The Missionary Part 14

Enid held her breath as the familiar figure, clad in the unfamiliar academic garb, walked towards the Chancellor's throne. She could see that he was deadly pale, and that his eyes were shining with an unnatural brightness. He never even once looked towards her. The wild outburst of cheering which greeted his appearance seemed as utterly lost upon him as if he had been stone deaf and blind. He listened to the Chancellor's address with as little emotion as though it concerned some one else. Then he knelt down, the hood, the outward and visible sign of his intellectual triumph, was put over his shoulders; the Chancellor spoke the magic words without his hearing them. He never felt the three taps given with the New Testament on his head, and he rose from his knees and moved away from the scene of the crowning triumph of his youth as mechanically as though the proceedings had no more interest for him than if they had been taking place a thousand miles away.

All through the afternoon Enid and her father waited for them to come, but there was no sign from either of them until just before tea-time Jepson presented himself with two letters, one addressed to Sir G.o.dfrey and one to Enid. Both were very short. Sir G.o.dfrey's was from Sir Arthur, and ran as follows:

"MY DEAR RALEIGH,

"I hope that you and your daughter will forgive the apparent discourtesy of our absence from you this afternoon and evening. I find it necessary to take Vane to London at once. His letter to Enid will explain the reason.

"Faithfully yours, "ARTHUR MAXWELL."

"There is evidently something very serious the matter," said Sir G.o.dfrey, as he handed the note to Enid. "Maxwell wouldn't write like that without good reason. That's from Vane, I suppose. What does he say?"

"Say," exclaimed Enid, with a flash of anger through her fast gathering tears. "That's what he says. It's too bad, too cruel--and after leaving me alone for two years--it's miserable!" And with that, she made a swift escape out of the room and shut the door behind her with an emphatic bang.

Sir G.o.dfrey picked the note up from the table where she had flung it.

There was no form of address. It simply began:

"I was drunk this morning. Drunk without meaning to be so, after being two years without touching alcohol and without experiencing the slightest craving for it. Last night I had finally come to the conclusion that it would be a sin to ask you to keep your promise to me.

Now I am convinced that it would be absolute infamy to do so. I dare not even face you to tell you this, so utterly unworthy and contemptible am I in my own sight. Whatever you hear to the contrary, remember that what has happened this morning is no fault of anyone but myself. If ever we meet again I hope I shall find you the wife of a man more worthy of you than I am now, or, with this accursed taint in my blood, ever could be.

Perhaps in those days we may be friends again; but for the present we must be strangers.

"Vane."

CHAPTER X.

Yet another twelve months had pa.s.sed since Vane had taken his degree; since Enid had seen him vanish like a spectre out of her life, and had waited vainly for his coming, only to receive instead that letter of farewell which, the instant she had read it, she knew to be final and irrevocable.

In such a nature as hers the tenderest spot was her pride. She had been his sweetheart since they were boy and girl together, and when the time came they had become formally engaged. For nearly four years now she had considered herself as half married to him. Other men attracted by her physical beauty and her mental charm had approached her, as they had a perfect right to do, in open and honest rivalry of Vane, but she had given them one and all very clearly to understand that she had definitely plighted her troth, and had no intention of breaking it. In other words she had been absolutely faithful even in thought.

She had never considered his feelings as to what he called his inherited alcoholism as anything else than the somewhat fine-drawn scruples of a highly-strung, and rather romantic nature. She had not troubled herself about the deadly scientific aspect of the matter. She knew perfectly well that men got drunk sometimes and still made excellent husbands, and, more than all, she firmly believed that, once Vane's wife, she would speedily acquire sufficient influence over him to make anything like a recurrence of what had happened quite impossible.

Even after his second and worst breakdown on the morning of Commemoration Day she would still have received him as her lover and, after a little friendly lecture which would, of course, have ended in the usual way, she would have been perfect friends with him again on the old footing.

But that letter had ended everything between them. Moreover, it had been followed by one from Sir Arthur to her father expressing great regret at the turn which matters had taken, but saying that, after repeated conversations with Vane, he had been forced to the conclusion that his resolve to enter the Church and devote himself to a life of celibacy and mission work at home was really fixed and unalterable.

After that there was, of course, nothing more to be said or done. Enid, being a natural, simple-hearted, healthy English girl, who enjoyed life a great deal too well to worry about looking under the surface of things, therefore came to the conclusion that she had been jilted for the sake of a fine-drawn Quixotic idea. If she had been jilted for the sake of another woman it would have been quite a different matter. Then there would have been something tangible to hate bitterly for a season, and then to get revenged on by making a much more brilliant marriage, as she could easily have done. But it was infinitely worse, and more humiliating to be thrown over like this by the man whom she had looked upon as her future husband nearly all her life, whom she had played at housekeeping with while they were children, and whom she had never looked upon as anything else but a sweetheart or a lover--and yet it was true, miserably true, and now, for the sake of a mere idea, she found herself cast off, loverless and alone.

Then, after a few weeks of secret, but exceeding bitterness, she did what nineteen out of every twenty girls would have done under the circ.u.mstances. The twentieth girl would probably have considered her life blighted for ever, and vowed the remainder of it to single-blessedness, charity and good works as a Sister of something or other. But Enid belonged to the practical majority, and so when the breaking off of the engagement became an actual social fact, and Reginald Garthorne came just at the psychological moment to tell her that never since he had earned that boyish licking on the steamer by kissing her, had he been able to look with love into the eyes of any other woman, she had told him with perfect frankness that, as it was quite impossible for her to marry Vane, and as she certainly liked him next best, and had not the slightest intention of remaining single, she was perfectly content to marry him. If he chose to take her on those terms he might go and talk the matter over with Sir G.o.dfrey, and if he and her mother said "yes," she would say "yes," too.

It was a somewhat prosaic wooing, perhaps, but Reginald Garthorne had been hungering for her in his heart for years. Outwardly he had been friends with Vane, but in his soul he had hated him consistently as boy and man ever since that scene behind the wheelhouse of the _Orient_. He was, therefore, perfectly content. He had longed for her, and he didn't care how he got her. The rest would come afterwards.

He was rich, far richer than Vane ever would be. He had inherited a fortune of nearly two hundred thousand pounds from his mother's side of the family when he came of age. On his father's death he would succeed to the t.i.tle and a fine old country house in the Midlands, with a rent-roll and mining royalties worth over thirty thousand a year. He would be able to make her life a continuous dream of pleasure, amidst which she would very soon forget the visionary who was throwing away his manhood and all the best years of his life just because he had learnt that he was the son of a drunken and abandoned woman, and had himself got drunk twice in his life.

The interview with Sir G.o.dfrey and Lady Raleigh had been entirely satisfactory. They both considered in their hearts that their daughter had been very badly treated. From every social point of view this was a match which left nothing to be desired, and so they said "yes," and Garthorne went back to Enid, and said, triumphantly, as he kissed her for the first time since that memorable kiss on the steamer:

"And so, you see, darling, I've won, after all!"

It was thus that it came about that, on the same day, as the Fates would have it, two ceremonies were being performed at the same hour, one in St. George's, Hanover Square, and one before the altar at Worcester Cathedral.

The Bishop, in full canonicals, surrounded by his attendant clergy, sat inside the altar rails in front of the Communion Table, and on the topmost step before the rails knelt two young men wearing surplices and the hoods of Bachelors of Arts of Oxford.

It was the Feast of St. James the Apostle, and in his exhortation the Archdeacon, who was preacher for the day, had taken for his text the collect:

"Grant, O merciful G.o.d, that, as Thine holy Apostle St. James, leaving his father and all that he had without delay, was obedient unto the call of Thy Son Jesus Christ and followed Him, so we, forsaking all worldly and carnal affections, may be evermore ready to follow Thy holy commandments, through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

One of the men kneeling at the altar rails was Mark Ernshaw, and the other was Vane Maxwell.

Among the somewhat scanty congregation which had remained after the usual morning service, sat Sir Arthur Maxwell. A year ago he would have been inclined to laugh at the idea of his son sacrificing all his brilliant worldly prospects to enter the Church. He was, as has already been said, a deeply religious man himself, but still, he was a man of the world, a man who had made his own way through the world, and won by sheer hard work some of the prizes which it has to give, and, like many others of his cla.s.s, he had come to look upon the clerical profession somewhat as the refuge of the intellectually dest.i.tute.

But as the time had gone on since that scene in his son's rooms at Oxford, he had come to believe that with Vane it was not a mere question, as it is with too many other men, of taking Orders to secure a profession and a position. He was entering the Church as the men of more earnest and more faithful ages had done; because he believed that he had a duty to do, a mission to perform, a sacrifice to make, and, above all, an enemy to fight which was G.o.d's enemy as well as his own.

Therefore the words "leaving his father and all that he had," awakened no bitter echoes in his soul. True it was a sacrifice for him as well as for Vane; but for Vane's sake he had made it willingly and cheerfully, and he was able now to look forward with perfect contentment to the triumphs which, in his father's pride, he could not help believing his son would win in that higher and holier sphere of life which he had chosen.

The presentation being made and the questions as to "crime or impediment" being duly asked and answered, the Litany and Suffrages began, and every note and word of the solemn intonation, ringing through the silence of the great Cathedral, found an echo which rang true in three souls at least among the congregation:

"O G.o.d the Father of Heaven: have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.

"O G.o.d the Son, Redeemer of the world: have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.

"O G.o.d the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son: have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.

"O Holy blessed and glorious Trinity, three Persons and one G.o.d: have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.

"Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers: neither take thou vengeance on our sins: spare us, good Lord, spare thy people whom thou hast redeemed with Thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever.

"From all evil and mischief: from sin, from the crafts and a.s.saults of the devil: from Thy wrath and from everlasting d.a.m.nation.

"From all blindness of heart: from pride, vain-glory and hypocrisy: from envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness.

"From fornication, and all other deadly sin: and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh and the devil.

"Good Lord deliver us!"

"Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers: neither take thou vengeance on our sins."

These, of all the words which he heard spoken on that fateful day, the day which marked for him the pa.s.sing of the line which divides the World of the Flesh from the World of the Spirit--the frontier of the kingdom of this world separating it from that other Kingdom which, though worldwide, yet owns but a single Lord--seemed to fall with greater weight into Vane's soul than any others of the service. As he heard them he raised his bent head, threw it back and, with wide open eyes, looked up over the Bishop's head and the reredos behind the altar to the central section of the great stained gla.s.s window containing the figure of the G.o.dhead crucified in the flesh, with the two Marys, Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene, kneeling at the foot of the Cross.

Like a quiver of summer lightning across the horizon of an August sky, there came to him the thought of that mother of his whom he had never known, and of that girl who was almost his sister, long ago lost in the great wilderness of London. They were not likenesses, only the faintest of suggestions, and yet the mere recollection seemed to lend an added solemnity to the vows which he was about to take.

"I will do so, the Lord being my helper!"

As he uttered the words there was not the faintest doubt in his soul that for the rest of his life he would be able to keep both the letter and the spirit of the oath unbroken to the end of his days. Many a man and woman has rashly wished that it were possible to look into the future. Such a thought had more than once crossed Vane Maxwell's mind, but could he, in that solemn moment, have looked into the future and seen what lay before him, he would have been well content with the high destiny to which his great renunciation was to lead him.