knows as she an' her man flitted a fortnight sen, an'
theer's no address."

And she disappeared. But at the foot of the stairs--standing unseen--she
said in her usual tone:

"If there was a cup o' tea, I could bring you, sir--or anythin'?"

Meynell, distressed and indignant, did not answer. He returned to the
sick-room. Bateson looked up as the Rector bent once more over the bed.

"She'll not coom?" he said, in a faint voice of surprise. "Well, that's a
queer thing. She wasn't used to be a tough 'un. I could most make her do
what I wanted. Well, never mind, Rector, never mind. Sit tha down--mebbe
you'd be wanting to say a prayer. You're welcome. I reckon it'll do me no
harm."

His lips parted in a smile--a smile of satire. But his brows frowned, and
his eyes were still alive and bright, only now, as the watcher thought,
with anger.

Meynell hesitated.

"I will say the church prayers, if you wish it, Bateson. Of course I will
say them."

"But I doan't believe in 'em," said the sick man, smiling again, "an' you
doan't believe in 'em, noather, if folk say true! Don't tha be vexed--I'm
not saying it to cheek tha. But Mr. Barron, ee says ee'll make tha give
up. Ee's been goin' roun' the village, talkin' to folk. I doan't care
about that--an' I've never been one o' your men--not pious enough, be a
long way--but I'd like to hear--now as I can't do tha no harm, Rector,
now as I'm goin', an' you cawn't deny me--what tha does really believe.
Will tha tell me?"

He turned, open-eyed, impulsive, intelligent, as he had always been in
life.

The Rector started. The inward challenge had taken voice.

"Certainly I will tell you, if it will help you--if you're strong
enough."

Bateson waved his hand contemptuously.

"I feel as strong as onything. That sup o' brandy has put some grit in
me. Give me some more. Thank tha ... Does tha believe in God, Rector?"

His whimsical, half-teasing, yet, at bottom, anxious look touched Meynell
strangely.

"With all my life--and with all my strength!"

Meynell's gaze was fixed intently on his questioner. The night-light in
the basin on the farther side of the room threw the strong features into
shadowy relief, illumining the yearning kindliness of the eyes.

"What made tha believe in Him?"

"My own life--my own struggles--and sins--and sufferings," said
Meynell, stooping toward the sick man, and speaking each word with an
intensity behind which lay much that could never be known to his
questioner. "A good man, Bateson, put it once in this way, 'There is
something in me that asks something of me.' That's easy to understand,
isn't it? If a man wants to be filthy, or drunken, or cruel, there is
always a voice within--it may be weak or it may be strong--that asks of
him to be--instead--pure and sober and kind. And perhaps he denies the
Voice, refuses it--talks it down--again and again. Then the joy in his
life dies out bit by bit, and the world turns to dust and ashes. Every
time that he says No to the Voice he is less happy--he has less power of
being happy. And the voice itself dies away--and death comes. But now,
suppose he turns to the Voice and says 'Lead me--I follow!' And suppose
he obeys, like a child stumbling. Then every time he stretches and bends
his poor weak will so as to give _It_ what it asks, his heart is happy;
and strength comes--the strength to do more and do better. _It_ asks him
to love--to love men and women, not with lust, but with pure love; and as
he obeys, as he loves--he _knows_--he knows that it is God asking, and
that God has come to him and abides with him. So when death overtakes him
he trusts himself to God as he would to his best friend."

"Tha'rt talkin' riddles, Rector!"

"No. Ask yourself. When you fell into sin with that woman, did nothing
speak to you, nothing try to stop you?"

The bright half-mocking eyes below Meynell's wandered a little--wavered
in expression.

"It was the hot blood in me--aye, an' in her too. Yo cawn't help them
things."

"Can't you? When your wife suffered, didn't that touch you? Wouldn't you
undo it now if you could?"

"Aye--because I'm goin'--doctor says I'm done for."

"No--well or ill--wouldn't you undo it--wouldn't you undo the blows you
gave your wife--the misery you caused her?"

"Mebbe. But I cawn't."

"No--not in my sense or yours. But in God's sense you can. Turn your
heart--ask Him to give you love--love to Him, who has been pleading with
you all your life--love to your wife, and your fellow men--love--and
repentance--and faith."

Meynell's voice shook. He was in an anguish at what seemed to him the
weakness, the ineffectiveness, of his pleading.

A silence. Then the voice rose again from the bed.

"Dost tha believe in Jesus Christ, Rector? Mr. Barron, he calls tha an
infidel. But he hasn't read the books you an' I have read, I'll uphold
yer!"

The dying man raised his hand to the bookshelves beside him with a proud
gesture.

The Rector slowly raised himself. An expression as of some passion
within, trying at once to check and to utter itself, became visible on
his face in the half light.

"It's not books that settle it, Jim. I'll try and put it to you--just as
I see it myself--just in the way it comes to me."

He paused a moment, frowning under the effort of simplification. The
hidden need of the dying man seemed to be mysteriously conveyed to
him--the pang of lonely anguish that death brings with it; the craving
for comfort beneath the apparent scorn of faith; the human cry expressed
in this strange catechism.

"Stop me if I tire you," he said at last. "I don't know if I can make it
plain--but to me, Bateson, there are two worlds that every man is
concerned with. There is this world of everyday life--work and business,
sleeping and talking, eating and drinking--that you and I have been
living in; and there is another world, within it, and alongside of it,
that we know when we are quiet--when we listen to our own hearts, and
follow that voice I spoke of just now. Jesus Christ called that other
world the Kingdom of God--and those who dwell in it, the children of God.
Love is the king of that world, and the law of it--Love, which _is_ God.
But different men--different races of men--give different names to that
Love--see it under different shapes. To us--to you and to me--it speaks
under the name and form of Jesus Christ. And so I come to say--so all
Christians come to say--_'I believe--in Jesus Christ our Lord_'. For it
is His life and His death that still to-day--as they have done for
hundreds of years--draw men and women into the Kingdom--the Kingdom of
Love--and so to God. He draws us to love--and so to God. And in God alone
is the soul of man satisfied; _satisfied--and at rest_."

The last words were but just breathed--yet they carried with them the
whole force of a man.

"That's all very well, Rector. But tha's given up th' Athanasian Creed,
and there's mony as says tha doesn't hold by tother Creeds. Wilt tha tell
_me_, as Jesus were born of a virgin?--or that a got up out o' the grave
on the third day?"

The Rector's face, through all its harass, softened tenderly.

"If you were a well man, Bateson, we'd talk of that. But there's only one
thing that matters to you now--it's to feel God with you--to be giving
your soul to God."

The two men gazed at each other.

"What are tha nursin' me for, Rector?" said Bateson, abruptly--"I'm nowt
to you."

"For the love of Christ," said Meynell, steadily, taking his hand--"and
of you, in Christ. But you mustn't talk. Rest a while."

There was a silence. The July night was beginning to pale into dawn.
Outside, beyond the nearer fields, the wheels and sheds and the two great
chimneys of the colliery were becoming plain; the tints and substance of
the hills were changing. Dim forms of cattle moved in the newly shorn
grass; the sound of their chewing could be faintly heard.

Suddenly the dying man raised himself in bed.

"I want my wife!" he said imperiously. "I tell tha, I want my wife!"

It was as though the last energy of being had thrown itself into the
cry--indignant, passionate, protesting.

Meynell rose.

"I will bring her."

Bateson gripped his hand.

"Tell her to mind that cottage at Morden End--and the night we came home
there first--as married folk. Tell her I'm goin'--goin' fast."

He fell back, panting. Meynell gave him food and medicine. Then he went
quickly downstairs, and knocked at the parlour door. After an interval of
evident hesitation on the part of the occupant of the room, it was
reluctantly unlocked. Meynell pushed it open wide.

"Mrs. Bateson--come to your husband--he is dying!"

The woman, deadly white, threw back her head proudly. But Meynell laid a
peremptory hand on her arm.

"I command you--in God's name. Come!"

A struggle shook her. She yielded suddenly--and began to cry. Meynell
patted her on the shoulder as he might have patted a child, said kind,
soothing things, gave her her husband's message, and finally drew her
from the room.

She went upstairs, Meynell following, anxious about the physical result
of the meeting, and ready to go for the doctor at a moment's notice.

The door at the top of the stairs was open. The dying man lay on his
side, gazing toward it, and gauntly illumined by the rising light.

The woman went slowly forward, drawn by the eyes directed upon her.

"I thowt tha'd come!" said Bateson, with a smile.

She sat down upon the bed, crouching, emaciated; at first motionless
and voiceless; a spectacle little less piteous, little less deathlike,
than the man on the pillows. He still smiled at her, in a kind of
triumph; also silent, but his lips trembled. Then, groping, she put out
her hand--her disfigured, toil-worn hand--and took his, raising it to her
lips. The touch of his flesh seemed to loosen in her the fountains of the
great deep. She slid to her knees and kissed him--enfolding him with her
arms, the two murmuring together.

Meynell went out into the dawn. His mystical sense had beheld the Lord in
that small upper room; had seen as it were the sacred hands breaking to
those two poor creatures the sacrament of love. His own mind was for the
time being tranquillized. It was as though he said to himself, "I know
that trouble will come back--I know that doubts and fears will pursue me
again; but this hour--this blessing--is from God!"...

The sun was high in a dewy world, already busy with its first labours of
field and mine, when Meynell left the cottage. The church clock was on
the stroke of eight.

He passed down the village street, and reached again the little gabled
house which he had passed the night before. As he approached, there was a
movement in the garden. A lady, who was walking among the roses, holding
up her gray dress from the dew, turned and hastened toward the gate.

"Please come in! You must be tired out. The gardener told me he'd seen
you about. We've got some coffee ready for you."

Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment.

"What are you up for at this hour?"

"Why shouldn't I be up? Look how lovely it is! I have a friend with me,
and I want to introduce you."

Miss Puttenham opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her
among the roses Meynell perceived another lady--a girl, with bright
reddish hair.

"Mary!" said Miss Puttenham.

The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and
reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy. But the
unconscious dignity of bearing showed that the shyness was the shyness of
strong character, rather than of mere youth and innocence.

"This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You've heard they're at Forked
Pond?" Alice Puttenham said, smiling, as she slipped her arm round the
girl. "I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I
want you to know each other."

"Elsmere's daughter!" thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the
two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room,
where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young
face.

CHAPTER III

"I am in love with the house--I adore the Chase--I like heretics--and I
don't think I'm ever going home again!"

Mrs. Flaxman as she spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis
Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin
iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache,
and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A
shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom
conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of
doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off.

Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young
and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in
the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion
was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were
excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society.

Mr. Manvers overlooked a certain challenge that Mrs. Flaxman had thrown
out, took the tea provided, and merely inquired how long the rebuilding
of the Flaxmans' own house would take. For it appeared that they were
only tenants of Maudeley House--furnished--for a year.

Mrs. Flaxman replied that only the British workman knew. But she looked
upon herself as homeless for two years, and found the prospect as
pleasant as her husband found it annoying.

"As if life was long enough to spend it in one county, and one house
and park! I have shaken all my duties from me like old rags. No more
school-treats, no more bean-feasts, no more hospital committees, for two
whole years! Think of it! Hugh, poor wretch, is still Chairman of the
County Council. That's why we took this place--it is within fifty miles.
He has to motor over occasionally. But I shall make him resign that, next
year. Then we are going for six months to Berlin--that's for music--_my_
show! Then we take a friend's house in British East Africa, where you can
see a lion kill from the front windows, and zebras stub up your kitchen
garden. That's Hugh's show. Then of course there'll be Japan--and by that
time there'll be airships to the North Pole, and we can take it on our
way home!"

"Souvent femme varie!" Mr. Manvers raised a pair of surprisingly shrewd
eyes from the carpet. "I remember the years when I used to try and dig
you and Hugh out of Bagley, and drive you abroad--without the smallest
success."

"Those were the years when one was moral and well-behaved! But everybody
who is worth anything goes a little mad at forty. I was forty last
week"--Rose Flaxman gave an involuntary sigh--"I can't get over it."

"Ah, well, it's quite time you were a little nipped by the years," said
Manvers dryly. "Why should you be so much younger than anybody else in
the world? When you grow old there'll be no more youth!"

Mrs. Flaxman's eyes, of a bright greenish-gray, shone gayly into his;
then their owner made a displeased mouth. "You may pay me compliments as
much as you like. They will not prevent me from telling you that you are
one of the most slow-minded people I have ever met!"

"H'm?" said Mr. Manvers, with mild interrogation.

Rose Flaxman repeated her remark, emphasizing with a little tattoo of her
teaspoon on the Chippendale tea-tray before her. Manvers studied her,
smiling.

"I am entirely ignorant of the grounds of this attack."

"Oh, what hypocrisy!" cried his companion hotly. "I throw out the most
tempting of all possible flies, and you absolutely refuse to rise to it."

Manvers considered.

"You expected me to rise to the word 'heretic?'"

"Of course I did! On the same principle as 'sweets to the sweet.' Who--I
should like to know--should be interested in heretics if not you?"

"It entirely depends on the species," said her companion cautiously.

"There couldn't be a more exciting species," declared Mrs. Flaxman.
"Here you have a Rector of a parish simply setting up another Church
of England--services, doctrines and all--off his own bat, so to
speak--without a 'with your leave or by your leave'; his parishioners
backing him up; his Bishop in a frightful taking and not the least
knowing what to do; the fagots all gathering to make a bonfire of him,
and a great black six-foot-two Inquisitor ready to apply the match--and
yet--I can't get you to take the smallest interest in it! I assure you,
Hugh is _thrilled_."

Manvers laid the finger-tips of two long brown hands lightly against each
other.

"Very sorry--but it leaves me quite cold. Heresy in the Church of England
comes to nothing. Our heretics are never violent enough. They forget the
excellent text about the Kingdom of Heaven! Now the heretics in the
Church of Rome are violent. That is what makes them so far more
interesting."

"This man seems to be drastic enough!"

"Oh, no!" said the other, gently but firmly incredulous. "Believe me--he
will resign, or apologize--they always do."

"Believe _me_!--you don't--excuse me!--know anything about it. In
the first place, Mr. Meynell has got his parishioners--all except a
handful--behind him--"

"So had Voysey," interjected Manvers, softly.

Mrs. Flaxman took no notice.

"--And he has hundreds of other supporters--thousands perhaps--and some
of them parsons--in this diocese, and outside it. And they are all
convinced that they must fight--fight to the death--and _not_ give in.
That, you see, is what makes the difference! My brother-in-law"--the
voice speaking changed and softened--"died twenty years ago. I remember
how sad it was. He seemed to be walking alone in a world that hardly
troubled to consider him--so far as the Church was concerned, I mean.
There seemed to be nothing else to do but to give up his living. But the
strain of doing it killed him."

"The strain of giving up your living may be severe--but, I assure you,
your man will find the strain of keeping it a good deal worse."

"It all depends upon his backing. How do you know there isn't a world
behind him?" Mrs. Flaxman persisted, as the man beside her slowly shook
his head. "Well, now, listen! Hugh and I went to church here last Sunday.
I never was so bewildered. First, it was crowded from end to end, and
there were scores of people from other villages and towns--a kind of
demonstration. Then, as to the service--neither of us could find our way
about. Instead of saying the Lord's Prayer four times, we said it once;
we left out half the psalms for the day, the Rector explaining from the
chancel steps that they were not fit to be read in a Christian church; we
altered this prayer and that prayer; we listened to an extempore prayer
for the widows and orphans of some poor fellows who have been killed in a
mine ten miles from here, which made me cry like baby; and, most amazing
of all, when it came to the Creeds--"

Manvers suddenly threw back his head, his face for the first time
sharpening into attention. "Ah! Well--what about the Creeds?"

Mrs. Flaxman bent forward, triumphing in the capture of her companion.

"We had both the Creeds. The Rector read them--turning to the
congregation--and with just a word of preface--'Here follows the Creed,
commonly called the Apostles' Creed,'--or 'Here follows the Nicene
Creed.' And we all stood and listened--and nobody said a word. It was the
strangest moment! You know--I'm not a serious person--but I just held my
breath."

"As though you heard behind the veil the awful Voices--'_Let us depart
hence_?'" said Manvers, after a pause. His expression had gradually
changed. Those who knew him best might have seen in it a slight and
passing trace of conflicts long since silenced and resolutely forgotten.

"If you mean by that that the church was irreverent--or disrespectful--or
hostile--well, you are quite wrong!" cried Mrs. Flaxman impetuously. "It
was like a moment of new birth--I can't describe it--as though a Spirit
entered in. And when the Rector finished--there was a kind of breath
through the church--like the rustling of new leaves--and I thought of
the wind blowing where it listed.... And then the Rector preached on the
Creeds--how they grew up and why. Fascinating!--why aren't the clergy
always telling us such things? And he brought it all round to impressing
upon us that some day _we_ might be worthy of another Christian creed--by
being faithful--that it would flower again out of our lives and souls--as
the old had done.... I wonder what it all meant!" she said abruptly, her
light voice dropping.

Manvers smiled. His emotion had quite passed away.

"Ah! but I forgot"--she resumed hurriedly--"we left out several of the
Commandments--and we chanted the Beatitudes--and then I found there was a
little service paper in the seat, and everybody in the church but Hugh
and me knew all about it beforehand!"

"A queer performance," said Manvers, "and of course childishly illegal.
Your man will be soon got rid of. I expect you might have applied to
him the remark of the Bishop of Cork on the Dean of Cork--'Excellent
sermon!--eloquent, clever, argumentative!--and not enough gospel in it to
save a tom-tit!"'

Mrs. Flaxman looked at him oddly.

"Well, but--the extraordinary thing was that Hugh made me stay for the
second service, and it was as Ritualistic as you like!"

Manvers fell back in his chair, the vivacity on his face relaxing.

"Ah!--is that all?"

"Oh! but you don't understand," said his companion, eagerly. "Of course
Ritualistic is the wrong word. Should I have said 'sacramental'? I only
meant that it was full of symbolism. There were lights--and flowers, and
music, but there was nothing priestly--or superstitious"--she frowned in
her effort to explain. "It was all poetic--and mystical--and yet
practical. There were a good many things changed in the Service,--but
I hardly noticed--I was so absorbed in watching the people. Almost every
one stayed for the second service. It was quite short--so was the first
service. And a great many communicated. But the spirit of it was the
wonderful thing. It had all that--that magic--that mystery--that one gets
out of Catholicism, even simple Catholicism, in a village church--say at
Benediction; and yet one had a sense of having come out into fresh air;
of saying things that were true--true at least to you, and to the people
that were saying them; things that you did believe, or could believe,
instead of things that you only pretended to believe, or couldn't
possibly believe! I haven't got over it yet, and as for Hugh, I have
never seen him so moved since--since Robert died."

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