A Lost Cause Part 7

Any of them would

"Buy a minute's mirth to wail a week, And sell eternity to gain a toy."

They had the manners of organ-grinders and the morals of monkeys. She caught some words of what Mrs. Duveen was saying now and again. Lord Rollington began to tell her, with affected disgust, how he had been at a burlesque theatre the night before, and the musical-comedy heroine of the hour had been so intoxicated that she could hardly sing her song.

"Too bad, you know, Miss Blantyre. I spotted it at once. It's always disgustin' to see a girl take too much to drink, but when she's caperin'

about the stage like that one really has a right to complain. Don't you think so? Now, if it had been a poor little chorus girl, she'd have been fired out of the theatre in a second. For my part, I--" and so on for an interminable five minutes.

General Pompe began to flirt with Lucy in that elderly "you-are-only-a-little-girl" sort of manner, that is so difficult to repel and which is so offensive. She saw his h.o.r.n.y eyes roving over her person with appreciation.

A great many of Lady Linquest's particular set were like this. Not all of them, thank goodness, but so very many! And the worst of it was that society mingled and overlapped so strangely. The sheep and the goats were not separated in any way. People like the Huddersfields stood almost alone, and even Agatha, when she was with the St. Justs--her mother's family--constantly met this sort of people. But, then, Agatha didn't seem to care, she didn't realise. She laughed at everything and thought it "awfully good fun." In fact, Lucy realised Agatha was exactly the same as she herself had always been--with the very slightest intervals--until this moment. It was startling to think that the words of Lord Huddersfield's son had worked this revolution in her point of view. For she was quite persuaded that they were the reason of it. She could find no other reason.

She did not realise then, as she was to realise with humble thankfulness and awe in the future, the august influence that was at work within her.

She was not gay at lunch. Usually she was a most welcome member of any such gathering as this. Her sayings were pointed, she entered fully into the spirit of the hour, her wit adorned the charm of her personality, and she was universally popular and voted "good fun" in the comprehensive epitome of her a.s.sociates. This was the highest praise they knew, and they gave it her without stint.

To-day the party fell flat--there was no doubt about it. The radiance of the early morning had given place to a heat which became terribly oppressive, and the sky was overclouded. Thunder was in the air, and London awaited a storm.

The electric lights began to glow in the restaurant.

Lady Linquest did her best to rouse her niece to gaiety, but her efforts were futile. The old man who was entertaining them grew sulky, and Lord Rollington drank gla.s.s after gla.s.s of champagne. The beautiful actress was frankly bored, and became more cynical and bitter with every scandalous story she told.

Only Mr. Duveen preserved his equanimity. He ate and drank and purred with secure complaisance. It was his role in life. Ever since he had been a little lick-trencher f.a.g at Eton he had been thus. It was said by his friends in society--after his back was turned--that on one occasion, having discovered the Earl of ---- kissing his wife, he had murmured an apology, saying that he had come to find his cigarette case, and hurriedly retired from the room. This, no doubt, was scandal and untrue, but it showed the estimation in which he was generally held.

Lucy knew this unpleasant story--Lady Linquest had told her. She thought of it as she watched the man pouring _mandarin_ into his coffee. Once more she felt the shrinking and repulsion that had come over her more than three hours ago.

She knew, or once had known, her Dante. She had had but little time for anything but frothy reading during the last year or two, but once she had kept up her Italian. A pa.s.sage from the _Inferno_ came into her brain now,--a long-forgotten pa.s.sage:

"Quest i non hanno speranza di morte, E la lor cicca vita e tanto ba.s.sa Che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte."

She saw the people of whom the Florentine spoke before her now, the people for whom the bitterest fate of all had been reserved,--these who "have no hope of death, and whose blind life so meanly drags that they are envious of every other fate."

Before she left Park Lane, it had been arranged that the small brougham should call for her at the restaurant, and take her on to Hornham. Her luggage was small. This smart society girl was going to take her plunge into the great London _Hinterland_ with a single trunk, like any little governess driving to her new situation, where she would learn how bitter the bread of another may taste, and how steep are the stairs in the house of a stranger.

The carriage arrived just as lunch was over, and she left all of them with immeasurable relief.

Driving up Shaftesbury Avenue to find her northward route was like driving into a black curtain. It was terribly hot and dark, the horses were uneasy, and the people moving on the pavements seemed like phantoms in some city of dreadful night.

London began to grip and hold her then as it had never done before. Seen under this pall, its immensity and the dignity it gained by that was revealed in a new aspect. _Her_ London, her corner of the town, the mere pleasure-city, became of no consequence, its luxury, its parks and palaces, shrank and dwindled to nothing in her consciousness.

She was attuned to thoughts more solemn than were wont to have their way with her. Her eyes and ears were opened to the reality of life.

She had lost her dislike for the visit she was going to pay. Below her frequent irritation at her brother's way of life there had always been a strong affection for him. And more than that, she had always respected him, though often enough she would not admit it even to herself. As the brougham turned into the surging arcana at Islington her curiosity about the next few days was quickened: the thought of personal discomfort--discomfort of a physical kind--had quite gone. She felt that she was about to have experience of something new, her pulses quickened to it.

The vicarage of St. Elwyn's was one of those stately old red-brick houses, enclosed in a walled garden of not inconsiderable extent, that are still to be found here and there in north London. They date from the florid Georgian times, when that part was a s.p.a.cious countryside where wealthy merchants withdrew from commerce in the evening of their days and lived a decorous life among the fields and trees. Here and there, in the vast overgrown and congested districts, one or another of these old freeholds has been preserved inviolate--as may be seen in the ride from Hackney to Edmonton--and becomes an alien in a wilderness of mean little houses and vulgar streets.

Father Blantyre had bought one of these few remaining mansions in Hornham, at a high price, and had presented it to the parish of St.

Elwyn's as its vicarage. Here he lived with his two curates and a staff of four servants,--a housekeeper, two maids, and a man-of-all-work. The personal wants of the three clergymen were very simple, but the servants were useful in many parochial affairs. In times when work was scarce, the vicarage staff boiled soup, like any cheap restaurant-keeper. The house was open at all times of the day or night to people who wanted to be quiet and alone for a time; social clubs and guilds had their headquarters there.

Indeed, the place was the centre of a diversified and complex life--how complex, neither Lucy, nor any outsider, had the least conception.

The carriage stopped at the heavy square porch with its flight of steps, and the footman ran up them and rang the bell.

Lucy noticed with amus.e.m.e.nt that the man's face expressed a mild wonder at the neighbourhood in which he found himself, and that he winked solemnly at the coachman on his box.

Lucy stood on the steps for a moment. The sky was quite dark, and the little side street in which she was, showed in a dim and sulphurous half-light--like the light round the House of Usher. A piano-organ close by was beating out its vibrant mechanical music with an incongruous and almost vulgar disregard of the menace of the heavens.

The housekeeper opened the front door, and Lucy entered a big panelled hall, now in a gloom that was almost profound, and with a tiled floor that clicked and echoed as the high heels of her shoes struck upon it.

"The vicar is in his study, Miss," the housekeeper said. She was a tall, gaunt, elderly woman, with a face that always reminded Lucy of a horse, and her voice was dry and hesitating.

Lucy crossed the hall, opened a door of oak and another of green baize, and entered her brother's room.

It was a large, lofty place. The walls were covered with books in sober bindings,--there must have been several thousands there. A soft carpet covered the floor, in the centre of which stood an enormous writing-table crowded with books and papers.

Hardly any light came into the place through the long window, and two candles in ma.s.sive silver holders stood upon the writing-table, throwing a soft radiance around.

The light fell upon a tall crucifix of silver that stood upon the table, a beautiful specimen of English Pre-Reformation work. A small couch had been drawn up close to the table, and on it the priest lay asleep. The face was lined and drawn with worry and with work, and all its secrets were told as the man slept. One hand lay hanging from the side of the sofa--a lean, strong hand, with a coil of muscle upon the back. Seen thus in an abandonment of repose, Lucy's brother showed as a man worn and weary with battle, scarred and battered, bruised, but how irrevocably rich!

A rush of tenderness came over the girl as she looked at him. Here was the man who had not winced or cried aloud, whose spirit was unbowed beneath the bludgeonings of life.

A high serenity lay over the pain upon the face. It was a face vowed, a saint's face, and even as he slept the great soul which shone like a monstrance within him, irradiated the mask that hid it.

Lucy saw all this, received some such impressions as those in two or three moments. Some attraction drew her eyes from the sleeper to the shining symbol of G.o.d's pain upon the table. Then they went back to Bernard Blantyre. To her excited fancy there seemed some subtle sympathy between them, an invisible shuttle that was flying to and fro.

Then Blantyre awoke and saw her. He did not come from the kingdom of sleep gradually, as most people do, loath to leave those silent halls.

He sprang suddenly into full consciousness, as soldiers upon fields of battle, as old veterans used to sudden drums and tramplings are known to do.

His eyes lighted up with merriment and triumph, his mobile face was one great smile. He caught her by the arms and kissed her repeatedly. "It's splendid to have you again, me darling," he said, with a slight Irish accent that came to both of them when they were excited. "Ye little wretch, staying away so long! Why, ye're prettier than ever! Ye'll have all the Hornham boys waiting for ye outside the church door after Ma.s.s, for we don't see your sort down our humble way--the rale West End product!"

Laughing and chattering, putting on the most exaggerated brogue, the brother and sister moved out into the hall. Father Blantyre called loudly, "King! Stephens! where are ye? she's come!--I don't know where my boys are at all, mavourneen--We'll dress um down for not being in to welcome the new clergywoman. Now, come up to your room, sweetheart, and Bob'll bring your box up. Bob! bring me sister's trunk up-stairs."

The little man ran up the wide stairway, an odd, active figure in his black ca.s.sock, laughing and shouting in an ecstasy of pleasure and excitement. No schoolboy could have been more merry, more full of simple joy.

Lucy followed him, half laughing, half inclined to sob at this happy welcome. She was carried off her feet by it all, by this strange arrival under lurid skies at the dingy old house which suddenly seemed so home-like.

Reproach filled her heart at her long neglect as she heard her brother's joy. Simplicity!--yes, that was it. He was utterly simple. The thought of the people she had left so short a time ago was more odious than ever.

She found herself alone in her bedroom, a big, gloomy place with solid mahogany furniture in the old style. There was nothing modern there save a little _prie-dieu_ of oak by the bedside. But the sober colours and outmoded ma.s.siveness of it all no longer troubled her. She did not give a single thought to her own luxurious nest in Park Lane--as she had done so often during her first visit to St. Elwyn's a year ago.

When she went down-stairs once more, both the a.s.sistant priests had come in and were waiting with the vicar in the study, where some tea was presently brought.

Stephens was a tall, youthful-looking man, rather slangy perhaps, with a good deal of the undergraduate about him still, but obviously in earnest. King was square-faced; the clean-shaved jaw showed powerful and had a flavour of the prize-fighter about it, while his general expression was grim and somewhat forbidding. He was much the elder of the two. His expression, the outward sh.e.l.l, was no index to the man within. A tenderer heart never beat in a man; a person more temperamentally kind never lived. But he had more capacity for anger, righteous anger, than either the vicar or Stephens. There were moments when he could be terrible, and some savage strain in him leaped to the surface and was only curbed by a will which had long been sanctified to good.

The two men seemed glad to see Lucy again. She had seen little of them on her first visit; neither of them had made any impression on her. Now they interested her at once.

"Now, then, Bernard," Lucy said as she began to pour out the tea, "what is all this I hear about a scene in church? Lord Huddersfield was full of it. He was most distressed."