The Case of Richard Meynell Part 36

"Nice man!"--said Rose, with enthusiasm--"Why didn't I ask him to-night!"

"But"--resumed Flaxman--"he warned me that if any letter of the kind got into the hands of a certain Miss Nairn in the village there might be trouble."

"Miss Nairn?--Miss Nairn?" The sisters looked at each other. "Oh, I know--the lady in black we saw in church the day the revolution began--a strange little shrivelled spinster-thing who lives in that house by the post-office. She quarrelled mortally with the Rector last year, because she ill-treated a little servant girl of hers, and the Rector remonstrated."

"Well, she's one of the 'aggrieved.'"

"They seem to be an odd crew! There's the old sea-captain that lives in that queer house with the single yew tree and the boarded-up window on the edge of the Heath. He's one of them. He used to come to church about once a quarter and wrote the Rector interminable letters on the meaning of Ezekiel. Then there's the publican--East--who nearly lost his license last year--he always put it down to the Rector and vowed he'd be even with him. I must say, the church in Upcote seems rather put to it for defenders!"

"In Upcote," corrected Flaxman. "That's because of Meynell's personal hold. Plenty of 'em--quite immaculate--elsewhere. However, Dawes is a perfectly decent, honest man, and grieved to the heart by the Rector's performances."

Catharine had waited silently to hear this remark, and then went away to write a letter.

"Poor darling! Will she go and call on Dawes--for sympathy?" said Flaxman, mischievously to his wife as the door closed.

"Sympathy?" Rose's face grew soft. "It's much as it was with Robert. It ought to be so simple--and it is so mixed! Nature of course _ought_ to have endowed all unbelievers with the proper horns and tail. And there they go--stealing your heart away!--and your daughter's."

The Flaxmans and Catharine--who spent the day with her sister, before the evening party--were more and more conscious of oppression as the hours went on; as though some moral thunder hung in the air.

Flaxman asked himself again and again--"Ought I to go to Meynell at once?" and could not satisfy himself with any answer; while he, his wife, and his sister-in-law, being persons of delicacy, were all ashamed of finding themselves the possessors, against their will, of facts--supposing they were facts--to which they had no right. Meynell's ignorance--Alice Puttenham's ignorance--of their knowledge, tormented their consciences. And it added to their discomfort that they shared their knowledge with such a person as Henry Barron. However, there was no help for it.

A mild autumn day drew to its close, with a lingering gold in the west and a rising moon. The charming old house, with its faded furniture, and its out-at-elbows charm, was lit up softly, with lamps that made a dim but friendly shining in its wide s.p.a.ces. It had never belonged to rich people, but always to people of taste. It boasted no Gainsboroughs or Romneys; but there were lesser men of the date, possessed of pretty talents of their own, painters and pastellists, who had tried their hands on the family, of whom they had probably been the personal friends. The originals of the portraits on the walls were known neither to history nor scandal; but their good, modest faces, their brave red or blue coats, their white gowns, and drooping feathers looked winningly out from the soft shadows of the rooms. At Maudeley, Rose wore her simplest dresses, and was astonished at the lightness of the household expenses. The house indeed had never known display, or any other luxury than s.p.a.ce; and to live in it was to accept its tradition.

The week-enders arrived at tea-time; Mr. Norham with a secretary and a valet, much preoccupied, and chewing the f.a.g-end of certain Cabinet deliberations in the morning; Flaxman's charming sister, Lady Helen Varley, and her husband; his elder brother, Lord Wanless, unmarried, an expert on armour, slightly eccentric, but still, in the eyes of all intriguing mothers, and to his own annoyance, more than desirable as a husband owing to the Wanless collieries and a few other trifles of the same kind; the Bishop of Markborough; Canon France and his sister; a young poet whose very delicate muse had lodged itself oddly in the frame of an athlete; a high official in the Local Government Board, Mr.

Spearman, whom Rose regarded with distrust as likely to lead Hugh into too much talk about workhouses; Lady Helen's two girls just out, as dainty and well-dressed, as gayly and innocently sure of themselves and their place in life as the "cla.s.ses" at their best know how to produce; and two or three youths, bound for Oxford by the end of the week, samples, these last, of a somewhat new type in that old University--combining the dash, family, and insolence of the old "tuft"

or Bullingdon man, with an amazing apt.i.tude for the cla.s.sics, rare indeed among the "tufts" of old. Two out of the three had captured almost every distinction that Oxford offers; and all three had been either gated for lengthy periods or "sent down," or otherwise trounced by an angry college, puzzled by the queer connection between Irelands and Hertfords on the one hand and tipsy frolics on the other.

Meynell appeared for dinner--somewhat late. It was only with great difficulty that the Flaxmans had prevailed on him to come, for the purpose of meeting Mr. Norham. But the party within the church which, foreseeing a Modernist defeat in the church courts, was appealing to Parliament to take action, was strengthening every week; Meynell's Sat.u.r.day articles in the _Modernist_, the paper founded by the Reformers'

League, were already providing these parliamentarians with a policy and inspiration; and if the Movement were to go on swelling during the winter, the government might have to take very serious cognizance of it during the spring. Mr. Norham therefore had expressed a wish for some conversation with the Modernist leader, who happened to be Rector of Upcote; and Meynell, who had by now cut himself adrift from all social engagements, had with difficulty saved an evening.

As far as Norham was concerned Meynell would have greatly preferred to take the Home Secretary for a Sunday walk on the Chase; but he had begun to love the Flaxmans, and could not make up his mind to say No to them.

Moreover, was it not more than probable that he would meet at Maudeley "one simple girl," of whom he did not dare in these strenuous days to let himself think too much?

So that Rose, as she surveyed her dinner table, could feel that she was maintaining the wide social traditions of England, by the mingling of as many contraries as possible. But the oil and vinegar were after all cunningly mixed, and the dinner went well. The Bishop was separated from Meynell by the length of the table, and Norham was carefully protected from Mr. Spearman, in his eyes a prince of bores, who was always bothering the Home Office.

The Bishop, who was seated beside Rose at one end of the table, noticed the black patch on Meynell's temple, and inquired its origin. Rose gave him a graphic account both of the accident and the riot. The Bishop raised his eyebrows.

"How does he contrive to live the two lives?" he said in a tone slightly acid. "If he continues to lead this Movement, he will have to give up fighting mobs and running up and down mines."

"What is going to happen to the Movement?" Rose asked him, with her most sympathetic smile. Socially and in her own house she was divinely all things to all men. But the Bishop was rather suspicious of her.

"What can happen to it but defeat? The only other alternative is the break-up of the Church. And for that, thank G.o.d, they are not strong enough."

"And no compromise is possible?"

"None. In three months Meynell and all his friends will have ceased to belong to the English Church. It is very lamentable. I am particularly sorry for Meynell himself--who is one of the best of men."

Rose felt her colour rising. She longed to ask--"But supposing _England_ has something to say?--suppose she chooses to transform her National Church? Hasn't she the right and the power?"

But her instincts as hostess stifled her pugnacity. And the little Bishop looked so worn and fragile that she had no heart for anything but cossetting him. At the same time she noticed--as she had done before on other occasions--the curious absence of any ferocity, any smell of brimstone, in the air! How different from Robert's day! Then the presumption underlying all controversy was of an offended authority ranged against an apologetic rebellion. A tone of moral condemnation on the one side, a touch of casuistry on the other, confused the issues. And now--behind and around the combatants--the clash of equal hosts!--over ground strewn with dead a.s.sumptions. The conflict might be no less strenuous; nay! from a series of isolated struggles it had developed into a world-wide battle; but the bitterness between man and man was less.

Yes!--for the n.o.bler spirits--the leaders and generals of each army. But what of the rank and file? And at the thought of Barron she laughed at herself for supposing that religious rancour and religious slander had died out of the world!

"Can we have some talk somewhere?" said Norham languidly, in Meynell's ear, as the gentlemen left the dining-room.

"I think Mrs. Flaxman will have arranged something," said Meynell, with a smile--detecting the weariness of the political Atlas.

And indeed Rose had all her dispositions made. They found her in the drawing-room, amid a bevy of bright gowns and comely faces, illumined by the cheerful light of a big wood fire--a circle of shimmering stuffs and gems, the blaze sparkling on the pointed slippers, the white necks and glossy hair of the girls, and on the diamonds of their mothers.

But Rose, the centre of the circle, sprang up at once, at sight of her two _gros bonnets_.

"The green drawing-room!" she murmured in Meynell's ear, and tripped on before them, while the incoming crowd of gentlemen, mingling with the ladies, served to mask the movement.

Not, however, before the Bishop had perceived the withdrawal of the politician and the heretic. He saw that Canon France, who followed him, had also an eye to the retreating figures.

"I trust we too shall have our audience." said the Bishop, ironically.

Canon France shrugged his shoulders, smiling.

Then his small shrewd eyes scanned the Bishop intently. Nothing in that delicate face beyond the sentiments proper to the situation?--the public situation? As to the personal emotion involved, that, the Canon knew, was for the time almost exhausted. The Bishop had suffered much during the preceding months--in his affections, his fatherly feeling toward his clergy, in his sense of the affront offered to Christ's seamless vesture of the Church. But now, France thought, pain had been largely deadened by the mere dramatic interest of the prospect ahead, by the anodyne of an immense correspondence, and of a vast increase in the business of the day, caused by the various actions pending.

Nothing else--new and disturbing--in the Bishop's mind? He moved on, chatting and jesting with the young girls who gathered round him. He was evidently a favourite with them, and with all nice women. Finally he sank into an armchair beside Lady Helen Varley, exchanging Mrs. Flaxman's cossetting for hers. His small figure was almost lost in the armchair.

The firelight danced on his slender stockinged legs, on his episcopal shoe buckles, on the cross which adorned his episcopal breast, and then on the gleaming snow of his hair, above his blue eyes with their slight unearthliness, so large and flower-like in his small white face. He seemed very much at ease--throwing off all burdens.

No!--the Slander which had begun to fly through the diocese, like an arrow by night, had not yet touched the Bishop.

Nor Meynell himself?

Yet France was certain that Barron had not been idle, that he had not let it drop. "I advised him to let it drop"--he said uneasily to himself--"that was all I could do."

Then he looked round him, at the faces of the women present. He scarcely knew any of them. Was she among them--the lady of Barron's tale? He thought of the story as he might have thought of the plot of a novel.

When medieval charters were not to be had, it made an interesting subject of speculation. And Barron could not have confided it to any one in the diocese, so discreet--so absolutely discreet--as he.

"I gather this Movement of yours is rapidly becoming formidable?" said Norham to his companion.

He spoke with the affectation of interest that all politicians in office must learn. But there was no heart in it, and Meynell wondered why the great man had desired to speak with him at all.

He replied that the growth of the Movement was certainly a startling fact.

"It is now clear that we must ultimately go to Parliament. The immediate result in the Church courts is of course not in doubt. But our hope lies in such demonstrations in the country as may induce Parliament"--he paused, laying a quiet emphasis on each word--"to reconsider--and resettle--the conditions of membership and office in the English Church."

"Good heavens!" cried Norham, throwing up his hand--"What a prospect! If that business once gets into the House of Commons, it'll have everything else out."

"Yes. It's big enough to ask for time--and take it."