The Ship of Stars Part 30

"Be quiet then."

At that moment Honoria pa.s.sed up the path. Her wedding gown almost brushed him as he stood wringing Lizzie's hand. She did not appear to see him; but he saw her face beneath the bridal veil, and it was hard and white.

"The proud toad!" said Lizzie. "I'm no better'n dirt, I suppose, though from the start she wasn' above robbin' me. Aw, she's sly ...

Mr. Raymond, I'll curse her as she comes out, see if I don't!"

"And I swear you shall not," said Taffy. The scent of Honoria's orange-blossom seemed to cling about them as they stood.

Lizzie looked at him vindictively. "You wanted her yourself, _I_ know. You weren't good enough, neither. Let go my fingers!"

"Go home, now. See, the people have all gone in."

"Go'st way in too, then, and leave me here to wait for her."

Taffy shut his teeth, let go her hand, and taking her by the shoulders, swung her round face toward the gate.

"March!" he commanded, and she moved off whimpering. Once she looked back. "March!" he repeated, and followed her down the road as one follows and threatens a mutinous dog.

The scene by the church gate had puzzled Honoria, and in her first letter (written from Italy) she came straight to the point, as her custom was:

"I hope there is nothing between you and that girl who used to be at Joll's. I say nothing about our hopes for you, but you have your own career to look to; and as I know you are too honourable to flatter an ignorant girl when you mean nothing, so I trust you are too wise to be caught by a foolish fancy.

Forgive a staid matron (of one week's standing) for writing so plainly, but what I saw made me uneasy--without cause, no doubt. Your future, remember, is not yours only. And now I shall trust you, and never come back to this subject."

"We are like children abroad, George's French is wonderful, but not so wonderful as his Italian. When he goes to take a ticket he first of all shouts the name of the station he wishes to arrive at (for some reason he believes all foreigners to be deaf), then he begins counting down francs one by one, very slowly, watching the clerk's face. When the clerk's face tells him he has doled out enough, he shouts 'Hold hard!' and clutches the ticket. It takes time; but all the people here are friends with him at once--especially the children, whom he punches in the ribs and tells to 'buck up.' Their mothers nod and smile and openly admire him; and I--well, I am happy and want everyone else to be happy."

CHAPTER XXII.

MEN AS TOWERS.

It was May morning, and Taffy made one of the group gathered on the roof of Magdalen Tower. In the groves below and across the river meadows all the birds were singing together. Beyond the glimmering suburbs, St. Clement's and Cowley St. John, over the dark rise by Bullingdon Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait, poised on her nether horn. Below her the morning sky waited, clean and virginal, letting her veil of mist slip lower and lower until it rested in folds upon Shotover. While it dropped a shaft of light tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high above Taffy's head, turning the dark side of the turrets to purple and casting lilac shadows on the surplices of the choir. For a moment the whole dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western sky, and melted and was gone as a flood of gold broke on the eastward-turned faces.

The clock below struck five and ceased. There was a sudden baring of heads; a hush; and gently, borne aloft on boys' voices, clear and strong, rose the first notes of the hymn--

"Te Deum Patrem colimus, Te laudibus prosequimur, Qui corpus cibo reficis, Coelesti mentem gratia."

In the pauses Taffy heard, faint and far below, the noise of cowhorns blown by the street boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond the bridge. Close beside him a small urchin of a chorister was singing away with the face of an ecstatic seraph; whence that ecstasy arose the urchin would have been puzzled to tell. There flashed into Taffy's brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring-- sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation after nation prostrating itself and arising to join the chant-- "the differing world's agreeing sacrifice." Yes, it was Praise that made men brothers; Praise, the creature's first and last act of homage to his Creator; Praise that made him kin with the angels.

Praise had lifted this tower; had expressed itself in its soaring pinnacles; and he for the moment was incorporate with the tower and part of its builder's purpose. "Lord, make men as towers!"--he remembered his father's prayer in the field by Tewkesbury, and at last he understood. "All towers carry a lamp of some kind"--why, of course they did. He looked about him. The small chorister's face was glowing--

"Triune Deus, hominum Salutis auctor optime, Immensum hoc mysterium Ovante lingua canimus!"

Silence--and then with a shout the tunable bells broke forth, rocking the tower. Someone seized Taffy's college cap and sent it spinning over the battlements. Caps? For a second or two they darkened the sky like a flock of birds. A few gowns followed, expanding as they dropped, like clumsy parachutes. The company--all but a few severe dons and their friends--tumbled laughing down the ladder, down the winding stair, and out into sunshine. The world was pagan after all.

At breakfast Taffy found a letter on his table, addressed in his mother's hand. As a rule she wrote twice a week, and this was not one of the usual days for hearing from her. But nothing was too good to happen that morning. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the letter and broke the seal.

"My dearest boy," it ran, "I want you home at once to consult with me. Something has happened (forgive me, dear, for not preparing you; but the blow fell on me yesterday so suddenly)--something which makes it doubtful, and more than doubtful, that you can continue at Oxford.

And something else _they say_ has happened which I will never believe in unless I hear it from my boy's lips. I have this comfort, at any rate, that he will never tell me a falsehood. This is a matter which cannot be explained by letter, and cannot wait until the end of term.

Come home quickly, dear; for until you are here I can have no peace of mind."

So once again Taffy travelled homewards by the night mail.

"Mother, it's a lie!"

Taffy's face was hot, but he looked straight into his mother's eyes.

She too was rosy-red: being ever a shamefast woman. And to speak of these things to her own boy--

"Thank G.o.d!" she murmured, and her fingers gripped the arms of her chair.

"It's a lie! Where is the girl?"

"She is in the workhouse, I believe. I don't know who spread it, or how many have heard. But Honoria believes it."

"Honoria! She cannot--" He came to a sudden halt. "But, mother, even supposing Honoria believes it, I don't see--"

He was looking straight at her. Her eyes sank. Light began to break in on him.

"Mother!"

Humility did not look up.

"Mother! Don't tell me that she--that Honoria--"

"She made us promise--your father and me. . . . G.o.d knows it did no more than repay what your father had suffered. . . . Your future was everything to us. . . ."

"And I have been maintained at Oxford by her money," he said, pausing in his bitterness on every word.

"Not by that only, Taffy! There was your scholarship . . . and it was true about my savings on the lace-work. . . ."

But he brushed her feeble explanations away with a little gesture of impatience. "Oh why, mother?--Oh why?"

She heard him groan and stretched out her arms.

"Taffy, forgive me--forgive us! We did wrongly, I see--I see it as plain now as you. But we did it for your sake."

"You should have told me. I was not a child. Yes, yes, you should have told me."

Yes; there lay the truth. They had treated him as a child when he was no longer a child. They had swathed him round with love, forgetting that boys grow and demand to see with their own eyes and walk on their own feet. To every mother of sons there comes sooner or later the sharp lesson which came to Humility that morning; and few can find any defence but that which Humility stammered, sitting in her chair and gazing piteously up at the tall youth confronting her: "I did it for your sake." Be pitiful, oh accusing sons, in that hour! For, terrible as your case may be against them, your mothers are speaking the simple truth.

Taffy took her hand. "The money must be paid back, every penny of it."

"Yes, dear."

"How much?"

Humility kept a small account-book in the work-box beside her.