Then the church, looming through the dusk; lights shining 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 passed 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 God 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."

"Certainly you do! A typical product—with just as much right to a place in English religion as Meynell—and no more."

"Hugh!—you must behave very nicely to the Bishop to-night."

"I should think I must!—considering the ominum gatherum you have asked to meet him. I really do not think you ought to have asked Meynell."

"There we must agree to differ," said Rose firmly. "Social relations in this country must be maintained—in spite of politics—in spite of religion—in spite of everything."

"That's all very well—but if you mix people too violently, you make them uncomfortable."

"My dear Hugh!—how many drawing-rooms are there?" His wife waved a vague hand toward the folding doors on her right, implying the suite of Georgian rooms that stretched away beyond them; "one for every nuance if it comes to that. If they positively won't mix I shall have to segregate them. But they will mix." Then she fell into a reverie for a moment, adding at the end of it—"I must keep one drawing-room for the Rector and Mr. Norham—"

"That I understand is what we're giving the party for. Intriguer!"

Rose threw him a cool glance.

"You may continue to play Gallio if you like. I am now a partisan."

"So I perceive. And you hope to turn Norham into one."

Rose nodded. Mr. Norham was the Home Secretary, the most important member in a Cabinet headed by a Prime Minister in rapidly failing health; to whose place, either by death or retirement it was generally expected that Edward Norham would succeed.

"Well, darling, I shall watch your manoeuvres with interest," said Flaxman, rising and gathering up his letters—"and, longo intervallo, I shall humbly do my best to assist them. Are Catherine and Mary coming?"

"Mary certainly—and, I think, Catharine. The Fox-Wiltons of course, and that mad creature Hester, who goes to Paris in a few days—and Alice Puttenham. How that sister of hers bullies her—horrid little woman! And Mr. Barron!"—Flaxman made an exclamation—"and the deaf daughter—and the nice elder son—and the unpresentable younger one—in fact the whole menagerie."

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders.

"A few others, I hope, to act as buffers."

"Heaps!" said Rose. "I have asked half the neighbourhood—our first big party. And as for the weekenders, you chose them yourself." She ran through the list, while Flaxman vainly protested that he had never in their joint existence been allowed to do anything of the kind. "But to-night you're not to take any notice of them at all. Neighbours first! Plenty of time for you to amuse yourself to-morrow. What time does Mr. Barron come?"

"In ten minutes!" said Flaxman, hastily departing, only, however, to be followed into his study by Rose, who breathed into his ear—

"And if you see Mary and Mr. Meynell colloguing—play up!"

Flaxman turned round with a start.

"I say!—is there really anything in that?"

Rose, sitting on the arm of his chair, did her best to bring him up to date. Yes—from her observation of the two—she was certain there was a good deal in it.

"And Catharine?"

Rose's eyebrows expressed the uncertainty of the situation.

"But such an odd thing happened last week! You remember the day of the accident—and the Church Council that was put off?"

"Perfectly."

"Catharine made up her mind suddenly to go to that Church Council—after not having been able to speak of Mr. Meynell or the Movement for weeks. Why—neither Mary nor I know. But she walked over from the cottage—the first time she has done it. She arrived in the village just as the dreadful thing had happened in the pit. Then of course she and the Rector took command. Nobody who knew Catharine would have expected anything else. And now she and Mary and the Rector are busy looking after the poor survivors. 'It's propinquity does it,' my dear!"

"Catharine could never—never—reconcile herself."

"I don't know," said Rose, doubtfully. "What did she want to go to that Council for?"

"Perhaps to lift up her voice?"

"No. Catharine isn't that sort. She would have suffered dreadfully—and sat still."

And with a thoughtful shake of the head, as though to indicate that the veins of meditation opened up by the case were rich and various, Rose went slowly away.

* * * * *

Then Hugh was left to his Times, and to speculations on the reasons why Henry Barron—a man whom he had never liked and often thwarted—should have asked for this interview in a letter marked "private." Flaxman made an agreeable figure, as he sat pondering by the fire, while the Times gradually slipped from his hands to the floor. And he was precisely what he looked—an excellent fellow, richly endowed with the world's good things, material and moral. He was of spare build, with grizzled hair; long-limbed, clean-shaven and gray-eyed. In general society he appeared as a person of polished manners, with a gently ironic turn of mind. His friends were more numerous and more devoted than is generally the case in middle age; and his family were rarely happy out of his company. Certain indeed of his early comrades in life were inclined to accuse him of a too facile contentment with things as they are, and a rather Philistine estimate of the value of machinery. He was absorbed in "business" which he did admirably. Not so much of the financial sort, although he was a trusted member of important boards. But for all that unpaid multiplicity of affairs—magisterial, municipal, social or charitable—which make the country gentleman's sphere Hugh Flaxman's appetite was insatiable. He was a born chairman of a county council, and a heaven-sent treasurer of a hospital.

And no doubt this natural bent, terribly indulged of late years, led occasionally to "holding forth"; at least those who took no interest in the things which interested Flaxman said so. And his wife, who was much more concerned for his social effect than for her own, was often nervously on the watch lest it should be true. That her handsome, popular Hugh should ever, even for a quarter of an hour, sit heavy on the soul even of a youth of eighteen was not to be borne; she pounced on each incipient harangue with mingled tact and decision.

But though Flaxman was a man of the world, he was by no means a worldling. Tenderly, unflinchingly, with a modest and cheerful devotion, he had made himself the stay of his brother-in-law Elsmere's harassed and broken life. His supreme and tyrannical common sense had never allowed him any delusions as to the ultimate permanence of heroic ventures like the New Brotherhood; and as to his private opinions on religious matters it is probable that not even his wife knew them. But outside the strong affections of his personal life there was at least one enduring passion in Flaxman which dignified his character. For liberty of experiment, and liberty of conscience, in himself or others, he would gladly have gone to the stake. Himself the loyal upholder of an established order, which he helped to run decently, he was yet in curious sympathy with many obscure revolutionists in many fields. To brutalize a man's conscience seemed to him worse than to murder his body. Hence a constant sympathy with minorities of all sorts; which no doubt interfered often with his practical efficiency. But perhaps it accounted for the number of his friends.

* * * * *

"We shall, I presume, be undisturbed?"

The speaker was Henry Barron; and he and Flaxman stood for a moment surveying each other after their first greeting.

"Certainly. I have given orders. For an hour if you wish, I am at your disposal."

"Oh, we shall not want so long."

Barron seated himself in the chair pointed out to him. His portly presence, in some faultlessly new and formal clothes, filled it substantially; and his colour, always high, was more emphatic than usual. Beside him, Flaxman made but a thread-paper appearance.

"I have come on an unpleasant errand"—he said, withdrawing some papers from his breast pocket—"but—after much thought—I came to the conclusion that there was no one in this neighbourhood I could consult upon a very painful matter, with greater profit—than yourself."

Flaxman made a rather stiff gesture of acknowledgment.

"May I ask you to read that?"

Barron selected a letter from the papers he held and handed it to his host.

Flaxman read it. His face changed and worked as he did so. He read it twice, turned it over to see if it contained any signature, and returned it to Barron.

"That's a precious production! Was it addressed to yourself?"

"No—to Dawes, the colliery manager. He brought it to me yesterday."

Flaxman thought a moment.

"He is—if I remember right—with yourself, one of the five aggrieved parishioners in the Meynell case?"

"He is. But he is by no means personally hostile to Meynell—quite the contrary. He brought it to me in much distress, thinking it well that we should take counsel upon it, in case other documents of the same kind should be going about."

"And you, I imagine, pointed out to him the utter absurdity of the charge, advised him to burn the letter and hold his tongue?"

Barron was silent a moment. Then he said, with slow distinctness:

"I regret I was unable to do anything of the kind." Flaxman turned sharply on the speaker.

"You mean to say you believe there is a word of truth in that preposterous story?"

"I have good reason, unfortunately, to know that it cannot at once be put aside."

Both paused—regarding each other. Then Flaxman said, in a raised accent of wonder:

"You think it possible—conceivable—that a man of Mr. Meynell's character—and transparently blameless life—should have not only been guilty of an intrigue of this kind twenty years ago—but should have done nothing since to repair it—should actually have settled down to live in the same village side by side with the lady whom the letter declares to be the mother of his child—without making any attempt to marry her—though perfectly free to do so? Why, my dear sir, was there ever a more ridiculous, a more incredible tale!"

Flaxman sprang to his feet, and with his hands in his pockets, turned upon his visitor, impatient contempt in every feature.

"Wait a moment before you judge," said Barron dryly. "Do you remember a case of sudden death in this village a few weeks ago?—a woman who returned from America to her son John Broad, a labourer living in one of my cottages—and died forty-eight hours after arrival of brain disease?"

Flaxman's brow puckered.

"I remember a report in the Post. There was an inquest—and some curious medical evidence?"

Barron nodded assent.

"By the merest chance, I happened to see that woman the night after she arrived. I went to the cottage to remonstrate on the behaviour of John Broad's boys in my plantation. She was alone in the house, and she came to the door. By the merest chance also, while we stood there, Meynell and Miss Puttenham passed in the road outside. The woman—Mrs. Sabin—was terribly excited on seeing them, and she said things which astounded me. I asked her to explain them, and we talked—alone—for nearly an hour. I admit that she was scarcely responsible, that she died within a few hours of our conversation, of brain disease. But I still do not see—I wish to heaven I did!—any way out of what she told me—when one comes to combine it with—well, with other things. But whether I should finally have decided to make any use of the information I am not sure. But unfortunately"—he pointed to the letter still in Flaxman's hand—"that shows me that other persons—persons unknown to me—are in possession of some, at any rate, of the facts—and therefore that it is now vain to hope that we can stifle the thing altogether."

"You have no idea who wrote the letter?" said Flaxman, holding it up.

"None whatever," was the emphatic reply.

"It is a disguised hand"—mused Flaxman—"but an educated one—more or less. However—we will return presently to the letter. Mrs. Sabin's communication to you was of a nature to confirm the statements contained in it?"

"Mrs. Sabin declared to me that having herself—independently—become aware of certain facts, while she was a servant in Lady Fox-Wilton's employment, that lady—no doubt in order to ensure her silence—took her abroad with herself and her young sister, Miss Alice, to a place in France she had some difficulty in pronouncing—it sounded to me like Grenoble; that there Miss Puttenham became the mother of a child, which passed thenceforward as the child of Sir Ralph and Lady Fox-Wilton, and received the name of Hester. She herself nursed Miss Puttenham, and no doctor was admitted. When the child was two months old, she accompanied the sisters to a place on the Riviera, where they took a villa. Here Sir Ralph Wilton, who was terribly broken and distressed by the whole thing, joined them, and he made an arrangement with her by which she agreed to go to the States and hold her tongue. She wrote to her people in Upcote—she had been a widow for some years—that she had accepted a nurse's situation in the States, and Sir Ralph saw her off from Genoa for New York. She seems to have married again in the States; and in the course of years to have developed some grievance against the Fox-Wiltons which ultimately determined her to come home. But all this part of her story was so excited and incoherent that I could make nothing of it. Nor does it matter very much to the subject—the real subject—we are discussing."

Flaxman, who was standing in front of the speaker, intently listening, made no immediate reply. His eyes—half absently—considered the man before him. In Barron's aspect and tone there was not only the pompous self-importance of the man possessed of exclusive and sensational information; there were also indications of triumphant trains of reasoning behind that outraged his listener.

"What has all this got to do with Meynell?" said Flaxman abruptly.

Barron cleared his throat.

"There was one occasion"—he said slowly—"and one only, on which the ladies at Grenoble—we will say it was Grenoble—received a visitor. Miss Puttenham was still in her room. A gentleman arrived, and was admitted to see her. Mrs. Sabin was bundled out of the room by Lady Fox-Wilton. But it was a small wooden house, and Mrs. Sabin heard a good deal. Miss Puttenham was crying and talking excitedly. Mrs. Sabin was certain from what, according to her, she could not help overhearing, that the man—"

"Must one go into this back-stairs story?" asked Flaxman, with repulsion.

"As you like," said Barron, impassively. "I should have thought it was necessary." He paused, looking quietly at his questioner.

Flaxman restrained himself with some difficulty.

"Did the woman have any real opportunity of seeing this visitor?"

"When he went away, he stood outside the house talking to Lady Fox-Wilton. Mrs. Sabin was at the window, behind the lace curtains, with the child in her arms. She watched him for some minutes."

"Well?" said Flaxman sharply.

"She had never seen him before, and she never saw him again, until—such at least was her own story—from the door of her son's cottage, while I was with her, she saw Miss Puttenham—and Meynell—standing in the road outside."

Flaxman took a turn along the room, and paused.

"You admit that she was ill at the time she spoke to you—and in a distracted, incoherent state?"

"Certainly I admit it." Barron drew himself erect, with a slight frown, as though tacitly protesting against certain suggestions in Flaxman's manner and voice. "But now let us look at another line of evidence. You as a newcomer are probably quite unaware of the gossip there has always been in this neighbourhood, ever since Sir Ralph Wilton's death, on the subject of Sir Ralph's will. That will in a special paragraph committed Hester Fox-Wilton to Richard Meynell's guardianship in remarkable terms; no provision whatever was made for the girl under Sir Ralph's will, and it is notorious that he treated her quite differently from his other children. From the moment also of the French journey, Sir Ralph's character and temper appeared to change. I have inquired of a good many persons as to this; of course with absolute discretion. He was a man of narrow Evangelical opinions"—at the word "narrow" Flaxman threw a sudden glance at the speaker—"and of strict veracity. My belief is that his later life was darkened by the falsehood to which he and his wife committed themselves. Finally, let me ask you to look at the young lady herself; at the extraordinary difference between her and her supposed family; at her extraordinary likeness—to the Rector."

Flaxman raised his eyebrows at the last words, his aspect expressing disbelief and disgust even more strongly than before. Barron glanced at him, and then, after a moment, resumed in another manner, loftily explanatory:

"I need not say that personally I find myself mixed up in such a business with the utmost reluctance."

"Naturally," put in Flaxman dryly. "The risks attaching to it are simply gigantic."

"I am aware of it. But as I have already pointed out to you, by some strange means—connected I have no doubt with the woman, Judith Sabin, though I cannot throw any light upon them—the story is no longer in my exclusive possession, and how many people are already aware of it and may be aware of it we cannot tell. I thought it well to come to you in the first instance, because I know that—you have taken some part lately—in Meynell's campaign."

"Ah!" thought Flaxman—"now we've come to it!"

Aloud he said:

"By which I suppose you mean that I am a subscriber to the Reform Fund, and that I have become a personal friend of Meynell's? You are quite right. Both my wife and I greatly like and respect the Rector." He laid stress on the words.

"It was for that very reason—let me repeat—that I came to you. You have influence with Meynell; and I want to persuade you, if I can, to use it." The speaker paused a moment, looking steadily at Flaxman. "What I venture to suggest is that you should inform him of the stories that are now current. It is surely just that he should be informed. And then—we have to consider the bearings of this report on the unhappy situation in the diocese. How can we prevent its being made use of? It would be impossible. You know what the feeling is—you know what people are. In Meynell's own interest, and in that of the poor lady whose name is involved with his in this scandal, would it not be desirable in every way that he should now quietly withdraw from this parish and from the public contest in which he is engaged? Any excuse would be sufficient—health—overwork—anything. The scandal would then die out of itself. There is not one of us—those on Meynell's side, or those against him—who would not in such a case do his utmost to stamp it out. But—if he persists—both in living here, and in exciting public opinion as he is now doing—the story will certainly come out! Nothing can possibly stop it."

Barron leant back and folded his arms. Flaxman's eyes sparkled. He felt an insane desire to run the substantial gentleman sitting opposite to the door and dismiss him with violence. But he restrained himself.

"I am greatly obliged to you for your belief in the power of my good offices," he said, with a very frosty smile, "but I am afraid I must ask to be excused. Of course if the matter became serious, legal action would be taken very promptly."

"How can legal action be taken?" interrupted Barron roughly. "Whatever may be the case with regard to Meynell and her identification of him, Judith Sabin's story is true. Of that I am entirely convinced."

But he had hardly spoken before he felt that he had made a false step. Flaxman's light blue eyes fixed him.

"The story with regard to Miss Puttenham?"

"Precisely."

"Then it comes to this: Supposing that woman's statement to be true, the private history of a poor lady who has lived an unblemished life in this village for many years is to be dragged to light—for what? In order—excuse my plain speaking—to blackmail Richard Meynell, and to force him to desist from the public campaign in which he is now engaged? These are hardly measures likely, I think, to commend themselves to some of your allies, Mr. Barron!"

Barron had sprung up in his chair.

"What my allies may or may not think is nothing to me. I am of course guided by my own judgment and conscience. And I altogether protest against the word you have just employed. I came to you, Mr. Flaxman, I can honestly say, in the interests of peace!—in the interests of Meynell himself."

"But you admit that there is really no evidence worthy of the name connecting Meynell with the story at all!" said Flaxman, turning upon him. "The crazy impression of a woman dying of brain disease—some gossip about Sir Ralph's will—a likeness that many people have never perceived! What does it amount to? Nothing!—nothing at all!—less than nothing!"

"I can only say that I disagree with you." The voice was that of a rancorous obstinacy at last unveiled. "I believe that the woman's identification was a just one—though I admit that the proof is difficult. But then perhaps I approach the matter in one way, and you in another. A man, Mr. Flaxman, in my belief, does not throw over the faith of Christ for nothing! No! Such things are long prepared. Conscience, my dear sir, conscience breaks down first. The man becomes a hypocrite in his private life before he openly throws off the restraints of religion. That is the sad sequence of events. I have watched it many times."

Flaxman had grown rather white. The man beside him seemed to him a kind of monstrosity. He thought of Meynell, of the eager refinement, the clean idealism, the visionary kindness of the man—and compared it with the "muddy vesture," mental and physical, of Meynell's accuser.

Nevertheless, as he held himself in with difficulty he began to perceive more plainly than he had yet done some of the intricacies of the situation.

"I have nothing to do," he said, in a tone that he endeavoured to make reasonably calm, "nor has anybody, with generalization of that kind, in a case like this. The point is—could Meynell, being what he is, what we all know him to be, have not only betrayed a young girl, but have then failed to do her the elementary justice of marrying her? And the reply is that the thing is incredible!"

"You forget that Meynell was extremely poor, and had his brothers to educate—"

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders in laughing contempt.

"Meynell desert the mother of his child—because of poverty—because of his brothers' education!—Meynell! You have known him some years—I only for a few months. But go into the cottages here—talk to the people—ask them, not what he believes, but what he is—what he has been to them. Get one of them, if you can, to credit this absurdity!"

"The Rector's intimate friendship with Miss Puttenham has long been an astonishment—sometimes a scandal—to the village!" exclaimed Barron, doggedly.

Flaxman stared at him in a blank amazement, then flushed. He took a turn up and down the room, after which he returned to the fireside, composed. What was the use of arguing with such a disputant? He felt as though the mere conversation were an insult to Meynell, in which he was forced to participate.

He took a seat deliberately, and put on his magisterial manner, which, however, was much more delicately and unassumingly authoritative than that of other men.

"I think we had better clear up our ideas. You bring me a story—a painful story—concerning a lady with whom we are both acquainted, which may or may not be true. Whether it is true or not is no concern of ours. Neither you nor I have anything to do with it, and legal penalties would certainly follow the diffusion of it. You invite me to connect with it the name of a man for whom I have the deepest respect and admiration; who bears an absolutely stainless record; and you threaten to make use of the charge in connection with the heresy trials now coming on. Now let me give you my advice—for what it may be worth. I should say—as you have asked my opinion—have nothing whatever to do with the matter! If anybody else brings you anonymous letters, tell them something of the law of libel—and something too of the guilt of slander! After all, with a little good will, these are matters that are as easily quelled as raised. A charge so preposterous has only to be firmly met to die away. It is your influence, and not mine, which is important in this matter. You are a permanent resident, and I a mere bird of passage. And"—Flaxman's countenance kindled—"let me just remind you of this: if you want to strengthen Meynell's cause—if you want to win him thousands of new adherents—you have only to launch against him a calumny which is sure to break down—and will inevitably recoil upon you!"

The two men had risen. Barron's face, handsome in feature, save for some thickened lines and the florid tint of the cheeks, had somehow emptied itself of expression while Flaxman was speaking.

"Your advice is no doubt excellent," he said quietly, as he buttoned his coat, "but it is hardly practical. If there is one anonymous letter, there are probably others. If there are letters—there is sure to be talk—and talk cannot be stopped. And in time everything gets into the newspapers."

Flaxman hesitated a moment. Something warned him not to push matters to extremities—to make no breach with Barron—to keep him in play.

"I admit, of course, if this goes beyond a certain point it may be necessary to go to Meynell—it may be necessary for Meynell to go to his Bishop. But at present, if you desire to suppress the thing, you have only to keep your own counsel—and wait. Dawes is a good fellow, and will, I am sure, say nothing. I could, if need be, speak to him myself. I was able to get his boy into a job not long ago."

Barron straightened his shoulders slowly.

"Should I be doing right—should I be doing my duty—in assisting to suppress it—always supposing that it could be suppressed—my convictions being what they are?"

Then—suddenly—it was borne in on Flaxman that in the whole interview there had been no genuine desire whatever on Barron's part for advice and consultation. He had come determined on a certain course, and the object of the visit had been, in truth, merely to convey to one of Meynell's supporters a hint of the coming attack, and some intimation of its strength. The visit had been in fact a threat—a move in Barron's game.

"That, of course, is a question which I cannot presume to decide," said Flaxman, with cold politeness. His manner changed instantly. Peremptorily dismissing the subject, he became, on the spot, the mere suave and courteous host of an interesting house; he pointed out the pictures and the view, and led the way to the hall.

As he took leave, Barron stiffly intimated that he should not himself be able to attend Mrs. Flaxman's party that evening; but his daughter and sons hoped to have the pleasure of obeying her invitation.

"Delighted to see them," said Flaxman, standing in the doorway, with his hands in his pockets. "Do you know Edward Norham?"

"I have never met him."

"A splendid fellow—likely I think to be the head of the Ministry before the year's out. My wife was determined to bring him and Meynell together. He seems to have the traditional interest in theology without which no English premier is complete."

Pursued by this parting shot, Barron retired, and Flaxman went back thoughtfully to his wife's sitting-room. Should he tell her? Certainly. Her ready wits and quick brain were indispensable in the battle that might be coming. Now that he was relieved from Barron's bodily presence, he was by no means inclined to pooh-pooh the communication which had been made to him.

As he approached his wife's door he heard voices. Catharine! He remembered that she was to lunch and spend the day with Rose. Now what to do! Devoted as he was to his sister-in-law, he was scarcely inclined to trust her with the incident of the morning.

But as soon as he opened the door, Rose ran upon him, drew him in and closed it. Catharine was sitting on the sofa—with a pale, kindled look—a letter in her hand.

"Catharine has had an abominable letter, Hugh!—the most scandalous thing!"

Flaxman took it from Catharine's hand, looked it through, and turned it over. The same script, a little differently disguised, and practically the same letter, as that which had been shown him in the library! But it began with a reference to the part which Mrs. Elsmere and her daughter had played in the terrible accident of the preceding week, which showed that the rogue responsible for it was at least a rogue possessed of some local and personal information.

Flaxman laid it down, and looked at his sister-in-law.

"Well?"

Catharine met his eyes with the clear intensity of her own.

"Isn't it hard to understand how anybody can do such a thing as that?" she said, with her patient sigh—the sigh of an angel grieving over the perversity of men.

Flaxman dropped on the sofa beside her.

"You feel with me, that it is a mere clumsy attempt to injure Meynell, in the interests of the campaign against him?" he asked her, eagerly.

"I don't know about that," said Catharine slowly—a shining sadness in her look. "But I do know that it could only injure those who are trying to fight his errors—if it could be supposed that they had stooped to such weapons!"

"You dear woman!" cried Flaxman, impulsively, and he raised her hand to his lips. Catharine and Rose looked their astonishment. Whereupon he gave them the history of the hour he had just passed through.



CHAPTER XII

But although what one may call the natural freemasonry of the children of light had come in to protect Catharine from any touch of that greedy credulity which had fastened on Barron; though she and Rose and Hugh Flaxman were at one in their contemptuous repudiation of Barron's reading of the story, the story itself, so far as it concerned Alice Puttenham and Hester, found in all their minds but little resistance.

"It may—it may be true," said Catharine gently. "If so—what she has gone through! Poor, poor thing!"

And as she spoke—her thin fingers clasped on her black dress, the nun-like veil falling about her shoulders, her aspect had the frank simplicity of those who for their Lord's sake have faced the ugly things of life.

"What a shame—what an outrage—that any of us here should know a word about it!" cried Rose, her small foot beating on the floor, the hot colour in her cheek. "How shall we ever be able to face her to-night?"

Flaxman started.

"Miss Puttenham is coming to-night?"

"Certainly. She comes with Mary—who was to pick her up—after dinner."

Flaxman patrolled the room a little, in meditation. Finally he stopped before his wife.

"You must realize, darling, that we may be all walking on the edge of a volcano to-night."

"If only Henry Barron were!—and I might be behind to give the last little chiquenade!" cried Rose.

Flaxman devoutly echoed the wish.

"But the point is—are there any more of these letters out? If so, we may hear of others to-night. Then—what to do? Do I make straight for Meynell?"

They pondered it.

"Impossible to leave Meynell in ignorance," said Flaxman—"if the thing spreads Meynell of course would be perfectly justified—in his ward's interests—in denying the whole matter absolutely, true or no. But can he?—with Barron in reserve—using the Sabin woman's tale for his own purposes?"

Catharine's face, a little sternly set, showed the obscure conflict behind.

"He cannot say what is false," she said stiffly. "But he can refuse to answer."

Flaxman looked at her with an expression as confident as her own.

"To protect a woman, my dear Catharine—a man may say anything in the world—almost."

Catharine made no reply, but her quiet face showed she did not agree with him.

"That child Hester!" Rose emerged suddenly from a mental voyage of recollection and conjecture. "Now one understands why Lady Fox-Wilton—stupid woman!—has never seemed to care a rap for her. It must indeed be annoying to have to mother a child so much handsomer than your own."

"I think I am very sorry for Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton," said Catharine, after a moment.

Rose assented.

"Yes!—just an ordinary dull, pig-headed country gentleman confronted with a situation that only occurs in plays to which you don't demean yourself by going!—and obliged to tell and act a string of lies, when lies happen to be just one of the vices you're not inclined to! And then afterward you find yourself let in for living years and years with a bad conscience—hating the cuckoo-child, too, more and more as it grows up. Yes!—I am quite sorry for Sir Ralph!"

"By the way!"—Flaxman looked up—"Do you know I am sure that I saw Miss Fox-Wilton—with Philip Meryon—in Hewlett's spinney this morning. I came back from Markborough by a path I had never discovered before—and there, sure enough, they were. They heard me on the path, I think, and vanished most effectively. The wood is very thick. But I am sure it was they—though they were some distance from me."

Rose exclaimed.

"Naughty, naughty child: She has been absolutely forbidden to see him, the whole Fox-Wilton family have made themselves into gaolers and spies—and she just outwits them all! Poor Alice Puttenham hovers about her—trying to distract and amuse her—and has no more influence than a fly. And as for the Rector, it would be absurd, if it weren't enraging! Look at all there is on his shoulders just now—the way people appeal to him from all over England to come and speak—or consult—or organize—(I don't want to be controversial, Catharine, darling!—but there it is). And he can't make up his mind to leave Upcote for twenty-four hours till this girl is safely off the scene! He means to take her to Paris himself on Monday. I only hope he has found a proper sort of Gorgon to leave her with!"

Flaxman could not but reflect that the whole relation of Meynell to his ward might well give openings to such a scoundrel like the writer of the anonymous letters, who was certainly acquainted with local affairs. But he did not express this feeling aloud. Meanwhile Catharine, who showed an interest in Hester which surprised both him and Rose, began to question him on the subject of Philip Meryon. Meryon's mother, it seemed, had been an intimate friend of one of Flaxman's sisters, Lady Helen Varley, and Flaxman was well acquainted with the young man's most unsatisfactory record. He drew a picture of the gradual degeneracy of the handsome lad who had been the hope and delight of his warm-hearted, excitable mother; of her deepening disappointment and premature death.

"Helen kept up with him for a time, for his mother's sake, but unluckily he has put himself beyond the pale now, one way and another. It is too disastrous about this pretty child! What on earth does she see in him?"

"Simply a means of escaping from her home," said Rose—"the situation working out! But who knows whether he hasn't got a wife already? Nobody should trust this young man farther than they can see him."

"It musn't—it can't be allowed!" said Catharine, with energy. And, as she spoke, she seemed to feel again the soft bloom of Hester's young cheek against her own, just as when she had drawn the girl to her, in that instinctive caress. The deep maternity in Catharine had never yet found scope enough in the love of one child.

Then, with a still keener sense of the various difficulties rising along Meynell's path, Flaxman and Rose returned to the anxious discussion of Barron's move and how to meet it. Catharine listened, saying little; and it was presently settled that Flaxman should himself call on Dawes, the colliery manager, that afternoon, and should write strongly to Barron, putting on paper the overwhelming arguments, both practical and ethical, in favour of silence—always supposing there were no further developments.

"Tell me"—said Rose presently, when Flaxman had left the sisters alone—"Mary of course knows nothing of that letter?"

Catharine flushed.

"How could she?" She looked almost haughtily at her sister.

Rose murmured an excuse. "Would it be possible to keep all knowledge from Mary that there was a scandal—of some sort—in circulation, if the thing developed?"

Catharine, holding her head high, thought it would not only be possible, but imperative.

Rose glanced at her uncertainly. Catharine was the only person of whom she had ever been afraid. But at last she took the plunge.

"Catharine!—don't be angry with me—but I think Mary is interested in Richard Meynell."

"Why should I be angry?" said Catharine. She had coloured a little, but she was perfectly composed. With her gray hair, and her plain widow's dress, she threw her sister's charming mondanity into bright relief. But beauty—loftily understood—lay with Catharine.

"It is ill luck—his opinions!" cried Rose, laying her hand upon her sister's.

"Opinions are not 'luck,'" said Catharine, with a rather cold smile.

"You mean we are responsible for them? Perhaps we are, if we are responsible for anything—which I sometimes doubt. But you like him—personally?" The tone was almost pleading.

"I think he is a good man."

"And if—if—they do fall in love—what are we all to do?"

Rose looked half whimsically—half entreatingly at her sister.

"Wait till the case arises," said Catharine, rather sharply. "And please don't interfere. You are too fond of match-making, Rose!"

"I am—I just ache to be at it, all the time. But I wouldn't do anything that would be a grief to you."

Catharine was silent a moment. Then she said in a tone that went to the listener's heart:

"Whatever happened—will be God's will."

She sat motionless, her eyes drooped, her features a little drawn and pale; her thoughts—Rose knew it—in the past.

* * * * *

Flaxman came back from his interview with Dawes, reporting that nothing could have been in better taste or feeling than Dawes's view of the matter. As far as the Rector was concerned—and he had told Mr. Barron so—the story was ridiculous, the mere blunder of a crazy woman; and, for the rest, what had they to do in Upcote with ferreting into other people's private affairs? He had locked up the letter in case it might some time be necessary to hand it to the police, and didn't intend himself to say a word to anybody. If the thing went any further, why of course the Rector must be informed. Otherwise silence was best. He had given a piece of his mind to Mr. Barron and "didn't want to be mixed up in any such business." "As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Flaxman, I'm fighting for the Church and her Creeds—I'm not out for backbiting!"

"Nice man!"—said Rose, with enthusiasm—"Why didn't I ask him to-night!"

"But"—resumed Flaxman—"he warned me that if any letter of the kind got into the hands of a certain Miss Nairn in the village there might be trouble."

"Miss Nairn?—Miss Nairn?" The sisters looked at each other. "Oh, I know—the lady in black we saw in church the day the revolution began—a strange little shrivelled spinster-thing who lives in that house by the post-office. She quarrelled mortally with the Rector last year, because she ill-treated a little servant girl of hers, and the Rector remonstrated."

"Well, she's one of the 'aggrieved.'"

"They seem to be an odd crew! There's the old sea-captain that lives in that queer house with the single yew tree and the boarded-up window on the edge of the Heath. He's one of them. He used to come to church about once a quarter and wrote the Rector interminable letters on the meaning of Ezekiel. Then there's the publican—East—who nearly lost his license last year—he always put it down to the Rector and vowed he'd be even with him. I must say, the church in Upcote seems rather put to it for defenders!"

"In Upcote," corrected Flaxman. "That's because of Meynell's personal hold. Plenty of 'em—quite immaculate—elsewhere. However, Dawes is a perfectly decent, honest man, and grieved to the heart by the Rector's performances."

Catharine had waited silently to hear this remark, and then went away to write a letter.

"Poor darling! Will she go and call on Dawes—for sympathy?" said Flaxman, mischievously to his wife as the door closed.

"Sympathy?" Rose's face grew soft. "It's much as it was with Robert. It ought to be so simple—and it is so mixed! Nature of course ought to have endowed all unbelievers with the proper horns and tail. And there they go—stealing your heart away!—and your daughter's."

The Flaxmans and Catharine—who spent the day with her sister, before the evening party—were more and more conscious of oppression as the hours went on; as though some moral thunder hung in the air.

Flaxman asked himself again and again—"Ought I to go to Meynell at once?" and could not satisfy himself with any answer; while he, his wife, and his sister-in-law, being persons of delicacy, were all ashamed of finding themselves the possessors, against their will, of facts—supposing they were facts—to which they had no right. Meynell's ignorance—Alice Puttenham's ignorance—of their knowledge, tormented their consciences. And it added to their discomfort that they shared their knowledge with such a person as Henry Barron. However, there was no help for it.

A mild autumn day drew to its close, with a lingering gold in the west and a rising moon. The charming old house, with its faded furniture, and its out-at-elbows charm, was lit up softly, with lamps that made a dim but friendly shining in its wide spaces. It had never belonged to rich people, but always to people of taste. It boasted no Gainsboroughs or Romneys; but there were lesser men of the date, possessed of pretty talents of their own, painters and pastellists, who had tried their hands on the family, of whom they had probably been the personal friends. The originals of the portraits on the walls were known neither to history nor scandal; but their good, modest faces, their brave red or blue coats, their white gowns, and drooping feathers looked winningly out from the soft shadows of the rooms. At Maudeley, Rose wore her simplest dresses, and was astonished at the lightness of the household expenses. The house indeed had never known display, or any other luxury than space; and to live in it was to accept its tradition.

The week-enders arrived at tea-time; Mr. Norham with a secretary and a valet, much preoccupied, and chewing the fag-end of certain Cabinet deliberations in the morning; Flaxman's charming sister, Lady Helen Varley, and her husband; his elder brother, Lord Wanless, unmarried, an expert on armour, slightly eccentric, but still, in the eyes of all intriguing mothers, and to his own annoyance, more than desirable as a husband owing to the Wanless collieries and a few other trifles of the same kind; the Bishop of Markborough; Canon France and his sister; a young poet whose very delicate muse had lodged itself oddly in the frame of an athlete; a high official in the Local Government Board, Mr. Spearman, whom Rose regarded with distrust as likely to lead Hugh into too much talk about workhouses; Lady Helen's two girls just out, as dainty and well-dressed, as gayly and innocently sure of themselves and their place in life as the "classes" at their best know how to produce; and two or three youths, bound for Oxford by the end of the week, samples, these last, of a somewhat new type in that old University—combining the dash, family, and insolence of the old "tuft" or Bullingdon man, with an amazing aptitude for the classics, rare indeed among the "tufts" of old. Two out of the three had captured almost every distinction that Oxford offers; and all three had been either gated for lengthy periods or "sent down," or otherwise trounced by an angry college, puzzled by the queer connection between Irelands and Hertfords on the one hand and tipsy frolics on the other.

Meynell appeared for dinner—somewhat late. It was only with great difficulty that the Flaxmans had prevailed on him to come, for the purpose of meeting Mr. Norham. But the party within the church which, foreseeing a Modernist defeat in the church courts, was appealing to Parliament to take action, was strengthening every week; Meynell's Saturday articles in the Modernist, the paper founded by the Reformers' League, were already providing these parliamentarians with a policy and inspiration; and if the Movement were to go on swelling during the winter, the government might have to take very serious cognizance of it during the spring. Mr. Norham therefore had expressed a wish for some conversation with the Modernist leader, who happened to be Rector of Upcote; and Meynell, who had by now cut himself adrift from all social engagements, had with difficulty saved an evening.

As far as Norham was concerned Meynell would have greatly preferred to take the Home Secretary for a Sunday walk on the Chase; but he had begun to love the Flaxmans, and could not make up his mind to say No to them. Moreover, was it not more than probable that he would meet at Maudeley "one simple girl," of whom he did not dare in these strenuous days to let himself think too much?

* * * * *

So that Rose, as she surveyed her dinner table, could feel that she was maintaining the wide social traditions of England, by the mingling of as many contraries as possible. But the oil and vinegar were after all cunningly mixed, and the dinner went well. The Bishop was separated from Meynell by the length of the table, and Norham was carefully protected from Mr. Spearman, in his eyes a prince of bores, who was always bothering the Home Office.

The Bishop, who was seated beside Rose at one end of the table, noticed the black patch on Meynell's temple, and inquired its origin. Rose gave him a graphic account both of the accident and the riot. The Bishop raised his eyebrows.

"How does he contrive to live the two lives?" he said in a tone slightly acid. "If he continues to lead this Movement, he will have to give up fighting mobs and running up and down mines."

"What is going to happen to the Movement?" Rose asked him, with her most sympathetic smile. Socially and in her own house she was divinely all things to all men. But the Bishop was rather suspicious of her.

"What can happen to it but defeat? The only other alternative is the break-up of the Church. And for that, thank God, they are not strong enough."

"And no compromise is possible?"

"None. In three months Meynell and all his friends will have ceased to belong to the English Church. It is very lamentable. I am particularly sorry for Meynell himself—who is one of the best of men."

Rose felt her colour rising. She longed to ask—"But supposing England has something to say?—suppose she chooses to transform her National Church? Hasn't she the right and the power?"

But her instincts as hostess stifled her pugnacity. And the little Bishop looked so worn and fragile that she had no heart for anything but cossetting him. At the same time she noticed—as she had done before on other occasions—the curious absence of any ferocity, any smell of brimstone, in the air! How different from Robert's day! Then the presumption underlying all controversy was of an offended authority ranged against an apologetic rebellion. A tone of moral condemnation on the one side, a touch of casuistry on the other, confused the issues. And now—behind and around the combatants—the clash of equal hosts!—over ground strewn with dead assumptions. The conflict might be no less strenuous; nay! from a series of isolated struggles it had developed into a world-wide battle; but the bitterness between man and man was less.

Yes!—for the nobler spirits—the leaders and generals of each army. But what of the rank and file? And at the thought of Barron she laughed at herself for supposing that religious rancour and religious slander had died out of the world!

"Can we have some talk somewhere?" said Norham languidly, in Meynell's ear, as the gentlemen left the dining-room.

"I think Mrs. Flaxman will have arranged something," said Meynell, with a smile—detecting the weariness of the political Atlas.

And indeed Rose had all her dispositions made. They found her in the drawing-room, amid a bevy of bright gowns and comely faces, illumined by the cheerful light of a big wood fire—a circle of shimmering stuffs and gems, the blaze sparkling on the pointed slippers, the white necks and glossy hair of the girls, and on the diamonds of their mothers.

But Rose, the centre of the circle, sprang up at once, at sight of her two gros bonnets.

"The green drawing-room!" she murmured in Meynell's ear, and tripped on before them, while the incoming crowd of gentlemen, mingling with the ladies, served to mask the movement.

Not, however, before the Bishop had perceived the withdrawal of the politician and the heretic. He saw that Canon France, who followed him, had also an eye to the retreating figures.

"I trust we too shall have our audience." said the Bishop, ironically.

Canon France shrugged his shoulders, smiling.

Then his small shrewd eyes scanned the Bishop intently. Nothing in that delicate face beyond the sentiments proper to the situation?—the public situation? As to the personal emotion involved, that, the Canon knew, was for the time almost exhausted. The Bishop had suffered much during the preceding months—in his affections, his fatherly feeling toward his clergy, in his sense of the affront offered to Christ's seamless vesture of the Church. But now, France thought, pain had been largely deadened by the mere dramatic interest of the prospect ahead, by the anodyne of an immense correspondence, and of a vast increase in the business of the day, caused by the various actions pending.

Nothing else—new and disturbing—in the Bishop's mind? He moved on, chatting and jesting with the young girls who gathered round him. He was evidently a favourite with them, and with all nice women. Finally he sank into an armchair beside Lady Helen Varley, exchanging Mrs. Flaxman's cossetting for hers. His small figure was almost lost in the armchair. The firelight danced on his slender stockinged legs, on his episcopal shoe buckles, on the cross which adorned his episcopal breast, and then on the gleaming snow of his hair, above his blue eyes with their slight unearthliness, so large and flower-like in his small white face. He seemed very much at ease—throwing off all burdens.

No!—the Slander which had begun to fly through the diocese, like an arrow by night, had not yet touched the Bishop.

Nor Meynell himself?

Yet France was certain that Barron had not been idle, that he had not let it drop. "I advised him to let it drop"—he said uneasily to himself—"that was all I could do."

Then he looked round him, at the faces of the women present. He scarcely knew any of them. Was she among them—the lady of Barron's tale? He thought of the story as he might have thought of the plot of a novel. When medieval charters were not to be had, it made an interesting subject of speculation. And Barron could not have confided it to any one in the diocese, so discreet—so absolutely discreet—as he.

* * * * *

"I gather this Movement of yours is rapidly becoming formidable?" said Norham to his companion.

He spoke with the affectation of interest that all politicians in office must learn. But there was no heart in it, and Meynell wondered why the great man had desired to speak with him at all.

He replied that the growth of the Movement was certainly a startling fact.

"It is now clear that we must ultimately go to Parliament. The immediate result in the Church courts is of course not in doubt. But our hope lies in such demonstrations in the country as may induce Parliament"—he paused, laying a quiet emphasis on each word—"to reconsider—and resettle—the conditions of membership and office in the English Church."

"Good heavens!" cried Norham, throwing up his hand—"What a prospect! If that business once gets into the House of Commons, it'll have everything else out."

"Yes. It's big enough to ask for time—and take it."

Norham suppressed a slight yawn as he turned in his chair.

"The House of Commons, alas!—never shows to advantage in an ecclesiastical debate. You'd think it was in the condition of Sydney Smith with a cold—not sure whether there were nine Articles and Thirty-Nine Muses—or the other way on!"

Meynell looked at the Secretary of State in silence—his eyes twinkling. He had heard from various friends of this touch of insolence in Norham. He awaited its disappearance.

Edward Norham was a man still young; under forty indeed, though marked prematurely by hard work and hard fighting. His black hair had receded on the temples, and was obviously thinning on the crown of the head; he wore spectacles, and his shoulders had taken the stoop of office work. But the eyes behind the spectacles lost nothing that they desired to see; and the general impression was one of bull-dog strength, which could be impertinent and aggressive, and could also masque itself in a good humour and charm by no means insincere. In his political career, he was on the eve of great things; and he would owe them mainly to a power of work, supreme even in these hard-driven days. This power of work enabled him to glean in many fields, and keep his eye on many chances that his colleagues perforce neglected. The Modernist Movement was one of these chances. For years he had foreseen great changes ahead in the relations of Church and State, and this group of men seemed to be forcing the pace.

Suddenly, as his eyes perused the strong humanity of the face beside him, Norham changed his manner. He sat up and put down the paper-knife he had been teasing. As he did so there was a little crash at his elbow and something rolled on the floor.

"What's that?"

"No harm done," said Meynell, stooping—"one of our host's Greek coins. What a beauty!" He picked up the little case and the coin which had rolled out of it—a gold coin of Velia, with a head of Athene—one of the great prizes of the collector.

Norham took it with eagerness. He was a Cambridge man, and a fine scholar, and such things delighted him.

"I didn't know Flaxman cared for these things."

"He inherited them," said Meynell, pointing to the open cabinet on the table. "But he loves them too. Mrs. Flaxman always has them put out on great occasions. It seems to me they ought to have a watcher! They are quite priceless, I believe. Such things are soon lost."

"Oh!—they are safe enough here," said Norham, returning the coin to its place, with another loving look at it. Then, with an effort, he pulled himself together, and with great rapidity began to question his companion as to the details and progress of the Movement. All the facts up to date, the number of Reformers enrolled since the foundation of the League, the League's finances, the astonishing growth of its petition to Parliament, the progress of the Movement in the Universities, among the ardent and intellectual youth of the day, its spread from week to week among the clergy: these things came out steadily and clearly in Meynell's replies.

"The League was started in July—it is now October. We have fifty thousand enrolled members, all communicants in Modernist churches. Meetings and demonstrations are being arranged at this moment all over England; and in January or February there will be a formal inauguration of the new Liturgy in Dunchester Cathedral."

"Heavens!" said Norham, dropping all signs of languor. "Dunchester will venture it?"

Meynell made a sign of assent.

"It is of course possible that the episcopal proceedings against the Bishop, which, as you see, have just begun, may have been brought to a close, and that the Cathedral may be no longer at our disposal, but—"

"The Dean, surely, has power to close it!"

"The Dean has come over to us, and the majority of the Canons."

Norham threw back his head with a laugh of amazement.

"The first time in history that a Dean has been of the same opinion as his Bishop! Upon my word, the government has been badly informed or I have not kept up. I had no idea—simply no idea—that things had gone so far. Markborough of course gives us very different accounts—he and the Bishops acting with him."

"A great deal is going on which our Bishop here is quite unaware of."

"You can substantiate what you have been saying?"

"I will send you papers to-morrow morning. But of course"—added Meynell, after a pause—"a great many of us will be out of our berths, in a few months, temporarily at least. It will rest with Parliament whether we remain so!"

"The Non-Jurors of the twentieth century!" murmured Norham, with a half-sceptical intonation.

"Ah, but this is the twentieth century!"—said Meynell smiling. "And in our belief the denouement will be different."

"What will you do—you clergy—when you are deprived?"

"In the first place, it will take a long time to deprive us—and so long as there are any of us left in our livings, each will come to the help of the other."

"But you yourself?"

"I have already made arrangements for a big barn in the village"—said Meynell, smiling—"a great tithe-barn of the fifteenth century, a magnificent old place, with a forest of wooden arches, and a vault like a church. The village will worship there for a while. We shall make it beautiful!"

Norham was silent for a moment. He was stupefied by the energy, the passion of religious hope in the face beside him. Then the critical temper in him conquered his emotion, and he said, not without sarcasm:

"This is all very surprising—very interesting—but what are the ideas behind you? A thing like this cannot live without ideas—and I confess I have always thought the ideas of Liberal Christianity a rather beggarly set-out—excuse the phrase!"

"There is nothing to excuse!—the phrase fits. 'A reduced Christianity'—as opposed to a 'full Christianity'—that is the description lately given, I think, by a divinity professor. I don't quarrel with it at all. Who can care for a 'reduced' anything! But a transformed Christianity—that is another matter."

"Why 'Christianity' at all?"

Meynell looked at him in a smiling silence. He—the man of religion—was unwilling in these surroundings to play the prophet, to plunge into the central stream of argument. But Norham, the outsider and dilettante, was conscious of a kindled mind.

"That is the question to which it always seems to me there is no answer," he said easily, leaning back in his chair. "You think you can take what you like of a great historical religion and leave the rest—that you can fall back on its pre-suppositions and build it anew. But the pre-suppositions themselves are all crumbling. 'God,'—'soul,' 'free-will,' 'immortality'—even human identity—is there one of the old fundamental notions that still stands, unchallenged? What are we in the eyes of modern psychology—but a world of automata—dancing to stimuli from outside? What has become of conscience—of the moral law—of Kant's imperative—in the minds of writers like these?"

He pointed to two recent novels lying on the table, both of them brilliant glorifications of sordid forms of adultery.

Meynell's look fired.

"Ah!—but let us distinguish. We are not anarchists—as those men are. Our claim is precisely that we are, and desire to remain, a part of a Society—a definite community with definite laws—of a National Church—of the nation, that is, in its spiritual aspect. The question for which we are campaigning is as to the terms of membership in that society. But terms and conditions there must always be. The 'wild living intellect of man' must accept conditions in the Church, as we conceive it, no less than in the Church as Newman conceived it."

Norham shrugged his shoulders.

"Then why all this bother?"

"Because the conditions must be adjusted from time to time! Otherwise the church suffers and souls are lost—wantonly, without reason. But there is no church—no religion—without some venture, some leap of faith! If you can't make any leap at all—any venture—then you remain outside—and you think yourself, perhaps, entitled to run amuck—as these men do!" He pointed to the books. "But we make the venture!—we accept the great hypothesis—of faith."

The sound of voices came dimly to them from the farther rooms. Norham pointed toward them.

"What difference then between you—and your Bishop?"

"Simply that in his case—as we say—the hypothesis of faith is weighted with a vast mass of stubborn matter that it was never meant to carry—bad history, bad criticism, an out-grown philosophy. To make it carry it—in our belief—you have to fly in the face of that gradual education of the world—education of the mind, education of the conscience—which is the chief mark of God in the world. But the hypothesis of Faith, itself, remains—take it at its lowest—as rational, as defensible, as legitimate as any other!"

"What do you mean by it? God—conscience—responsibility?"

"Those are the big words!" said Meynell, smiling—"and of course the true ones. But what the saint means by it, I suppose, in the first instance, is that there is in man something mysterious, superhuman—a Life in life—which can be indefinitely strengthened, enlightened, purified, till it reveal to him the secret of the world, till it 'toss him' to the 'breast' of God!—or again, can be weakened, lost, destroyed, till he relapses into the animal. Believe it, we say! Live by it!—make the venture. Verificatur vivendo!"

* * * * *

Again the conversation paused. From the distance once more came the merry clamour of the farther drawing-room. A din of young folk, chaffing and teasing each other—a girl's defiant voice above it—outbursts of laughter. Norham, who had in him a touch of dramatic imagination, enjoyed the contrast between the gay crowd in the distance and this quiet room where he sat face to face with a visionary—surely altogether remote from the marrying, money-making, sensuous world. Yet after all the League was a big, practical, organized fact.

"What you have expressed—very finely, if I may say so—is of course the mystical creed," he replied at last, with suave politeness. "But why call it Christianity?"

As he spoke, he was conscious of a certain pride in himself. He felt complacently that he understood Meynell and appreciated him; and that hardly any of his colleagues would, or could have done so.

"Why call it Christianity?" he repeated.

"Because Christianity is this creed!—'embodied in a tale.' And mankind must have tales and symbols."

"And the life of Christ is your symbol?"

"More!—it is our Sacrament—the supreme Sacrament—to which all other symbols of the same kind lead—in which they are summed up."

"And that is why you make so much of the Eucharist?"

"It is—to us—just as full of mystical meaning, just as much the meeting-place of God and man, as to the Catholic—Roman or Anglican."

"Strange that there should be so many of you!" said Norham, after a moment, with an incredulous smile.

"Yes—that has been the discovery of the last six months. But we might all have guessed it. The fuel has been long laid—now comes the kindling, and the blaze!"

There was a pause. Then Norham said abruptly—

"Now what is it you want of Parliament?"

The two men plunged into a discussion, in which the politician became presently aware that the parish priest, the visionary, possessed a surprising amount of practical and statesman-like ability.

* * * * *

Meanwhile—a room or two away—in the great bare drawing-room, with its faded tapestries, and its warm mixture of lamplight and firelight, the evening guests had been arriving. Rose stood at the door of the drawing-room, receiving, her husband beside her, Catharine a little way behind.

"Oh!" cried Rose suddenly, under her breath, only heard by Hugh—a little sound of perturbation.

Outside, in the hall, hardly lit at intervals by oil-lamps, a group could be seen advancing; in front Alice Puttenham and Mary, and behind, the Fox-Wilton party, Hester's golden head and challenging gait drawing all eyes as she passed along.

But it was on Alice Puttenham that Rose's gaze was fixed. She came dreamily forward; and Rose saw her marked out, by the lovely oval of the face, its whiteness, its melancholy, from all the moving shapes around her. She wore a dress of black gauze over white; a little scarf of old lace lay on her shoulders; her still abundant hair was rolled back from her high brow and sad eyes. She looked very small and childish—as frail as thistledown.

And behind her, Hester's stormy beauty! Rose gave a little gulp. Then she found herself pressing a cold hand, and was conscious of sudden relief. Miss Puttenham's shy composure was unchanged. She could not have looked so—she could not surely have confronted such a gathering of neighbours and strangers, if—

No, no! The Slander—Rose, in her turn, saw it under an image, as though a dark night-bird hovered over Upcote—had not yet descended on this gentle head. With eager kindness, Hugh came forward—and Catharine. They found her a place by the fire, where presently the glow seemed to make its way to her pale cheeks, and she sat silent and amused, watching the triumph of Hester.

For Hester was no sooner in the room than, resenting perhaps the decidedly cool reception that Mrs. Flaxman had given her, she at once set to work to extinguish all the other young women there. And she had very soon succeeded. The Oxford youths, Lord Wanless, the sons of two or three neighbouring squires, they were all presently gathered about her, as thick as bees on honeycomb, recognizing in her instantly one of those beings endowed from their cradle with a double portion of sex-magic, who leave such a wild track behind them in the world.

By her chair stood poor Stephen Barron, absorbed in her every look and tone. Occasionally she threw him a word—Rose thought for pure mischief; and his whole face would light up.

In the centre of the circle round Hester stood one of the Oxford lads, a magnificent fellow, radiating health and gayety, who was trying to wear her down in one of the word-games of the day. They fought hard and breathlessly, everybody listening partly for the amusement of the game, partly for the pleasure of watching the good looks of the young creatures playing it. At last the man turned on his heel with a cry of victory.

"Beaten!—beaten!—by a hair. But you're wonderful, Miss Fox-Wilton. I never found anybody near so good as you at it before, except a man I met once at Newmarket—Philip Meryon—do you know him? Never saw a fellow so good at games. But an awfully queer fish!"

It seemed to the morbid sensitiveness of Rose that there was an instantaneous and a thrilling silence. Hester tossed her head; her colour, after the first start, ebbed away; she grew pale.

"Yes, I do know him. Why is he a queer fish? You only say that because he beat you!"

The young man gave a half-laugh, and looked at his friends. Then he changed the subject. But Hester got up impatiently from her seat, and would not play any more. Rose caught the sudden intentness with which Alice Puttenham's eyes pursued her.

Stephen Barron came to the help of his hostess, and started more games. Rose was grateful to him—and quite intolerably sorry for him.

"But why was I obliged to shake hands with the other brother?" she thought rebelliously, as she watched the disagreeable face of Maurice Barron, who had been standing in the circle not far from Hester. He had a look of bad company which displeased her; and she resented what seemed to her an inclination to stare at the pretty women—especially at Hester, and Miss Puttenham. Heavens!—if that odious father had betrayed anything to such a son! Surely, surely it was inconceivable!

The party was beginning to thin when Meynell, impatient to be quit of his Cabinet Minister that he might find Mary Elsmere before it was too late, hurried from the green drawing-room, in the wake of Mr. Norham, and stumbled against a young man, who in the very imperfect illumination had not perceived the second figure behind the Home Secretary.

"Hullo!" said Meynell brusquely, stepping back. "How do you do? Is Stephen here?"

Maurice Barron answered in the affirmative—and added, as though from the need to say something, no matter what:

"I hear there are some coins to be seen in there?"

"There are."

Meynell passed on, his countenance showing a sternness, a contempt even, that was rare with him. He and Norham passed through the next drawing-room, and met various acquaintances at the farther door. Maurice Barron stood watching them. The persons invading the room had come intending to see the coins. But meeting the Home Secretary they turned back with him, and Meynell followed them, eager to disengage himself from them. At the door some impulse made him turn and look back. He saw Maurice Barron disappearing into the green drawing-room.

* * * * *

The night was soft and warm. Catharine and Mary had come prepared to walk home, Catharine eagerly resuming, now that her health allowed it, the Spartan habits of their normal life. Flaxman was drawn by the beauty of the moonlight and the park to offer to escort them to the lower lodge. Hester declared that she too would walk, and carelessly accepted Stephen's escort. Meynell stepped out from the house with them, and in the natural sequence of things he found himself with Mary.

Flaxman and Catharine, who led the way, hardly spoke to each other. They walked, pensive and depressed. Each knew what the other was thinking of, and each felt that nothing was to be gained for the moment by any fresh talk about it. Just behind them they could hear Hester laughing and sparring with Stephen; and when Catharine looked back she could see Meynell and Mary far away, in the distance of the avenue they were following.

* * * * *

The great lime-trees on either side threw long shadows on grass covered with the fresh fallen leaf, which gleamed, a pale orange, through the dusk. The sky was dappled with white cloud, and the lime-boughs overhead broke it into patterns of delight. The sharp scent of the fallen leaves was in the air; and the night for all its mildness prophesied winter. Meynell seemed to himself to be moving on enchanted ground, beneath enchanted trees. The tension of his long talk with Norham, the cares of his leadership—the voices of a natural ambition, dropped away. Mary in a blue cloak, a white scarf wound about her head, summed up for him the pure beauty of nature and the night. For the first time he did not attempt to check the thrill in his veins; he began to hope. It was impossible to ignore the change in Mrs. Elsmere's attitude toward him. He had no idea what had caused it; but he felt it. And he realized also that through unseen and inexplicable gradations Mary had come mysteriously near to him. He dared not have spoken a word of love to her; but such feeling as theirs, however restrained, penetrates speech and gesture, and irresistibly makes all things new.

They spoke of the most trivial matters, and hardly noticed what they said. He all the time was thinking: "Beyond this tumult there will be rest some day—then I may speak. We could live hardly and simply—neither of us wants luxury. But now it would be unjust—it would bring too great a burden on her—and her poor mother. I must wait! But we shall see each other—we shall understand each other!"

Meanwhile she, on her side, would perhaps have given the world to share the struggle from which he debarred her.

Nevertheless, for both, it was an hour of happiness and hope.



CHAPTER XIII

"So I see your name this morning, Stephen, on their list."

Henry Barron held up a page of the Times and pointed to its first column.

"I sent it in some time ago."

"And pray what does your parish think of it?"

"They won't support me."

"Thank God!"

Barron rose majestically to his feet, and from the rug surveyed his thin, fair-haired son. Stephen had just ridden over from his own tiny vicarage, twelve miles away, to settle some business connected with a family legacy with his father. Since the outbreak of the Reform Movement there had been frequent disputes between the father and son, if aggressive attack on the one side and silent endurance on the other make a dispute. Barron scorned his eldest son, as a faddist and a dreamer; while Stephen could never remember the time when his father had not seemed to him the living embodiment of prejudice, obstinacy, and caprice. He had always reckoned it indeed the crowning proof of Meynell's unworldly optimism that, at the moment of his father's accession to the White House estate, there should have been a passing friendship between him and the Rector. Yet whenever thoughts of this kind presented themselves explicitly to Stephen he tried to suppress them. His life, often, was a constant struggle between a genuine and irrepressible dislike of his father and a sore sense that no Christian priest could permit himself such a feeling.

He made no reply to his father's interjection. But Barron knew very well that his son's self-control was no indication of lack of will; quite the contrary; and the father was conscious of a growing exasperation as he watched the patient compression of the young mouth. He wanted somehow to convict and crush Stephen; and he believed that he held the means thereto in his hand. He had not been sure before Stephen arrived whether he should reveal the situation or not. But the temptation was too great. That the son's mind and soul should finally have escaped his father, "like a bird out of the snare of the fowler," was the unforgivable offence. What a gentle, malleable fellow he had seemed in his school and college days!—how amenable to the father's spiritual tyranny! It was Barron's constant excuse to himself for his own rancorous feeling—that Meynell had robbed him of his son.

"You probably think it strange"—he resumed harshly—"that I should rejoice in what of course is your misfortune—that your people reject you; but there are higher interests than those of personal affection concerned in this business. We who are defending her must think first of the Church!"

"Naturally," said Stephen.

His father looked at him in silence for a moment, at the mild pliant figure, the downcast eyes.

"There is, however, one thing for which I have cause—we all have cause—to be grateful to Meynell," he said, with emphasis.

Stephen looked up.

"I understand he refused to sanction your engagement to Hester Fox-Wilton."

The young man flushed.

"It would be better, I think, father, if we are to talk over these matters quietly—which I understood is the reason you asked me to come here to-day—that you should avoid a tone toward myself and my affairs which can only make frank conversation difficult or impossible between us."

"I have no desire to be offensive," said Barron, checking himself with difficulty, "and I have only your good in view, though you may not believe it. My reason for approving Meynell in the matter is that he was aware—and you were not aware"—he fell into the slow phrasing he always affected on important occasions—"of facts bearing vitally on your proposal; and that in the light of them he acted as any honest man was bound to act."

"What do you mean!" cried Stephen, springing to his feet.

"I mean"—the answer was increasingly deliberate—"that Hester Fox-Wilton—it is very painful to have to go into these things, but it is necessary, I regret to say—is not a Fox-Wilton at all—and has no right whatever to her name!"

Stephen walked up to the speaker.

"Take care, father! This is a question of a girl—an unprotected girl! What right have you to say such an abominable thing!"

He stood panting and white, in front of his father.

"The right of truth!" said Barron. "It happens to be true."

"Your grounds?"

"The confession of the woman who nursed her mother—who was not Lady Fox-Wilton."

Barron had now assumed the habitual attitude—thumbs in his pockets, legs slightly apart—that Stephen had associated from his childhood with the long bullying, secular and religious, that Barron's family owed to Barron's temperament.

In the pause, Stephen's quick breathing could be heard.

"Who was she?"

The son's tone had caught the father's sharpness.

"Well, my dear Stephen, I am not sure that I shall tell you while you look at me in that fashion! Believe me—it is not my fault, but my misfortune, that I happen to be acquainted with this very disagreeable secret. And I have one thing to say—you must give me your promise that you will regard any communication from me as entirely confidential, before I say another word."

Stephen walked away to the window and came back.

"Very well. I promise."

"Sit down. It is a long story."

The son obeyed mechanically, his frowning eyes fixed upon his father. Barron at once plunged into an account of his interview with Judith Sabin, omitting only those portions of it which connected the story with Meynell. It was evident, presently, that Stephen—to the dawning triumph of his father—listened with an increasingly troubled mind. And indeed, at the first whisper of the story, there had flashed through the young man's memory the vision of Meynell arguing and expostulating on that July afternoon, when he, Stephen, had spoken so confidingly, so unsuspectingly of his love for Hester. He recalled his own amazement, his sense of shock and strangeness. What Meynell said on that occasion seemed to have so little relation to what Meynell habitually was. Meynell, for whom love, in its spiritual aspect, was the salt and significance of life, the foundation of all wisdom—Meynell on that occasion had seemed to make comparatively nothing of love!—to deny its simplest rights—to put it despotically out of count. Stephen, as he had long recognized, had been overborne and silenced by Meynell's personality rather than by Meynell's arguments—by the disabling force mainly of his own devotion to the man who bade him wait and renounce. But in his heart he had never quite forgiven, or understood; and for all the subsequent trouble about Hester, all his own jealousy and pain, he had not been able to prevent himself from blaming Meynell. And now—now!—if this story were true—he began to understand. Poor child—poor mother! With the marriage of the child, must come—he felt the logic of it—the confession of the mother. A woman like Alice Puttenham, a man like Meynell, were not likely to give Hester to her lover without telling that lover what he had a right to know. Small blame to them if they were not prepared to bring about that crisis prematurely, while Hester was still so young! It must be faced—but not, not till it must!

Yes, he understood. A rush of warm and pitiful love filled his heart; while his intelligence dismally accepted and endorsed the story his father was telling with that heavy tragic touch which the son instinctively hated as insincere and theatrical.

"Now then, perhaps,"—Barron wound up—"you will realize why it is I feel Meynell has acted considerately, and as any true friend of yours was bound to act. He knew—and you were ignorant. Such a marriage could not have been for your happiness, and he rightly interposed."

"What difference does it make to Hester herself," cried Stephen hotly—"supposing the thing is true? I admit—it may be true," and as he spoke a host of small confirmations came thronging into his unwilling mind. "But in any case—"

He walked up to his father again.

"What have you done about it, father?" he said, sharply. "I suppose you went to Meynell at once."

Barron smiled, with a lift of the eyebrows. He knocked off the end of his cigarette, and paused.

"Of course you have seen Meynell?" Stephen repeated.

"No, I haven't."

"I should have thought that was your first duty."

"It was not easy to decide what my duty was," said Barron, with the same emphasis, "not at all easy."

"What do you mean, father? There seems to be something more behind. If there is, considering my feeling for Hester, it seems to me that having told me so much you are bound to tell me all you know. Remember—this story concerns the girl I love!"

Passion and pain spoke in the young man's voice. His father looked at him with an involuntary sympathy.

"I know. I am very sorry for you. But it concerns other people also."

"What is known of the father?" said Stephen abruptly.

"Ah, that is the point!" said Barron, making an abstracted face.

"It is a question to which I am surely entitled to have an answer!"

"I am not sure that I can give it you. I can tell you of course what the view of Judith Sabin was—what the facts seem to point to. But—in any case, whether I believe Judith Sabin or no, I should not have said a word to you on the subject but for the circumstance that—unfortunately—there are other people in the case."

Whereupon—watching his son carefully—Barron repeated the story that he had already given to Flaxman.

The effect upon Meynell's young disciple and worshipper may be imagined. He grew deadly pale, and then red; choked with indignant scorn; and could scarcely bring himself to listen at all, after he had once gathered the real gist of what his father was saying.

Yet, by this time, the story was much better worth listening to than it had been when Barron had first presented it to Flaxman. By dint of much brooding, and under the influence of an angry obstinacy which must have its prey, Barron had made it a good deal more plausible than it had been to begin with, and would no doubt make it more plausible still. He had brought in by now a variety of small local observations bearing on the relations between the three figures in the drama—Hester, Alice Puttenham, Meynell—which Stephen must and did often recognize as true and telling. It was true that there was much friction and difference between Hester and the Fox-Wilton family; that Alice Puttenham's position and personality had always teased the curiosity of the neighbourhood; that the terms of Sir Ralph's will were perplexing; and that Meynell was Hester's guardian in a special sense, a fact for which there was no obvious explanation. It was true also that there emerged at times a singular likeness in Hester's beauty—a likeness of expression and gesture—to the blunt and powerful aspect of the Rector....

And yet! Did his father believe, for a moment, the preposterous things he was saying? The young man sharpened his wits as far as possible for Hester's and his friend's sake, and came presently to the conclusion that it was one of those violent, intermittent half-beliefs which, in the service of hatred and party spirit, can be just as effective and dangerous as any other. And when the circumstantial argument passed presently into the psychological—even the theological—this became the more evident.

For in order to explain to himself and others how Meynell could possibly have behaved in a fashion so villainous, Barron had invented by now a whole psychological sequence. He was prepared to show in detail how the thing had probably evolved; to trace the processes of Meynell's mind. The sin once sinned, what more natural than Meynell's proceeding? Marriage would not have mended the disgrace, or averted the practical consequences of the intrigue. He certainly could not have kept his living had the facts been known. On the one hand his poverty—his brothers to educate,—his benefice to be saved. On the other, the natural desire of the Fox-Wiltons and of Alice Puttenham to conceal everything that had occurred. The sophistries of love would come in—repentance—the desire to make a fresh start—to protect the woman he had sacrificed.

And all that might have availed him against sin and temptation—a steadfast Christian faith—was already deserting him; must have been already undermined. What was there to wonder at?—what was there incredible in the story? The human heart was corrupt and desperately wicked; and nothing stood between any man, however apparently holy, and moral catastrophe but the grace of God.

Stephen bore the long, incredible harangue, as best he could, for Meynell's sake. He sat with his face turned away from his father, his hand closing and unclosing on his knee, his nerves quivering under the exasperation of his father's monstrous premises, and still more monstrous deductions. At the end he faced round abruptly.

"I do not wish to offend you, father, but I had better say at once that I do not accept, for a single instant, your arguments or your conclusion. I am positive that the facts, whatever they may be, are not what you suppose them to be! I say that to begin with. But now the question is, what to do. You say there are anonymous letters about. That decides it. It is clear that you must go to Meynell at once! And if you do not, I must."

Barron's look flashed.

"You gave me your promise"—he said imperiously—"before I told you this story—that you would not communicate it without my permission. I withhold the permission."

"Then you must go yourself," said the young man vehemently—"You must!"

"I am not altogether unwilling to go," said Barron slowly. "But I shall choose my own time."

And as he raised his cold eyes upon his son it pleased his spirit of intrigue, and of domination through intrigue, that he had already received a letter from Flaxman giving precisely opposite advice, and did not intend to tell Stephen anything about it. Stephen's impulsive candour, however, appealed to him much more than Flaxman's reticence. It would indeed be physically and morally impossible for him—anonymous letters or no—to lock the scandal much longer within his own breast. It had become a living and burning thing, like some wild creature straining at a leash.

* * * * *

A little while later Stephen found himself alone. He believed himself to have got an undertaking from his father that Meynell should be communicated with promptly—perhaps that very evening. But the terms of the promise were not very clear; and the young man's mind was full of a seething wrath and unhappiness. If the story were true, so far as Hester and her unacknowledged mother were concerned—and, as we have seen, there was that in his long and intimate knowledge of Hester's situation which, as he listened, had suddenly fused and flashed in a most unwilling conviction—then, what dire, what pitiful need, on their part, of protection and of help! If indeed any friendly consideration for him, Stephen, had entered into Meynell's conduct, the young man angrily resented the fact.

He paced up and down the library for a time, divided thus between a fierce contempt for Meynell's slanderers and a passionate pity for Hester.

His father had gone to Markborough. Theresa was, he believed, in the garden giving orders. Presently the clock on the bookcase struck three, and Stephen awoke with a start to the engagements of the day.

He was in the act of opening the library door when he suddenly remembered—Maurice!

He blamed himself for not having remembered earlier that Maurice was at home—for not having asked his father about him. He went to look for him, could not find him in any of the sitting-rooms, and finally mounted to the second-floor bedroom which had always been his brother's.

"Maurice!" He knocked. No answer. But there was a hurried movement inside, and something that sounded like the opening of a drawer.

He called again, and tried the door. It was locked. But after further shuffling inside, as though some one were handling papers, it was thrown open.

"Well, Maurice, I hope I haven't disturbed you in anything very important. I thought I must come and have a look at you. Are you all right?"

"Come in, old fellow," said Maurice with affected warmth—"I was only writing a few letters. No room for anybody downstairs but the pater and Theresa, so I have to retreat up here."

"And lock yourself in?" said Stephen, laughing. "Any secrets going?" And as he took a seat on the edge of the bed, while Maurice returned to his chair, he could not prevent himself from looking with a certain keen scrutiny both at the room and his younger brother.

He and Maurice had never been friends. There was a gap of nearly ten years between them, and certain radical and profound differences of temperament. And these differences nature had expressed, with an entire absence of subtlety, in their physique—in the slender fairness and wholesomeness of Stephen, as contrasted with the sallowness, the stoop, the thin black hair, the furtive, excitable look of Maurice.

"Getting on well with your new work?" he asked, as he took unwilling note of the half-consumed brandy and soda on the table, of the saucer of cigarette ends beside it, and the general untidiness and stuffiness of the room.

"Not bad," said Maurice, resuming his cigarette.

"What is it?"

"An agency—one of these new phonographs—Yankee of course. I manage the office. A lot of cads—but I make 'em sit up."

And he launched into boasting of his success in the business—the orders he had secured, the economies he had brought about in the office. Stephen found himself wondering meanwhile what kind of a business it could be that entrusted its affairs to Maurice. But he betrayed no scepticism, and the two talked in more or less brotherly fashion for a few minutes, till Stephen, with a look at his watch, declared that he must find his horse and go.

"I thought you were only coming for the week-end," he said as he moved toward the door.

"I got seedy—and took a week off. Besides, I found pater in such a stew."

Stephen hesitated.

"About the Rector?"

Maurice nodded.

"Pater is in an awful way about it. I've been trying to cheer him up. Meynell will be turned out, of course."

"Probably," said Stephen gravely. "So shall I."

"What'll you do?"

"Become a preacher somewhere—under Meynell."

The younger brother looked with a sort of inquisitive grin at the elder.

"You're ready to put your money on him to that extent? Well, all I know is, father's dead set against him—and I've no use for him—never had!"

"That's because you didn't know him," said Stephen briefly. "What did you ever have against him?"

He looked sharply at his brother. The disagreeable idea crossed his mind that his father, whose weakness for Maurice he well knew, might have told the story to the lad.

Maurice laughed, and pulled his scanty moustache as he turned away.

"Oh! I don't know—we never hit it off. My fault, of course. Ta, ta."

As Stephen rode away he was haunted for a few minutes by some disagreeable reminiscences of a school holiday when Maurice had been discovered drunk in one of the public-houses of the village by the Rector, who had firmly dug him out and walked him home. But this and other recollections, not dissimilar, soon passed away, under the steady assault of thoughts far more compelling....

* * * * *

He took the bridle-path through Maudeley, and was presently aware, in a clearing of the wood, of the figure of Meynell in front of him.

The Rector was walking in haste, without his dogs. He was therefore out on business, which indeed was implied by the energy of his whole movement.

He looked round, frowning as Stephen overtook him.

"Is that you, Stephen? Are you going home?"

"Yes. And you?"

Meynell did not immediately reply. The autumn wood, a splendour of gold and orange leaf overhead, of red-brown leaf below, with passages here and there where the sun struck through the beech trees, of purest lemon-yellow, or intensest green, breathed and murmured round them. A light wind sang in the tree-tops, and every now and then the plain broke in—purple through the gold; with its dim colliery chimneys, its wreaths of smoke, and its paler patches which stood for farms and villages.

Meynell walked by the horse in silence for a while, till, suddenly wiping a hot brow, he turned and looked at Stephen.

"I think I shall have to tell you, Stephen, where I am going, and why," he said, eyeing the young man with a deprecating look, almost a look of remorse.

Stephen stared at him in silence.

"Flaxman walked home with me last night—came into the Rectory, and told me that—yesterday—he saw Meryon and Hester together—in Hewlett's wood—as you know, a lonely place where nobody goes. It was a great blow to me. I had every reason to believe him safely out of the neighbourhood. All his servants have clearly been instructed to lie—and Hester!—well, I won't trust myself to say what I think of her conduct! I went up this morning to see her—found the whole household in confusion! Nobody knew where Hester was. She had gone out immediately after breakfast, with the maid who is supposed to be always with her. Then suddenly—about an hour later—one of the boys appeared, having seen this woman at the station—and no Hester. The woman, taken by surprise—young Fox-Wilton just had a few words with her as the train was moving off—confessed she was going into Markborough to meet Hester and come back with her. She didn't know where Miss Hester was. She had left her in the village, and was to meet her at a shop in Markborough. After that, things began to come out. The butler told tales. The maid is clearly an unprincipled hussy, and has probably been in Meryon's pay all the time—"