The Case of Richard Meynell Part 6

"Mrs. Bateson--come to your husband--he is dying!"

The woman, deadly white, threw back her head proudly. But Meynell laid a peremptory hand on her arm.

"I command you--in G.o.d's name. Come!"

A struggle shook her. She yielded suddenly--and began to cry. Meynell patted her on the shoulder as he might have patted a child, said kind, soothing things, gave her her husband's message, and finally drew her from the room.

She went upstairs, Meynell following, anxious about the physical result of the meeting, and ready to go for the doctor at a moment's notice.

The door at the top of the stairs was open. The dying man lay on his side, gazing toward it, and gauntly illumined by the rising light.

The woman went slowly forward, drawn by the eyes directed upon her.

"I thowt tha'd come!" said Bateson, with a smile.

She sat down upon the bed, crouching, emaciated; at first motionless and voiceless; a spectacle little less piteous, little less deathlike, than the man on the pillows. He still smiled at her, in a kind of triumph; also silent, but his lips trembled. Then, groping, she put out her hand--her disfigured, toil-worn hand--and took his, raising it to her lips. The touch of his flesh seemed to loosen in her the fountains of the great deep. She slid to her knees and kissed him--enfolding him with her arms, the two murmuring together.

Meynell went out into the dawn. His mystical sense had beheld the Lord in that small upper room; had seen as it were the sacred hands breaking to those two poor creatures the sacrament of love. His own mind was for the time being tranquillized. It was as though he said to himself, "I know that trouble will come back--I know that doubts and fears will pursue me again; but this hour--this blessing--is from G.o.d!"...

The sun was high in a dewy world, already busy with its first labours of field and mine, when Meynell left the cottage. The church clock was on the stroke of eight.

He pa.s.sed down the village street, and reached again the little gabled house which he had pa.s.sed the night before. As he approached, there was a movement in the garden. A lady, who was walking among the roses, holding up her gray dress from the dew, turned and hastened toward the gate.

"Please come in! You must be tired out. The gardener told me he'd seen you about. We've got some coffee ready for you."

Meynell looked at the speaker in smiling astonishment.

"What are you up for at this hour?"

"Why shouldn't I be up? Look how lovely it is! I have a friend with me, and I want to introduce you."

Miss Puttenham opened her garden gate and drew in the Rector. Behind her among the roses Meynell perceived another lady--a girl, with bright reddish hair.

"Mary!" said Miss Puttenham.

The girl approached. Meynell had an impression of mingled charm and reticence as she gave him her hand. The eyes were sweet and shy. But the unconscious dignity of bearing showed that the shyness was the shyness of strong character, rather than of mere youth and innocence.

"This is my new friend, Mary Elsmere. You've heard they're at Forked Pond?" Alice Puttenham said, smiling, as she slipped her arm round the girl. "I captured her for the night, while Mrs. Elsmere went to town. I want you to know each other."

"Elsmere's daughter!" thought Meynell, with a thrill, as he followed the two ladies through the open French window into the little dining-room, where the coffee was ready. And he could not take his eyes from the young face.

CHAPTER III

"I am in love with the house--I adore the Chase--I like heretics--and I don't think I'm ever going home again!"

Mrs. Flaxman as she spoke handed a cup of tea to a tall gentleman, Louis Manvers by name, the possessor of a long, tanned countenance; of thin iron-gray hair, descending toward the shoulders; of a drooping moustache, and eyes that mostly studied the carpet or the knees of their owner. A shy, laconic person at first sight, with the manner of one to whom conversation, of the drawing-room kind, was little more than a series of doubtful experiments, that seldom or never came off.

Mrs. Flaxman, on the other hand, was a pretty woman of forty, still young and slender, in spite of two boys at Eton, one of them seventeen, and in the Eleven; and her talk was as rash and rapid as that of her companion was the reverse. Which perhaps might be one of the reasons why they were excellent friends, and always happy in each other's society.

Mr. Manvers overlooked a certain challenge that Mrs. Flaxman had thrown out, took the tea provided, and merely inquired how long the rebuilding of the Flaxmans' own house would take. For it appeared that they were only tenants of Maudeley House--furnished--for a year.

Mrs. Flaxman replied that only the British workman knew. But she looked upon herself as homeless for two years, and found the prospect as pleasant as her husband found it annoying.

"As if life was long enough to spend it in one county, and one house and park! I have shaken all my duties from me like old rags. No more school-treats, no more bean-feasts, no more hospital committees, for two whole years! Think of it! Hugh, poor wretch, is still Chairman of the County Council. That's why we took this place--it is within fifty miles.

He has to motor over occasionally. But I shall make him resign that, next year. Then we are going for six months to Berlin--that's for music--_my_ show! Then we take a friend's house in British East Africa, where you can see a lion kill from the front windows, and zebras stub up your kitchen garden. That's Hugh's show. Then of course there'll be j.a.pan--and by that time there'll be airs.h.i.+ps to the North Pole, and we can take it on our way home!"

"Souvent femme varie!" Mr. Manvers raised a pair of surprisingly shrewd eyes from the carpet. "I remember the years when I used to try and dig you and Hugh out of Bagley, and drive you abroad--without the smallest success."

"Those were the years when one was moral and well-behaved! But everybody who is worth anything goes a little mad at forty. I was forty last week"--Rose Flaxman gave an involuntary sigh--"I can't get over it."

"Ah, well, it's quite time you were a little nipped by the years," said Manvers dryly. "Why should you be so much younger than anybody else in the world? When you grow old there'll be no more youth!"

Mrs. Flaxman's eyes, of a bright greenish-gray, shone gayly into his; then their owner made a displeased mouth. "You may pay me compliments as much as you like. They will not prevent me from telling you that you are one of the most slow-minded people I have ever met!"

"H'm?" said Mr. Manvers, with mild interrogation.

Rose Flaxman repeated her remark, emphasizing with a little tattoo of her teaspoon on the Chippendale tea-tray before her. Manvers studied her, smiling.

"I am entirely ignorant of the grounds of this attack."

"Oh, what hypocrisy!" cried his companion hotly. "I throw out the most tempting of all possible flies, and you absolutely refuse to rise to it."

Manvers considered.

"You expected me to rise to the word 'heretic?'"

"Of course I did! On the same principle as 'sweets to the sweet.' Who--I should like to know--should be interested in heretics if not you?"

"It entirely depends on the species," said her companion cautiously.

"There couldn't be a more exciting species," declared Mrs. Flaxman.

"Here you have a Rector of a parish simply setting up another Church of England--services, doctrines and all--off his own bat, so to speak--without a 'with your leave or by your leave'; his paris.h.i.+oners backing him up; his Bishop in a frightful taking and not the least knowing what to do; the f.a.gots all gathering to make a bonfire of him, and a great black six-foot-two Inquisitor ready to apply the match--and yet--I can't get you to take the smallest interest in it! I a.s.sure you, Hugh is _thrilled_."

Manvers laid the finger-tips of two long brown hands lightly against each other.

"Very sorry--but it leaves me quite cold. Heresy in the Church of England comes to nothing. Our heretics are never violent enough. They forget the excellent text about the Kingdom of Heaven! Now the heretics in the Church of Rome are violent. That is what makes them so far more interesting."

"This man seems to be drastic enough!"

"Oh, no!" said the other, gently but firmly incredulous. "Believe me--he will resign, or apologize--they always do."

"Believe _me_!--you don't--excuse me!--know anything about it. In the first place, Mr. Meynell has got his paris.h.i.+oners--all except a handful--behind him--"

"So had Voysey," interjected Manvers, softly.