Red Pottage Part 53

The aristocracy all hang together, whatever Selina and Ada may say.

Money don't buy everything, as the governor thinks. But if you're once in with 'em you're in."

Hugh went back to his room and locked himself in. He was a delicate man, highly strung, and he had not slept the night before. He collapsed into a chair and remained a long time, his head in his hands.

It was too horrible, this woman coming back upon him suddenly, like the ghost of some one whom he had murdered. His momentary infatuation had been clean forgotten in his overwhelming love for Rachel. His intrigue with Lady Newhaven seemed so long ago that it had been relegated to the same mental shelf in his mind as the nibbling of a certain forbidden ginger-bread when he was home for his first holidays. He could not be held responsible for either offence after this immense interval of time.

It was not he who had committed them, but that other embryo self, that envelope of flesh and sense which he was beginning to abhor, through which he had pa.s.sed before he reached himself, Hugh, the real man--the man who loved Rachel, and whom Rachel loved.

He had not flinched when he came unexpectedly on Lady Newhaven. At the sight of her a sudden pa.s.sion of anger shot up and enveloped him as in one flame from head to foot. His love for Rachel was a weapon, and he used it. He did not greatly care about his own good name, but the good name of the man whom Rachel loved was a thing to fight for. It was for her sake, not Lady Newhaven's, that he had concocted the story of the mistaken rooms. He should not have had the presence of mind if Rachel had not been concerned.

He had not finished with Lady Newhaven. He should have trouble yet with her, hideous scenes, in which the corpse of his dead l.u.s.t would be dragged up, a thing to shudder at, out of its nettly grave.

He could bear it. He must bear it. Nothing would induce him to marry Lady Newhaven, as she evidently expected. He set his teeth. "She will know the day after to-morrow," he said to himself, "when she sees my engagement to Rachel in the papers. Then she will get at me somehow, and make my life a h.e.l.l to me, while she can. And she will try and come between me and Rachel. I deserve it. I deserve anything I get. But Rachel knows, and will stick to me. I will go down to her to-morrow. I can't go on without seeing her. And she won't mind, as the engagement will be given out next day."

He became more composed at the thought of Rachel. But presently his lip quivered. It would be all right in the end. But, oh! not to have done it! Not to have done it! To have come to his marriage with a whiter past, not to need her forgiveness on the very threshold of their life together, not to have been unfaithful to her before he knew her.

What man who has disbelieved in his youth in the sanct.i.ty of Love, and then later has knelt in its Holy of Holies, has escaped that pang?

CHAPTER XLVI

There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good-fellows.h.i.+p in thee.--SHAKESPEARE

"My mind misgives me, d.i.c.k!" said the Bishop, a day or two later, as d.i.c.k joined him and his sister and Rachel at luncheon at the Palace. "I am convinced that you have been up to some mischief."

"I have just returned from Warpington, my lord. I understood it was your wish I should ride over and tell them Hester was better."

"It certainly was my wish. I'm very much obliged to you. But I remembered after you had gone that you had refused to speak to Gresley when he was over here, and I was sorry I sent you."

"I spoke to him all right," said d.i.c.k, grimly. "That was why I was so alacritous to go."

The Bishop looked steadily at him.

"Until you are my suffragan I should prefer to manage my own business with my clergy."

"Just so," said d.i.c.k, helping himself to mustard. "But, you see, I'm his cousin, and I thought it just as well to let him know quietly and dispa.s.sionately what I thought of him. So I told him I was not particular about my acquaintances. I knew lots of bad eggs out in Australia, half of them hatched in England, chaps who'd been shaved and tubbed gratis by Government--in fact, I'd a large visiting list, but that I drew the line at such a cad as him, and that he might remember I wasn't going to preach for him at any more of his little cold-water cures"--a smile hovered on d.i.c.k's crooked mouth--"or ever take any notice of him in future. That was what he wanted, my lord. You were too soft with him, if you'll excuse my saying so. But that sort of chap wants it giving him hot and strong. He doesn't understand anything else.

He gets quite beyond himself, fizzing about on his little pocket-handkerchief of a parish, thinking he is a sort of G.o.d, because no one makes it their business to keep him in his place, and rub it into him that he is an infernal fool. That is why some clergymen jaw so, because they never have it brought home to them what rot they talk.

They'd be no sillier than other men if they were only treated properly.

I was very calm, but I let him have it. I told him he was a mean sneak, and that either he was the biggest fool or the biggest rogue going, and that the mere fact of his cloth did not give him the right to do dishonest things with other people's property, though it did save him from the pounding he richly deserved. He tried to interrupt; indeed, he was tooting all the time like a fog-horn, but I did not take any notice, and I wound up by saying it was men like him who brought discredit on the Church and on the clergy, and who made the gorge rise of decent chaps like me. Yes," said d.i.c.k, after a pause, "when I left him he understood, I don't say entirely, but he had a distant glimmering. It isn't often I go on these errands of mercy, but I felt that the least I could do was to back you up, my lord. Of course, it is in little matters like this that lay helpers come in, who are not so hampered about their language as I suppose the clergy are."

The Bishop tried, he tried hard, to look severe, but his mouth twitched.

"Don't thank me," said d.i.c.k. "Nothing is a trouble where you are concerned. It was--ahem--a pleasure."

"That I can believe," said the Bishop. "Well, d.i.c.k, Providence makes use of strange instruments--the jawbone of an a.s.s has a certain Scriptural prestige. I dare say you reached poor Gresley where I failed. I certainly failed. But, if it is not too much to ask, I should regard it as a favor another time if I might be informed beforehand what direction your diocesan aid was about to take."

Dr. Brown, who often came to luncheon at the Palace, came in now. He took off his leathern driving-gloves and held his hands to the fire.

"Cold," he said. "They're skating everywhere. How is Miss Gresley?"

"She knows us to-day," said Rachel, "and she is quite cheerful."

"Does the poor thing know her book is burned?"

"No. She was speaking this morning of its coming out in the spring."

The little doctor thrust out his underlip and changed the subject.

"I travelled from Pontesbury this morning," he said, "with that man who was nearly drowned at Beaumere in the summer. I doctored him at Wilderleigh. Tall, thin, rather a fine gentleman. I forget his name."

Dr. Brown aways spoke of men above himself in the social scale as "fine gentlemen."

"Mr. Redman," said Miss Keane, the Bishop's sister, a dignified person, who had been hampered throughout life by a predilection for the wrong name, and by making engagements in illegible handwriting by last year's almanacs.

"Was it Mr. Scarlett?" said Rachel, feeling d.i.c.k's lynx eye upon her. "I was at Wilderleigh when the accident happened."

"That's the man. He got out at Southminster, and asked me which was the best hotel. No, I won't have any more, thanks. I'll go up and see Miss Gresley at once."

Rachel followed the Bishop into the library. They generally waited there together till the doctor came down.

"I don't know many young men I like better than d.i.c.k," said the Bishop.

"I should marry him if I were a young woman. I admire the way he acts up to his principles. Very few of us do. Until he has a further light on the subject, he is right to, knock a man down who insults him. And from his point of view he was justified in speaking to Mr. Gresley as he did.

I was sorely tempted to say something of that kind to him myself, but as one grows gray one realizes that one can only speak in a spirit of love.

A man of d.i.c.k's stamp will always be respected, because he does not a.s.sume virtues which belong to a higher grade than he is on at present.

But when he reaches that higher grade he will act as thoroughly upon the convictions that accompany it as he does now on his present convictions."

"He certainly would not turn the other cheek to the smiter."

"I should not advise the smiter to reckon on it. And unless it is turned from that rare sense of spiritual brotherhood it would be unmanly to turn it. To imitate the outward appearance of certain virtues is like imitating the clothes of a certain cla.s.s. It does not make us belong to the cla.s.s to dress like it. The true foundation for the spiritual life, as far as I can see it, is in the full development of our human nature with all its simple trusts and aspirations. I admire d.i.c.k's solid foundation. It will carry a building worthy of him some day. But my words of wisdom appear to be thrown away upon you. You are thinking of something else."

"I was thinking that I ought to tell you that I am engaged to be married."

The Bishop's face lit up.

"I am engaged to Mr. Scarlett. That is why he has come down here."

The Bishop's face fell. Rachel had been three days at the Palace. d.i.c.k had not allowed the gra.s.s to grow under his feet. "That admirable prompt.i.tude," the Bishop had remarked to himself, "deserves success."

"Poor, dear d.i.c.k," he said, softly.

"That is what Hester says. I told her yesterday."

"I really have a very high opinion of d.i.c.k," said the Bishop.

"So have I. If I might have two I would certainly choose him second."