The Case of Richard Meynell Part 44

"I could go on for hours telling you these very simple and obvious things which must be so familiar to you. To me the amazement of this Movement is that it has taken so long to come. We have groaned under the oppression of what we have now thrown off, so long and so hopelessly; the Revision that the High Churchmen made such a bother about a few years ago came to so little; that now, to see this thing spreading like a great spring-tide over the face of England is marvellous indeed! And when one knows what it means--no mere liturgical change, no mere lopping off here and changing there, but a transformation of the root ideas of Christianity; a transference of its whole proof and evidence from the outward to the inward field, and therewith the uprush of a certainty and joy unknown to our modern life; one can but bow one's head, as those that hear mysterious voices on the wind.

"For so into the temple of man's spirit, age by age, comes the renewing Master of man's life--and makes His tabernacle with man. 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, And the King of Glory shall come in.'"

Meynell bowed his head upon his hands. The pulse of hope and pa.s.sion in the letter was almost overpowering. It came, he knew, from an elderly man, broken by many troubles, and tormented by arthritis, yet a true saint, and at times a great preacher.

The next letter he opened came from a priest in the diocese of Aix....

"The effect of the various encyclicals and of the ill-advised attempt to make both clergy and laity sign the Modernist decrees has had a prodigious effect all over France--precisely in the opposite sense to that desired by Pius X. The spread of the Movement is really amazing.

Fifteen years ago I remember hearing a French critic say--Edmond Scherer, I think, the successor of Sainte Beuve--'The Catholics have not a single intellectual of any eminence--and it is a misfortune for _us_, the liberals. We have nothing to fight--we seem to be beating the air.'

"Scherer could not have said this to-day. There are Catholics everywhere--in the University, the Ecole Normale, the front ranks of literature. But with few exceptions _they are all Modernist_; they have thrown overboard the whole _fatras_ of legend and tradition. Christianity has become to them a symbolical and spiritual religion; not only personally important and efficacious, but of enormous significance from the national point of view. But as you know, _we_ do not at present aspire to outward or ceremonial changes. We are quite content to leaven the meal from within; to uphold the absolute right and necessity of the two languages in Christianity--the popular and the scientific, the mythological and the mystical. If the Pope could have his way, Catholicism would soon be at an end--except as a peasant-cult--in the Latin countries. But, thank G.o.d, he will not have his way. One hears of a Modernist freemasonry among the Italian clergy--of a secret press--an enthusiasm, like that of the Carb.o.n.e.ria in the forties. So the spirit of the Most High blows among the dead clods of the world--and, in a moment the harvest is there!"

Meynell let the paper drop. He began to write, and he wrote without stopping with great ease and inspiration for nearly two hours. Then as midnight struck, he put down his pen, and gazed into the dying fire. He felt as Wordsworth's skater felt on Esthwaite, when, at a sudden pause, the mountains and cliffs seemed to whirl past him in a vast headlong procession. So it was in Meynell's mind with thoughts and ideas.

Gradually they calmed and slackened, till at last they pa.s.sed into an abstraction and ecstasy of prayer.

When he rose, the night had grown very cold. He hurriedly put his papers in order, before going to bed, and as he did so, he perceived two unopened letters which had been overlooked.

One was from Hugh Flaxman, communicating the news of the loss of two valuable gold coins from the collection exhibited at the party. "We are all in tribulation. I wonder whether you can remember seeing them when you were talking there with Norham? One was a gold stater of Velia with a head of Athene."...

The other letter was addressed in Henry Barron's handwriting. Meynell looked at it in some surprise as he opened it, for there had been no communication between him and the White House for a long time.

"I should be glad if you could make it convenient to see me to-morrow morning. I wish to speak with you on a personal matter of some importance--of which I do not think you should remain in ignorance. Will it suit you if I come at eleven?"

Meynell stood motionless. But the mind reacted in a flash. He thought--

"_Now_ I shall know what she told him in those two hours!"

CHAPTER XV

"The Rector will be back, sir, direckly. I was to I tell you so pertickler. They had 'im out to a man in the Row, who's been drinkin'

days, and was goin' on shockin'--his wife was afraid to stop in the house. But he won't be long, sir."

And Anne, very stiff and on her dignity, relieved one of the two armchairs of its habitual burden of books, gave it a dusting with her ap.r.o.n, and offered it to the visitor. It was evident that she regarded his presence with entire disfavour, but was prepared to treat him with prudence for the master's sake. Her devotion to Meynell had made her shrewd; she perfectly understood who were his enemies, and who his friends.

Barron, with a sharp sense of annoyance that he should be kept waiting, merely because a drunken miner happened to be beating his wife, coldly accepted her civilities, and took up a copy of the _Times_ which was lying on the table. But when Anne had retired, he dropped the newspaper, and began with a rather ugly curiosity to examine the room. He walked round the walls, looking at the books, raising his eyebrows at the rows of paper-bound German volumes, and peering closely into the t.i.tles of the English ones. Then his attention was caught by a wall-map, in which a number of small flags attached to pins were sticking. It was an outline map of England, apparently sketched by Meynell himself, as the notes and letterings were in his handwriting. It was labelled "Branches of the Reform League." All over England the little flags bristled, thicker here, and thinner there, but making a goodly show on the whole. Barron's face lengthened as he pondered the map.

Then he pa.s.sed by the laden writing-table. On it lay an open copy of the _Modernist_, with a half-written "leader" of Meynell's between the sheets. Beside it was a copy of Thomas a Kempis, and Father Tyrrell's posthumous book, in which a great soul, like a breaking wave, had foamed itself away; a volume of Sanday, another of Harnack, into the open cover of which the Rector had apparently just pinned an extract from a Church paper. Barron involuntarily stooped to read it. It ran:

"This is no time for giving up the Athanasian Creed. The moment when the sewage of continental unbelief is pouring into England is not the moment for banishing to a museum a screen that was erected to guard the sanctuary."

Beneath it, in Meynell's writing:

"A gem, not to be lost! The muddle of the metaphor, the corruption of the style, everything is symbolic. In a preceding paragraph the writer makes an attack on Harnack, who is described as 'notorious for opposing' the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. That history has a right to its say on so-called historical events never seems to have occurred to this gentleman; still less that there is a mystical and sacred element in all truth, all the advancing knowledge of mankind, including historical knowledge, and that therefore his responsibility, his moral and spiritual risk even, in disbelieving Harnack, is probably infinitely greater than Harnack's in dealing historically with the Birth Stories. The fact is the whole onus is now on the orthodox side. It is not we that are on our defence; but they."

Barron raised himself with a flushed cheek, and a stiffened mouth.

Meynell's note had removed his last scruples. It was necessary to deal drastically with a clergyman who could write such things.

A step outside. The sleeping dogs on the doorstep sprang up and noisily greeted their master. Meynell shut them out, to their great disgust, and came hurriedly toward the study.

Barron, as he saw him in the doorway, drew back with an exclamation. The Rector's dress and hair were dishevelled and awry, and his face--pale, drawn, and damp with perspiration--showed that he had just come through a personal struggle.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Barron. But that fellow, Pinches--you remember?--the new blacksmith--has been drinking for nearly a week, and went quite mad this morning. We just prevented him from killing his wife, but it was a tough business. I'll go and wash and change my coat, if you will allow me."

So he went away, and Barron had a few more minutes in which to meditate on the room and its owner. When at last Meynell came back, and settled himself in the chair opposite to his visitor, with a quiet "Now I am quite at your service," Barron found himself overtaken with a curious and unwelcome hesitation. The signs--a slightly strained look, a quickened breathing--that Meynell still bore upon him of a physical wrestle, combined perhaps with a moral victory, suddenly seemed, even in Barron's own eyes, to dwarf what he had to say--to make a poor mean thing out of his story. And Meynell's shining eyes, divided between close attention to the man before him and some recent and disturbing recollections in which Barron had no share, reinforced the impression.

But he recaptured himself quickly. After all, it was at once a charitable and a high-judicial part that he had come to play. He gathered his dignity about him, resenting the momentary disturbance of it.

"I am come to-day, Mr. Meynell, on a very unpleasant errand."

The formal "Mr." marked the complete breach in their once friendly relations. Meynell made a slight inclination.

"Then I hope you will tell it me as quickly as may be. Does it concern yourself, or me? Maurice, I hope, is doing well?"

Barron winced. It seemed to him an offence on the Rector's part that Meynell's tone should subtly though quite innocently remind him of days when he had been thankful to accept a strong man's help in dealing with the escapades of a vicious lad.

"He is doing excellently, thank you--except that his health is not all I could wish. My business to-day," he continued, slowly--"concerns a woman, formerly of this village, whom I happened by a strange accident to see just after her return to it--"

"You are speaking of Judith Sabin?" interrupted Meynell.

"I am. You were of course aware that I had seen her?"

"Naturally--from the inquest. Well?"

The quiet, interrogative tone seemed to Barron an impertinence. With a suddenly heightened colour he struck straight--violently--for the heart of the thing.

"She told me a lamentable story--and she was led to tell it me by seeing--and identifying--yourself--as you were standing with a lady in the road outside the cottage."

"Identifying me?" repeated Meynell, with a slight accent of astonishment.

"That I think is hardly possible. For Judith Sabin had never seen me."

"You were not perhaps aware of it--but she had seen you."

Meynell shook his head.

"She was mistaken--or you are. However, that doesn't matter. I gather you wish to consult me about something that Judith Sabin communicated to you?"

"I do. But the story she told me turns very closely on her identification of yourself; and therefore it does matter," said Barron, with emphasis.

A puzzled look pa.s.sed again over Meynell's face. But he said nothing. His att.i.tude, coldly expectant, demanded the story.

Barron told it--once more. He repeated Judith Sabin's narrative in the straightened, rearranged form he had now given to it, postponing, however, any further mention of Meynell's relation to it till a last dramatic moment.

He did not find his task so easy on this occasion. There was something in the personality of the man sitting opposite to him which seemed to make a narrative that had pa.s.sed muster elsewhere sound here a mere vulgar impertinence, the wanton intrusion of a common man on things sacredly and justly covered from sight.