The Case of Richard Meynell Part 52

An exquisite joyousness trembled in her look.

"Leave it to them!"

Then, as she once more perceived the anxiety and despondency in him, the brightness clouded; pity possessed her: "Tell me what you are preaching--and writing."

"_If_ I preach--_if_ I write. And what will you tell me?"

"'How the water comes down at Lodore,'" she said gayly. "What the mountains look like, and how many rainy days there are in a week."

"Excellent! I perceive you mean to libel the country I love!"

"You can always come and see!" she said, with a shy courage.

He shook his head.

"No. My Westmoreland holiday is given up."

"Because of the Movement?"

And sitting down by the fire, still with that same look of suppressed and tremulous joy, she began to question him about the meetings and engagements ahead. But he would not be drawn into any talk about them. It was no doubt quite possible--though not, he thought, probable--that he might soon be ostracized from them all. But upon this he would not dwell, and though her understanding of the whole position was far too vague to warn her from these questions, she soon perceived that he was unwilling to answer them as usual. Silence indeed fell between them; but it was a silence of emotion. She had thrown off her cloak, and sat looking down, in the light of the fire; she knew that he observed her, and the colour on her cheek was due to something more than the flame at her feet. As they realized each other's nearness indeed, in the quiet of the dim room, it was with a magic sense of transformation. Outside the autumn storm was still beating--symbol of the moral storm which threatened them. Yet within were trust and pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude and tender hope, intertwined, all of them, with the sacred impulse of the woman toward the man, and of the man toward the woman. Each moment as it pa.s.sed built up one of those watersheds of life from which henceforward the rivers flow broadening to undreamt-of seas.

When Catharine returned, Meynell was hat in hand for departure. There was no more expression of feeling or reference to grave affairs. They stood a few moments chatting about ordinary things. Incidentally Hugh Flaxman's loss of the two gold coins was mentioned. Meynell inquired when they were first missed.

"That very evening," said Mary. "Rose always puts them away herself. She missed the two little cases at once. One was a coin of Velia, with a head of Athene--"

"I remember it perfectly," said Meynell. "It dropped on the floor when I was talking to Norham--and I picked it up--with another, if I remember right--a Hermes!"

Mary replied that the Hermes too was missing--that both were exceedingly rare; and that in the spring a buyer for the Louvre had offered Hugh four hundred pounds for the two.

"They feel most unhappy and uncomfortable about it. None of the servants seems to have gone into that room during the party. Rose put all the coins on the table herself. She remembers saying good-bye to Canon France and his sister in the drawing-room--and two or three others--and immediately afterward she went into the green drawing-room to lock up the coins. There were two missing."

"She doesn't remember who had been in the room?"

"She vaguely remembers seeing two or three people go in and out--the Bishop!--Canon Dornal!"

They both laughed. Then Meynell's face set sharply. A sudden recollection shot through his mind. He beheld the figure of a sallow, dark-haired young man slipping--alone--through the doorway of the green drawing-room.

And this image in the mind touched and fired others, like a spark running through dead leaves....

When he had gone, Catharine turned to Mary, and Mary, running, wound her arms close round her mother, and lay her head on Catharine's breast.

"You angel!--you darling!" she said, and raising her mother's hand she kissed it pa.s.sionately.

Catharine's eyes filled with tears, and her heart with mingled joy and revolt. Then, quickly, she asked herself as she stood there in her child's embrace whether she should speak of a certain event--certain experience--which had, in truth, though Mary knew nothing of it, vitally affected both their lives.

But she could not bring herself to speak of it.

So that Mary never knew to what, in truth, she owed the painful breaking down of an opposition and a hostility which might in time have poisoned all their relations to each other.

But when Mary had gone away to change her damp clothes, the visionary experience of which Catharine could not tell came back upon her; and again she felt the thrill--the touch of bodiless ecstasy.

It had been in the early morning, when all such things befall. For then the mind is not yet recaptured by life and no longer held by sleep. There is in it a pure expectancy, open to strange influences: influences from memory and the under-soul. It visualizes easily, and dream and fact are one.

In this state Catharine woke on a September morning and felt beside her a presence that held her breathless. The half-remembered images and thoughts of sleep pursued her--became what we call "real."

"Robert!" she said, aloud--very low.

And without voice, it seemed to her that some one replied. A dialogue began into which she threw her soul. Of her body, she was not conscious; and yet the little room, its white ceiling, its open windows, and the dancing shadows of the autumn leaves were all present to her. She poured out the sorrow, the anxiety--about Mary--that pressed so heavy on her heart, and the tender voice answered, now consoling, now rebuking.

"And we forbade him, because he followed not us ... Forbid him not--_forbid him not_!"--seemed to go echoing through the quiet air.

The words sank deep into her sense--she heard herself sobbing--and the unearthly presence came nearer--though still always remote, intangible--with the same baffling distance between itself and her....

The psychology of it was plain. It was the upthrust into consciousness of the mingled ideas and pa.s.sions on which her life was founded, piercing through the intellectualism of her dogmatic belief. But though she would have patiently accepted any scientific explanation, she believed in her heart that Robert had spoken to her, bidding her renounce her repugnance to Mary's friendship with Meynell--to Mary's love for Meynell.

She came down the morning after with a strange, dull sense of change and disaster. But the currents of her mind and will had set firmly in a fresh direction. It was almost mechanically--under a strong sense of guidance--that she had made her hesitating proposal to Mary to go with her to the Upcote meeting. Mary's look of utter astonishment had sent new waves of disturbance and compunction through the mother's mind.

But if these things could not be told--even to Mary--there were other revelations to make.

When the lamp had been brought in, and the darkness outside shut out, Catharine laid her hand on Mary's, and told the story of Alice Puttenham.

Mary heard it in silence, growing very pale. Then, with another embrace of her mother, she went away upstairs, only pausing at the door of the sitting-room to ask when they should start for the cottage.

Upstairs Mary sat for long in the dark, thinking.... Through her uncurtained windows she watched the obscure dying away of the storm, the calming of the trees, and the gradual clearing of the night sky. Between the upfurling clouds the stars began to show; tumult pa.s.sed into a great tranquillity; and a breath of frost began to steal through the woods, and over the water....

Catharine too pa.s.sed an hour of reflection--and of yearning over the unhappy. Naturally, to Mary, her lips had been sealed on that deepest secret of all, which she had divined for a moment in Alice. She had clearly perceived what was or had been the weakness of the woman, together with the loyal unconsciousness and integrity of the man. And having perceived it, not only pity but the strain in Catharine of plain simplicity and common sense bade her bury and ignore it henceforward.

It was what Alice's true mind must desire; and it was the only way to help her. She began however to understand what might be the full meaning of Alice's last injunction--and her eyes grew wet.

Mother and daughter started about eight o'clock for the cottage. They had a lantern with them, but they hardly needed it, for through the tranquillized air a new moon shone palely, and the frost made way.

Catharine walked rejoicing apparently in renewed strength and recovered powers of exertion. Some mining, crippling influence seemed to have been removed from her since her dream. And yet, even at this time, she was not without premonitions--physical premonitions--as to the future--faint signal-voices that the obscure life of the body can often communicate to the spirit.

They found the cottage all in light and movement. Servants were flying about; boxes were in the hall; Hester had come over to spend the night at the cottage that she and "Aunt Alice" might start by an early train.

Alice came out to meet her visitors in the little hall. Catharine slipped into the drawing-room. Alice and Mary held each other enwrapped in one of those moments of life that have no outward expression but dimmed eyes and fluttering breath.

"Is it all done? Can't I help?" said Mary at last, scarcely knowing what she said, as Alice released her.

"No, dear, it's all done--except our books. Come up with me while I pack them."

And they vanished upstairs, hand in hand.