The Case of Richard Meynell Part 31

After what seemed to her an age, she heard her mother's step, and the Rector following. Catharine stood again beside her daughter, brus.h.i.+ng away at last a few quiet tears.

"You oughtn't to face this any more, indeed you oughtn't," said Meynell, with urgency, as he joined them. "Tell her so, Miss Mary. But she has been doing wonders. My people bless her!"

He held out his hand, involuntarily, and Catharine placed hers in it.

Then, seeing a small crowd already collected in the street, he hurried out to speak to them.

Meanwhile evening had fallen, a late September evening, shot with gold and purple. Behind the village the yellow stubbles stretched up to the edge of the Chase and drifts of bluish smoke from the colliery chimneys hung in the still air.

Meynell, standing on the raised footpath above the crowd, gave notice that a special service of mourning would be held in the church that evening. The meeting of the Church Council would of course be postponed.

During his few words Mary made her way to the farther edge of the gathering, looking over it toward the speaker. Behind him ran the row of cottages, and in the doorway opposite she saw her mother, with her arm tenderly folded round a sobbing girl, the sister of one of the dead. The sudden tranquillity, the sudden pause from tumult and anguish seemed to draw a "wind-warm s.p.a.ce" round Mary, and she had time, for a moment, to think of herself and the strangeness of this tragic day.

How amazing that her mother should be here at all. This meeting of the Reformers' League to which she had insisted on coming--as a spectator of course, and with the general public--what did it mean? Mary did not yet know, long as she had pondered it.

How beautiful was the lined face!--so pale in the golden dusk, in its heavy frame of black. Mary could not take her eyes from it. It betrayed an animation, a pa.s.sion of life, which had been foreign to it for months.

In these few crowded hours, when every word and action had been simple, instructive, inevitable; love to G.o.d and man working at their swiftest and purest; through all the tragedy and the horror some burden seemed to have dropped from Catharine's soul. She met her daughter's eyes, and smiled.

When Meynell had finished, the crowd silently drifted away, and he came back to the Elsmeres. They noticed the village fly coming toward them--saw it stop in the roadway.

"I sent for it," Meynell explained rapidly. "You mustn't let your mother do any more. Look at her! Please, will you both go to the Rectory? My cook will give you tea; I have let her know. Then the fly will take you home."

They protested in vain--must indeed submit. Catharine flushed a little at being so commanded; but there was no help for it.

"I _would_ like to come and show you my den!" said Meynell, as he put them into the carriage. "But there's too much to do here."

He pointed sadly to the cottages, shut the door, and they were off.

During the short drive Catharine sat rather stiffly upright. Saint as she was, she was accustomed to have her way.

They drove into the dark shrubbery that lay between the Rectory and the road. At the door of the little house stood Anne in a white cap and clean ap.r.o.n. But the white cap sat rather wildly on its owner's head; nor would she take any interest in her visitors till she had got from them a fuller account of the tumult at the pit than had yet reached her, and a.s.surances that Meynell's wound was but slight. But when these were given she pounced upon Catharine.

"Eh, but you're droppin'!"

And with many curious looks at them she hurried them into the study, where a hasty clearance had been made among the books, and a tea-table spread.

She bustled away to bring the tea.

Then exhaustion seized on Catharine. She submitted to be put on the sofa after it had been cleared of its pile of books; and Mary sat by her a while, holding her hands. Death and the agony of broken hearts overshadowed them.

But then the dogs came in, discreet at first, and presently--at scent of currant cake--effusively friendly. Mary fed them all, and Catharine watched the colour coming back to her face, and the dumb sweetness in the gray eyes.

Presently, while her mother still rested, Mary took courage to wander round the room, looking at the books, the photographs on the walls, the rack of pipes, the carpenter's bench, and the panels of half-finished carving. Timidly, yet eagerly, she breathed in the message it seemed to bring her from its owner--of strenuous and frugal life. Was that half-faded miniature of a soldier his father--and that sweet gray-haired woman his mother? Her heart thrilled to each discovery.

Then Anne invaded them, for conversation, and while Catharine, unable to hide her fatigue, lay speechless, Anne chattered about her master. Her indignation was boundless that any hand could be lifted against him in his own parish. "Why he strips himself bare for them, he does!"

And--with Mary unconsciously leading her--out came story after story, in the racy Mercian vernacular, ill.u.s.trating a good man's life, and all

His little nameless unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

As they drove slowly home through the sad village street they perceived Henry Barron calling at some of the stricken houses. The squire was always punctilious, and his condolences might be counted on. Beside him walked a young man with a jaunty step, a bored sallow face, and a long moustache which he constantly caressed. Mary supposed him to be the squire's second son, "Mr. Maurice," whom n.o.body liked.

Then the church, looming through the dusk; lights s.h.i.+ning through its fine perpendicular windows, and the sound of familiar hymns surging out into the starry twilight.

Catharine turned eagerly to her companion.

"Shall we go in?"

The emotion of one to whom religious utterance is as water to the thirsty spoke in her voice. But Mary caught and held her.

"No, dearest, no!--come home and rest." And when Catharine had yielded, and they were safely past the lighted church, Mary breathed more freely.

Instinctively she felt that certain barriers had gone down before the tragic tumult, the human action of the day; let well alone!

And for the first time, as she sat in the darkness, holding her mother's hand, and watching the blackness of the woods file past under the stars, she confessed her love to her own heart--trembling, yet exultant.

Meanwhile in the crowded church, men and women who had pa.s.sed that afternoon through the extremes of hate and sorrow unpacked their hearts in singing and prayer. The hymns rose and fell through the dim red sandstone church--symbol of the endless plaint of human life, forever clamouring in the ears of Time; and Meynell's address, as he stood on the chancel steps, almost among the people, the disfiguring strips of plaster on the temple and brow sharply evident between the curly black hair and the dark hollows of the eyes, sank deep into grief-stricken souls. It was the plain utterance of a man, with the prophetic gift, speaking to human beings to whom, through years of checkered life, he had given all that a man can give of service and of soul. He stood there as the living expression of their conscience, their better mind, conceived as the mysterious voice of a Divine power in man; and in the name of that Power, and its direct message to the human soul embodied in the tale we call Christianity, he bade them repent their bloodthirst, and hope in G.o.d for their dead. He spoke amid weeping; and from that night forward one might have thought his power unshakeable, at least among his own people.

But there were persons in the church who remained untouched by it. In the left aisle Hester sat a little apart from her sisters, her hard, curious look ranging from the preacher through the crowded benches. She surveyed it all as a spectacle, half thrilled, half critical. And at the western end of the aisle the squire and his son stood during the greater part of the service, showing plainly by their motionless lips and folded arms that they took no part in what was going on.

Father and son walked home together in close conversation.

And two days later the first anonymous letter in the Meynell case was posted in Markborough, and duly delivered the following morning to an address in Upcote Minor.

CHAPTER XI

"What on earth can Henry Barron desire a private interview with me about?" said Hugh Flaxman looking up from his letters, as he and his wife sat together after breakfast in Mrs. Flaxman's sitting-room.

"I suppose he wants subscriptions for his heresy hunt? The Church party seem to be appealing for funds in most of the newspapers."

"I should have thought he knew I am not prepared to support him," said Flaxman quietly.

"Where are you, old man?" His wife laid a caressing hand on his shoulder--"I don't really quite know."

Flaxman smiled at her.

"You and I are not theologians, are we, darling?" He kissed the hand. "I don't find myself prepared to swear to Meynell's precise 'words' any more than I was to Robert's. But I am ready to fight to prevent his being driven out."

"So am I!" said Rose, erect, with her hands behind her.

"We want all sorts."

"Ye-es," said Rose doubtfully. "I don't think I want Mr. Barron."