The Case of Richard Meynell Part 29

The words were spoken with an impatient emphasis to which Mary did not venture a reply. But she could not restrain an expression in her gray eyes which was a balm to the hara.s.sed combatant beside her.

They said no more of Hester. And presently Mary's hunger for news of the Reform Movement could not be hid. It was clear she had been reading everything she could on the subject, and feeding upon it in a loneliness, and under a constraint, which touched Meynell profoundly. The conflict in her between a spiritual heredity--the heredity of her father's message--and her tender love for her mother had never been so plain to him. Yet he could not feel that he was abetting any disloyalty in allowing the conversation. She was mature. Her mind had its own rights!

Mary indeed, unknown to him, was thrilling under a strange and secret sense of deliverance. Her mother's spiritual grip upon her had relaxed; she moved and spoke with a new though still timid sense of freedom.

So once again, as on their first meeting, only more intimately, her sympathy, her quick response, led him on. Soon lying back at his ease, his hands behind his head, he was painting for her the progress of the campaign; its astonishing developments; the kindling on all sides of the dry bones of English religion.

The new--or re-written--Liturgy of the Reform was, it seemed, almost completed. From all parts: from the Universities, from cathedral cloisters, from quiet country parishes, from the clash of life in the great towns, men had emerged as though by magic to bring to the making of it their learning and their piety, the stored pa.s.sion of their hearts.

And the mere common impulse, the mere release of thoughts and aspirations so long repressed, had brought about an extraordinary harmony, a victorious selflessness, among the members of the commission charged with the task. The work had gone with rapidity, yet with sureness, as in those early years of Christianity, which saw so rich and marvellous an upgrowth from the old soil of humanity. With surprising ease and spontaneity the old had pa.s.sed over into the new; just as in the first hundred years after Christ's death the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the later Judaism had become, with but slight change, the psalms and hymns of Christianity; and a new sacred literature had flowered on the stock of the old.

"To-night--here!--we submit the new marriage service and the new burial service to the Church Council. And the same thing will be happening, at the same moment, in all the churches of the Reform--scattered through England."

"How many churches now?" she asked, with a quickened breath.

"Eighteen in July--this week, over a hundred. But before our cases come on for trial there will be many more. Every day new congregations come in from new dioceses. The beacon fire goes leaping on, from point to point!"

But the emotion which the phrase betrayed was instantly replaced by the business tone of the organizer as he went on to describe some of the practical developments of the preceding weeks: the founding of a newspaper; the collection of propagandist funds; the enrolment of teachers and missionaries, in connection with each Modernist church. Yet, at the end of it all, feeling broke through again.

"They have been wonderful weeks!--wonderful! Which of us could have hoped to see the spread of such a force in the dusty modern world! You remember the fairy story of the prince whose heart was bound with iron bands--and how one by one, the bands give way? I have seen it like that--in life after life."

"And the fighting?"

She had propped her face on her hands, and her eyes, with their eager sympathy, their changing lights, rained influence on the man beside her; an influence insensibly mingling with and colouring the pa.s.sion for ideas which held them both in its grip.

"--Has been hot--will be of course infinitely hotter still! But yet, again and again, with one's very foes, one grasps hands. They seem to feel with us 'the common wave'--to be touched by it--touched by our hope.

It is as though we had made them realize at last how starved, how shut out, we have been--we, half the thinking nation!--for so long!"

"Don't--don't be too confident!" she entreated. "Aren't you--isn't it natural you should miscalculate the forces against you? Oh! they are so strong! and--and so n.o.ble."

She drew in her breath, and he understood her.

"Strong indeed," he said gravely. "But--"

Then a smile broke in.

"Have I been boasting? You see some signs of swelled head? Perhaps you are right. Now let me tell you what the other side are doing. That chastens one! There is a conference of Bishops next week; there was one a week ago. These are of course thundering resolutions in Convocation.

The English Church Union has an Albert Hall meeting; it will be magnificent. A 'League of the Trinity' has started against us, and will soon be campaigning all over England. The orthodox newspapers are all in full cry. Meanwhile the Bishops are only waiting for the decision of my case--the test case--in the lower court to take us all by detachments.

Every case, of course, will go ultimately to the Supreme Court--the Privy Council. A hundred cases--that will take time! Meanwhile--from us--a monster pet.i.tion--first to the Bishops for the a.s.sembling of a full Council of the English Church, then to Parliament for radical changes in the conditions of membership of the Church, clerical and lay."

Mary drew in her breath.

"You _can't_ win! you _can't_ win!"

And he saw in her clear eyes her sorrow for him and her horror of the conflict before him.

"That," he said quietly, "is nothing to us. We are but soldiers under command."

He rose; and, suddenly, she realized with a fluttering heart how empty that room would be when he was gone. He held out his hand to her.

"I must go and prepare what I have to say to-night. The Church Council consists of about thirty people--two thirds of them will be miners."

"How is it _possible_ that they can understand you?" she asked him, wondering.

"You forget that half of them I have taught from their childhood. They are my spiritual brothers, or sons--picked men--the leaders of their fellows--far better Christians than I. I wish you could see them--and hear them." He looked at her a little wistfully.

"I am coming," she said, looking down.

His start of pleasure was very evident.

"I am glad," he said simply; "I want you to know these men."

"And my mother is coming with me."

Her voice was constrained. Meynell felt a natural surprise. He paused an instant, and then said with gentle emphasis:

"I don' think there will be anything to wound her. At any rate, there will be nothing new, or strange--to _her_--in what is said to-night."

"Oh, no!" Then, after a moment's awkwardness, she said, "We shall soon be going away."

His face changed.

"Going away? I thought you would be here for the winter!"

"No. Mother is so much better, we are going to our little house in the Lakes, in Long Whindale. We came here because mother was ill--and Aunt Rose begged us. But--"

"Do you know"--he interrupted her impetuously--"that for six months I've had a hunger for just one fortnight up there among the fells?"

"You love them?" Her face bloomed with pleasure. "You know the dear mountains?"

He smiled.

"It doesn't do to think of them, does it? You should see the letters on my table! But I may have to take a few days' rest, some time. Should I find you in Long Whindale--if I dropped down on you--over Goat Scar?"

"Yes--from December till March!" Then she suddenly checked the happiness of her look and tone. "I needn't warn you that it rains."

"Doesn't it rain! And everybody pretends it doesn't. The lies one tells!"

She laughed.

They stood looking at each other. An atmosphere seemed to have sprung up round them in which every tone and movement had suddenly become magnified--significant.

Meynell recovered himself. He held out his hand in farewell, but he had scarcely turned away from her, when she made a startled movement toward the open window.

"What is that?"

There was a sound of shouting and running in the street outside. A crowd seemed to be approaching. Meynell ran out into the garden to listen. By this time the noise had grown considerably, and he thought he distinguished his own name among the cries.

"Something has happened at the colliery!" he said to Mary, who had followed him.