The Case of Richard Meynell Part 18

While Meynell was pa.s.sing through the woods of Forked Pond a very different scene, vitally connected with the Rector and his fortunes, was pa.s.sing 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 grat.i.tude 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 ident.i.ty 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 a.s.sailed 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, pa.s.sionately 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.