The Case of Richard Meynell by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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He paused a moment among the trees, just before the cottage passed out of
sight. The sun was sinking in a golden haze, the first prophecy of
autumnal mists. Broad lights lay here and there upon the water, to be
lost again in depths of shadow, wherein woods of dream gave back
the woods that stooped to them from the shore. Everything was so still he
could hear the fish rising, the run of a squirrel along a branch, the
passage of a coot through the water.

The very profoundity of nature's peace suddenly showed him to himself. A
man engaged in a struggle beyond his power!--committed to one of those
tasks that rend and fever the human spirit even while they ennoble it! He
had talked boldly to Stephen and the Bishop of "war"--"inevitable" and
"necessary war." At the same time there was no one who would suffer from
war more than he. The mere daily practice of Christianity, as a man's
life-work, is a daily training in sensitiveness, involves a daily
refining of the nerves. When a man so trained, so refined, takes up the
public tasks of leadership and organization, in this noisy, hard-hitting
world, his nature is set at enmity with itself. Meynell did not yet know
whether the mystic in him would allow the fighter in him to play his
part.

If the memory of Fenton's cold, unrecognizing eyes and rigid mouth, as
they passed each other in the silence of the Cathedral, had power to
cause so deep a stab of pain, how was he to brace himself in the future
to what must come?--the alienation of friend after friend, the
condemnation of the good, the tumult, the poisoned feeling, the abuse,
public and private.

Only by the help of that Power behind the veil of things, perceived by
the mind of faith! "_Thou, Thou art being and breath_!--Thine is this
truth, which, like a living hand, bridles and commands me. Grind my life
as corn in Thy mill!--but forsake me not! Nay, Thou wilt not, Thou canst
not forsake me!"

No hope for a man attempting such an enterprise as Meynell's but in this
simplicity, this passion of self-surrender. Without it no adventure in
the spiritual fight has ever touched and fired the heart of man. Meynell
was sternly and simply aware of it.

But how is this temper, this passion, kindled?

The answer flashed. Everywhere the divine ultimate Power mediates itself
through the earthly elements and forces, speaks through small, childish
things, incarnates itself in lover, wife, or friend--flashing its mystic
fire through the web of human relations. It seemed to Meynell, as he
stood in the evening stillness by the pond, hidden from sight by the
light brushwood round him, that, absorbed as he had been from his youth
in the symbolism and passion of the religious life, as other men are
absorbed in art or science, he had never really understood one of these
great words by which he imagined himself to live--Love, or Endurance, or
Sacrifice, or Joy--because he had never known the most sacred, the most
intimate, things of human life out of which they grow.

And there uprose in him a sudden yearning--a sudden flame of desire--for
the revealing love of wife and child. As it thrilled through him, he
seemed to be looking down into the eyes--so frank, so human--of Mary
Elsmere.

Then while he watched, lost in feeling, yet instinctively listening for
any movement in the wood, there was a flicker of white among the trees
opposite. A girl, book in hand, came down to the water's edge, and paused
there a little, watching the glow of sunset on the water. Meynell
retreated farther into the wood; but he was still able to see her.
Presently she sat down, propping herself against a tree, and began to
read.

Her presence, the grace of her bending neck, informed the silence of the
woods with life and charm. Meynell watched her a few moments in a trance
of pleasure. But memory broke in upon the trance and scattered all his
pleasure. What reasonable hope of winning the daughter of that quiet,
indomitable woman, who, at their first meeting, had shown him with such
icy gentleness the gulf between himself and them?

And yet between himself and Mary he knew that there was no gulf.
Spiritually she was her father's child, and not her mother's.

But to suppose that she would consent to bring back into her mother's
life the same tragic conflict, in new form, which had already rent and
seared it, was madness. He read his dismissal in her quiet avoidance of
him ever since she had been a witness of her mother's manner toward him.

No. Such a daughter would never inflict a second sorrow, of the same
kind, on such a mother. Meynell bowed his head, and went slowly away. It
was as though he left youth and all delightfulness behind him, in the
deepening dusk of the woods.

* * * * *

While Meynell was passing through the woods of Forked Pond a very
different scene, vitally connected with the Rector and his fortunes, was
passing a mile away, in a workman's cottage at Upcote Minor.

Barron had spent an agitated day. After his interview with the Bishop, in
which he was rather angrily conscious that his devotion and his zeal were
not rewarded with as much gratitude or as complete a confidence on the
Bishop's part as he might have claimed, he called on Canon France.

To him he talked long and emphatically on the situation, on the excessive
caution of the Bishop, who had entirely refused to inhibit any one of the
eighteen, at present, lest there should be popular commotions; on the
measures that he and his friends were taking, and on the strong feeling
that he believed to be rising against the Modernists. It was evident that
he was discontented with the Bishop, and believed himself the only
saviour of the situation.

Canon France watched him, sunk deep in his armchair, the plump fingers of
one hand playing with certain charter rolls of the fourteenth century,
with their seals attached, which lay in a tray beside him. He had just
brought them over from the Cathedral Library, and was longing to be at
work on them. Barron's conversation did not interest him in the least,
and he even grudged him his second cup of tea. But he did not show his
impatience. He prophesied a speedy end to a ridiculous movement; wondered
what on earth would happen to some of the men, who had nothing but their
livings, and finally said, with a humorous eye, and no malicious
intention:

"The Romanists have always an easy way of settling these things. They
find a scandal or invent one. But Meynell, I suppose, is immaculate."

Barron shook his head.

"Meynell's life is absolutely correct, outwardly," he said slowly. "Of
course the Upcote people whom he has led away think him a saint."

"Ah, well," said the Canon, smiling, "no hope then--that way. I rejoice,
of course, for Meynell's sake. But the goodness of the unbeliever is
becoming a great puzzle to mankind."

"Apparent goodness," said Barron hotly.

The Canon smiled again. He wished--and this time more intensely--that
Barron would go, and let him get to his charters.

And in a few minutes Barron did take his departure. As he walked to the
inn to find his carriage he pondered the problem of the virtuous
unbeliever. A certain Bampton lecture by a well-known and learned Bishop
recurred to him, which most frankly and drastically connected "Unbelief"
with "Sin." Yet somehow the view was not borne out, as in the interests
of a sound theology it should have been, by experience.

After all, he reached Upcote in good time before dinner, and remembering
that he had to inflict a well-deserved lecture on the children who had
been caught injuring trees and stealing wood in his plantations, he
dismissed the carriage and made his way, before going home, to the
cottage, which stood just outside the village, on the way from Maudeley
to the Rectory and the church.

He knocked peremptorily. But no one came. He knocked again, chafing at
the delay. But still no one came, and after going round the cottage,
tapping at one of the windows, and getting no response, he was just going
away, in the belief that the cottage was empty, when there was a rattling
sound at the front door. It opened, and an old woman stood in the
doorway.

"You've made a pretty noise," she said grimly, "but there's no one in but
me."

"I am Mr. Barron," said her visitor, sharply. "And I want to see John
Broad. My keepers have been complaining to me about his children's
behaviour in the woods."

The woman before him shook her head irritably.

"What's the good of asking me? I only came off the cars here last night."

"You're a lodger, I suppose?" said Barron, eyeing her suspiciously. He
did not allow his tenants to take in lodgers.

And the more he examined her the stranger did her aspect seem. She was
evidently a woman of seventy or upward, and it struck him that she looked
haggard and ill. Her grayish-white hair hung untidily about a thin, bony
face; the eyes, hollow and wavering, infected the spectator with their
own distress; yet the distress was so angry that it rather repelled than
appealed. Her dress was quite out of keeping with the labourer's cottage
in which she stood. It was a shabby blue silk, fashionably cut, and set
off by numerous lockets and bangles.

She smiled scornfully at Barron's questions.

"A lodger? Well, I daresay I am. I'm John's mother."

"His mother?" said Barron, astonished. "I didn't know he had a mother
alive." But as he spoke some vague recollection of Theresa's talk in the
morning came back upon him.

The strange person in the doorway looked at him oddly.

"Well, I daresay you didn't. There's a many as would say the same. I've
been away this eighteen year, come October."

Barron, as she spoke, was struck with her accent, and recalled her
mention of "the cars."

"Why, you've been in the States," he said.

"That's it--eighteen year." Then suddenly, pressing her hand to her
forehead, she said angrily: "I don't know what you mean. What do you come
bothering me for? I don't know who you are--and I don't know nothing
about your trees. Come in and sit down. John'll be in directly."

She held the door open, and Barron, impelled by a sudden curiosity,
stepped in. He thought the woman was half-witted; but her silk dress, and
her jewellery, above all her sudden appearance on the scene as the mother
of a man whom he had always supposed to be alone in the world, with three
motherless, neglected children, puzzled him.

So as one accustomed to keep a sharp eye on the morals and affairs of his
cottage tenants, he began to question her about herself. She had thrown
herself confusedly on a chair, and sat with her head thrown back, and her
eyes half closed--as though in pain. The replies he got from her were
short and grudging, but he made out from them that she had married a
second time in the States, that she had only recently written to her son,
who for some years had supposed her dead, and had now come home to him,
having no other relation left in the World.

He soon convinced himself that she was not normally sane. That she had no
idea as to his own identity was not surprising, for she had left Upcote
for the States years before his succession to the White House estate.
But her memory in all directions was confused, and her strange talk made
him suspect drugs. She had also, it seemed, the usual grievances of the
unsound mind, and believed herself to be injured and assailed by persons
to whom she darkly alluded.

As they sat talking, footsteps were heard in the road outside. Mrs.
Sabin--so she gave her name--at once hurried to the door and looked out.
The movement betrayed her excited, restless state--the state of one just
returned to a scene once familiar and trying, with a clouded brain, to
recover old threads and clues.

Barron heard a low cry from her, and looked round.

"What's the matter?"

He saw her bent forward and pointing, her wrinkled face expressing a wild
astonishment.

"That's her!--that's my Miss Alice!"

Barron, following her gesture, perceived through the half-open door two
figures standing in the road on the farther side of a bit of village
green. Meynell, who had just emerged from Maudeley Park upon the
highroad, had met Alice Puttenham on her way to pay an evening visit to
the Elsmeres, and had stopped to ask a question about some village
affairs. Miss Puttenham's face was turned toward John Broad's cottage;
the Rector had his back to it. They were absorbed in what they were
talking about, and had of course no idea that they were watched.

"Why do you say my Miss Alice?" Barron inquired in astonishment.

Mrs. Sabin gave a low laugh. And at the moment, Meynell turned so that
the level light now flooding the village street shone full upon him. Mrs.
Sabin tottered back from the door, with another stifled cry, and sank
into her chair. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of her head. "But--but
they told me he was dead. He'll have married her then?"

She raised herself, peering eagerly at her companion.

"Married whom?" said Barron, utterly mystified, but affected himself,
involuntarily, by the excitement of his strange companion.

"Why--Miss Alice!" she said gasping.

"Why should he marry her?"

Mrs. Sabin tried to control herself. "I'm not to talk about that--I know
I'm not. But they give me my money for fifteen year--and then they
stopped giving it--three year ago. I suppose they thought I'd never be
back here again. But John's my flesh and blood, all the same. I made Mr.
Sabin write for me to Sir Ralph. But there came a lawyer's letter and
fifty pounds--and that was to be the last, they said. So when Mr. Sabin
died, I said I'd come over and see for myself. But I'm ill--you see--and
John's a fool--and I must find some one as 'ull tell me what to do. If
you're a gentleman living here"--she peered into his face--"perhaps
you'll tell me? Lady Fox-Wilton's left comfortable, I know. Why shouldn't
she do what's handsome? Perhaps you'll give me a word of advice, sir? But
you mustn't tell!--not a word to anybody. Perhaps they'll be for putting
me in prison?"

She put her finger to her mouth; and then once more she bent forward,
passionately scrutinizing the two people in the distance. Barron had
grown white.

"If you want my advice you must try and tell me plainly what all this
means," he said, sternly.

She looked at him--with a mad expression flickering between doubt and
desire.

"Then you must shut the door, sir," she said at last. Yet as he moved to
do so, she bent forward once more to look intently at the couple outside.

"And what did they tell me that lie for?" she repeated, in a tone half
perplexed, half resentful. Then she turned peremptorily to Barron.

"Shut the door!"

* * * * *

Half an hour later Barron emerged into the road, from the cottage. He
walked like a man bewildered. All that was evil in him rejoiced; all that
was good sorrowed. He felt that God had arisen, and scattered his
enemies; he also felt a genuine horror and awe in the presence of
human frailty.

All night long he lay awake, pondering how to deal with the story which
had been told him; how to clear up its confusions and implications; to
find some firm foothold in the mad medley of the woman's talk--some
reasonable scheme of time and place. Much of what she had told him had
been frankly incoherent; and to press her had only made confusion worse.
He was tolerably certain that she was suffering from some obscure brain
trouble. The effort of talking to him had clearly exhausted her; but he
had not been able to refrain from making her talk. At the end of the half
hour he had advised her--in some alarm at her ghastly look--to see a
doctor. But the suggestion had made her angry, and he had let it drop.

In the morning news was brought to him from Broad's cottage that John
Broad's mother, Mrs. Richard Sabin, who had arrived from America only
forty-eight hours before, had died suddenly in the night. The bursting
of an unsuspected aneurism in the brain was, according to the doctor
called in, the cause of death.

BOOK II

HESTER

"Light as the flying seed-balls is their play
The silly maids!"

"Who see in mould the rose unfold,
The soul through blood and tears."

CHAPTER VII

"I cannot get this skirt to hang as Lady Edith's did," said Sarah
Fox-Wilton discontentedly.

"Spend twenty guineas on it, my dear, as Lady Edith did on hers, and
it'll be all right," said a mocking voice.

Sarah frowned. She went on pinning and adjusting a serge skirt in the
making, which hung on the dummy before her. "Oh, we all know what _you_
would like to spend on your dress, Hester!" she said angrily, but
indistinctly, as her mouth was full of pins.

"Because really nice frocks are not to be had any other way," said Hester
coolly. "You pay for them--and you get them. But as for supposing you can
copy Lady Edith's frocks for nothing, why, of course you can't, and you
don't!"

"If I had ever so much money," said Sarah severely, "I shouldn't think it
_right_ to spend what Lady Edith does on her dress."

"Oh, wouldn't you!" said Hester with a laugh and a yawn. "Just give _me_
the chance--that's all!" Then she turned her head--"Lulu!--you mustn't
eat any more toffy!"--and she flung out a mischievous hand and captured a
box that was lying on the table, before a girl, who was sitting near it
with a book, could abstract from it another square of toffy.

"Give it me!" said Lulu, springing up, and making for her assailant.
Hester laughingly resisted, and they wrestled for the box a little, till
Hester suddenly let it go.

"Take it then--and good luck to you! I wouldn't spoil my teeth and my
complexion as you do--not for tons of sweets. Hullo!"--the speaker sprang
up--"the rain's over, and it's quite a decent evening. I shall go out for
a run and take Roddy."

"Then I shall have to come too," said Sarah, getting up from her knees,
and pulling down her sleeves. "I don't want to at all, but mamma says you
are not to go out alone."

Hester flushed. "Do you think I can't escape you all--if I want to? Of
course I can. What geese you are! None of you will ever prevent me from
doing what I want to do. It really would save such a lot of time and
trouble if you would get that into your heads."

"Where do you mean to go?" said Sarah stolidly, without taking any notice
of her remark. "Because if you'll go to the village, I can get some
binding I want."

"I have no intention whatever of going out for your convenience, thank
you!" said Hester, laughing angrily. "I am going into the garden, and you
can come or not as you please." She opened the French window as she spoke
and stepped out.

"Has mamma heard from that Paris woman yet?" asked Lulu, looking after
Hester, who was now standing on the lawn playing with a terrier-puppy she
had lately brought home as a gift from a neighbouring farmer--much to
Lady Fox-Wilton's annoyance. Hester had an absurd way of making friends
with the most unsuitable people, and they generally gave her things.

"The Rector expected to hear to-day."

"I don't believe she'll go," said Lulu, beginning again on the toffy. She
was a heavily made girl of twenty, with sleepy eyes and a dull
complexion. She took little exercise, was inordinately fond of sweet
things, helped her mother a little in the housekeeping, and was
intimately acquainted with all the gossip of the village. So was Sarah;
but her tongue was sharper than Lulu's, and her brain quicker. She was
therefore the unpopular sister; while for Lulu her acquaintances felt
rather a contemptuous indulgence. Sarah had had various love affairs,
which had come to nothing, and was regarded as "disappointed" in the
village. Lulu was not interested in young men, and had never yet been
observed to take any trouble to capture one. So long as she was allowed
sufficient sixpenny novels to read, and enough sweet things to eat, she
was good-humoured enough, and could do kind things on occasion for her
friends. Sarah was rarely known to do kind things; but as her woman
friends were much more afraid of her than of Lulu, she was in general
treated with much more consideration.

Still it could not be said that Lady Fox-Wilton was to be regarded as
blessed in either of her two elder daughters. And her sons were quite
frankly a trouble to her. The eldest, Sarah's junior by a year and a
half, had just left Oxford suddenly and ignominiously, without a degree,
and was for the most part loafing at home. The youngest, a boy of
fifteen, was supposed to be delicate, and had been removed from school by
his mother on that account. He too was at home, and a tutor who lodged in
the village was understood to be preparing him for the Civil Service. He
was a pettish and spiteful lad, and between him and Hester existed
perpetual feud.

But indeed Hester was at war with each member of the family in turn;
sometimes with all of them together. And it had been so from her earliest
childhood. They all felt instinctively that she despised them and the
slow, lethargic temperament which was in most of them an inheritance from
a father cast in one of the typical moulds of British Philistinism. There
was some insurmountable difference between her and them. In the first
place, her beauty set her apart from the rest; and, beside her, Sarah's
sharp profile, and round apple-red cheeks, or Lulu's clumsiness, made,
as both girls were secretly aware, an even worse impression than they
need have made. And in the next, there were in her strains of romantic,
egotistic ability to which nothing in them corresponded. She could
play, she could draw--brilliantly, spontaneously--up to a certain
point, when neither Sarah nor Lulu could stumble through a "piece," or
produce anything capable of giving the smallest satisfaction to their
drawing-master. She could chatter, on occasion, so that a room full of
people instinctively listened. And she had read voraciously, especially
poetry, where they were content with picture-papers and the mildest of
novels. Hester brought nothing to perfection; but there could be no
question that in every aspect of life she was constantly making, in
comparison with her family, a dashing or dazzling effect all the more
striking because of the unattractive _milieu_ out of which it sprang.

The presence of Lady Fox-Wilton, in particular, was needed to show these
contrasts at their sharpest.

As Hester still raced about the lawn, with the dog, that lady came round
the corner of the house, with a shawl over her head, and beckoned to the
girl at play. Hester carelessly looked round.

"What do you want, mamma!"

"Come here. I want to speak to you."

Hester ran across the lawn in wide curves, playing with the dog, and
arrived laughing and breathless beside the newcomer. Edith Fox-Wilton was
a small, withered woman, in a widow's cap, who more than looked her age,
which was not far from fifty. She had been pretty in youth, and her blue
eyes were still appealing, especially when she smiled. But she did not
smile often, and she had the expression of one perpetually protesting
against all the agencies--this-worldly or other-worldly--which had the
control of her existence. Her weak fretfulness depressed all the
vitalities near her; only Hester resisted.

At the moment, however, her look was not so much fretful as excited. Her
thin cheeks were much redder than usual; she constantly looked round as
though expecting or dreading some interruption; and in a hand which shook
she held a just opened letter.

"What is the matter, mamma?" asked Hester, a sharp challenging note in
her gay voice. "You look as though something had happened."

"Nothing has happened," said Lady Fox-Wilton hastily. "And I wish you
wouldn't romp with the puppy in that way, Hester. He's always doing some
damage to the flowers. I'm going out, and I wished to give you a message
from the Rector."

"Is that from Uncle Richard?" said Hester, glancing carelessly at the
letter.

Lady Fox-Wilton crushed it in her hand.

"I told you it was. Why do you ask unnecessary questions? The Rector has
heard from the lady in Paris and he wants you to go as soon as possible.
Either he or Aunt Alice will take you over. We have had the best possible
recommendations. You will enjoy it very much. They can get you the best
lessons in Paris, they say. They know everybody."

"H'm--" said Hester, reflectively. Then she looked at the speaker. "Do
you know, mamma, that I happen to be eighteen this week?"

"Don't be silly, Hester! Of course I know!"

"Well, you see, it's rather important. Am I or am I not obliged to do
what you and Mr. Meynell want me to do? I believe I'm not obliged.
Anyway, I don't quite see how you're going to make me do it, if I don't
want to."

"You can behave like a naughty, troublesome girl, without any proper
feeling, of course!--if you choose," said Lady Fox-Wilton warmly. "But I
trust you will do nothing of the kind. We are your guardians till you are
twenty-one; and you ought to be guided by us."

"Well, of course I can't be engaged to Stephen, if you say I
mayn't--because there's Stephen to back you up. But if Queen Victoria
could be a queen at eighteen, I don't see why _I_ shouldn't be fit at
eighteen to manage my own wretched affairs! Anyway--I--am--not--going to
Paris--unless I want to go. So I don't advise you to promise that lady
just yet. If she keeps her room empty, you might have to pay for it!"

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