.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 45074
   :PG.Title: The Vision Splendid
   :PG.Released: 2014-03-08
   :PG.Reposted: 2015-08-17 - text corrections
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: \D. \K. Broster
   :DC.Creator: \G. \W. Taylor
   :DC.Title: The Vision Splendid
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1913
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE VISION SPLENDID
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      THE VISION SPLENDID

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      BY

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      \D. \K. BROSTER AND \G. \W. TAYLOR

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      AUTHOR OF "CHANTEMERLE"

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      LONDON:
      JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
      1913

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BOOK I: `CRAG AND TORRENT`_

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BOOK II: `GARISH DAY`_

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BOOK III: `LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT`_

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EPILOGUE: `THE MORN`_

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.. _`CRAG AND TORRENT`:

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   THE
   VISION SPLENDID

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   BOOK I

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   CRAG AND TORRENT

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   CHAPTER I

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The broad faces of the sunflowers surveyed, with their
eternal, undiscriminating smile, the nape of Horatia's
white neck, and were no wiser.  Her back was towards
them, and they could not see what book was in her lap.
But the hollyhocks further down the border were
probably aware that she was not really reading anything.
They swayed a little, disturbing a blundering bee; and
Horatia, turning her head towards the flower-bed,
glanced for a moment at those tall warriors en fête.

A gust of perfume suddenly shook out at her from
the border.  Certainly the summer seemed hardly
within sight of its end, though on this Monday, the
thirtieth of August, 1830, much of the corn was cut
already.

Horatia's own summer was at the full, and it was
now only old-fashioned people who thought the single
woman of twenty-four in peril of the unblest autumn of
perpetual maidenhood.  For the sake of the red-gold
bunches of curls at her temples, the dazzling skin that
goes with such hair, the straight, wilful little nose, the
mouth holding in its curves some petulance and much
sweetness, an admirer might well have been sitting
beside her in this agreeable old garden.  Yet Horatia
Grenville was not accounted a beauty.  She was
neither statuesque nor drooping.  But part of the
blame lay undeniably with the book on her lap, the
*Republic* of Plato in the original.  Horatia could and
did read Greek without too much difficulty; could
not, or would not, occupy her fingers for ever with
embroidery or knitting, and was believed to despise
amateur performance upon the harp.  In short she was
"blue," and therefore—at least in her own county—was
not beautiful; she was learned, and could not, in
Berkshire, be lovely.

Yes, she was twenty-four, and unmarried; a country
parson's daughter, but well-born and well-dowered;
suspected (unjustly) of knowing Hebrew as well as
Greek, but always admirably dressed.  She had never
been in love, and had never, to her knowledge, even
desired to taste that condition.  Nor had she discovered
in herself any aptitude for flirting.  She wished
sometimes that she did not frighten young men by her real
or supposed intellectual attainments, but not for any
plaudits of the drawing-room would she have bartered
all that was typified to her by the Greek text on her
knee.  And she had no craving for domestic bliss.

Indeed, she could have had that bliss had she desired
it.  At least two decorous and (to her) entirely negligible
requests had been made for her hand.  They had come
from quite suitable personages, whom she had met
during her periodical sojourns with her various relations.
Moreover, here, at home, five years ago, the man who
had known her from a child, and was indeed a distant
connection, had asked her to marry him.

That episode had startled and distressed Horatia.
Tristram Hungerford, six years her senior, had always
been a quasi-fraternal part of her life.  The boy who
came over daily on his pony from Compton Parva, what
time a pony was still to her as an elephant, who was
construing Livy with her father while her own fingers
created the tremulous pothook, who climbed the Rectory
apple-trees while her infant legs bore her but precariously
on terra firma—whom she welcomed home from Eton
with unrestrained joy and offerings of toffee, from
Oxford as frankly but less exuberantly—that this young
man should suddenly propose to make her his wife was
absurd, and she did not like it at all.  At nineteen,
Horatia Grenville had been singularly immature for her
times.  She had no wish but that her playmate and
friend should retain that rôle always; why should he
want to change it?  She signified as much, and to her
great relief Tristram reverted with extraordinary
completeness to his former part, and had filled it for five
more years.

Miss Grenville had, however, taken no vow against
matrimony.  It was merely that she could not bear the
idea of so sudden a finality.  Even now she refused to
picture herself sitting down, as she put it, to count over
forks and spoons.  Indeed, having returned but two
days ago from a visit to a newly married friend, whose
chief occupations, so it seemed to her guest, were
quoting "what Henry says," and trying to out-do other
young married women of her acquaintance in dress, she
was still full of an almost passionate wonder that people
could shut down their lives to that kind of thing.  Yet,
deep in her heart, perhaps she realised—perhaps she
did not—that in six or seven years' time, when the
fatuities of the recently-wed had dropped away from
Henry and Emilia, when there were children round them,
they would have full lives, whereas she...

But Horatia greatly desired her life to be full.  She
wanted to express herself somehow.  Sitting there
by the sunflowers and the phloxes, she thought of the
many women of the day who had succeeded in doing
this.  She thought of Mrs. Somerville, of Miss Mitford,
of Hannah More and of Mrs. Fry; of Joanna Baillie
and Miss Edgeworth; of Miss Jane Porter, whose
*Scottish Chiefs* had delighted her childhood; and of
Lady Morgan.  Most of these celebrated women were
unmarried.  And she considered also the women of the
past: Joan of Arc, St. Catherine of Siena, Madame de
Rambouillet, Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu.

It was not that Horatia Grenville wished definitely
either to lead a nation to battle or to write plays, to be
an astronomical genius, or to sway the councils of princes.
She wanted to do something, but knew not what that
something was.  This afternoon she was more conscious
than usual both of her desire and of its vagueness.  It
occurred to her that she was rather like the sleepy wasp
who, having painfully climbed up the skirt of her gown
and attained the open page of the *Republic*, was now
starting discontentedly to crawl down again.

"Really, I am getting morbid!" thought Miss
Grenville; "and here is Papa!"

The Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville,
Rector of Compton Regis, was seen indeed to issue at
that moment from the long window of the drawing-room
and to approach her over the grass, comfortable,
benignant, and of aristocratic appearance.  He held a
half-written letter in one hand, and a quill pen in the
other; his spectacles were pushed down his nose.  His
daughter jumped up.

"Do you want me, Papa?"

"My dear, only for this," replied Mr. Grenville,
holding up the letter.  "I am writing to your Aunt
Julia, and you must really make up your mind whether
you will pay her a visit this autumn.  In her last letter
she mentions the matter again."

Horatia looked up at her parent.  "Papa," she
answered gravely, "I don't like staying with people who
disapprove of me."  A sudden little smile came about
the corners of her mouth.  "I shouldn't stay with *you*
if you didn't appreciate me, you know!"

The twinkle which was never far from the Rector's
eyes came into them at this pronouncement.  "Of that
I have no doubt, my child," he said.  "But it is a mercy
that your aunt cannot hear your filial sentiments."

Horatia caught at his arm.  "Sit down, dearest
Papa," she said half imperiously, half coaxingly, "and
let us discuss the visit to Aunt Julia."

The Honourable and Reverend Stephen, still holding
paper and pen, submitted to be placed in her chair.
Horatia, with the grace that was peculiarly hers, sat
down upon the grass at his feet, her full skirt spreading
fanwise around her.

"First," she began, taking hold of the letter, "we
will see what you have said about me."

The Rector yielded it.  "There is nothing at all about
you as yet, my dear," he remarked mildly.  "Your Aunt
is thinking of putting some money into this new
railroad between Manchester and Liverpool, and asks for
my advice."

Horatia made a face and returned the letter.  "Papa,
you always have the best of me!  Now put down that
pen—especially if there is still ink upon it, as I
suspect—and I will show you many reasons why I should not
pay Aunt Julia a visit.  In the first place, she disapproves
of me because I do not make flannel petticoats for the
poor; in the second place, she wishes to see me married;
in the third place she calls Plato a heathen and
Shakespeare 'waste of time.'  In the fourth place, I am but
just returned from visits elsewhere; ... In the
hundredth place—I prefer to stop with you.  One
hundred reasons against Aunt Julia."  And she laid
her fresh cheek upon the hand that held the letter.

The Rector pinched the cheek.  "'La Reine le veult,'
as usual, I suppose.  Shall you always prefer to stop
with me, Horatia?"

"It is my duty, Papa," said Miss Grenville, without
lifting her head.  The solemnity of her voice was too
much for her father, and he broke, as she had intended
he should, into a chuckle.

"That word on your lips!" he exclaimed.  Then he
put his hand gently on the smooth and radiant head.
"I could bear to see you go from me," he said in a
suddenly stirred voice, "if I knew you were going to a
happy home of your own."

The head moved restlessly.  "You know how much
I dislike—how much I wish you would not talk of that,
Papa!" said the girl almost shortly, and she raised
herself.  "Why must every woman get married?  One
would think that you wanted to be rid of me."  Her
cheeks were a little flushed.  "But even if you did, I
would not marry!" she added.  "I would—never
mind what I would do."  She flung her arms round her
father's neck and kissed him.  "Do not speak of it
again!  You do not deserve to have such a good
daughter.  Now go and tell Aunt Julia that I cannot
stay with her—say that I am translating Rousseau,
that will make her furious—and tell her that a Christian
gentlewoman should not know anything about investments!"


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Having thus dismissed her parent, Miss Horatia
Grenville did not return to her book or her reverie, but
crossed the lawn, showing herself as tall and generously
made in her dress of thin mulberry-coloured silk with
the great puffed sleeves, trim waist and full short skirt
of the prevailing fashion.  Catching up a flat basket and
a pair of scissors, she then walked up and down by the
flower border, snipping off dead blossoms and singing to
herself snatches of *Deh vieni*.  So occupied, she heard
the click of the garden gate.  "Probably Tristram," she
thought to herself.  "It is quite time that he came."

And indeed a masculine figure was stooping to fasten
the little gate at the end of the short privet-walled path,
by which it had just entered.  As it raised itself, and
turned, it was revealed as that of a young man of about
thirty, in riding costume, darker in hair and eyes than
the majority of Englishmen, but none the less
unmistakably English.  Pleasant to look at, and more
than common tall, he would not however have
drawn the attention of a casual observer; a closer critic
might have become aware of something in the eyes not
quite consonant with his vigorous and every-day
appearance.

Horatia put down her basket and went towards him,
holding out both hands.

"I am so glad that you have come," she said frankly.
"How are you, Tristram?"

"As usual, very glad to see you," responded the
young man, smiling.  "I wondered if you would be in.
Where is the Rector?"

"Papa is writing to Aunt Julia, about investments
and about the difficulty of getting me to leave
home."

"Before Martha has unpacked your trunks from this
last visit, I suppose you mean?"

"Don't tease me, Tristram, when you have not seen
me for so long!  Come and sit down on the lawn and
talk sensibly.  Papa will be out soon, I expect.  You will
stay to dinner, of course?"

"I shall be very pleased," responded the guest, and
he looked as if he were pleased too—as indeed he was—with
his greeting.  He walked beside her to her chair on
the grass, picked up Plato, lying there face downwards,
murmured "What shocking treatment for a philosopher!"
fetched himself another chair from a little
distance, and, sitting down by Miss Grenville, said
"How did you enjoy your round of visits?"

"Not at all," replied Horatia petulantly, half
laughing.  "I have not said this to Papa, because it might
make him conceited; but I will tell *you* that I am
delighted to be home again."  And she added, still more
confidentially, "Tristram, the newly-married bore me
extremely!  I shall not visit Emilia Strangeways again
for seven years at least."

Tristram Hungerford laughed.  "All the better for
us!  It is dull enough without you."

"O, what stories!" exclaimed Horatia.  "You have
not been dull.  You have had Mr. Dormer with you!"  There
was mockery in her eyes.  "I know all about it.
Tell me the truth now!  How long did he stay?"

"A week, Horatia, only a week, and since then it has
been duller than ever."

"That I can believe," retorted Miss Grenville; "but
it has been dull because Mr. Dormer has left you, and
not because I have been away.  You have no one now
to exult with over the increasing circulation of the
*Christian Year*, and no one to melt you with the
sufferings of the Non-Jurors—which *I* think they
brought on themselves.  However, I must not jest about
Mr. Dormer, I know; he is sacrosanct.  Tell me any
news.  Tell me something interesting."

The life, the vitality that responded to hers, dropped
suddenly out of Tristram Hungerford's face.

"I have got some news," he said hesitatingly, "but
I am not sure that you will find it interesting.  I have
made up my mind at last, quite definitely, to take
Orders—that is, if the Bishop will have me."

And at that Miss Grenville's face changed too, and
after a moment's pause she said, very seriously, "Why?"

"Because," returned the young man almost guiltily,
"I think that I may be able to serve the Church better
that way, and the time is coming when we shall have to
fight for her."

Horatia did not try to conceal her feelings.  "I
thought you were getting views of that sort," she said
gloomily; "and I was afraid that it would end in your
taking Orders—in fact, I said so to Papa the other day.
Of course, in my opinion you are made for it; but I
wish that you were not."  She sighed, and added
inconsequently, "It must make a difference."

Tristram flushed and leant forward.  "But, Horatia,
what do you mean?  I shall never be any different—I
never could be so to you!"  The feeling in his voice
was almost ardour—and it was not the ardour of a
friend.  Whether Miss Grenville were fully aware of this
or no she pursued her own thoughts aloud.

"I wonder; I am not so sure.  By taking Orders you
will be throwing in your lot for ever with all those Oriel
people.  That is what it means."

"I cannot think," said the culprit, "why you dislike
them so."

"It isn't that I dislike them exactly," said Horatia,
considering; "but that there is something about them
that I don't like.  Even Mr. Keble, although he lives in
the country and writes poetry, can't be as harmless as
he seems, or they would not all pay him such deference.
I have nothing against Mr. Newman and Mr. Froude;
in fact I liked Mr. Froude when you brought him out
here, which is more than I could ever say about
Mr. Dormer.  He can make himself very charming, but he's
steel underneath, I'm quite certain....  Yes, they
are all different, and yet they are alike.  They are only
clergymen, as Papa is, but at his age they won't be
in the least like him.  For one thing they won't be half
as nice.  There is something about them that makes
me shiver.  They are too absolute.  I have the feeling
that they will change you, that they are changing you.
O, I can't explain it; but I know what I mean—and,
Tristram, I could not bear that you should be different
from what you are?"

She looked at him directly, earnestly, like a child
pleading that something it likes may not be taken away
from it, and never noticed her companion turn suddenly
rather white.

"Horatia, if you——" he began, and suddenly the
Rector's voice cut through his own—"What are you
two discussing so warmly that you haven't heard the
dinner-bell?" it said, coming before its owner as he
emerged through the drawing-room window.  "It's
long after half-past five.  Tristram, my dear fellow, I
am very glad to see you.  You are staying, of course?"

And after a barely perceptible pause the young man
got up and said that he was.





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   CHAPTER II

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"Papa has really no right to be hungry," observed Miss
Grenville as they sat down to table.  "Saturday, you
know, was our annual village feast, and he acknowledges
that he is obliged to eat a great deal on that occasion."

"How did it go off, Rector?" asked the guest.

"Oh, quite successfully," replied Mr. Grenville,
carving a leg of mutton.  "There was a good deal to
eat, I must admit.  I left, as I always do, before the
dancing; but not before I heard a swain (I think it was
one of Farmer Wilson's men) assuring his inamorata
that he would kiss her if she wished it."

"The lady seems to have been forward," observed
Horatia.  "Papa, you are not forgetting the plate of
meat for old Mrs. Jenkins?  You know you promised
to send in her dinner while she is ill."

"No, my dear," returned her father, looking round.
"I have not forgotten the meat, but Sarah appears to
have forgotten the plates."

The handmaid fled and remedied her error.  It was
no unusual thing for the Rectory crockery to go
voyaging in the cause of charity.

Horatia seemed in high though rather fitful spirits.
She amused her hearers with an account of her
visits.  At one house, she affirmed, she was entertained
to death; at the other her host and hostess only seemed
to want to be alone together, though they had pestered
her to go there.

"You will find us, as usual, very quiet," said Tristram,
looking across the table at her animated face.  "I
don't think anything has happened since you went
away.—Stay, though, something has taken place in
Oxfordshire.  Rector, I suppose you have heard about
the affair at Otmoor on Saturday night?"

Mr. Grenville had not.

"Well, Otmoor, as you know, was drained under Act
of Parliament in 1815, and this proceeding has been a
cause of discontent ever since, because the embankments
were thought to prevent the water draining away from
the land above.  You remember the disturbances last
June, and how the farmers cut the banks, and were
indicted for felony, but acquitted on the ground that
the embankments did do damage and were a nuisance?"

"Yes, I recall the circumstance," said the Rector.

"Well, the Otmoor people appear to have jumped to
the conclusion that the Act of Parliament was void, the
enclosure of Otmoor consequently illegal, and that they
had a right to pull down the embankment.  On Saturday
night, therefore, they started to do so, and I believe
they proceeded with the work last night also.  They are
said to have been riotous.  I wonder you had not heard
of it."

"Dear, dear," commented the Rector, "that is excessively
serious!  I am afraid that there is indeed a
spirit of unrest abroad at present.  There have been one
or two rick fires lately that looked to me very suspicious,
very.  And then there was that barn near Henley about
a fortnight ago."

"Do you think, then, that we shall have a revolution
in England like the Days of July?" asked Horatia a
little mischievously.

"No, of course not, my dear!  The Revolution in
France the other day was above all things dynastic—at
least, so I read it—and no one wants to turn out our new
King, whom God preserve.  But there is social unrest..."

"Good Heavens!" suddenly exclaimed Tristram
Hungerford.  "I had quite forgotten, and your
mentioning the Days of July has reminded me.  I've got a
Frenchman, a Legitimist, coming to stay with me the
day after to-morrow.  You remember how, when I was
in Paris a few years ago, I made the acquaintance of the
sons of the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, the First Gentleman
of the Bedchamber?  I stayed with the eldest at their
place in the country for a few days, and I asked them to
come and see me if ever they were in England."

"But the Duc de la Roche-Guyon accompanied
Charles the Tenth on his flight over here, and is now
with him at Lulworth, is he not?" asked Horatia.  "I
remember seeing his name in the papers."

"Yes," said Tristram, "the Duc is at Lulworth with
the King, and Armand, his younger and favourite son,
has come over to pay him a visit.  But I fancy that the
young gentleman has no intention of remaining buried
in Dorset; Lulworth is too dull for a person of his tastes,
and he is returning to more congenial scenes in Paris—even
though it be an Orleanist Paris.  However, he has
written from Dorset and suggested paying me a short
visit.  I own that I am rather surprised, for I am afraid
that my chances of amusing him are not greater than
those of his exiled sovereign.  Moreover, I really hardly
know him.  It was his elder brother, the Marquis
Emmanuel, of whom I saw more....  May I bring
the youth here to call?"

"Do," said Miss Grenville.  "Papa, did you know
that Tristram considered us a centre of gaiety?  It is a
flattering but a burdensome reputation.  If anyone
expects me to sparkle I am tongue-tied on the instant.
I had better ask the Miss Baileys to come in."

"My dear," said the Rector impressively, "I beg
you will do nothing of the sort.  I cannot endure those
young persons."

"I know it," replied his daughter.—"But, Tristram,
it is a good thing that Mr. Dormer has left you.  It is
well known, is it not, that you may not have other
guests when he is with you?"

A very slight colour came into Mr. Hungerford's face,
and the Rector said rather quickly, "Is Mr. Dormer
going to be in college till term begins?"

"Yes," answered the young man.  "It is quieter for
him, and he is very anxious to finish his book on the
Non-Jurors.  All the worry last term with the
Provost—though, not being a tutor, he was not actually
implicated—put him back in his work."

"I have no sympathy with Mr. Dormer's sufferings,"
declared Horatia.  "You have told me before now,
Tristram, that he has very high views about the
authority of the Church.  Why doesn't he have high
views about the authority of the Provost?"

"But, Horatia," said Tristram earnestly, "don't you
see that it was a matter of conscience?  Newman and
Wilberforce and Froude could not without a protest see
their chances of influencing their pupils vanish, and
themselves reduced to mere tutoring machines.  If
Keble had been elected Provost instead of Hawkins, the
situation would never have arisen.  Now they will have
no more pupils after next year; and, as an Oriel man,
I can't help thinking that it will be Oriel's loss."

"Don't argue with her, Tristram," said the Rector.
"She is only teasing you."

"Not at all," returned Horatia.  "My sympathies
are with the Provost; and so are yours, Papa.  Speak
up now, and tell the truth.  Did your tutor at Christ
Church consider himself responsible for your soul?"

"Well, no, I can't say that he did," admitted
Mr. Grenville, remembering that port-drinking divine.

"There you are!" exclaimed his daughter.  "And
look at the result; could it be better?  Now these Oriel
people want to make their pupils into horrid prigs, and
all the parents in England ought to be grateful to the
Provost for preventing it."

"Horatia," said the Rector, "this levity is not at all
becoming.  I don't myself agree entirely with either
side.  I have a great respect for the Provost, and at the
same time I admire the spirit and high sense of duty of
your friends, Tristram.  Mr. Keble is of their opinion,
and although I cannot go as far as he does, I am
bound to say that the *Christian Year* seems to me to
combine sound scholarship with a proper appreciation
of our historic Church.  Yes, they are good men, and I
am sorry they have been defeated."

"And I," remarked Horatia impenitently, "am
looking forward to seeing each with his one ewe lamb.
How they will cherish their last pupil!"


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When Tristram went, according to custom, into the
Rector's study for a talk after dinner, the door was
hardly shut behind them before Mr. Grenville said:

"I had a feeling this afternoon, when it was too late,
that I interrupted you with Horatia at an unfortunate
moment."

"No, Sir," replied the young man.  "I think, on the
contrary, that you saved me from making a blunder.
One shock is enough for one afternoon."

"Ah," said Mr. Grenville, making his way towards
his favourite chair.  "You have told her then that you
mean to take Orders?"

"I told her that I had practically made up my mind
to do so."

"And what did she say?"

"I gathered that she wasn't surprised, and that she
wasn't altogether pleased," returned Tristram with half
a smile.

"She is out of sympathy with your views," commented
the Rector, tapping with his foot.  "And of
course, as you know, I deplore extremes myself.  But
in time you would settle down.  Still, I know quite well
Horatia's dislike to what seem to be the growing views
of the Oriel Common Room, and she appears to me to
be quite unable to discuss the matter on its merits.  She
always says, 'Papa, dear, I do dislike Mr. Dormer so
much, and I'm not fond of any of those Oriel people.
I cannot understand what Tristram sees in them.'  But
I'll tell you what I think, my boy," concluded the
Rector mysteriously, "and that is, this dislike is a very
hopeful sign."

"Why?" asked Tristram with gloom.

"Well, to begin with, Horatia, unlike most women,
can generally discuss a subject impersonally, but in this
matter she makes a personal application, and she always
attacks your friend Dormer, when she might just as well
select Mr. Newman or Mr. Froude.  Why?  Because
I verily believe she is jealous of him!"  And the
Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville sat back in
his chair to make the full effect of his words.

"You don't really think that she cares—that she
could ever...?"

"I don't know, my dear boy; I can't say.  Perhaps
I oughtn't to raise your hopes.  Horatia is a very
extraordinary young woman.  Sometimes I blame myself;
I blame myself very severely.  I gave her an education
out of the common."

"You did everything that was right," interjected
Tristram.

"I hope so, Tristram, I hope so.  Did I ever tell you
that her aunt once assured me she would either die an
old maid or make a fool of herself?  Well, I did my
best.  Your mother, Tristram, was very fond of my
girl, and she told me more than once that she believed
she had the makings of a fine woman.  If she had been
here now, she would have advised us; for I can't help
feeling that we are at a parting of the ways.  If we had
had her help these last few years it might have been
different.  I have thought that you made a mistake in
not trying again when you came back from abroad.
Persistence sometimes works wonders."

"I cannot bear the idea of pestering a girl until she
accepts an offer out of sheer weariness," said Tristram
with some heat.

"No, I know, and I respect you, my dear fellow,"
said the Rector, looking at him affectionately.
Continuing to look at him, he went on: "Of course, too, I
have doubted whether I have been right to allow you to
see so much of her.  But sometimes I thought you were
getting over it, and Horatia is so entirely at her ease
with you that I feared to interrupt a friendship which I
always hoped might become something else.  But I
believe it has been a strain on you, Tristram.  I can see
it all now, and it must not go on.  It is not fair to you.
How long is it since she refused you?"

"Five years.  I asked her in 1825, the summer before
my mother died."

"Well, well," said the Rector, sighing gently, "the
sooner you try your luck again the better.  The child
strikes me as unsettled, and a little depressed perhaps.
Anyhow, for your own sake, I do not think you ought to
wait.  I could wish that this young friend of yours were
not coming, for it means that nothing can be done for a
week or two.  However, there is the autumn before you,
and if Horatia won't have you, you will soon be taking
Orders and wanting to settle down, and perhaps you
will see someone else.  You are not the sort of man to
have to wait long for a living, and you will be lonely
without a wife.  If my girl is so foolish as to refuse you
again, well——"

Tristram shook his head.  "There is no 'well,'
Mr. Grenville.  It is Horatia or nobody for me."





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   CHAPTER III

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One of Tristram Hungerford's earliest recollections was
of the smell of sealskin, of its delicious softness, and of
its singular utility, when rubbed the wrong way, as a
medium for tracing the journeys of the children of
Israel during Mr. Venn's long sermons in Clapham
parish church.  His Mamma, as he sat snuggled up
against her, never reproved him for this ingenious use
of her attire, and the stern, sad, greyhaired man, on the
other side of her, could not see his small son's
occupation, and would not have realised its significance if he
had.  For if at any given moment John Hungerford was
not attending to Mr. Venn, he was thinking of the cause
to which he had given his whole life and the greater part
of his substance—the abolition of the slave-trade—thinking
too, perhaps, of his English childhood, of his
youth and young manhood spent in Barbados as
manager to that very rich planter, his uncle, of his
return to England a convinced champion of the freedom
of the negro, his untiring labours to that end, in
Parliament and out of it, his friendship with the like-minded
group that held Wilberforce and Stephen, the Thorntons,
Lord Teignmouth and Hannah More, and finally
the meeting with Selina Heathcote, who now sat by his
side, and the healing of that fierce loneliness which had
cut the lines in his face that made people somewhat
afraid of him.

Tristram, however, was not one of these persons,
though he had early realised that Papa was not quite
the same on Sundays as on other days, connecting the
fact with his known study of prophecy and with the
puzzling distinction that was drawn between walking
across the Common to church (which was permissible)
and walking on the same portion of the earth's surface
after church (which was not).

But, after all, Sunday (with its sealskin alleviations in
winter) was soon over, and thereafter Tristram was free,
with his special friends Robert Wilberforce, little John
Venn, and Tom Macaulay, to play by the Mount Pond
and to explore the mysteries of the Common, or, if it
was wet, reinforced by other Wilberforces and Venns,
to engage in endless games of hide and seek up and down
the big house, with its spreading lawns and aged elms,
to which, three years before the old century had run out,
John Hungerford had brought his bride.  Mrs. Hungerford's
chief characteristic was a charity that knew no
bounds, so that it was in her drawing-room that
Mr. Venn propounded his novel scheme of district visiting,
and in her spare bedrooms that the unfortunate African
lads, who were being educated as an experiment at
Mr. Graves's school on the Common, were nursed back to
life after having nearly died of pneumonia.  And on a
day in May, 1800, Tristram had made his own appearance
under its roof, and now he himself, clad in a blue
coat with white collar and ruffles, attended that academy
with his small friends.

Yet those earliest pictures of Evangelical Clapham,
of his father pacing up and down the lawn under the
elms in earnest talk with Mr. Wilberforce, of his mother
smiling at her guests assembled round the great
mahogany dining table (to meet, perhaps, Mrs. Hannah More
or Mr. Gisborne of Yoxall, the famous preacher), were
soon overlaid with others.  In 1808 John Hungerford's
health, shaken by his exertions for the General Abolition
Act of the previous year, began to cause anxiety.  The
doctors recommended change of scene, and air more
bracing than that of Clapham village, suggesting a
temporary retirement to the neighbourhood of the
Sussex or the Berkshire Downs.  Mrs. Hungerford
having a distant relative in the latter county—the young
wife of the Rector of Compton Regis—and a suitable
house at Compton Parva, the next village, falling
vacant, this house was bought, the Hungerfords intending
to divide their time between Clapham and Berkshire.
But John Hungerford, worn out with his labours in
the cause to which he had sacrificed everything, died a
few months later, and Mrs. Hungerford, with her son,
was left in circumstances considerably reduced.  The
large West Indian income reverted, on her husband's
death, to other hands, and so the mansion at Clapham
had to be sold, and the newly-acquired house at
Compton became their permanent home.  But at Compton,
too, death had been busy, for the Rector was now a
widower, almost inseparable from his baby girl.  At
Mrs. Hungerford's request he undertook to prepare
Tristram for Eton.  Herein he was carrying out her own
wishes against those of her friends of the Common, who
were inclined to regard public schools as nurseries of
vice and Cambridge as the only tolerable University.
Already Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Venn had urged tutors
at home in preference to this scheme, and Mr. Zachary
Macaulay had suggested that Tristram should
accompany Tom to his private school in preparation for
Cambridge.  But all the Heathcotes from time immemorial
had gone to Eton and Oxford, and Mrs. Hungerford,
praying always against the spirit of worldliness,
intended Tristram to follow the tradition.

And so for three years Tristram rode his pony to the
Rectory, and learnt to write Latin verse, while
Mrs. Hungerford did her best to counteract the Rector's
educational plans for his little daughter.  Disappointed
in his hopes of a son, Mr. Grenville said that there was
no reason why Horatia should not be as good a scholar
as any boy, and to this end she was to begin Latin at five
and Greek at six, and meanwhile he gave her everything
she wanted.  But before Horatia had mastered *Mensa,
a table*, the white pony had ceased its visits to the
Rectory, for its rider was in his first term at school.

Save for one thing, Eton did not bulk very large in
Tristram's experience.  He took with him there a
questioning mind and a strong body.  The first he soon
learnt to disguise; the second brought him the thing
that counted, his friend.  Fond of all games, he gave
himself assiduously to rowing, a sport then rather winked at
than formally recognised by the authorities, and towards
the end of his fourth year had attained the position of a
captain.  When selecting a crew for the Boats of the
Fourth of June, he happened to cast his eye on a
delicate-looking boy of his own age, above him in class, whose
brilliant but rather uncertain oarsmanship he had once
or twice observed, and, though he rather doubted his
staying power, resolved to include him.  Nor, when he
asked him to take an oar in the *Defiance*, and Dormer,
flushing with pleasure, had accepted, stoutly denying
the imputation that he was not strong, had Tristram
any idea that he himself had just performed the most
pregnant action, perhaps, of his life.

The Fourth of June came, and Tristram's recruit did
not belie his promise, nor did he fail in the severer test
of Election Saturday, when, amid fireworks and
bell-ringing, the *Defiance* chased the *Mars* round and round
Windsor Eyot and finally bumped her.  It was not,
indeed, until they had landed that Tristram's well-earned
triumph was somewhat dashed by the news that Number
Four had fainted, and that they could not bring him to.
He ran back to find that not all the Thames water which
was being ladled over his unconscious comrade was
having any effect, and, conscience-stricken, he picked
him up and went off with him in search of more skilled
assistance, divided between alarm, admiration for his
pluck, and a certain protective sensation quite new to
him.  To the end of his life he was always to entertain
for Charles Dormer somewhat similar feelings.

The result of it all was a verdict that the boy had
slightly strained his heart and must pass a week in bed.
The remorseful Tristram visited him daily, and thus, in
talks more intimate than they could probably have
compassed by other means, their friendship had its birth.
Later, Tristram took Dormer home with him for the
holidays, and the compassionate soul of Selina Hungerford
was able to spend itself on the boy, who, she felt
secretly sure, had never had a real mother.

The time came at last for Tristram to go up to Oxford.
In the selection of a college Mrs. Hungerford accepted
the choice of Mr. Grenville, who voted unhesitatingly
for Oriel.  Copleston, the Provost, he had known and
admired since undergraduate days, and he had followed
the ascent of Oriel, under Provost Eveleigh, towards her
present pre-eminence.  He had seen her choose her
Fellows for their intellectual promise rather than for
their social qualities, and he had seen her force upon a
University content hitherto with a farce, a system of
real examination for the B.A. degree.  He had also seen
(though without quite realising its import) the gradual
formation of that group of Fellows called the Noetics,
who were products of the French Revolution though
they were ignorant of the philosophy of the Continent,
who, asking the why and the wherefore, pulled everything
to pieces, and who had the temerity to apply even
to religion itself the unfettered discussion meted out in
Common Room to all subjects alike.  Into this atmosphere
of liberal thought the Rector was responsible for
plunging the son of John Hungerford, born in the sacred
village of Clapham, and destined by his parents for the
ministry.

The son of John Hungerford, however, was the last
to complain of his immersion, especially as his friend,
too, was entered at Oriel.  That questioning spirit,
which he had learnt to disguise at Eton, now found a
suitable soil and blossomed accordingly.  Tristram had,
moreover, the fortune to fall for instruction to the great
Whately himself, the Noetic of the Noetics, the "White
Bear," who treated his pupils rather like the host of
dogs which he took with him on his walks round Christ
Church meadows, throwing stones for them into the
Cherwell.  With his boisterous humanity, his disturbing
habit of launching Socratic questions, his almost equally
disturbing habit of imparting information lying full
length on a sofa, he kept the minds of his disciples in a
continual ferment, and when, as in Tristram's case, the
critical faculty was already highly developed, the result
was so stimulating that an apt pupil might very well
pass even beyond the ideas of his master.  Above all
things, Whately hated shams; he repudiated all
authority, whether of the Church or of tradition, and
held that there was nothing which should not be
submitted to reason.  Yet, in an Erastian age, he upheld
the freedom of the Church from the State, though he
denounced the priesthood as an invasion of Christian
equality.  He reduced dogma to a residuum, yet, for his
able defence of that residuum, he might rank as a
Christian apologist.

His views at first appealed very strongly to Tristram,
who thought that he was going to be able to reconcile
reason, religion, learning, and the general scheme of
things.  But after a while he discovered that this process
was not so easy, and Dormer, the High Churchman, was
responsible for making it harder still.  And at the end
of his time at Oxford he found his opinions in such a
state of flux that he determined to postpone taking
Orders.  Mrs. Hungerford, rather to the surprise of the
conscience-stricken Rector, put no pressure on her son,
and a noble lord writing at this juncture in search of a
tutor for his heir, Tristram was glad to accept the post.

Three years later, on his homeward way from the
Continental tour which rounded off his time with his
pupil, when choosing, at Brussels, a piece of lace for
Horatia's approaching birthday (on which he had always
given her a present), Tristram realised with a curious
dismay that it was the eighteenth recurrence of this
anniversary, that he had, of course, always intended to
marry her, that applications for her hand might already
have been made from other quarters—and accepted—and
that he must get back at once.  His charge was
perhaps equally dismayed at the speed with which,
next day, they resumed their homeward course.

They need not have hastened.  If the disappointed
lover had not been obliged to consider his mother's
suddenly threatened health, it would have gone even
harder with him than it did.  She who had always
tended now needed tending, and had her illness been
voluntary her unrivalled instinct for consolation could
not have hit upon a means more healing.  Tristram took
her away to Hastings, and there, after eight months,
she died.

Doubly as the place was now painful to him, Tristram
returned to Compton.  His loss, however, had this effect,
that it made intercourse with the Rectory more easy of
resumption.  Having sufficient means and no definite
object for his energies he was thrown back upon himself.
He had neither the money nor the inclination to stand
for Parliament.  His father's passion for the interests of
the negro had not descended to him, but more and more
the crying need of the English poor was forcing itself
upon his attention.  He would have liked to be able to
take Orders and to immerse himself in activities in some
growing town.  As it was he found a shadow of
consolation in studying the problem of Poor Law reform.
He even wrote a pamphlet, "A remedy for the present
distress," and, as a justice of the peace, he was active in
the emigration schemes then so popular as a means of
remedying the mischief caused by the insane administration
of the Poor Law.  But every day seemed emptier
than the last.  He saw Horatia frequently, but, disguise
it as he might, this privilege was not entirely pleasurable.
He had lost the mother to whom he was devoted,
and now the Gospel according to Whately was beginning
to fail him.  Slowly and bitterly it came to him that the
"manly, reasonable, moderate, not too other-worldly
faith and practice" which had once satisfied him had
done so only because he was young, and because things
were going well with him.  When he went in to Oxford to
see Dormer, now in Orders and Fellow of Oriel, he came
across Whately more than once, and felt the chill that
one feels in meeting a person the glamour of whose
influence has departed.

But more and more he found himself a constant visitor
at Oriel, until, as a privileged person, he came to be
almost included in the circle of Dormer's friends there.
These, without, exception, belonged to the new Oriel
school, who were in reaction from speculation to
authority, and, like John Keble, their guide, boldly
placed character above intellect.  Dormer never argued
with him now, yet, imperceptibly, the leaven worked....
In the end it was Tristram's own need and his
feeling for the needs of others which made him able to
cut himself away from all "liberal" trammels and to
rank himself under the same banner with the friend who
had waited long and patiently for such a change of mind.
During the summer term of 1830 he told Dormer that
there was now no reason why he should not be ordained.

He had told Dormer something else too—the something
which he had been discussing this very evening
with Mr. Grenville, the something which was engrossing
his whole thoughts as he rode homewards under the
infant moon—his intention of again asking Horatia to
marry him.  There had never been any other woman for
him.  He knew her very well; he was no stranger even
to her faults—little flecks making more beautiful a
beautiful flower, they seemed to him, for he had a
profound belief in her, a sort of intuitive faith in the real,
secret Horatia whom sometimes she seemed to delight
in hiding up—the woman with a capacity for great
things.  And the more he knew her the more he desired
her.  The thought that, when the time seemed favourable,
he was going to stake his happiness on another throw,
shook him.  It haunted his sleep that night in a harassing
dream, relic of their conversation at supper, wherein he
was feverishly trying to build up a dyke against a flood
of water that poured and pushed upon it, and Horatia,
dressed in the robes of the Provost of Oriel, was laughing
at him and telling him not to be absurd, for the water
had to come.  Then, with her garden trowel, she had
herself made a little breach in the bank, and at that a
smooth wave had slipped over and carried her away,
still laughing; and he woke, in a horror for which he
could scarcely account, and lay wakeful till dawn.





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   CHAPTER IV

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There was a certain day in the year the advent of
which always imbued the Rector of Compton Regis with
an irritability quite foreign to his nature.  It was that
Sunday, usually occurring somewhere between Lammas
and Michaelmas, on which his conscience obliged him
to preach a sermon on eternal punishment.

The Rector was not sound on Hell, and he knew it.
Every year he sought miserably for some formula which
should reconcile what he felt with what he believed, and
he sat this afternoon at his study table surrounded by
old discourses on the subject, running one hand
distractedly through his thick grey hair while the other
held the pen of an unready writer.  Every now and
then his gaze sought help from his beloved little cases
of Romano-British coins, or from the backs of Camden
and Dugdale, and once, leaving his uncongenial task,
he got up and wistfully fingered his latest acquisition,
the brass piece of Allectus, which lay waiting to be put
in its place with its numismatical peers.

The Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville was
one of those persons, abounding in these islands, whose
theories and practice do not match.  He stood,
outwardly, for the union on equal terms of Church and
State, but in his heart he really assigned to the former a
different and a superior plane.  His antiquarian leanings,
very plainly manifested in his study, were the cause
alike of this inconsistency, and of the measure of
sympathy which, despite himself, he accorded to the "Oriel
young men" whose enthusiasm (a thing he feared and
disliked) would, he considered, wear off in time, and
whose attachment to the historical foundation of the
Church commanded his entire approval.

Aristocrat and Tory, the best-born gentleman in the
neighbourhood (and the least likely to lay stress on the
fact), he was greatly respected, and with reason.  No
dissenting chapel reared its head in the parish, and there
was not a single public-house.  It was his custom to
celebrate Holy Communion at Christmas, Easter and
Whitsun, and on the Sundays immediately following
those feasts, and to baptise and catechise on Sunday
afternoons.  His reading in church was very impressive.
He knew every one of his flock personally; he endeavoured
always to do his duty as he conceived it, else had
he not now been struggling, poor gentleman, with an
uncongenial topic....

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"Have you any letters for the carrier, dear?" asked
Horatia, putting her bonneted head in at the door.
Sounds of impatient boundings and whimperings behind
her hinted at an accompanying presence.

The Rector abandoned Hell for the moment.  "There
is the letter to your Aunt Julia, my love.  I had to keep
it back to make some inquiries about railroads ... and
then this sermon ... Where have I put it?"  Rumpling
his hair still more violently he reflected, and
having searched among the litter on his table, found
what he sought and gave it to his daughter.

"Try and have your sermon finished when I come
back in an hour's time, there's a good Papa," suggested
Horatia, kissing him.  "I am sure what you said last
year would do quite well.  I shall go round by
Five-Acres and back by the road."

Outside the inn the Oxford carrier was just preparing
to start, wrapped in an old many-caped coat, which had
probably once adorned a greater luminary, some driver
of the numerous London and Oxford coaches.  Horatia
gave him the letter, acknowledged the landlord's
respectful greeting, and summoning her spaniel from some
ravishing discovery in the yard, turned along the road.

Presently the carrier passed her, cracking his whip in
emulation of the *Magnet* or the *Regulator*, and as she
watched the lumbering covered cart dwindle gradually
in the distance, Horatia found her mind following the
odyssey of Aunt Julia's letter; saw it being trundled
along the miles of road, past Kingston Bagpuize and
Besselsleigh and down the long hill into Oxford;
witnessed its transference next morning to the London
coach at the *Angel*, and finally pictured the postman
delivering it at Cavendish Square, and Aunt Julia
receiving it at breakfast in the big, handsome, gloomy
dining-room.

And because, not having any great love of that lady,
she had seen little of Aunt Julia since her childhood, she
instinctively imaged her as she had appeared in those
days, with her smooth brown hair, her rich and smooth
brown dress; and she saw, round the breakfast table,
her eight cousins, all of the ages which were respectively
theirs about the time of the battle of Salamanca.
(Horatia herself was born in Trafalgar year, and owed
her name to that fact.) Further, she recalled her
never-forgotten and scarcely forgiven stay under Aunt Julia's
roof at that epoch.

She was six or seven, and she had been deposited in
Aunt Julia's care on account of an epidemic at Compton.
Her nurse did not accompany her.  Mrs. Baird, a strict
Evangelical, brought up her children very literally in
the fear of the Lord, and she believed in "breaking a
child's will."  Yet she was kind and perfectly just, while
her offspring were such models of good behaviour that
it seemed now to Horatia as if this process could not
have been painful to them.  But the atmosphere of
compulsory religion, which attained its apogee on
Sunday, caused Horatia to look upon that day with a
novel horror.  Church in the morning, with a long string
of little be-pantalooned worshippers setting out in double
file towards Margaret Chapel, the two rearmost reciting
to their father, during that short transit, verses and
hymns: after church more verses and hymns, and then
it three o'clock a heavy meal, at which all the children
dined with their parents.  The conversation was
instructive.  Uncle James never failed to quote with
approval Mr. Wilberforce's application of the text in
Proverbs about the dinner of herbs and the stalled ox,
pointing out that his fortunate offspring enjoyed both
the better meal and the blessings of affection.
Afterwards there was more religious instruction, and family
prayers, in the evening, of enormously swollen bulk.
The first Sunday of her stay, Horatia bore these
multiplied devotions because she was unaware, at any given
moment, how much was still to follow.  On the second
Sunday she restrained herself until the evening.  It was
Aunt Julia's custom always to hear the prayers of the
younger children; but when Horatia in her turn was
bidden to kneel at that unyielding lap, she refused.  She
would not say any more prayers: God, she announced,
with confidence, must be tired; He had been hearing
them all day.  And in this opinion she remained firm.

Only having suffered the mildest reproofs for
wrong-doing, Horatia was not warned when the eulogy of the
rod of correction taken from the Book of Proverbs was
chosen for the nightly reading, but when the other
children had been dismissed she suddenly experienced, at the
lap she had scorned, the practical effect of the wise man's
teaching.  Yet Aunt Julia, though she had not spared
for her crying, suffered defeat, for Horatia did not say
her prayers, and her visit was shortly afterwards
terminated lest she should contaminate the other children.
Aunt Julia indeed offered to undertake a course of
"bringing the child to her senses" at some future date,
but the Rector declined the proposal, nor did Horatia
visit again in Cavendish Square until she was nearly
grown up.  It was many a day, too, before she could be
coaxed by her father to resume the practice of prayer.

Aunt Julia's hair was not so brown now, and of the
eight daughters five were prosperously married.
Horatia knew that none of them considered herself to
have had a childhood other than happy.  Perhaps it was
a good preparation for the state of matrimony, to have
your "will broken" early in life.  If so, how far was
she herself from possessing that desired qualification!

Horatia smiled at the thought as she walked along.
Since the death of the mother whom she could not
remember, and the extinction of the hope of a son (for
Mr. Grenville had a feeling against second marriages),
she had been to her father almost everything that a son
could have been—with the added advantage that she
was never obliged to leave him.  Latin and Greek and
ancient history had been laid open to her as to a boy;
she was able to take an interest in the Rector's
antiquarian pursuits, and could have abstracted passages
from the Fathers for him if he had wanted them.  All
this Mr. Grenville had taught her himself, turning a
deaf ear to family representations on the necessity of a
governess, the use of the globes, and deportment.  Music
and Italian masters, however, visited the Rectory from
time to time, imparting knowledge when their pupil was
in the mood to receive it, but it was to the old émigré
priest settled at East Hendred, whom she loved, that
she owed her remarkably good knowledge and
pronunciation of French, and her interest in the history of
his native land.  For after all Horatia was not a typical
classical scholar; her acquaintance with Greek and
Latin authors was by no means extensive, and need not
so much have alarmed her neighbours.


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Decidedly it would, after all, soon be autumn in
earnest.  Only five days ago, when she was in the garden
among the flowers, Horatia had scouted the thought,
but there was less of summer here.  Farmer Wilson's
beeches were actually beginning to turn.  There was a
tiny trail of leaves along the side of Narrow Lane, as she
could see by glancing down it.  The high road, less
overshadowed, was clearer of these evidences of mortality.
How blue was the line of the Downs!

A horseman overtook her, riding fast, and raising his
hat as he passed, but without looking at her.  It was no
one that she knew, yet, a good rider herself, Horatia
instinctively remarked his ease and grace, his perfect
seat.  He was taking the same road as she, but long
before she got to the turn he had disappeared round it;
and indeed she had forgotten him even sooner, for
Rover the spaniel suddenly went delirious over a
hedgehog which he just then discovered, and which he had
to be coerced into leaving behind.  Horatia was still
praising and scolding her dog when she got to the
turn—and when the sound of loud screaming ahead caused
her to hasten her steps.

By the side of the road, a little way down, was a group
composed of the gentleman who had passed her, his
horse, and a small child in a pinafore.  From this infant,
seated upon the border of grass, proceeded the loud
wails which Horatia had heard; the rider, one buckskinned
knee upon the ground, was stooping over it and
addressing it in tones that, as Horatia came nearer,
sounded alternately anxious and coaxing.

"It is Tommy Wilson," thought Miss Grenville
aghast.  "He is always playing in the road, and now he's
been ridden over....  But it can't be serious, or he
would not be able to yell like that."  Nevertheless she
hastened still more.  The gentleman, absorbed in his
blandishments, did not hear her.

"Leetle boy," she heard him say—"leetle boy, you
are not hurt, not the least in the world.  You are
frightened, soit, but you are not hurt.  See, here is a
crown"—the yells ceased for a moment—"now rise
and go to your home.  Quoi! you cannot stand upon
your feet?"  For he had lifted the infant to a standing
posture, which it instantly abandoned, falling this time
prone upon the ground, and emitting now perfect shrieks
of rage or terror.

"Dieu! a-t-il des poumons!" exclaimed the young
man despairingly to himself.  He made a gesture and
rose; at the same instant heard Horatia's step and,
turning round, snatched off his hat.  His mien implored
the succour which she would have rendered in any case.

"Is the child really hurt, Sir?" she asked.  As well
pretend that she took him for an Englishman, since he
spoke the tongue so readily!

"Mademoiselle," said the young man dramatically,
"I swear to you that my horse never passed within a
foot of him.  But he runs across the road in front of me,
and falls down; I dismount and pick him up—what
else could I do?—and since that time he ceases not to
yell comme un démon!"

His brilliant, speaking dark-blue eyes rested on her
with a mixture of humour, appeal, and (it was impossible
not to recognise it) of admiration.  His black silk cravat
was so high that his chin creased it; his chamois-coloured
cashmere waistcoat was fastened with buttons
of chased gold, and the cut of his greenish-bronze coat
testified to an ultra-fashionable tailor.  Horatia looked
at Tommy Wilson, now rolling on the grass in a perfect
luxury of woe.  Bending over him she seized him firmly
by the arm.

"Tommy," she commanded, "get up!"  More
successful than the Frenchman, she restored him to some
measure of equilibrium.  "Now you are coming with me
to the doctor to show him where you are hurt.  Come
along!"

Her voice, which he knew, had the effect of reducing
the youth's lamentations, but at her suggestion a fresh
tide of alarm swept over his round, smeared face.  He
resisted, ejaculating hoarsely: "No, Miss!  No, Miss
'Ratia!  No, I 'ont!"

"Very well then, I shall bring the doctor to you
here," said Miss Grenville firmly.  "Now mind, Tommy,
that you stay where you are without moving till I come
back with him.  Do you hear?"  She loosed her hold
and stood back, holding up a warning finger.

A success almost startling rewarded her manoeuvre.
For five seconds, perhaps, Thomas Wilson stood blinking
at her through his tears, his mouth working woefully
at the corners; then, with an expression of forlorn
determination, he turned, ran past the horse, and set
off to trot home at a pace which dispelled the least
suspicion of injury.





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   CHAPTER V

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Both Horatia and the stranger whom she had befriended
looked after the small vanishing figure with an amused
relief; then the young man turned, and, clasping his
hat to his breast (for he was still bareheaded), made her
a graceful, formal bow.

"Mademoiselle, I am your debtor to my dying day!
Conceive how I am alarmed by that so evil boy!  Ma
foi, I began to see myself in an English prison for
attempted murder."

"Mr. Hungerford would soon have effected your
release, Monsieur," said Horatia, laughing.  "May I
ask, indeed, why he has left you to these adventures?"  For
she would no longer pretend ignorance of his
identity.

The young man showed a marked surprise.  "Is it
possible that I have the good fortune to be known to
you?" he exclaimed.  "But yes; I am the guest of
Mr. Hungerford, and, to make a clean breast of my sins,
Mademoiselle, I have lost him.  He was taking me to
pay a call upon M. le Recteur of Compton Regis, and his
daughter—cousins of Mr. Hungerford, I believe—we
parted half an hour ago, and I was to meet him at some
place whose name I have forgotten; then I have the
contretemps with the infant and have lost the way also.
I am in despair, because I have it in my mind that the
cousine of Mr. Hungerford is une très belle personne,
and her father very instructed; and who knows now
whether I shall ever see them?"

His air of regret and helplessness was rather
attractive; but the suspicion that he really had more than
half an inkling who she was restored to Miss Grenville's
voice and manner something of the decorum proper to
the chance meeting of a young lady with a strange
gentleman on the road—a decorum already a good deal
impaired by the feeling of complicity in the business of
Tommy Wilson.

"I have no doubt," she said, "that you will find
Mr. Hungerford already at the Rectory, and I will direct you
the shortest way thither.  I am myself Miss Grenville."

M. le Comte de la Roche-Guyon smote himself lightly
on the breast.  "I might have guessed it!" he said in
an aside to Tristram's horse.  "Mademoiselle, I am
more than ever your devoted servant ... Permit
me!"  He kissed her gloved hand with a singular
mixture of reverence and fervour.  "But ... if we
are going the same way ... might I not have the
great honour of accompanying you, or would it not be
considered convenable, in England?"

His tone, his innocent, pleading glance suggested that
in his own less conventional native land such a proceeding
would be perfectly proper; whereas Horatia knew
the exact contrary to be the case.  However, she always
thought that she despised convention; there was the
chance that he might get lost again, and meanwhile poor
Tristram would be waiting about Heaven knew where.
So she said, with sufficient dignity, that she should be
very pleased, and they started homewards, conversing
with great propriety on such banal subjects as the
weather, and with Tristram's horse pacing beside them
for chaperon.  Yet the shade of Tommy Wilson, hovering
cherub-like above them, linked them in a half-guilty
alliance.

And thus they came round by Five-Acres into Compton
Regis, and at the cross-roads by the farm found
Tristram Hungerford, on his old horse, looking for his
missing guest.

"My dear La Roche-Guyon, where have you been?"
he demanded, as he dismounted and saluted Horatia.

"In Paradise," responded the young man audaciously.
"Eh quoi, you were anxious about me, mon ami?  I
found a guardian angel in the person of Miss Grenville
herself."

"So I see," answered his host a trifle drily.  "I rode
back to Risley to look for you."

The Comte protested that he was desolated, at the
same time managing to convey to the girl beside him,
without either speech or look, that, for obvious reasons,
he was nothing of the sort.  But Miss Grenville, with a
heightened colour, walked on in silence between them.
She had no taste for exaggerated compliments; that
foolish utterance about Paradise would not have been
at all in good taste for an Englishman.  But, of course,
M. de la Roche-Guyon was a foreigner.

She had yet to learn that M. de la Roche-Guyon, born
and partially educated as he had been in England, had
a much less incomplete knowledge of English usage than
he found convenient, at times, to publish abroad.


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Armand-Maurice de la Roche-Guyon achieved, in the
Rectory drawing-room, the impression which he never
failed to make in any society.  Man or woman, you
wanted instinctively to be friends with him; he had so
engaging an air of expecting it.  And Horatia noticed
afresh how intensely he was alive, and how little he tried
to conceal the fact.  She thought of the wooden,
controlled visages of some of her male acquaintances, and
contrasted them with his changing, vivid face, in which
every feature, from the clear eyebrows to the rather
mocking mouth, could express any shade of feeling from
derision to adoration.  Such foreign accent as he
retained lent a charm to his fluent English, which,
though apt to desert him at moments of crisis, carried
him gallantly in ordinary conversation, and only
required occasional help from a gesture or a French word.
But, as he explained, he had been born in England, and
therefore the English "th," the shibboleth of his
countrymen, troubled him but little.

"M. l'Abbé Dubayet, who taught my daughter, never
learnt our language properly, though he had been in
England for a quarter of a century," remarked the
Rector, commenting on his visitor's proficiency.

"So much the better for Mademoiselle, who speaks,
I will wager, like a Tourangelle," responded the young
Frenchman, with a little bow in Horatia's direction.

"Yes, she does speak well," said the Rector.

"Her friends complain, I believe, that they cannot
follow her on that account," murmured Tristram.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Horatia.  "Do not
think to flatter me into talking French with M. de la
Roche-Guyon.  I shall ask him the inevitable question
in English: How do you like England, Monsieur?"

"Mais, mon Dieu!" exclaimed the guest, "how am
I to reply to that?  If you mean the country,
Mademoiselle, it is not new to me; if you mean John Bull,
it would not be polite of me to tell you how much he
sometimes amuses me; if you mean the English ladies,
you would think what I should say too polite, and you
would not believe me."

"We had better let you off, La Roche-Guyon," said
Tristram.  "Far be it from us to ask why John Bull
amuses you."

"You have seen Oxford, I suppose, Monsieur?"
inquired the Rector.

"Already twice," responded M. de la Roche-Guyon.
"I find it beautiful—but of a beauty!  We have nothing
like it; it must be the wonder of the world, your
University.  Fortunate young men, to live in those
magnificent colleges, and disport themselves on those
lawns!  I saw there—what did I not see? all the
colleges, I think, certainly that of Oriel, the nurse of
Mr. Hungerford—and the theatre, with those heads of
Roman Emperors (but, indeed, I hope they were not
really like that), and the great library, superb, and a
museum—I have forgotten its name, where there was
a jewel of Alfred, and the sword sent by the Pope to
your Henry VIII—he would not send one, I think, to
William IV?—and a horn which grew upon the head of
a woman (but that I do not believe, naturally) and a
picture of the Christ carrying the cross made in the
feathers of the humming-bird.  Yes, and I also saw in
the library, I think, a model of our Maison Carrée at
Nîmes.  But it is the whole city, with its towers and
gardens, which has most ravished me."

"Ah, do you take an interest in Roman remains?"
queried the Rector, brightening.  "We can't show you
another Maison Carrée of course, but there is a very fair
Roman villa between here and Oxford, with a Roman
cemetery near it.  Then there is Cherbury Camp, not
far from us—though that is probably pre-Roman, if not
pre-British; it is egg-shaped, and has three valla, with
fosses outside each—very interesting.  I should have
great pleasure in showing it to you, Monsieur, if you
cared to see it."

"I am sure that M. le Comte will not care for that,
Papa," interposed Horatia.  "I assure you, Monsieur,
it is nothing but a few grassy banks, all ploughed away
except in one place.  Imagination supplies the rest."

"And what, Miss, supplies the Roman coins in my
study, from Augustus to Honorius, all found in this
county?" demanded her father.  "And the cameo of
Hermes with a cornucopia, and the very Anglo-Saxon
fibula you are wearing at this moment, ungrateful
girl!"

"You have found these things!" exclaimed the
young Frenchman eagerly, and his quick glance went to
Horatia's neck.  "De grace, Monsieur, permit me to
avail myself of your so kind offer!  I have always desired
to behold the traces of our conquerors and yours.  What
a people, the Romans!"

The Rector, delighted at this responsive enthusiasm,
said that he would certainly conduct the visitor to
Cherbury Camp next morning, and was warmly thanked
for his offer.  Tristram, though a little surprised at his
guest's unexpected antiquarian zeal, was not ill-pleased
at the arrangement, for he had an article to finish.  Miss
Grenville, however, continued to oppose her father's
selection.

"I have a much better idea than that," she
announced.  "Take M. de la Roche-Guyon to see the
White Horse, Papa."

"The White Horse, what is that?" inquired the
young man.  "An old inn?"

"It is a horse cut in the hillside by the Anglo-Saxons,"
Horatia informed him.  "It is said to have been made
by command of Alfred to commemorate his victory over
the Danes.  Papa does not believe that theory, as everyone
else does.  But he will no doubt explain his heretical
ideas to you if you go with him to-morrow.  At any rate,
you will get a magnificent view, and see something you
have not the like of, I suppose, in France."

"But pardon," retorted the Frenchman, "in France
we have the white horse of M. de Lafayette, and that is
already an animal—how do you say, légendaire; and
some day perhaps he will be laid out as a bed in the
gardens of the Tuileries.  Oh, la belle idée!"

Horatia laughed.  But the mention of Lafayette
reminded her of recent events.

"You were in the revolution, perhaps, Monsieur?"

The young man's face darkened.  "How do you
mean, 'in it,' Mademoiselle?  You do not think that I
am one of those scoundrelly revolutionaries?"

"No, indeed!  But you saw it—you fought in it,
perhaps?"

The Comte de la Roche-Guyon shrugged his shoulders.
"Yes, I fought a little.  But I had bad luck."

What this misfortune was he did not specify.  He did
not seem to wish to talk about the Days of July, and
Horatia liked him for it, feeling sure that the long white
seam which she suddenly espied on the back of his right
hand was an honourable memento of the occasion, and
not realising that the age of so well-healed a wound must
be nearer two years than two months.

"Ah, a sad business," said Mr. Grenville sympathetically.
"And you have just come from Lulworth, I
understand.  How did you find the King?"

"His Majesty is lodged tant bien que mal," responded
their visitor.  "The Castle is out of repair and there
is little state.  The day before I left I saw Madame la
Dauphine and her lady driving out in the rain in a
shabby little open carriage drawn by a rough pony.
They both had old straw bonnets and Madame la
Duchesse d'Angoulême a light brown shawl.  I believe
that they were one day taken for servants, for
housekeepers, at a neighbouring château which they went to
visit."

"What unparalleled misfortunes have been hers!"
said the Rector.  "And the Duchesse de Berry?"

"Ah, she finds it too dull there; she goes visiting.
Madame la Duchesse de Berry will not stop at anything;
she has the spirit of an Amazon.  My father tells me
that on the way from Paris to Cherbourg she went armed
with pistols, and fired them off once, too, in the King's
presence.  His Majesty was much annoyed."

"It is her little son, is it not, who is the heir to the
crown?" asked Horatia.  "How old is he?"

"Henry V is this month ten years old," responded
the Comte.

"Britwell-Prior in Oxfordshire belongs to the Welds
of Lulworth," said the Rector musingly.  "Oh, are you
going, Tristram?  Well, mind that you spare me M. de la
Roche-Guyon to-morrow morning.  I will be ... let
me see—yes, I will be at the cross-roads at half-past
ten, if he will join me there, and we will go to the White
Horse, if Robin, who is really getting very fat, will carry
me up the hill.  And when shall I see you again?"

"At the Squire's on Saturday, I expect," said
Tristram, adding that he hoped himself to get up a little
dinner-party next week, if he could persuade M. de la
Roche-Guyon to stay.  He was beginning to take his
leave when Horatia interrupted him.

"Before you go, Tristram, I want to show you this
book which I picked up in Oxford before I went away.
Excuse me, M. le Comte."

It is to be presumed that M. le Comte excused her,
no other course being open to him, but he bent
interested eyes upon her as she and Tristram stooped over
the book together, eyes which had already opened wider
than their wont when he first heard the mutual use of
the Christian name.

"Pardon," he observed in a low voice to the Rector,
"but Mademoiselle your daughter and Mr. Hungerford
are par—relations, I should say?"

"A sort of cousins," replied Mr. Grenville.  "Moreover
Tristram Hungerford is almost a son to me—an
old pupil whom I have known since he was a child."  And
wishing further to disarm possible foreign criticism,
he added, "Our English girls have much more
liberty than yours in France, you know."

"For that reason I have always wished to be an
Englishman," was M. de la Roche-Guyon's reply
to this.

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"Your Miss Grenville is very pretty, to my mind,"
he observed to his host as they rode homewards some
twenty minutes later.  "Has she many admirers?"

Mr. Hungerford thought this question decidedly
impertinent—especially as he could not answer it in the
affirmative—but remembering, like Horatia, that the
speaker was a foreigner, abstained from an attempt to
snub him.  He answered a little stiffly:

"Miss Grenville is not concerned to see every man at
her feet."

"So I supposed," returned the young Frenchman.

"She is docte, instruite.  Nevertheless——" he broke
off and shot a long, keen and rather malicious glance at
Tristram's profile—"nevertheless, some day she will
find it quite an amusing game.  They all do, in the end."

Tristram pulled out his watch.  "Shall we trot a
little?" he suggested pleasantly.  "It is later than I
thought."





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   CHAPTER VI

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"But ... mille pardons ... it is not very
resembling—it is not much like a horse," said M. le
Comte de la Roche-Guyon a little doubtfully.

The wind of the Berkshire Downs blew through his
dark hair as he stood, hat on hip, one hand at his chin,
and looked down on the strange beast stretched at
his feet on the chalky hillside turf.

"It is not," confessed the Rector, holding on to his
hat.  "For one thing the tail seems longer than the
legs, does it not?  (The whole thing, I must tell you, is
three hundred and seventy-four feet long, and covers an
acre of ground.)  And yet the form of the horse's figure
as represented on ancient British coins is known to be
a debased copy of the elegant animals on the pieces
struck by Philip of Macedon.  And that is one reason
why I take the Horse to be of far older origin than the
victory of Ashdown in 871 which it is supposed to
commemorate.  I take it to be of British, not of Saxon,
times."

"Really!" murmured his audience.

"Yes," said Mr. Grenville with growing impressiveness,
"it is to me certain that the ceremonies connected
with the quinquennial scouring of the Horse, of which I
will tell you presently, are religious in origin."  And he
expanded this theory.

If M. de la Roche-Guyon (as is highly probable) was
supremely indifferent to date and origin, and unmoved
by the thought of the ancient race to whom the Rector
attributed the execution of the chalk steed, he concealed
it well.  Considering that he was quite ignorant of the
pre-Conquest history of England his questions were
remarkably intelligent, and Mr. Grenville thoroughly
enjoyed his own exposition.

"Well, we must be going," he said regretfully at last,
and they went to the place where they had left their
horses tethered a little lower down.  The descent was
steep and stony, and before they had gone very far the
Frenchman pulled up with apologies; he feared that his
horse, or rather Mr. Hungerford's, had a stone in its shoe.
Mr. Grenville whiled away the delay by speaking of the
very fine neolithic celt which he had found at his favourite
Cherbury, nor did it occur to him that the young man
tinkering at his horse's foot had not the remotest idea
of what a celt might be.  On the contrary, the Comte
smiled very pleasantly as he remounted, and congratulated
Mr. Grenville on possessing this object.  The
Rector agreed that he was lucky.

"It is fifteen years ago since I found it," he mused,
"but I remember my excitement as if it were yesterday.
I must show it to you when we get back—for, of course,
Hungerford understands that you are returning to
luncheon with me?—Hold up, Robin!  I should like
also to show you my coins."

M. de la Roche-Guyon, it appeared, asked nothing
better, and they proceeded in the September sunshine.
They were within a mile of Compton when the Rector
suddenly checked his fat cob.

"I believe, M. le Comte, that your horse is losing a
shoe.  Hungerford's man must be very careless, for I
happen to know that the beast was shod only last week.
Or perhaps it was that stone?  Fortunately we are only
a little way from home."

Once again the young man dismounted.  "It is true,"
he said.  "It must have been the stone.  What a
nuisance!"  The Rector could not see him biting his lips
to hide a smile, nor hear him mutter "Peste!  It was
not necessary, after all!"

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"It does not in the least resemble the horse of M. de
Lafayette," he assured Horatia at luncheon, a meal
which passed off with much gaiety, but at the conclusion
of which the Rector spoke again of his coins and the
famous celt.  Horatia, though she could not bring
herself to believe the vivacious young Frenchman really
interested in the contents of Berkshire tumuli, had not
the heart to try to prevent her father from bringing out
his treasures, and she watched M. de la Roche-Guyon
being borne off to the study with mingled amusement
and compassion.  It was his own fault after all; and
she was sure that Papa could not keep him long—because
he still had not finished that sermon.

Half an hour later, sitting with some embroidery on
the lawn, she knew that the Rector must have returned
to his task, for she beheld the Comte to issue alone from
the house.

"M. le Recteur permits that I make my adieux," he
said as he came towards her.  "Will Mademoiselle
permit it also?"

Horatia laid down her work.  "Pray do not hurry
away, Monsieur.  Papa has his sermon to finish, and I,
as you see, have no serious occupation.  Will you not
sit down for a little?"

The young Frenchman complied readily enough.  His
glance went round the garden, over the phloxes and
sunflowers, rested a moment on a book lying on the
grass, and came back to Horatia.  He gave a little,
half-checked sigh.

"You cannot think, Mademoiselle," he said after a
moment's silence, "how delightful it is for an exile like
myself to be admitted again into the intimacy of home
life.  Not only is it beautiful and touching, but it is
unexpected; for in France we are told that you have no
life of the family to be compared with ours; and I have
been used ... in the past ... to so much."

His voice dropped, and he looked down.

"We think, in England, that we have much of it too,"
said Horatia rather softly.  "But—an exile—why do
you call yourself that, Monsieur le Comte?  Surely you
are returning to France?"

The young man raised his eyes, blue and laughing no
longer.  "Ah, yes, Mademoiselle," he said with
meaning, "my body returns indeed, but my heart remains
behind ... at Lulworth, with my King, with my
father who is privileged to be, for his sake, an exile
in body as well.  I go back to my home in Paris, where
my father's place will be for ever vacant; I go back to
take up my life of yesterday, to meet my friends, to
laugh, to talk, and ... if Heaven grant it, to plot
for Henry V.  That is all I can do....  Yes, I go back,
but I am no less an exile, though in my native land.
Surely you, Mademoiselle, can understand that?"

Horatia bent her head over her embroidery.  "Yes,
I think I understand," she said.  But she was puzzled;
the people she knew did not talk like this.

"Eh bien!" went on Armand de la Roche-Guyon
more lightly, "it is Fate.  Our house has served the
Lilies for a thousand years, and I suppose the time has
come to die with them.  You can understand that too,
you whose ancestors fought for the Stuarts."

None of Miss Grenville's ancestors—persons distinctly
Hanoverian in sympathy—had ever supported that
romantic cause, but for the moment, moved by the
voice, she almost believed that they had.

"But Louis-Philippe is a Bourbon," she suggested.
"You would not——"

"Serve the son of Egalité!" exclaimed the Comte.
"Serve the man who has usurped the throne of
France!  Sooner would I die!——  But I do not
wish to talk of my affairs.  Tell me of yourself,
Mademoiselle, of your life here.  It is vain that
you try to disguise from me that you surpass other
women in intellect and character as you surpass
them—pardon me that I say it—in beauty.  Chez nous, that
superiority is recognised; but with you, is it not, you
must hide it from people that you do not frighten them
by your attainments.  But we Frenchmen understand."

His tone and manner were perfect; grave, respectful,
sympathetic, quite without commonplace gallantry.
Horatia was amazed at his penetration.

"You are quite right," she said, laying down her
work.  "It is very ridiculous that my small
accomplishments should have the effect of walling me off, as it
were, from the rest of the world, but so it is.  I am no
cleverer than other girls, but, thanks to my kind father,
I am better educated.  You cannot imagine, M. le
Comte, how that fact hampers me in ordinary life.  When
I stay with my cousins in Northamptonshire they
think it a joke to introduce me as a 'bluestocking,' as
one who knows Greek.  Every man—every young man
at least—that I meet is frightened of me, or pretends to
be so, which is sillier still; every woman in her heart
dislikes me.  I suppose they think that I am 'superior.'"

"Ah, the women, I can believe that," said Armand
de la Roche-Guyon quickly.  "But the men, no, that
I can never understand; no Frenchman could
understand it."

In a flash Horatia was aware how intimately she had
been talking to him.  But he went on:

"You should have been born a Frenchwoman,
Mademoiselle.  In Paris you would occupy your proper
place, reigning at once by beauty and by wit, as only
our women do."

Horatia coloured.  "Do you then notice so much
difference in England?" she asked, for the sake of
saying something.

The young man cast up his eyes to heaven.  "Mademoiselle,
by the very disposition of the chairs in an
English drawing-room after dinner one can see it!  In
a row on one side of the room are the ladies; in a row
on the other the gentlemen, perhaps looking at them
indeed, but more likely talking among themselves of
hunting or of politics.  Now with us how different!  It
is to the ladies that the hour of the drawing-room is
consecrated; we pay them court, we cannot help it,
it is in the blood with us.  Besides, have they not great
influence on the situation of a man of the world?  But
with you, suppose now that M. le mari is at his club,
eating a dinner that lasts for hours, and that then he
goes to the ballet at the Opera, and afterwards perhaps
to supper, all this time his unfortunate spouse must shut
her doors to visitors, and, for all amusement, may take
a cup of tea tête-à-tête with his armchair—vous savez,
c'est du barbarisme!"

He was quite excited, and it did not occur to Horatia,
amused and rather pleased, to wonder whether his
indignation were on behalf of the excluded visitor or
the secluded lady.

"You seem to know a great deal about it," she
observed, smiling.

But M. de la Roche-Guyon here got up rather suddenly
and said that he must be going.  Horatia, could
she have read his thoughts, might have reassured him,
and told him that the sound he had heard was not the
Rector opening the drawing-room window, with a view
to sallying forth, but the garden gate, which was loose
on the latch.

He had raised her hand in the graceful foreign fashion
to his lips before she said, "But shall I not see you
to-morrow?"

"To-morrow!" said he with enthusiasm.  "Do you
tell me that you, Mademoiselle, will be at the dinner-party
of the Squire to which I am told I am bidden?"

"Yes," said Miss Grenville.  "And I shall be
interested to observe whether, after dinner, you follow
the English fashion or the French."

"After what you have told me, is there need to ask?"

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Horatia went into the house singing.  Something
shining and vital seemed to have brushed against her
in passing to-day.


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The impression which Miss Grenville gained of
M. de la Roche-Guyon at the Squire's dinner-party next
day was that, though separated from her by the length
of the table, many épergnes and piles of fruit, and though
something monopolised by the ladies on either side of
him, he was always looking in her direction if she
happened to glance in his.  It gave her a curious and
entirely novel sensation.

In the drawing-room afterwards all the ladies were
loud in his praises.  "So charming, and with such
courtly manners—so distinguished, and O, so handsome!
How interesting, too, that he should be a friend
of Mr. Hungerford's—characters so totally unlike, and
tastes too, one would imagine.  But evidently the
Count knows how to be all things to all men!"

Horatia, to whom this last remark was made,
stiffened a little on Tristram's behalf.  "I think it was
very good of Mr. Hungerford to ask him to stay with
him," she said, "for he is only an acquaintance.  It is
really M. de la Roche-Guyon's brother whom
Mr. Hungerford knows."

When the gentlemen came in from the dining-room,
rather earlier than they were expected, there was a knot
of ladies in the centre of the room, of which, however,
Horatia was not a part.  Into this circle M. de la
Roche-Guyon was immediately absorbed, and a buzz of laughter
and conversation at once arose.

Tristram came over to Horatia smiling.  "It's
hopeless to get La Roche-Guyon out, but no doubt he is
enjoying himself.  I do not think his brother would be
quite so much at home."

"Why?" asked Horatia with interest.  "What is his
brother like?  Is he very different?"

"Quite," responded Tristram laconically, sitting
down beside her.

"He is older, is he not?"

"Yes, by nearly twenty years, I should think."

"I can't imagine this M. de la Roche-Guyon twenty
years older."

"You need not try.  They are not in the least replicas
of each other.  Emmanuel de la Roche-Guyon was never
like his brother, of that I am sure."

"It is sad for him to be practically an exile,"
observed Horatia.

Tristram merely looked at her, then at the laughing
group in the middle of the room, and raised his
eyebrows.  Horatia smiled in spite of herself.

"I see what you mean.  Well, I will bestow my
sympathy better.  It is sad for the Duke to be in exile at
Lulworth, with Charles X."

Tristram lowered his voice.  "My dear Horatia, there
are compensations even in banishment.  Imagine living
under the same roof with all the relatives you ever
had—with, say, your great-grandmother, your
grandmother, all your great-aunts, your brothers, your
nephews....  That is what the French generally
mean by family life—a kind of hotel, with the additional
drawback of knowing intimately all the other occupants.
They have not our idea of the home that grows
up round two people."

Once again Horatia was conscious of that new quality
in Tristram's voice, once again she could disregard it,
for before she had time to make a reply of any sort she
perceived that the Comte de la Roche-Guyon was free,
and was coming towards them.

"Ah, here you are!" said Tristram, getting up.
"Take my place, and talk to Miss Grenville for a
little."  Going off, he crossed the room to speak to a neglected
spinster in a corner.

M. de la Roche-Guyon sat down in his vacated place
without more ado.  He gave one glance round the room,
and said, "Si nous causions un peu en français?"

His eyes, as dancing and daring as they had been sad
yesterday, challenged her to more than conversation in
a foreign tongue.  And something in Horatia's soul
responded.

"Volontiers, Monsieur.  What shall we talk about?"

The young man drew his chair a thought nearer.
Conversation was rippling all around them; they were
isolated in a sea of chatter.

"I will tell you a secret," he said.  "I can tell you in
French, but you must promise me to forget it in
English."

"Very well, I promise."

"You remember, Mademoiselle, that we were late
yesterday, M. votre père and I, because M. Hungerford's
horse cast a shoe as we came back."

Horatia nodded.

"And how you blamed the groom of M. Hungerford
or the blacksmith?  Eh bien, I alone was to blame!"

Miss Grenville opened astonished eyes.  "I do not
understand you, Monsieur.  You did not shoe the horse;
and you did not make the shoe come off on purpose."

"Mais si, si, si!" reiterated the young Frenchman,
his eyes sparkling.  "*Peccavi nimis, cogitatione, verbo, et
opere*.  I loosened the nails before I left the hillside!"

"But why?"

"I am not sure that I dare tell you, after all!  But
you have promised me absolution.  Eh bien, I wanted
to make sure of ... in other words, I thought I would
force M. le Recteur to ask me to luncheon....  You
are not annoyed?"

Certainly the emotion which shot through Miss
Grenville, and which flew its flag in her cheeks was not
annoyance.  She did not know what it was.

"I should like to give M. Hungerford a golden
horseshoe," proceeded the Comte, watching her.  "It is true
that I need not have——"

"Hush!" said Horatia, "Miss Bailey is going to sing."

In the centre of the room a very blonde lady in white
was already displaying her arms to the harp, and her
sister, similarly clad, shortly gave commands, in a rather
shrill soprano, to light up the festal bower when the
stars were gleaming deep, asserting that she had met
the shock of the Paynim spears as the mountain meets
the sun, but asseverating that naught to her were blood
and tears, for her lovely bride was won.

Under cover of the applause which greeted this
statement, Tristram made his way back to the couple.

"La Roche-Guyon, be prepared to emulate the
songstress.  Your fate will be upon you in a moment."

"Misericorde!" exclaimed the young man, and at
that moment, indeed, his hostess was seen to be bearing
down upon him.

"M. le Comte, you will sing to us, will you not?  Oh,
I am sure you can sing without your music—you
foreigners are so gifted!  Do, pray, favour us!"  And,
other ladies joining in the request, M. le Comte, with
none of the self-consciousness of an Englishman
similarly placed, seated himself at the piano.  "I shall
sing to you, ladies," he announced after a moment's
thought, "a little old song that was a favourite with
Marie Antoinette."

The fair listeners prepared to be affected, expecting
regrets for Trianon or sighs from the Temple.  But
M. de la Roche-Guyon broke into the gallant
impertinence of Joli Tambour, and very well he sang it.

So the assembly heard that there was once a drummer
boy returning from the wars, from whom, as he passed
under the palace window, the princess asked his rose,
but that, when he demanded her hand in marriage, the
king, her father, refused it, saying he was not rich
enough.  However, when Joli Tambour replied that he
was "fils d'Angleterre," with three ships upon the sea,
one full of gold, one of precious stones, and the third to
take his love a-sailing, the king said that he might have
his daughter.  But Joli Tambour refused her, for there
were fairer in his own land:

   |  "Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
   |  Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
   |          Et ran, tan, plan!"
   |

"Rather a slap in the face!" laughed a jolly dowager
to Horatia.  "The young man evidently wishes to
intimate that he is not for marrying any of our
daughters."

"Oh, surely he had no such motive!" returned Miss
Grenville.  "Besides——" she began, and stopped, for
it had suddenly occurred to her that she did not really
know whether he were married or not.

She had no further speech that evening with the
singer, but he appeared, mysteriously and unnecessarily
to hand her into the carriage when it came round to the
steps, though the master of the house was there for that
purpose, and she had her father's assistance as well.
But somehow, when it came to the point, it was the
Frenchman who put her in.

"Thank you, thank you," said the Rector, as he shut
the door.  "I hope we shall see you again soon."

Armand de la Roche-Guyon bowed, and, stepping
back into the circle of flickering light thrown downwards
by the cressets at the foot of the steps, became for
the second time that evening a disturbing picture.





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   CHAPTER VII

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"And so, my dear friends," said the Rector, "terrible
as is the idea of the punishment reserved for the
ungodly...."

"Poor Papa!" thought Horatia, looking up out of
the high Rectory pew at his handsome, kindly face, now
clouded with the delivery of the sermon that cost him
so much ingenuity.

But she was not listening very attentively.  Her gaze
wandered on and up to the huge Royal arms that rested
on the beam over the chancel arch, over the "When
the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness."  What
stories she had told herself about the unicorn
once!

Beyond the top of the great three-decker pulpit there
was not indeed much that she could see, except the
little square carpeted room without a roof in which she
sat, for since she had put away childish things she no
longer stood upon the seat which ran round three of its
four sides.  But she knew exactly how the knees of the
young men stuck through the railings of the gallery at
the end of the church, how red and shiny were their
faces, how plastered their Sunday hair.  Moreover, she
was sure that in the space behind them, occupied by
the singers and players, William Bates was fidgetting
with his flute, unscrewing it and putting it together
again, and the bassoonist was going to sleep.  "I can't
'elp it, your Reverence, I really can't; seems as if there
was something in this 'ere instrument," he was
wont to plead.  Horatia wondered whether he would
awake before the end of the discourse.

And then, almost without knowing it, she found
herself speculating upon what Tristram and his guest were
doing.  She had hoped (she put it to herself as
"thought") that Tristram might have brought the
latter over here.  But, of course, the Comte de la
Roche-Guyon was a Roman Catholic.

Her mind went back to last night.  What an extraordinary
knack he had of appearing in a different light
every time she met him—he seemed to be almost a
different person.  She counted up the times....
It puzzled her, but she was by now beginning to realise
that it interested her too.  And what would he be like
when he came to say good-bye?  The week for which she
had understood him to be staying would be up next
Wednesday, and Tristram would be sure to bring him
over before that.

She wondered if he would ever come to England
again....

The Rector was beginning to descend from his
eminence, the clerk below was clearing his throat before
giving out "Thy dreadful anger, Lord, restrain, and
spare a wretch forlorn"—the metrical version of the
sixth Psalm—and of the end of the sermon Horatia had
not heard a word.


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In the course of a week it had become abundantly
clear to Tristram Hungerford that the Comte de la
Roche-Guyon, young as he was, had made a close study
of the fair sex, if, indeed, he did not consider himself an
authority upon it.  It was therefore without surprise,
if without appreciation, that Tristram listened perforce,
this Wednesday morning, to a dissertation on the
subject.  The two were on their way to Compton
Rectory; their horses had dropped to a walk, and under
the bright, windy September sky the young Frenchman
imparted to his host the fruit of ripe reflection on the
dames of Britain.

"Every time that I am in England," he said, gesticulating
with his riding-whip, "I am struck afresh with
the curious—how do you call it—limitations of the
English ladies.  They have so much in their favour, and
yet—pardon me that I say it—if you desire the fresh
toilette, the graceful walk and gesture, ease in conversation,
knowledge of coquetry, you must seek for them in
France, for a real Englishwoman knows nothing of
them."

"But I thought that our English ladies were supposed
to model themselves nowadays on those of the Continent,"
objected Tristram, keeping the ball rolling out
of politeness.

Armand de la Roche-Guyon nearly dropped his reins.
"Mais, mon Dieu, that makes it worse!" he exclaimed.
"In a party of English ladies you can indeed observe
that each has taken a hint from the Continent for her
dress or her manner, and the result, ma foi, is often to
make die of laughter.  I have seen ... but that
would not interest you ... Tenez, the way an
Englishwoman sits down upon a chair, have you ever
thought to remark that?  It is as if chance alone had
caused her to fall there!  She sits down without paying
the least attention to her dress.  But the care with
which a Frenchwoman places herself in an armchair,
taking hold of her robe on either side, raising her arms
gently as a bird spreads its wings!  Even if she should be
exhausted by laughing or half-fainting from emotion,
still her dress will remain untumbled.  It is worth
remarking, I assure you!"

Certainly these observations would never have
occurred to Mr. Hungerford, and to judge by his
expression, he had small wish even to make them
vicariously.  His companion was instantly aware of this.

"Forgive me, mon ami!  I see that you think it is
not convenable that I should thus criticise your fair
compatriots, whom, du reste, I admire from the bottom of
my heart.  And let me assure you that I have no
criticisms for Miss Grenville; she is perfection itself."

"You are very good," replied Tristram, without
trying to suppress the irony of his tone.

The corners of the Comte's mouth twitched, and to
Tristram's relief he touched up his horse for a sign that
the subject was done with.  As their hoofs rang sharply
on the road the Englishman glanced once or twice at
the clear profile beside him, stamped so visibly with the
mark of race—and with what else?  That was the
question.  Armand seemed to him such a boy—but not
an English boy.  Well, he was very attractive, but——

As they were fastening up their horses outside the
Rectory, the subject of these speculations suddenly said,
with an air of great earnestness, "Mon ami, I wish you
would explain to me one trait in the English character
which I have never been able to understand.  An
Englishman is so haughty, he has such high notions of
what befits a gentleman, and yet he will receive money
from the man who has seduced his wife.  If I had run
away with the wife of an Englishman, *I* should expect
to give him the chance of putting a bullet into me, but
*he* would expect me to pay him in bank notes the value
of the lady—how one estimates that I know not.  Can
you solve me this problem of the English character?"

Though the Rectory drawing-room was empty, Tristram
did not attempt to elucidate this point, and his
questioner, whose query was probably only rhetorical,
sat and gazed with deep and silent attention at a picture
of Daniel in the lions' den, worked in silks, which hung
over the sofa.  Then the door opened, and admitted the
Rector, looking rather worried.

"Ah, M. de la Roche-Guyon, I am very glad to see
you!  Tristram, this Otmoor business is disgraceful!
I hear there was a riot in Oxford on Monday night, and
that the mob succeeded in releasing the prisoners."

"It is true," returned Tristram.  "We were in
Oxford on Monday evening, La Roche-Guyon and I, and
saw it——"

"Saw it!  Well, was it as bad as I have heard?"

"There was rather a scrimmage," admitted the
young man.  "The soldiers had no chance against the
mob.  St. Giles's Fair was on, of course, and it was in
St. Giles that they rescued the Otmoor prisoners—about
sixty of them—from the waggons."

"And what were the escort about, pray?" demanded
Mr. Grenville indignantly.  "What were they, by the way?"

"Oxfordshire Yeomanry.  They held their own as well
as they could, and had rather the advantage, as far as
we could see, till they turned down Beaumont Street.
Then the crowd got the better of them."

The Rector shrugged his shoulders.  "I cannot conceive
what you must think of us, M. le Comte," he said,
turning to the Frenchman.  "You will imagine that the
reign of law and order is coming to an end in England."

"As in France," finished Armand good-humouredly.
"Ma foi, M. le Recteur, it has reminded me a little of the
Days of July; I own that I have not expected to see
street fighting in England, and in a city so calm, so
academic as Oxford!  But one never knows.  There was
one soldier—a sergeant I think—who ceased not to fight
till he was disabled.  The populace were fierce against
him ... It is strange, how John Bull loves not the
military.  I have remarked it before.  (These
observations are harmless, mon ami, is it not?)  John Bull
thinks much more of the taxes which he pays to keep up
the army than he does of military glory.  That he calls
*stuff*.  Is not that so?"

"What you say is profoundly true," answered
Mr. Grenville, impressed; but at that moment the door
opened and Horatia came in.

An "Oh!" of surprise escaped her, for she imagined
the young Frenchman to have gone, and without taking
leave.

"You are a ghost!" she said to him, recovering
herself.  "I thought you were leaving us to-day."

Tristram broke in.  "I have persuaded M. de la
Roche-Guyon to stay till the beginning of next week,
because I had the idea that he might care to go to the
Charity Ball which Lady Carte is getting up on Monday,
and also I thought of arranging my little dinner-party
for this Saturday, if the date suits you and the Rector?
I know that it is all right for Dormer."

Miss Grenville looked at her father.  "That will be
charming.  It will do excellently for us.  May we ask if
there is to be anyone else besides Mr. Dormer?"

"Yes, I am going on now to ask the Edward Puseys;
they are still at Pusey with Lady Lucy, I believe."

"I think they must be," corroborated Horatia,
"for I met him driving his wife over to call on the
Mainwarings two or three days ago.  He did not look
much as if he were thinking of what he was doing."

"I am glad that you are going to ask them, Tristram,"
commented the Rector, who had known the Pusey
brothers since they were boys.  "That young man's
learning is stupendous.  Too much was made, in my
opinion, of his supposed sympathy with the new German
theology, and I am glad that he did get the Chair of
Hebrew."

"And I am glad too," added his daughter, "because
they have such comfortable lodgings at Christ Church.
I hope I shall stay there again some day.  I like
Mrs. Pusey, and it is so romantic to think that they waited
ten years for each other, but I am rather frightened of
him."

"Permit me to say that I don't believe you are really
frightened of anybody in the world," observed Tristram
smiling.

"Tristram, how can you say so!  I am dust and ashes
before Papa when he is really cross—and terrified of
you, when you are in your conscience mood.—Is there
anyone else?"

"We are short of ladies, and I thought it would
interest M. de la Roche-Guyon to meet the Trenchards,
who are staying just now with their aunt, so I shall
ask her to come and bring them."

"Very nice," murmured the Rector.  "Beautiful
girls, if they are like their elder sisters—though, of
course, none of them could ever compare with their
step-sister, the French one."

Horatia turned to Armand, who had been sitting
unusually silent.  "Doesn't it flatter you, Monsieur, that
Papa's ideal woman should be French?"

"Mademoiselle," returned the Comte instantly, with
an inclination, "our ideal women are always of another
nationality than our own!"

Tristram got up.  "Well, we must be getting on, if
that is settled, and you can both come on
Saturday."  M. de la Roche-Guyon also rose, very slowly.

"No, Tristram," interjected the Rector, laying hold
of his arm, "you positively must stay ten minutes,
because I've had this letter from Liverpool about James
Stack and his wife emigrating to Canada.  I had thought
I should be able to get them off almost at once, but the
shipping company say—there, you'd better see it."  He
fumbled in his pockets.  "Horatia, suppose you take
M. de la Roche-Guyon into the garden for five minutes."

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Horatia was preceding the guest down the path when
he said softly behind her: "There are advantages, after
all, in Canada's having passed into English hands.  As
a Frenchman, I never expected to admit them."

"Why, what"—began Miss Grenville, stopping,
and then suddenly finding his meaning quite clear.  She
coloured, was angry with herself, and tried to retrieve
her slip by saying, "Papa has helped two or three of the
parish to emigrate out there."

Armand was now walking beside her, along the line
of flowers where autumn had begun to lay a hand in the
week that had passed since he had sat there.  But he
showed no disposition to follow up his sally.  On the
contrary he looked rather moody, almost cross.  It was
a new phase.  And after a moment or two he said,
kicking a stone along the path:

"I am not looking forward to this dinner-party,
Mademoiselle.  Mr. Hungerford is too kind.  What
have you and I to do with these grave persons?  *I* don't
know Hebrew!"

It was new to Horatia to be classed among the more
frivolous portion of an assembly, and classed there by,
and in conjunction with, a young man.  "Ah, but you
forget the Trenchard girls," she said lightly.  "They
do not know Hebrew either, and they are very pretty.
Their mother is French; have you not heard about
them?"

"Mr. Hungerford told me something, but I am afraid
I did not listen; I was not interested."

"But you ought to be interested.  It is rather
romantic.  Their mother, when she was quite young, was
a lady-in-waiting to Madame Elisabeth.  She fled to
England, and her lover—who was a Frenchman, of
course—fought through the Vendean war and came to
England and married her.  But next year he went back
with the expedition to Quiberon, and was killed there.
I can't remember his name.  Then she married
Mr. Trenchard, a Suffolk squire, and had several children,
I think about eight—anyhow Trenchards have been
staying here with Mrs. Willoughby, who is Mr. Trenchard's
sister, ever since I can remember.  And
once I saw Mrs. Trenchard herself; somehow she did
not look as if she had been through all those things as a
girl."

Her hearer lent her sufficient interest, at any rate he
was looking at her, a tiny frown between his dark
eyebrows.  "But you spoke of another daughter?"

"The child of the Vendean—born after his death, I
believe.  I never saw her.  But Papa remembers her;
more beautiful and gracious than one can possibly
imagine, he says.  She went into a convent in
Rome."

M. de la Roche-Guyon said nothing, and having come
to the end of the path Horatia stooped to a late rose in
the border.  She was finding his evident ill-humour
oddly disturbing.

"Let us speak of the ball on Monday—my last day,"
he said watching her.  "How many dances will you
vouchsafe me—in the cause of charity?"

And Miss Grenville, plucking the wet rose, found
herself replying, to her no small amazement:

"That depends on Mr. Hungerford."

"Comment!" exclaimed the young Frenchman,
stepping backwards.  "Mais, juste ciel, il n'est pas
votre fiancé!"  His eyes blazed at her, and he had
quite perceptibly paled; it was obvious that he was
unaware of his lapse into his own tongue.

"Certainly not," replied Horatia with dignity.  (She
had been right about his eyes; they could look fury.)  "But
he is a very old friend and kinsman, and we always
arrange to dance so many together."

Armand de la Roche-Guyon made a gesture, and
smiled, quite sweetly.  "I understand—mais
parfaitement!  Comme vous êtes femme ... adorablement
femme!"  He touched her hand a second, and Tristram
and the Rector came down the path.





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   CHAPTER VIII

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Mr. Hungerford's little dinner-party had gone the
way of all dinner-parties.  The Rector had pronounced
it, from his point of view, a decided success.  "A most
enjoyable evening, my dear," he said to Horatia, as they
were driving home.  "Whatever else that man Dormer
of Oriel is or is not, he is a brilliant talker when he
pleases.  And I had a good talk with Edward Pusey
afterwards in the drawing-room.  The Arabic catalogue
at the Bodleian is a colossal piece of work, but from
what he told me I think his plans are too ambitious—not
beyond his scholarship, mark you, but beyond his
physical strength.  He confessed to me that he
sometimes almost envied the bricklayers whom he saw at
work in the streets, the drudgery was so great."

"But Mr. Pusey is a young man, and he needn't
make Arabic catalogues unless he wants to," Horatia
had responded rather unsympathetically.  For she had
not found the party so delightful.  She had been taken in
by Mr. Pusey, and though Armand de la Roche-Guyon
sat on her other hand, his partner, Miss Arabella
Trenchard, had talked to him a great deal, and he had
seemed to like it.  It was quite natural, of course; he
probably liked everybody, and Miss Trenchard was very
pretty, much prettier than she herself; so that it was
no wonder if M. de la Roche-Guyon had been by no
means as bored as he had predicted.  But, at all events,
he had found his way straight to her in the drawing-room
afterwards, and chatted to her ... till Mr. Dormer,
showing a most unusual taste for her society,
had come and made a third ... and, to be quite
just, had talked so delightfully that she almost forgave
him the intrusion, at the time.  Afterwards, it rankled
increasingly.

But now it was Monday morning, the morning of the
dance, and Horatia, in the drawing-room putting some
asters into a bowl, was aware of being in a state of
causeless and febrile excitement.  She could not but
ask herself what there was in a dance so to excite her;
she was not a young girl any more; she had been to
many such.  Yet she was conscious that this ball was
clothed in her imagination with the glamour of an
untasted pleasure, and that the thought of it was like
some splendid palace built on the edge of a precipice,
beyond which there was nothing.

She had just carried the bowl to the mantel-shelf when,
without warning, M. de la Roche-Guyon was announced
to her.  Horatia was startled, almost discomposed, and
the vessel, which was "Wheatsheaf" Bow, narrowly
escaped destruction.

"Mr. Hungerford sent me with a note," said the
young Frenchman apologetically.  "That is my excuse
for deranging you so early, Mademoiselle; you must
forgive me.  It is about to-night."

She took the letter and read:


"My dear Horatia,—

"I am obliged to go into Oxford this evening to
meet Mr. Rose, a man from Cambridge, at Dormer's
rooms, and cannot possibly return in time for the
Charity Ball; in fact I shall have to spend the night
in Oxford.  Would you and the Rector be so kind as
to consider M. de la Roche-Guyon as of your party?
There is of course no need for him actually to accompany
you.  It is most unfortunate that this summons should
have come just now, and that I must reluctantly forgo
an evening to which I had looked forward with so much
pleasure.  I shall come to dinner, if I may, when I am
at liberty, and make my apologies to you in person.—T.H."


Miss Grenville, on reading these lines, stamped her
foot.

"How tiresome, O how tiresome!  Why could not
Tristram have gone to Oxford any other night!"

"You are sorry that Mr. Hungerford cannot come to
the dance?" inquired the Comte, who seemed already
acquainted with the purport of the note.

"Why, of course!" flashed Horatia, out of her burst
of indignation.  "Are you, then, glad of it, Monsieur?"

"In one sense, yes," replied M. de la Roche-Guyon
coolly.  "Because now I can ask for the dances of your
kinsman as well as for my own."

Miss Grenville saw fit to take no notice of this
sentiment, continuing along her own line of thought.

"How like Mr. Dormer!  Everything must give way
to what Mr. Dormer arranges and wishes.  I have no
patience with it—I am sure you do not like him either!"

"Mon Dieu, I should think I did not," replied the
young man warmly, "considering that he spoilt my
evening on Saturday!  He might have left us that
quarter of an hour in the drawing-room.  I could almost
believe that he did it on purpose....  No, Mr. Dormer
does not amuse me."

"You have seen a good deal of him," said Horatia,
restored to good humour, for she discerned a common
feeling.

Armand made something of a grimace.  "Mr. Hungerford
has been kind enough to take me to see him
twice.  I do not like priests.  They know too much."

"But Mr. Dormer is not a priest," returned Horatia,
half amused.

"Well, perhaps not, mais il en a l'air, and he needs
only the ... what is it, la soutane?—the cassock,
yes, and the sash that the delusion should be complete.
Besides, he has the book."

"What book?" asked Horatia, mystified.

"The priest's book, the breviary.  It was lying open
on his table when we went in to see him at the college of
Oriel.  Almost I fancied myself chez Monsignor de la
Roche-Guyon, my cousin."

"Oh, I understand!" said Horatia.  "He is translating
some of the hymns from the Paris Breviary—why,
I don't know.  I think I remember Tristram
telling me about it in the spring.  Mr. Dormer and
several of the other Fellows at Oriel are what is known as
High Church, and they are always doing queer things."

"High Church?" queried the young Frenchman,
"what is that?  And what queer things is it that they
do?"

"Oh, it's so boring," said Miss Grenville wearily.
"They think the Church of England is in danger; I
don't know why, for it has gone on comfortably enough
all these years without them.  So they meet and talk a
great deal about it—in fact, that is no doubt why
Tristram has so tiresomely to go into Oxford this
evening—fresh alarums and excursions, I expect...
Papa was very much shocked when he heard Mr. Froude
say that the Reformation was a mistake, but
when I told him afterwards that I thought they had
better all turn Papists, and have done with it, he didn't
like that either ... O forgive me!  What have I
said!"  The colour rushed over her face.  "I had
forgotten for the moment; of course you are a Catholic
yourself."

"But I had rather that you forgot it," exclaimed the
young Frenchman, with an expressive gesture.  "I am
a Catholic, it is true, because—well, because one has to
be.  Royalism and the Church stand together; but I
am not devout—pray do not think so!"

Horatia hastened to assure him that she had never
suspected him of this, and they both laughed.

When he had gone she went upstairs and looked at
the gown that she was to wear that night to dance in
the palace which would crumble to ruins at daybreak.


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The aching elbows of the fiddlers had several times
been eased by surreptitious potations; the candles were
beginning to gutter, chaperons' heads to nod sleepily.
A light dust hung in the air from the action of so many
pairs of twinkling feet upon the beeswax, and the
Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville was distinctly conscious of
a desire for his bed.  Nor did the converse in which he
was entangled with an elderly entomologist staying in
the neighbourhood really reconcile him to sitting
through so many quadrilles and country dances—to
hearing selections from *La Gazza Ladra* give place to
*Basque Roads*, *Der Freischütz* to *Drops of Brandy*.  The
Rector had no enthusiasm for lepidoptera, and he could
by no means get the collector of beetles to listen to his
own views on monoliths.  Not inappropriately did the
entomologist discourse of the butterflies of Berkshire,
its obscurer moths, in this big room cleared for the
Charity Ball and full of a throng as bright and moving,
but the scientific mind does not unbend to these
analogies, and it might have been conjectured that he did not
even see the fair guests had he not, during a waltz,
suddenly inquired:

"Who is that extremely attractive young lady
dancing with the French count—there, in yellow—a
prodigious fine dancer?"

Probably one of the Trenchard girls, thought the
Rector, and looked.  But no!  He pursed his lips.
"That is my daughter," quoth he.

"Dear, dear," observed the entomologist, human
after all, and he put on his glasses the better to observe
the phenomenon.  "My dear Mr. Grenville, I congratulate
you, I do indeed.  A most charming girl."

Flushed and smiling, Horatia whirled slowly past.
No need to ask if she found her partner congenial.  The
Rector's eyes followed the couple, and it began to dawn
upon him that he had been thus following them,
unconsciously, a good many times that evening.  Was
this really so?  Even as the question occurred to him,
the Squire, beaming in his blue, gilt-buttoned evening
coat, appeared on his other side.

"Hallo, Rector," he said cheerfully.  "Going well,
ain't it?  That young French spark seems to be enjoying
himself.  They make a fine couple, eh?"

"Who do?" asked Mr. Grenville rather unwisely, as
the golden dress came past again.

"Why, your girl and he, of course," said the Squire,
with all the effect of a wink.  "There they go.  How
would you like her as Madame de—what's the fellow's
name?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mainwaring," said the Rector
rather tartly.  "We have had to be civil to the young
man because he is Hungerford's friend, and no doubt
he finds my girl, who speaks French well, is easy to get
on with——"

"Yes, especially as his own English is so bad,"
retorted the Squire grinning.  "Well, well, we're only
young once.  I remember when I first met my wife....
You're not thinking of going before it's over,
Rector?"

Mr. Grenville put back his watch.  "It is a good deal
later than I thought.  I told Dawes to be here at twelve
o'clock."

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No consciousness of eyes paternal, entomological or
matronly was on Horatia during that last intoxicating
waltz.  She loved dancing, and she had danced a good
deal, but never with a partner like this.

The music stopped (a little out of tune).

"Are you giddy?" asked Armand tenderly.

"A little," said Horatia, with truth.  "It is so hot..."

He drew her hand a little further through his arm.
"Here is a doorway.  Where does it lead to?  Voyons
... ah, the library, and empty.  Quelle chance!  On
est bien ici, n'est-ce pas?  See, here is a chair; give me
your fan."

But she would not sit down.

"I must go back to Papa."

"Not yet.  He will have you all the days, and I have
only these so few moments more of you."

"You are really leaving to-morrow?" asked
Horatia in a conventional tone.

"Si fait.  I return to Lulworth, and thence to Paris.
And you will never think of me again."

Horatia did not answer this time, for she found she
could not.

Armand stopped fanning.  "I shall have only this to
remember you by, for I mean to keep it," he said,
looking down at the painted ivory in his hand.  "Mais il
suffira.  Yes, I hear them, the violins; il faut s'en aller:
il faut se dire adieu....  Nous ne danserons plus
ensemble ... Adieu, adieu, toute belle, adieu pour jamais!"

He crushed her hands fiercely to his lips.  Her head
whirled a second; then she tore them away.

"Please go ... ask Papa to come and fetch me
here ... I will not go back into the room...."

He looked at her strangely, almost wildly, but she
would not meet his eyes.  "Please go," she reiterated
faintly, and Armand, suddenly dropping on one knee,
put his lips to the hem of her dress—and was gone.

And loud through the strains of *The New-Rigged
Ship*, now pouring under the archway, she heard the
heartless marching beat of *Joli Tambour*.

   |  "Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
   |  Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
   |            Et ran, tan, plan!"
   |

Mr. Grenville hurried in almost immediately, his
daughter's cloak on his arm.  Horatia was lying back in
a big leather chair.  She looked curiously white, but
roused at once.

"Is that my cloak?  Thank you, Papa, very much.
It is time to go, is it not, though it is not quite over."

"That is what I was thinking, my dear," said the
Rector, putting the swansdown over her.  "I believe
we have been keeping Dawes waiting.  Have you got
everything—your gloves, your fan?"

"Everything I want, thank you, Papa."

The old fat horses and the careful Dawes did not
devour the five miles that lay between them and home.
After a few desultory remarks, both father and daughter
relapsed into silence, each in a corner of the barouche.
But Horatia had drawn off her gloves, and in the
darkness was pulling and twisting them into a rope,
endeavouring to keep down the sobs which rose chokingly in
her throat.  Had anything in the world ever hurt like
this?  All the while the horses' hoofs beat out the refrain,
relentless, and so horribly gay.  "Et ran, tan, plan.
Et ran, tan, plan!"  With all her desperate fight for
composure she only succeeded in keeping back the main
violence of the storm; the smaller rain-clouds broke
despite herself, and, quietly as she wept, the Rector was
aware of it.

"My darling, what is it?" he said, putting out a
hand to her.

"Nothing," replied Horatia, swallowing the tears.
"I am tired ... and stupid ... I danced too
much..."

   |  ("Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies,
   |  Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies!")
   |

"I thought you looked tired, my love," replied
Mr. Grenville, exceedingly alarmed but (he hoped) tactful.
"I heard one or two people saying that the floor was
not good.  Come, child, put your head here; perhaps
you will be more comfortable; and we shall soon be
home."

Whether or no he knew why she wept, Horatia could
not resist the kind voice, and all the rest of the way her
elaborately dressed head lay against her father's
shoulder.

She kissed him silently when they got in.  No, she
did not want her maid.  Again she repeated that she
was only tired; she would be all right in the morning,
and so went to her room.

Fool, fool, that he had been!  But what had happened?
At any rate they had not come to an understanding;
that was obvious.  And, thank God, the young man
was going away to-morrow.  But he could not bear to
see her suffer.  Twice he went and listened shame-facedly
at her door; she was sobbing, sobbing as if her
heart would break—she who never cried!  At dawn,
when the birds were twittering, he went again; she was
quiet.  He prayed God she slept.  It was more than he
could do.





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   CHAPTER IX

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The Rector breakfasted alone next morning.  Miss
Horatia was very tired; she might not be down till the
afternoon; she would sleep if she could.  Recognising
this as an indication that she did not wish for a visit
from him, Mr. Grenville with a heavy heart tried, in
succession, to tackle his next Sunday's sermon, to
furbish up an old one, to read the violent article on
Clerical Farmers in the last number of the *Gentleman's
Magazine*, to compose an answer to it, and to rearrange
some of his coins.  In the afternoon he had to attend a
meeting of magistrates at a distance.  He wondered if
he should see Horatia before he started.  Never before
had a dance kept her in bed next morning.

Just as the gig came round for him she appeared,
wearing a hat and carrying a basket.  All traces of last
night's emotion had vanished.

"Good morning, or rather, good afternoon, dear
Papa," she said very cheerfully, kissing him.  "Am I
not late?  But I was so tired last night.  Where are
you going to?  Oh, I had forgotten.  *I* am going to
old Mrs. Dawes; and if there are any blackberries
ripe I shall take her some.  She says they are good
for the rheumatics.  I don't believe her.  Good-bye,
darling...."

The wheels of the gig grated on the drive, and
Mr. Grenville turned round to wave a farewell, but without
his usual smile.  He looked worried, poor dear.  How
could she best efface the memory of last night's
self-betrayal from his mind?  Obviously best by a cheerful,
a very cheerful demeanour, such as she had already
attempted.  She had forgotten in truth that her father
was going to this meeting; there was then no need for
her to leave the house this afternoon—her motive in so
doing being to gain a little respite before he should
question her, as he very well might.  But since she had
told him that she was going, go she would.  As well
begin the usual life at once.  Mrs. Dawes would detail
her symptoms at length, and that would serve as a
temporary distraction.

This indeed the old dame did with much thoroughness
and repetition, after which she seemed disposed for
general conversation.

"That there French count, Miss; a likely young
gentleman, I hears; he be gone from these parts now,
bain't he?"

"I believe so," said Horatia.  "But you were telling
me about your grandson?"

"John, he seed him riding droo the village on
Mr. 'Ungerford's 'orse," pursued Mrs. Dawes, not to be
turned aside.  "He ride proper, John says; and he wur
surprised fit to bust hisself, John wur."

"Why?"

"The Count being a foreigner, Miss, and a Papist.
I don't hold with no foreigners; a bloody-minded set,
I calls 'em.  Look at that Bonyparty as cut off the 'eads
of the King and Queen of France.  I mind how the year
that you was born, Miss 'Oratia..."

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It was nearly six o'clock when Horatia emerged from
Mrs. Dawes' cottage.  She was surprised to find the
invasion of twilight already begun, and an enormous
yellow moon looking at her through the tree-trunks.  Yet
she was in no haste to return home, but loitered along
the road, picking a few blackberries as she went.  One
or two villagers passed her, and their evening salutations
rang heartily on the still air.  "Rector, he'll be having
a rare treat to-morrow," was the comment of one, but
Horatia overheard Whitehead, the smith, a melancholy
personage, who passed at the same time, opine that,
"them berries was mortal bad for the innards, and did
get in atween a man's teeth like so much grit."

After him there was silence; only a few far-away
sounds from the village reached her.  The grass at the
edge of the road was already damp.  It was time to
return.

In the Rectory the lamps would be lighted; her father
would be back, and he, who always heard her step,
would come out of his study and say, "Well, my dear,
and how is Mrs. Dawes?"  It would be chilly enough
to have a fire after supper, and she would sit with him,
and talk to him; or, if he had not finished his letters,
she would go on with the last series of *The Tales of a
Grandfather*.  And Dash, on the hearthrug, would
whimper in his sleep because he had dreams of rabbits
which he never caught....

And it would be the same to-morrow, and the next
day.  Once she had loved it—that other Horatia only
a few days dead, who seemed so strange to her now, had
chosen it.  Now ... how should she bear it! how
should she bear it!

She moved on very slowly.  Strange, dim scents came
out of the hedgerows; a bird fluttered in an elder-bush.
How early the moon was rising!  The sky just overhead
seemed still the sky of day.  It was pain, this peace and
beauty ... and it was not peace.  The quiet country
lane, the pure, still sky, were all athrill with expectation.

Or was it she herself?  But what had she to expect?
Nothing—nothing again, for ever.

... So they had noticed how well he rode—foolish,
oddly comforting reflection.  She thought how he had
passed her on Tristram's horse that afternoon—only a
fortnight ago—how he had ridden into her life, and out
of it again.  That was a romantic phrase and delightful
to read in a book, but in real life it had no glamour; the
fact enshrined in it was too bitingly real.  Unwanted,
unsummoned, there came into her head—

   |  "It was a' for our rightfu' King
   |    We left fair Scotland's strand;
   |  It was a' for our rightfu' King
   |    We e'er saw Irish land,
   |          My dear—
   |    We e'er saw Irish land.
   |
   |  "He turn'd him right and round about
   |    Upon the Irish shore;
   |  And gae his bridle-reins a shake,
   |    With, Adieu for evermore,
   |          My dear—
   |    With, Adieu for evermore!"

And on the heels of the lines, a mocking commentary,
came floating Sir Walter's version—

   |  "A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
   |    A feather of the blue,
   |  A doublet of the Lincoln green—
   |    No more of me ye knew,
   |          My Love!
   |  No more of me ye knew!"

Yes, that was all she had known ... O, how foolish,
foolish she was—a silly sentimental girl of the kind that
she most despised!  Yet, if only she had never seen him!

And at that moment Armand de la Roche-Guyon
came round the corner of the road.

Horatia stood still, petrified.  It was as if her thoughts
had taken body, for he was gone—how could he be
here ... walking rapidly towards her like this,
bareheaded—flesh and blood.  Before her heart had
recovered its broken pulsations he was up to her.

"What, are you not gone?" she faltered.

"They told me you had walked this way," he said
rapidly in his own tongue.  "I have been to the
Rectory; you were not there.  I could not go—mon
Dieu, I could not go....  Give me your basket;
let us go back by the field path; it is close
here."

She gave him the basket without a word, suffocated
by the tumult in her heart, and dominated by the change
in him, by the ardour and purpose which radiated from
him, making him seem taller and even more desirable.
He had the air of a young conqueror; but he was
unsmiling, which was rare.  Now she knew what the night
had been trying to tell her....

They came in a moment to the gap in the hedge, by
the oak-tree, an unauthorised way of attaining the field-path.
It seemed right that he should know of it, though
little less than a miracle.  He held aside the twigs
and brambles so that she could pass.  And when she had
stepped through everything was clear to her, and she
knew that in entering the shorn September field,
lit with its low yellow moon, she had come into another
country, dazzlingly strange, but her inheritance, her
home.  She half turned, and was caught in Armand's
arms, her lips to his; and thus, beneath a tree, in the
gloaming, like any village girl, did Horatia Grenville,
who cared not for love, give and receive her first kiss.

Behind her, for a wonder and a benediction, hung the
great luminous shield of the harvest moon, and the
scattered blackberries lay among the leaves and stubble,
like a sacrifice to joys unfathomed.





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   CHAPTER X

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The parting guest, unless he be a dear friend, is generally
a persona grata to his host.  Tristram Hungerford was
rather ashamed of the sensation of relief with which he
had faced his visitor at the breakfast table this morning,
for the Comte de la Roche-Guyon had proved himself
throughout his stay uniformly agreeable, lively, and
anxious to please.  But the elder man was only too
conscious of their slender basis of common interests, and,
though himself anything but taciturn, he was, like most
people who live alone, physically incapable of talking
all day without pause, and found the society of those
persons so gifted (among whom Armand de la Roche-Guyon
appeared to be numbered) rather fatiguing.

Moreover, he had not expected to find himself facing
him at all this morning across the coffee-cups.  When he
had returned from Oxford yesterday morning, the
morning after the dance, expecting to speed his guest
on his way, he had been met by the young man's
apologetic request to be allowed to stay another night
if convenient to his host.  He had heard from his father
and there were reasons ... Tristram made the only
answer open to him, premising however that, thinking
he should be alone that night, he had unfortunately
engaged himself to dine at Faringdon, and would not be
home till late.  Armand would consequently, he feared,
have a solitary dinner unless indeed he were to go over
to Compton Rectory.  The Comte replied that he might
conceivably walk over in the afternoon to pay his
respects, but that he did not expect to be asked to
dinner.  And indeed he had set off in that direction a
little before Tristram started for Faringdon.

But when Tristram returned from his dinner party,
rather late in the evening, he found that the Frenchman
had already gone to bed, and being himself tired, did not
altogether regret this.  And this morning, whether from
a sleepless night, or any other cause, Armand was much
less talkative than usual; he looked thoughtful and
rather pale, and now, when the after-breakfast ease of
two males devoid of the cares of housekeeping was about
to descend upon them, he seemed unusually preoccupied.

"I am afraid, La Roche-Guyon, that you had a bad
night," said Tristram, as he rose from the table.  "It
was remiss of me not to have asked you earlier.  You
were not indisposed yesterday evening, I trust?"

"On the contrary," replied his guest somewhat
cryptically.  A gleam passed over his face, but Tristram,
who was hunting on the mantelpiece for the key of the
clock, did not see it.  "I had the best night of my life."

"I am glad to hear it," replied his host.  "But I am
extremely sorry that I cannot drive or send you into
Oxford to catch the coach.  I pretty well knocked up
both my horses yesterday."

"Pray not to think of it," said Armand politely.  "I
have made arrangements to post from the *Fox*.  Already
you have been too kind in taking me so many times to
Oxford....  And now I have to beg of you another
kindness."

"I am at your service," said Tristram, finding and
inserting the key.

"Vous êtes bien bon," said the Comte, his English
suddenly deserting him.  "C'est que——"  He broke
off, walked over to the window, and there, taking hold
of the tassel of the curtain-cord, said, with more
composure:

"The fact is, that Miss Grenville has promised to
marry me.  And as M. le Recteur, when I saw him
yesterday evening, did not appear very much to like the
idea, I was obliged to refer him to you.  I told him that
you could speak for me if you would—that you knew my
family, and that I am not a—what do you call
it—impostor, as he seemed to think....  It was that
which I said to him."

He ceased, and in Tristram's head the ticks of the
half-resuscitated clock rang like gongs.

"I do not wonder that you are surprised," went on
Armand, in his pleasant voice, and in more and more
shaky English.  "But I am mad with love of her since
the day we meet—tiens, I have thought sometimes that
you remarked it—and she ... well, she has
consented to be my wife.  You may guess if I think myself
to be the most fortunate man on earth..."  He said
more; Tristram did not hear it.  But he at last forced
himself to turn round, and saw the speaker standing
there against the window.

"When did this happen?" he asked—or someone asked.

"Yesterday evening.  It was why I stayed—I must
avow it to you, my friend.  First I go to the Rectory—no
one is there; they tell me Miss Grenville visits a
cottage.  I too go to the cottage, and meet her in the
lane——."

"What do you want me to do?"

Armand made a gesture.  "To use your good offices
for me with M. le Recteur.  He was not very polite.  He
thinks that I am not sufficient of a parti.  Mais,
figurez-vous bien that on the contrary I shall have work enough
to persuade my father to a foreign marriage, even with
so divine a creature, and as well-born——"

Tristram was never to know whether he would have
succeeded in keeping indefinitely his self-command, for
at that moment his housekeeper fortunately entered to
tell them that the *Fox* had just sent to say that they
had no post-horses this morning, there having been some
mistake about the order yesterday.

Out of the maze of shock and anguish one thing was
plain to Tristram, that to have Armand's presence
further inflicted upon him was intolerable.  "After all,
my horses——" he began, but the Frenchman cut him
short.

"No, not for worlds!  I will go round to the *Fox* at
once myself.  In these cases of 'no post-horses' it is
always only a question of money.  More than ever must
I now go quickly to Lulworth—to get my father's
consent," he added in French for the sole benefit of his
host, and vanished.

So *this* was Horatia's choice!  Tristram stumbled to a
chair and covered his face.  Coffee-pot and empty cups
witnessed the wreck of hopes that might well have had
a more tragic setting.


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The door opening noisily brought Tristram almost
immediately after to his feet.  The intruder was the
Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville, unannounced, short
of breath, and angry as Tristram had never seen him.

He shut the door and looked round with positive
ferocity.

"Is that young scamp here?"

Tristram regarded him dizzily.  "No ... I don't
think so," he answered, as if he were not quite sure.

"Do you know what has happened?" demanded
Mr. Grenville.  "Yes, I can see that you do!  That
foreigner of yours had the impudence to walk into my
study last night and ask for my consent to his marriage
with Horatia—Horatia!"  The Rector became momentarily
speechless.  "This young adventurer, who has
been here a fortnight, has the audacity to say he is
going to marry my daughter!"  He flung himself down
in a chair.

"It was only last night, then, as he says?"

"Yes, it happened last night, but it goes further
back than that.  My eyes were opened after the dance
the night before last, when she gave him I don't know
how many dances, and they disappeared together at
the end.  Why on earth did you choose that evening to
go to Oxford?  I took her home, and then in the carriage
she began to cry—said she was tired.  I didn't sleep a
wink that night, but I congratulated myself that the
spark was off yesterday.  Imagine my surprise when
they walked in together yesterday evening, and he tells
me as cool as you please that it is natural I should be
surprised, but that you would vouch for him!—Why
can't you say something, man?"

"What does Horatia say?" asked Tristram, very white.

"Don't speak to me about Horatia!" cried the irate
parent.  "I ought to have shut her up with bread and
water.  I have spoilt her, and this is the outcome of it.
And as for you—I can't think why you ever brought a
Frenchman about the place!"

Before Tristram could reply to this thrust the Frenchman
in question came hastily in, equipped, as was
evident, for an immediate start, a cloak over his arm,
his hat in his hand.

"I regret that I have to go at once—but at once!"
he said to Tristram.  "Ah! pardon, M. le Recteur, I
did not observe you"—though the bound with which
Mr. Grenville had quitted his chair must have rendered
him hard to overlook.—"Excuse me that I take leave
of my kind host.  It seems," he went on, turning to that
individual, "that the horses I have procured are old
and slow, and that to catch the coach from Oxford I
must start immediately.  So, with a thousand apologies——"

"Understand, Sir," interrupted the Rector in high
wrath, "that I will not entertain your proposal for an
instant, and that I forbid you to come near my house!"

The Comte de la Roche-Guyon transferred his
attention to the angry cleric.  "Mais parfaitement,
Monsieur," he responded with a bland little bow.  "I
should not dream of entering your house again until I
have the consent of my father to the alliance.  I go at
once to Lulworth in the hope of obtaining that consent.
It was not, indeed, what I should have wished, to speak
to your daughter before approaching you, but, as I had
the honour of telling you last night, Monsieur, I did
seek to ask your permission first, but you were out, and
time was short.  Enfin, when I come again I trust it will
be more en règle.  Meanwhile, I am your humble
servant."  He made the Rector another, more formal,
valedictory bow, and advanced upon Tristram.

"I know that I leave my cause in good hands," he
said gracefully.  "Cher ami, for that, as for your
hospitality, I shall be your debtor for life.  But you
English do not like speeches, I know, and time presses..."

As much to prevent a second ebullition of
Mr. Grenville's wrath as because time pressed the cher ami
hastened with his guest from the room.  A few last
directions from himself, a smile or two from Armand, a
shake of the hand, and the man who had so lightly taken
his happiness from him was gone, confident, easy, and
attractive to the last.

When Tristram came back into the dining-room the
Rector was still standing thunderstruck on the hearth-rug.

"Well!" he ejaculated pregnantly, "for sheer
impudence commend me to one of that nation!"

Tristram sat wearily down without replying to this
cry of the heart, and there was silence, broken only by
a sort of soliloquy on the Rector's part, on the blindness
which had been his—and Tristram's.

"Couldn't you see it coming, Tristram?" he
repeated.  "Although I was such a fool, couldn't *you* see
it.  But there, they say Love is blind.  It must be, or
you would never have ... have..."

"Have thrown them together," finished Tristram
bitterly.  "Is there any need to tell you that in my
wildest moments I could never have conceived of such
a thing?  I saw that he admired her and paid her
compliments, as he might any—perhaps every—woman, but
to me he was ... just negligible.  He was welcome
to pay court to her, if she liked it, because ... because
I could not dream that she..."

"There's nothing in that!" said the Rector briefly.
"With women you never can tell.  But, of course, it is
impossible that it should be allowed to go on.  You
must come back with me, Tristram.  You at least have
influence with her.  I have never yet forbidden her
anything—it has never been my way—and I would rather
she came to it of herself."

Colour shot into the younger man's face.  "I would
do anything to help you, Sir, and much more to help
Horatia; but I can't do that—not yet."

Mr. Grenville looked away from him.  "God bless my
soul, what a selfish brute I am ... But come now,
my dear boy, once he's gone it will be all right.  Horatia
will settle down.  It's only a passing fancy; of that I
feel certain.  I have never known her other than
sensible.  She will see that it's out of the question.—You
don't agree with me, eh?"

"From what I know of Horatia, I am afraid that I don't."

"But you are going to propose to her yourself!"
said the Rector in accents of amazement, slewing round
in his chair.

Out of his pain Tristram showed his own surprise.
"No, not now; it's impossible."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Mr. Grenville with great
directness.  "Then I shall tell her myself."

"Mr. Grenville, I beg of you, I implore you not to do
such a thing!" exclaimed the young man in agitation.
"It is useless; worse than useless.  It would only
grieve her kind heart.  How little chance could I have
ever had!  She has—she must have given her love with
both hands; I do not think so meanly of her as to
imagine that she could ever transfer it ... a gift so
priceless," he added to himself.

The Rector pressed his lips together and rose.  "Well,
I can't understand the present generation.  If I had
been in your shoes I should have been married to her
any time these five years.  These reticences and
delicacies are beyond me.  If a man wants a girl, let him
ask for her!"

Tristram smiled a rather dreary smile, thinking that
even the successful suitor was not finding this course
altogether satisfactory.

"You know I never held your views on persistent
courtship, Sir.  It would have been better for me,
perhaps, if I had ... But this I will do, for Horatia's
own sake: I will come over directly I can, and I will try
my best to show her that there are ... difficulties
... to take into consideration.  But I warn you that
if I think it is for her happiness I shall oppose you,
Mr. Grenville.  I would get her the moon if she wanted it!"

And the sudden passion of this last utterance left
Horatia's father dumb.





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   CHAPTER XI

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Not only the slumber proper to the Long Vacation, but
the particular drowsy calm of the afternoon hung that
day in sunlight over Oriel.  In his lodge at the gate the
porter dozed peaceably over *Jackson's Oxford Journal*;
and, owing to this charmed sleep, a stray black spaniel,
of an architectural turn of mind, who had now for half
an hour or so been exploring both quadrangles, was at
this moment seated quietly in the outer, in front of that
porch which distinguishes Oriel from all other colleges,
appearing to meditate, in the intervals of scratching
himself, on the characteristics of Oxford Gothic, or to
admire the few plants in pots, relics of the summer term,
ranked down the steps against the wall.  Across this
porch the September sun cut diagonally, so that half
the statue of the Virgin above it was in shade, and one
of the two Kings beneath her, and the shadow of the
gables from the gateway front lay in sloping battlements
on the gravel.  Merton tower, looking down over
the long roof with its air of being part of the same
building, was still in full sunlight, like the Provost's
lodgings on the north side of the quadrangle, but, save
the slowly creeping shadows, the spaniel was the only
living thing visible in the sleepy peace which no
undergraduate clamour had disturbed for three months past.
Such Fellows as were in residence were out walking or
riding—all but two.  The porter, if roused, could have
told an inquirer—as he was shortly to tell Tristram—that
Mr. Dormer was in his rooms; that he was working
very hard, he believed, and had not been out of college,
let alone on a horse, for three days.  Up the staircase on
the right—not that he gave this unnecessary indication
to Mr. Hungerford.

But at the present moment, though Tristram's friend
was sitting at his manuscript-strewn writing-table, he was
not working; he was leaning back in his tall chair,
seeming not a little exhausted.  Those who looked at Charles
Dormer's face only once were apt, on that first
impression, to think it refined to the point of femininity.
But they never said so a second time.  Somewhat
unnaturally thin for a young man of thirty, it spoke of an
early-learnt self-control, of ardour in leash and a very
sensitive endurance, the whole touched with a kind of
angelic severity and force.  The eyes were kinder than
the mouth, and if the expression suggested possibilities
of relentlessness, it indicated still more clearly against
whom that relentlessness would chiefly be directed—probably
for some years had already been directed—Charles
Dormer.  But since to these less popular
attributes the young Fellow joined a general physical
exterior of unusual distinction, he did not meet with any
marked success in his constant endeavour to make
himself out quite an ordinary person.  People were only too
ready to see in him the ancestor who fell for the King
at Newbury, and Tristram, when he wished genuinely
to annoy him, had merely to repeat the effusive remarks
on his appearance which he had the fortune to overhear
from some fair lips one Commemoration.  Mr. Dormer
of Oriel had no use for the externals of romance.


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Axe, going leisurely through her pastures to the sea,
had known continually, as the old century died and the
new was born, the laughter and noise of a tribe of
beautiful and healthy children, who raced in her
meadows, fished in her waters, and dwelt upon the
banks of her daughter Coly.  All the Axe valley, indeed,
knew Mr. Dormer of Colyton, and his handsome sons.
His beautiful and delicate wife they knew less.
Mr. Dormer, genial hard-riding gentleman that he was,
came of Non-juring stock, long since conformed to the
Establishment; his wife, of like origin, had all the piety
and devotion proper to a spiritual descendant of
Andrewes and Ken, coupled with a strong tendency to
mysticism.

Mary Dormer, indeed, might in any other country or
age have been a nun.  As it was, she had borne five
children to the husband who reverenced her as a saint,
and only one quarter understood her.  But as at last her
extreme and increasing delicacy shut her off from the
more ordinary family cares, she was able to lead in her
seclusion a life not unlike the cloistered.  All her sons
resembled their father in temperament and shared his
interests—all but one.  Nature had bestowed on Mary
Dormer's youngest child a measure of her delicacy but
even more of her spirit.  So when Henry, who intended
to be a great soldier, like him of Blenheim and
Malplaquet, who had spent his boyhood here at Ashe House,
when Christopher, who would be a sailor, if he did not
meanwhile drown himself either in Axe or on Seaton
shore, when Robert, the most turbulent of all, who was
destined for the Bar—when all these elder brothers,
brimming with spirits, set forth on some neck-breaking
expedition, little Charles was left contentedly with his
mother.  Mr. Dormer would sometimes grumblingly
predict that his youngest boy would grow up a milksop,
the others occasionally tease him for a mother's darling,
but since the child, when he was big enough, could sit a
horse rather better, if anything, than his elders, and was
extraordinarily lucky with a fishing-rod, his brothers
were forced to render him the tribute of a slightly
grudging admiration for a prowess that cost him so little
pains.

Yet, to the mind of the child who did these things with
such ease and gaiety, the world he knew was little
different from the Garden of Eden, or from that celestial
city of which the particulars were familiar to him from
the old hymn, in the faded seventeenth century writing,
which his mother read to him till he knew it by heart.
But there were disparities.  "Quite through the streets,
with silver sound," said the hymn with precision, yet
the Coly put a circling arm around, not through his
home.  Other resemblances were more exact, their own
garden, for instance, where grew, indubitably, the
pleasantest flowers that could be seen, and where at least
the long straight path between the laurels—"the
gallant walk" as he called it,—was, as in Paradise,
always green.  Still it was pleasant to think that in the
heavenly city no "dampish mists" would come up from
the sea to prevent his going out whenever he had a mind
to, and that David, standing harp in hand as master of
the choir, would probably sing more sweetly than his
present prototype in Colyton Church.  On the other
hand it was plain that since "no spider's web, no dirt,
no dust, no filth may there be seen," the garden
tool-shed and similar attractive places could have no
counterpart above.

Accompanied as the child was by his simple and
joyous thoughts, it would never have surprised him had
he seen the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool
of the evening, or met an angel as he himself ran singing
through the grass and flowers on Coly's banks.  Perhaps
he did.  And he supposed that everybody else had the
same expectations, but that Christopher and Robert,
for instance, did not speak of them because he himself
never spoke of them, save to his mother.  Nor was he
remarkable for obedience.  All his after-life he was to
struggle with his own masterful will.  He fell into the
stream by the weir, where he had been straitly charged
not to go, and was with difficulty rescued by a brother;
he would ride prohibited horses, consort occasionally
with forbidden companions; he was at once dreamy
and wilful, sweet-tempered and naughty.  With all this
he seemed to her who knew him best—and who was to
him, it must be confessed, more like an elder sister and
companion than a mother—such a child as Adam and
Eve might have had before the Fall, and it was almost
with awe that, as he grew older, she set about teaching
him what she knew of Church doctrine, and in particular
that belief in the Real Presence which had been
miraculously preserved by the few in a materialistic age.
Pathetically certain that one day the Church would
unearth her neglected treasure, she gave him the
Prayer-Book in which that treasure was enshrined,
saying so solemnly, "Never let anyone take that away
from you, Charles," that for years the boy kept it
wrapped up in a silk handkerchief, and lived in
expectation of having to do battle for its retention.

Mrs. Dormer died just when Charles was ready to go
to school, and at eleven, motherless, he was plunged
into the rough and tumble of Eton life.  The Garden of
Eden was gone for ever, and there was scarcely a
sign-post on the way to the Heavenly City.  But the child of
Mary Dormer had his own pillar of fire to lead him
through the wilderness....  Towards the end of his
schooldays he met his life-long friend, and together,
in 1818, they went up to Oriel.

Though at Eton Dormer was considered odd and
dreamy, it was known that he possessed powers above
the average, and great things were prophesied of his
University career.  A great thing indeed awaited him
at Oxford—the influence of John Keble.  If Oriel had a
distinguished reputation its most brilliant member had
a more distinguished.  Winner of a Double First and of
two University prizes, already for seven years Fellow
of a college that worshipped intellectual attainments,
Keble was himself the herald of reaction from the Noetic
philosophy to the older school of authority and
tradition.  Humility and otherworldliness had little in
common with "march of mind," nor a quiet confidence
in the Divine Commission of the Church with a speculation
that was eventually to issue in free thought.  All
Charles Dormer's longing for "the severe sweetness of
the life divine," all his ardent conviction that better
things were to come, seemed to find their vindication
in the faith and in the practice of this young man, not
ten years older than himself, and there soon sprang up
between the two an appreciation as lasting as that which
a few years later was to unite John Keble and Richard
Hurrell Froude.  Eton prognostications were nevertheless
fulfilled when, in 1822, the same year as Newman,
Dormer, having already taken a Double First, won the
coveted prize of an Oriel Fellowship.

The new Fellow, now reading for Orders, was made
welcome enough in Common Room, but after Keble's
departure from Oxford in the following year he was
rather lonely.  He did not find real companionship
among the elder Fellows in residence, Hawkins, Tyler,
or Dornford; with the younger he often walked or rode,
but Newman was an Evangelical, and of the two whom
he had known at Eton, Pusey was silent and depressed,
Jelf of too practical a temperament.  Keble alone shared
his ideals, for though his own affection was given
steadfastly to Tristram Hungerford, the grief at Tristram's
development which had haunted him through the three
years of their joint college life was sharpened rather than
assuaged when their time together was over, and
Hungerford definitely enlisted in the Latitudinarian or
(in the phraseology of the day) the Liberal camp.  He
had fought for his friend and lost.

But the consequences of that defeat were far-reaching.
Because of his sympathy for Tristram and for
others like him, who were honest in their difficulties,
Dormer tried, for the first time, to find the intellectual
reason for his own clear faith.  First-class man and
Fellow of Oriel as he was, he could not.  He had at last
boldly to admit that his certainty was not gained by
reason, though it was reasonable, and that the most his
unaided intellect could do was to give him high
probability.  If faith was then ultimately a gift, to be won
by surrender to a Divine Person, how great was the
need of a Society in living communion with that Person,
a Society strong alike in learning and in spirituality!
And what of that Church of which he was a member?
Was it because she fell so far short of what she might
be that the time seemed to be coming when she would
be swept away by the tide of unbelief which, since the
days of the French Revolution, had devastated the
Continent?  Indeed, unless she made haste to seek out
the credentials of her Divine commission and to reforge
the links which bound her to the Church of the first ages,
would she even be worth saving from that flood?

And then the day came when Charles Dormer found
that he was not alone in these conclusions, for the same
premisses were bringing together, in his own college, a
number of persons whose loyalty to the Church led
them to think not merely of defence but of reform.
Dormer's rooms became henceforward the scene of
many a fervid discussion, many a stimulating argument.
In the end, even as Hurrell Froude, the youngest and
most ardent fighter of them all, had drawn in his
Evangelical and Whatelyan friend, so did Dormer insensibly
win over the man for whom his affection had first set him
on this track.  And to Charles Dormer, not unnaturally,
the adhesion of John Henry Newman was of vastly less
importance than that of Tristram Hungerford.


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Dormer's pen was still between his fingers.  He roused
himself, turned once more to the table, added a final
sentence to the last sheet, and laid down the pen; then
he leant back again with a long sigh.  He was tired, for
he had been finishing his book at high pressure; but he
was more tired than he ought to have been, and he knew
it.  He supposed that he would pay for the strain by a
bout of the disabling headaches, whose increasing
frequency, during the last six months, had begun to make
him uneasy.

And at this moment, just as Tristram in his need was
riding towards him up St. Aldate's, he put his head back
against his chair and began to think of him with peculiar
affection.  For fourteen years the bonds of their friendship
had only drawn the closer.  Tristram at last had
the same cause at heart, and was about to take Orders.
There was only one thing which separated them.  He
himself would never marry, but Tristram certainly
would, and Dormer continually reproached himself with
the quite human regret which this reflection sometimes
roused in him.  With his profound belief in the
Providence of God, he felt that Tristram had always been
destined for home life, and that he belonged, or would
belong to the class of clergy who, in England at all
events, seem able to serve their people best by being
one with them in actual experience of the common life.
For though Dormer would have wished that class to be
numerically the smaller, the idea of an enforced celibacy
was abhorrent to him.

And hitherto he had encouraged Tristram to hope that
the time might yet come when Horatia would listen to
him.  But the results of his observations at Tristram's
dinner-party last week had been most disturbing.  Was
it possible that this young Frenchman was carrying off
Miss Grenville's heart—he did not say her hand—under
Tristram's very eyes?  This seemed scarcely credible,
yet he had of set purpose interrupted their conversation
that evening, and had felt uneasy ever since, for a
reason that he could scarcely define.  But perhaps he
had been mistaken; at any rate, he hoped so...

He was at this point when a knock came at the door.

"Come in," he said, opening his eyes to see the subject
of his meditations before him.  He sprang up.  "My
dear fellow!  I am delighted to see you.  Forgive this litter."

"I hardly expected to find you in college at this hour,"
remarked Tristram, glancing at the table.  "I suppose
this is the reason for it."

Dormer nodded, and began gathering the sheets
together.  "The Non-jurors must be got out of the way
as soon as possible, now that I have promised to undertake
this work on the Councils for Rose.  I've just been
writing to Keble about his proposals, for, adequately
carried out, they might provide almost a lifework for
the person who undertook them."

"But *you* have promised definitely to undertake them."

"Yes, I've accepted," said Dormer sitting down again
with something like a sigh.  "It's rather a daunting
prospect, you know, Tristram, and yet it may be the
work for which one has been waiting.  I am so glad that
you managed to see Rose the other evening; I wanted
you particularly to meet him.  He is the coming man."

"Oh, is he?" replied Tristram not very enthusiastically.
"Well, yes, I was glad to meet him.  He showed
his sense in asking you to do this, anyhow.  But what
about those headaches?"

"Suppose you leave my headaches alone," retorted
Dormer smiling.  "You look rather fagged yourself.
Will you have some tea, or would you rather have a
glass of ale after your ride?—I seem to have been
talking a great deal about myself."

If he had, the circumstance was so unusual—save
perhaps in his present company—as scarcely to call
for apology.

"Neither, thanks," answered Tristram, who was
wandering restlessly round the room, which he knew
as well as his own.  "I am not tired that I know of...
I like that drawing of Cologne Cathedral.  Who gave it
you—Froude?"

"No," said Dormer, watching him suddenly rather
intently.  "It was Robert Wilberforce."

Tristram strayed to a bookcase.  "Hallo," he
remarked, "here are these Non-juring books of yours
which I am always meaning to have a look at.  What
is this—'Devotions for the Canonical Hours, to be used
in the houses of the clergy and by all religious societies
where there is a priest.'  Surely that is strange!"

"It always sounds to me like an eighteenth century
Little Gidding," answered his friend.  "That copy
belonged to Cartwright, the Shrewsbury apothecary,
and the last Non-juring Bishop.  I had an older book,
called 'A Companion for the Penitent, and for Persons
troubled in mind,' but I gave it to Keble."

"I expect he was pleased with it," commented his
visitor.  He put back the book and came and threw
himself down in a chair.  "Doesn't it seem strange to
have finished, after all this time?"

"Yes," said Dormer, looking at his papers, "and I
believe I am almost sorry.  But it would have been a
pity to spend longer over the Non-jurors, for I expect
very few people will so much as glance at the book."

"When I was talking to Froude the other day he
seemed to hold a different opinion," said Tristram.

"Ah, yes, but then you see he is almost as keen about
the Non-jurors as I am myself.  I have heard him say
that he was beginning to think that they were the last
of English divines, and that those since were twaddlers."

"Froude is almost too bold.  He doesn't seem to care
what he says."

"But," continued Dormer, leaning back in his chair,
"although I know, of course, that it will be read by a
few, what I mean is that it will appeal chiefly to those
already interested.  And if this remark applies to a
modern book, how much more will it apply to what I
am afraid will be a rather dull work on the first
centuries.—You know, Tristram, what we want alongside of this
sort of thing is some more arresting kind of writing,
some series of short essays in a popular form that could
be circulated among the country clergy—essays to
prove the continuity of the Church for instance.  In this
book I've been trying to show the direct connection
between Non-jurors, the Caroline divines, the ancient
Church of England, and the primitive Church.  For the
next five years or so I shall be trying to point out, by
means of the history of the principal Councils, that
the doctrine of the Church of England is that of an
undivided Christendom.  I don't say my volumes won't
be read, but I do say that the same thing put in a
cheaper and shorter form would be more read."

"Why shouldn't it be done, then?"

"Well, it's an idea," admitted Dormer.  "It is the
country clergy that we need to get hold of, for after all
they are the people who really count.  I must talk to
Newman about it.  I fancy it might appeal to him."

"What might appeal to Newman?" asked a voice.
The door was open, and in the aperture stood a young
man of twenty-seven or so, tall, thin to the point of
emaciation, with very bright eyes and an air of being
intensely alive.  "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for
bursting in upon you; but the only thing that appeals
to Newman just now is his mother's furniture at Rose
Hill—at least I hope it is appealing to him, for he has
gone to Iffley with Wilberforce to inspect it."

"Oh, come in, Froude," said Dormer.  "If you had
been eavesdropping a moment or two earlier you would
have heard Hungerford's opinion of you."

Hurrell Froude smiled, and, shutting the door, half
leant, half sat on Dormer's writing-table.  "I don't
care in the least what Hungerford thinks of me.
I have just had a shock.  Did you know that the
first Latitudinarians were Tories?  I did not.  It looks
as if Whiggery has by degrees taken up all the filth
that has been secreted by human thought—Puritanism,
Latitudinarianism, Popery, infidelity, they have
it all!"

Tristram laughed.  "Is that the result of your studies
at Dartington last month, Froude?  I thought you were
working at the English Reformers."

"So I was," replied the intruder, "but their civilities
to the smug fellows on the Continent, added to the fact
that the weather was rather hot, stuck in my gizzard.
Their odious Protestantism——"

"Ah!" interrupted Dormer like lightning.  "It
was too hot for work at Dartington, was it?  We've got
that admission at last!  Have I not always maintained
that there was no air so far up the Dart?  Now at
Colyton there is always the valley breeze either up or
down the Axe."

"Horrible!" ejaculated Froude, running his long
thin hand through his hair with a gesture of repulsion.
"Like living in a perpetual draught!  Now at
Dartington——"

"O, for Heaven's sake!" cried Tristram.  The
interminable feud between the two Devonians on the merits
of their respective birthplaces and rivers was one
of the standing jokes of the Common Room, and
Dormer had just scored one by Froude's careless
admission.

Froude got off the table.  "Out of regard for you, my
dear Hungerford, we will cease.  I really came in to
ask Dormer if he would ride with me one afternoon this
week.  I have found a delightful little thirteenth
century church in Buckinghamshire with piscina,
sedilia and all complete, and I want him to see it."

"I'll come with pleasure.  But that reminds me,"
said Dormer, rummaging in a drawer and getting out a
little water-colour sketch of a church tower.  "What
do you think of that?"

The visitor took it and looked at it attentively for a
moment.  "Charming," he pronounced.  "Where is
it?  I sometimes think I like a square tower better than
a spire, especially when it has an elegant lantern like this.
It is nowhere near here, I am sure.  Is——"  He broke
off suspiciously, for Dormer was standing looking at him
with a mischievous smile.

"That is Colyton church tower which you are pleased
to admire," said he.

Hurrell Froude flung down the sketch.  "Villain!"
he exclaimed, and broke into a fit of coughing.  "That
was a traitor's trick," he said, as soon as he could get
breath.  "I don't admire it at all, and I'm off.  You
will end as a Whig, or something worse, if that is
possible!"

"Well, I must be getting back also," said Tristram,
as the door closed.  "How did Froude get that cough,
I wonder?  I only came in to see how you were."

"Your guest has gone, I suppose?"

"Went this morning," responded his friend, briefly.

"Oh, I thought he was to leave yesterday."

"He stayed another night.  Good-bye; I must go."

"Wait a moment," urged Dormer.  "I want you to
read that."  And he tossed a letter across the table.

"From Habington," remarked Tristram, taking it
up.  "What has he got to say?"

"You read it and see," persisted Dormer.  "I wish
someone would tell *me* what to say.  I haven't the knack
of writing to people in his interesting situation."

Tristram read the letter as desired, Dormer studying
him the while.  Something *had* happened!

"Habington engaged to be married!" exclaimed
Tristram.  "Well, I must say I am surprised.  I thought
he was a convert to your celibate views."

"I thought so once too, but, apart from Froude, and
perhaps Newman, I intend to believe in no man's
constancy in future."

"You're very fierce, Charles!"

"Well, I am disappointed.  Habington was doing
good work here in Oxford; now he must give up his
Fellowship at Trinity and be a family man in a country
parsonage.  He will do good and be an example whereever
he is, but he cannot be what he might have been."

"Then," said Tristram slowly, "if I marry after I
take Orders I shall not be what I might have been?"

A look that few people ever saw came into Charles
Dormer's eyes.  He leant forward on the table, his
elbows on his scattered manuscripts.  "Tristram," he
said earnestly, "you know that you have always had
my good wishes, and you have them still.  You are so
obviously cut out for the charities and the
humanities...."  He stopped and looked down at his papers.
"I don't think I am being a sawney about you, even
when I want you to be happy."

Tristram was at the door, his hand on the handle.
His voice came jerkily.  "I am afraid your good wishes
are of no use to me now ... Yes, I wanted you to
know, but I can't tell you, after all ... I only hope
I shall do what is right."

He was gone, and Dormer, half-risen from his chair,
was left staring at the closed door.

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But as Tristram rode over Folly Bridge, where the
river ran yellow in the sunset, he knew that his course
lay plain before him.

Half way up the long hill he checked his horse, and
from sheer habit turned in the saddle.  There stood the
towers, orderly and lovely, in the faint mist of the
autumn day's ending.  He almost fancied that he could
hear the bells of Magdalen.  Many and many a time,
riding into Oxford on summer afternoons, on winter
mornings, had he pretended to himself that he was seeing
the city for the first time, that its streets were strange
to him, its pinnacles a new delight.  Now, without any
effort of the imagination, it seemed to him both that
everything he had ever loved lay below him, cruel and
valedictory, never to greet him again, and that it was a
place in essence still unentered, an alien city.  So, by
the mind's alchemy, were the town he had loved and the
woman he had lost made one, for a second, in his spirit.

But his course was plain.  He rode on up the hill.





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   CHAPTER XII

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Tristram's plain course was to lead him, and he knew
it, into the waste places of the spirit.  In such a desert
he wrestled, two days later, with a radiant Horatia,
himself miserably conscious both of the interpretation
that the world would put upon his action, and of the
futility of his effort, and stabbed to the heart by her
transfigured personality, to him the surest evidence of
what had happened.

Yet she was the same Horatia, as kind, as generous as
ever.  She listened very patiently to his exposition of
the difficulties attendant on a marriage with a man of a
different race, of a different creed; she seemed even to
do homage to the motive which had prompted him to
speech.  A lesser woman, so much in love as she, would,
he thought, have sent him about his business.

She smiled at him divinely when he had finished.

"Dear, dear Tristram," she said, and she put her
hand on his.  "You are indeed, as you have always
been, the best of friends.  Everything you say is true,
and I know you have not liked to say it.  But you see
that it is no good, and so I want you to be on my side
in the fight I am afraid that I am going to have with
dearest Papa.  Will you?"

"I have already told him," said Tristram, "that if
I thought the match was for your happiness, I should
uphold it."

"*My happiness*!  You cannot doubt that, can you,
Tristram?"

He did not answer.

"Papa is in his study," she suggested.  "Suppose
you were to go now and see what you can do with him?"

"I will try," he answered.

She came after him to the door, thanking him.  He
could not have borne much more.


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The Rector was sitting at his study table.  "Well,"
he said, as the envoy entered.  "What does she say?
You have been my last hope of persuading her to see
things sensibly."

Tristram crossed the room, and did not immediately
answer.  He had already professed himself convinced
of Horatia's determination, but hope will lurk in such
odd corners of the heart, that not till this moment did
he know how the frail thing had really ceased to flutter
in him.

"I am afraid," he said at last, "that I have been
worse than useless, for I have promised to try to
persuade *you*."

The Rector veered round in his chair to face him.
"You, *you*, Tristram, support her!  Then the world has
gone crazy!"  He took off his glasses and for a full
half-minute gazed at the figure standing rather rigidly
before him.  "You really mean to tell me that, knowing
Horatia as you do, you think I ought to take seriously
this passing fancy?"

"I'm afraid I do, Sir," said Tristram steadily; "but,
then, I cannot think it a passing fancy now that I have
seen her and talked to her.  Horatia does not have
whims.  If she changes, she changes whole-heartedly,
and I confess I have never seen anyone so altered."  His
voice wavered for a moment.  "She has put her whole
happiness in Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and if you
thwart her, you will be taking a very heavy
responsibility."

"All the same," said the Rector stubbornly, "I shall
take it.  As you probably know, under French law my
consent is a very important matter, and I shall certainly
not give it.  Allow my daughter to marry a foreigner,
and a Papist—a Papist, Tristram, do you realise that?"

Tristram gave a little sigh.  "I do, indeed, only too
well.  That is what clinched the matter for me.  I
mean I thought, of course, that it would be a serious
obstacle to Horatia's mind, yet when I suggested it
as a difficulty, she only said, 'But I love him, what
else matters?'  For Horatia, with her upbringing
and her views that means a great deal.  I confess I
hardly understand it."

"Nor I," returned Mr. Grenville.  "She has said the
same to me, and even when I told her that her children
would have to be brought up as Roman Catholics, she
said that she did not like the idea, but she supposed that
people always had to pay for happiness.  He has
bewitched her!  But I shall save her from herself,
Tristram.  To throw herself away on the first wandering
foreigner!"

"His father is a peer of France," said Tristram very
quietly, "and Horatia will be a great lady.  She is not
throwing herself away in that sense."

The Rector gave an impatient exclamation, and
brought his hands down violently on his knees.  "To
hear you talk, Tristram, anyone might suppose that
you had something to gain from her marriage!  'Pon my
soul, the young men of the present day are beyond me!
A fortnight ago, in this very room, you were telling me
about your own feelings for Horatia, and now here you
are, as calm and cool as any lawyer, trying to argue me
into letting her marry this organ-grinder!  Really I
find it hard to remember that not long ago you were a
boy yourself, and a boy, too, whom I had hoped to call
my son!"

It was the final turn of the screw.  Tristram left him
and went over to the window.

"I can't speak of that side of it," he said brokenly.
"I have loved her distractedly ... I still love her
... but there is her happiness to think of, and if she
... if the Comte de la Roche-Guyon..."  He
could get no further, but laid his head against the cold
glass.

"My dear boy, forgive me," exclaimed Mr. Grenville
remorsefully.  "I am so upset I don't know what I am
saying.  I'm a selfish old man, and you put me to
shame ... you put me to shame...."

Sighing heavily, he turned round his chair to the
table.  He felt himself suddenly what he had often
mendaciously declared himself to be, an old man.
Perhaps it was wrong to struggle against the young—to
play Providence overmuch.  Yet this was Horatia's
whole life at stake.  Still, the man who stood silent
there at the window, in what bitter pain he could guess,
was able to see her go.  He put out his hand, and took
up the brass of Allectus, lying neglected among a
disarray of papers, and, in the silence studied the galley
on the reverse.  At last he said miserably:

"What do you know about this young man?"

Tristram told him about the family, while the Rector
turned the coin over and over.

"Yes, that's all right, I suppose, but what about the
young man himself?"

"Frankly, I don't know any more than you do."

"But you have your suspicions, eh?  Young Frenchmen
don't bear a very good character, and you know that."

"Nor do all young Englishmen."

Mr. Grenville refused to be drawn off.  "When you
were in Paris, or wherever it was, Tristram, staying with
his family, surely you must have heard something
about him."

"No, not a rumour of the kind you mean."

"And yet," said the Rector, "you share my feelings
about him.  I know you do!"

"We have not either of us any right to have
'feelings' about him," retorted Tristram from the
window.  "We merely do not know.  I would tell you
if there had been anything.  He may be a blackguard
or he may be a hero.  We don't know."

"Very well, then," said the Rector judicially, laying
down the coin with precision.  "I'll put it in another
way.  Do you consider him a fit husband for Horatia?"

Tristram started forward.  "Mr. Grenville, don't
drive me mad!  You are putting me in a horrible
position.  Armand confides his interests to my hands;
the first thing I do is to try to persuade Horatia not to
marry him.  Now you want to make me blacken his
character ... I beg your pardon, Sir!"

The Rector was on his feet.  "It is for me to beg
yours.  My dear, dear boy, do forgive me!  I am
behaving abominably; I am not only selfish but mean—but
if I do seem to have been trying to get you to say
things against a rival (as I suppose I have), remember
I am also trying to save Horatia from this ... this
calamitous marriage, and you from your own fantastic
principles.  It is all such a confusion, but I am really
trying for your own happiness as well as hers ... You
know, Tristram, I'm sure you could still have her
if you tried, when she has forgotten him....  But
do say that you forgive me!"

The young man took his outstretched hand.  "As if
I had anything to forgive, Sir!"  Then he went back
with him to the table and sat down beside him, and once
again reiterated his conviction that Horatia would not
forget her lover, that he himself had no chance now,
probably never had, so that the case must be considered
on its own merits, and that perhaps, after all, the two
were made for each other—though here, indeed, the
conviction sounded less sincere.

"Well," said the Rector, looking at him with
affection as he finished, "however this turns out I am not
likely to forget how you have behaved!  And perhaps
(but don't say so to Horatia) I may have to think about
the possibility some day—but not yet ... no, not yet!"





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   CHAPTER XIII

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The ostler of the Red Lion at Compton Regis and one
of the stablemen, who happened at the time to be
conversing outside that hostelry, were the only persons in
the village privileged to behold a certain blue and yellow
postchaise draw up in front of the inn at dusk on an
evening in October.  Scenting a guest of importance,
and preparing to summon the landlord, the ostler was,
however, stayed by a curt inquiry from the postilion—

"Be this the way to Little Compton?"

"Straight on, first road to the left," responded the
ostler, advancing into one of the paths of radiance cut
by the lamps in the damp autumn air.  "You're no
Oxford man or you'd not ask."

"Well, why should I be an Oxford man?" retorted
the postilion.  "I'm from Salisbury, if you want to
know, and damme, if that ain't as good as Oxford——"

But here a head was thrust out of the far window of
the chaise, and a voice with a trace of foreign
accent—the voice of a young man—demanded what the devil
they had stopped for, and, grumbling, the postilion
shouted to the steaming horses.  As the chaise rolled
off the ostler caught sight of a much older face, lit by
the travelling lamp within the carriage.  He stared
after the receding vehicle.

"'Ere, Bill," he called, "I've seen a Dook.  Strike
me, but it's 'im wot's going to stay with Mr. 'Ungerford
down to Little Compton.  'Ear the posty say 'e come
from Salisbury?  That the Dook, sure enough, the old
party.  T'other'll be his son, the young spark wot was
'ere before."

"Dook!  Wot's a furrin Dook?" queried the
exclusive Bill, and spat on the ground.


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These worthies were quite right in their surmises, and
Mr. Hungerford down to Little Compton was at that
moment awaiting, with what equanimity he might, the
visit of his all but successful rival and of his father, to
whom he had been forced to offer a hospitality which
would probably ensure that rival's complete triumph.
Nor was Tristram unaware of the ironical humour of
the situation.

A week had scarcely passed since Armand's departure
for Dorset—a week in which the transfigured Horatia
had seemed to tread on air—when there came to her a
letter from her lover saying that his father absolutely
refused his consent to the match.  Tristram did not like
to think of the days that had followed, when Horatia
went about the house dimmed and red-eyed—though
she was generally invisible when he was at the
Rectory—and when the Rector (so curiously are human beings
compounded) raged alternately against Armand for his
audacity and against the Duc de la Roche-Guyon for
his prohibition.  Nothing in fact could have done so
much to forward the match, in so far as the Rector was
concerned, as this obstacle: and at last, late one
evening, Mr. Grenville came over to see Tristram quite
broken, reiterating pitifully, "I am being driven to it.
I can't have the child going into a decline," and ending
up: "As for this Duke, it's preposterous!  Who is he,
I should like to know, to behave as if my Horatia were
not good enough for his younger son?  As you know,
Tristram, I detest boasting of my connections, but if it
comes to that——"

And since Mr. Grenville could indeed claim cousinship
of varying degrees with the Most Noble Richard Temple
Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, Duke of Buckingham,
and his brother Lord Nugent, with the Marquis
of Chandos, and little Earl Temple, and old Lord
Grenville, the Chancellor of the University of Oxford,
it was hardly surprising that he was annoyed.

Tristram could only suggest that the Duc might come
round.  "It seems so strange," complained Mr. Grenville,
"that he should be so opposed to his son's wishes,
when his son is not a minor—how old is he?—twenty-five
or twenty-six, I suppose....  You don't think,"
he said suddenly, "that it's just a ruse on the young
man's part to get out of marrying her—that he is
repenting of it—that it was only a passing fancy on *his*
part?  For if that should be so, Tristram, if he is
capable of anything so vile, it will kill my girl."  His
voice shook with agitation.  Gone for ever were the days
when he would have hoped that such was the suitor's
intention.

Tristram tried to reassure him, for he did not believe
this to be the case.  After the Rector, somewhat
comforted, had gone, there was nothing left for him to
do but to pray convulsively for Horatia's happiness.

And when, two days later, he got a letter from
Armand, saying that as the King was moving to Holyrood
in mid-October he had prevailed on his father to
break the journey northward and come with him to
Compton Regis, and that he, Armand, had hopes
... it was with real relief as well as with repugnance that
Tristram did what Armand obviously hoped he would
do, and invited his father and him to honour his roof
during their sojourn.  And if anything could have
nerved him this evening to endure the position in which
he had placed himself, it was the brief sight which he
had of Horatia that day when he went over to tell
the Rector that everything was arranged—of Horatia
as she turned on him a sort of rainbow look of
gratitude.

That was this morning.  Now he was out in the dark
and the damp to welcome his guests, exchanging suitable
greetings with the elder and submitting to Armand's
embrace.

"Ah, mon cher, how amiable of you to receive us
thus!  We have had a dog of a journey.  Mon père,
enter then, while I pay the postilion; you should not
expose yourself thus to the damp."

"No, indeed," said Tristram.  "If you will come in,
M. le Duc..."

In the hall, the face of M. le Duc de la Roche-Guyon
appeared above the high collar of his full cloak, old,
pale, rather bleached-looking.  He was beginning a
stately little speech when his son appeared, full of
solicitude and hurried him upstairs.  And Armand in
person reappeared alone before dinner in order to get
a few words with his host.  Tristram had been preparing
himself for this.  The young man professed profound
gratitude, was sure that if his father once saw the
lady of his choice, all would be well.  He himself was
more hopeful than he had been for weeks past.

"In fact," he went on, his eyes sparkling, "I believe
the day is already won.  My grandmother supports
me—and that will turn the scale.  My father has great
respect for her wishes.  Her letter arrived, praise the
saints, just before we left Lulworth."

Tristram now remembered to have heard something
of an autocratic old Dowager Duchess, the Duke's
mother.

"She says—mais n'importe," went on the Comte.
"Now, with your permission, and if my father does not
appear too tired, I will leave you after dinner to
yourselves."

"You are trusting me with a good deal, La Roche-Guyon,"
Tristram was moved to remark.

"Parbleu, are you not my friend!" retorted the
Frenchman.  "Besides, you are one of those people
whom it is natural to trust."

Although the Duc, when he appeared, was very
plainly, if immaculately attired, he somehow radiated
from his person an air of courts and of diplomacy very
foreign to Tristram's dining-room and its solid British
furniture.  He was grand seigneur to his finger-tips,
polished, melancholy, affable, and perfectly simple in
his address; but it required no effort to imagine the
absent cordon bleu and stars on his breast.  Armand
behaved towards him with a mingled air of deference
and affection which, while it amused Tristram—so far
as he was capable of being amused by anything—did not
displease him, for it appeared genuine and habitual.
Apparently the young man considered the paternal
health equal to a discussion, for after one glass of port
he very unembarrassedly excused himself, and left the
others still seated with their wineglasses at the polished
mahogany.

The Duc looked after him with a little smile of amusement
and affection flitting across his delicate bloodless
lips.

"That is the signal for us to begin our 'conversations,'
Monsieur.  You have plenipotentiary powers, I think?"

"I—not in the least!" said Tristram, somewhat
alarmed.  "I have no—no official position at all in the
matter.  It will be between yourself, M. le Duc, and the
lady's father.  Anything that I can arrange, in the way
of a meeting between you, I shall be happy to do, and
any information I have is at your service.  Beyond that
I cannot go."

The older man bowed.  "You are a kinsman, I
think, Monsieur?"

"Distant," said Tristram.  "I rather count myself
an old friend."

"Of M. Grenville or of Mademoiselle?"

"Of both."

"And—pardon me if I ask an impertinent question,
but we must know where we stand—as a kinsman and
as an old friend, you have yourself no objection to this
alliance?"

"I am solely desirous of Miss Grenville's happiness,"
responded Tristram, his eyes on the foot of his wineglass.

"And you think that the match with my son will
ensure it?"

"How can I possibly say?  But I hope that it may
take place."

"Merci, Monsieur, for your courtesy," said the Duc,
very courteously himself.  "Now I in my turn must
make my position clear to you.  I had other views for
my son—in fact I thought he ... had other views
for himself.  I am, however, convinced that he is
passionately in love with this lady, whom I doubt not
I shall find to be all and more than all that he represents.
But you know, Monsieur, that we French people do not
look with favour upon marriages of love.  We prefer
that love should come after marriage.  We find it better
so.  Then there is the difference of race.  To these young
people that seems nothing now, but it tells, Monsieur,
it tells more and more through life.  This objection
naturally applies on your side also; not so the former,
for you are more sentimental than we are."  He was
arranging two little groups of almonds with fingers as
blanched as they.

"I seem to remember," commented Tristram, "that
the Comte de Flahault, coming over to England, fell in
love with an English lady and married her, and that
they are living happily in Paris at this very moment."

"Quite true," said the Duc, with the air of one
acknowledging a point, and he added another almond
to the smaller pile.  "But I cannot wholly allow the
parallel.  M. de Flahault was an Imperialist—an
aide-de-camp of Napoleon in fact; he is now an Orleanist,
and the lady, she was titrée, noble in her own right, I
believe, the Baroness Keats, or Keat, il me semble."

"Keith," said Tristram.  "But surely I do not need
to remind M. le Duc, who has, I understand, lived much
in England, that many of the members of our best
families bear no titles, that with us the grandson of an
earl, not being the heir, is plain Mr. So-and-so, and that
some of the oldest families have never had titles at
all—have, indeed, refused them."

"That I know," conceded M. de la Roche-Guyon.
"But it is not generally understood in France."

Tristram pushed away his wineglass.  "You must
not suspect me of flattery, Sir, if I say that I should
have thought your own ancient and illustrious name
capable of covering any disparity in station between
the parties, did such exist.  But I should wish to remind
you that Mr. Grenville is by no means the ordinary
country parson that you have perhaps imagined.  He is
himself the younger son of a noble family; he has
connections among the highest of our English nobility, and
he is no pauper.  I can sketch you his family tree if you
wish....  As for the lady herself, she would grace
the most exalted rank, and, as a kinsman and an old
friend, I think I have the right to say that the man who
wins her is to be congratulated indeed."

The Duc lifted his eyes from the almonds and shot
him a keen, rather disconcerting glance.  "Ah, yes.
You, Monsieur, the accredited ambassador, have
espoused the match with warmth.  How is it that
M. Grenville then refused, in no uncertain terms, to
entertain the thought of it; indeed, so far as I could gather,
forbade my son the house?"

For a second Tristram was taken aback by this
pertinent inquiry, for he had really forgotten the
Rector's one time vehement opposition.

"I think," he said, "that you will find Mr. Grenville
... in short, that that difficulty does not now exist."

The Duc leant back in his chair.  "Will you permit
me, Monsieur, to say (since I am a man so much older
than you) that there is something in you, I know not
what, which pleases me very much.  I will be franker
with you than I had meant to be.  My mother, the
Dowager Duchess, to whose judgment I pay great
deference, is in favour of this match.  I have learnt the
fact but this morning.  I own that I am surprised, but
Armand is her favourite grandson.  There are reasons,
with which I need not trouble you, why her wishes
should have great weight with me.  I am, therefore,
little likely when I see this lady, by all accounts so
charming, to find her unsuitable.  But what of M. son
père?  It will not consort very well with my dignity (to
which you must permit me to hold) if I approve my
son's choice only to find that M. Grenville does not
approve his daughter's."

And in the gaze which he directed upon Tristram, in
the tones of his thin, well-bred voice, there peeped out
something of the arrogance of an ancient race.

The younger man smiled.  He felt suddenly very weary.

"You need not apprehend anything on that score, I
can assure you, Sir.  I saw Mr. Grenville this morning.
When your son first asked for his daughter's hand he
was startled, greatly startled, and surprised.  He
probably spoke words which he would have recalled afterwards.
You will find him, I think, more than reconciled
to the idea."

The Duke seemed to have fallen into a short reverie.

"It is well to be young," he said at last, and there
was faint regret in his tone.  "The fire of youth—who
shall give us that again?  When I married my first
wife, Emmanuel's mother, I was only twenty—but that
was a mariage de convenance.  Armand's mother was
very beautiful; I loved her as Armand loves this lady,
but he has the advantage of me ... he has the
advantage of me ... for then I was no longer
young."  He sighed, and passed his handkerchief over
his lips, and his face, deeply marked, seemed to wither
and grow older than its sixty-five years.  "But why am
I talking thus to you, Monsieur, who still have that
inestimable gift of youth?  Mais tout passe, tout lasse
... I will do myself the honour of calling upon
Mr. Grenville to-morrow morning at eleven, if you think
that hour will be convenient to him."

And he flicked with one long, polished nail at the two
heaps of almonds, scattering them.


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Not being present next morning at the momentous
interview between the Duc and Mr. Grenville, Tristram
could only guess at what happened.  Armand, on fire
with restlessness, spent the time walking round and
round the not very extensive garden like a caged
animal, and when Tristram went out to say that his
father had returned and would like to see him in the
study, he found the young man slashing with a stick
at his rose trees.

"Oh, pardon if I have hurt them!" he exclaimed.
"Mon Dieu, que je suis énervé!  Yes, I will go at once.
I had better have borrowed one of your horses and gone
for a gallop.—He is in the study, you say, this good
father of mine?"

The irony of Tristram's own position oppressed him
the more in proportion as his anxiety about Armand's
intentions was relieved.  Neither the Duc nor his son
said much when they emerged from their conference,
only the elder man informed his host that he was to
dine alone at the Rectory that evening, and that he
hoped then to make the acquaintance of Miss Grenville.
As good luck so ordered, a colleague of Tristram's on the
bench turned up at dinner time and had to be asked to
stay.  Never had Tristram so blessed his boring but
steady flow of conversation, nor so welcomed his
presence, which effectually prevented Armand from
pouring out his own hopes and fears.

There was no one, however, to save Tristram from
the Duke's really enthusiastic praises of Miss Grenville
when he returned from the Rectory, and expatiated on
the gifts of heart and mind and person which he
discerned in her.

"I shall keep that young rascal on tenterhooks a little
longer," he declared.  "Another sleepless night will not
do him any harm, if he has had as many as he asserts.
Besides, it is not absolutely arranged.  With your
permission, Mr. Grenville will come over here to-morrow
morning to discuss matters with me.  I will send Armand
out; no doubt, even in this misty weather, his flame
will keep him warm."

He kept his word, and next morning the Comte,
refusing a horse, went soberly off on foot in the direction
of the Downs.  Mr. Grenville arrived; Tristram was
unable, and did not indeed particularly desire, to make
an opportunity of seeing him alone before he left him
and the Duc to their discussion.  The whole thing was
getting dreamlike to him now, losing the outlines of its
reality as the Downs had lost theirs with the death of
summer.  He would be glad when this whirl of
conferences was over, the result—already
certain—announced, and Armand de la Roche-Guyon no longer
under his roof—not that he minded even his presence
very much.  How he should get on afterwards, from
day to day, he did not know, but at present he seemed
to himself a being without passions, energy, or desires—a
mere leaf whirled on the engulfing stream of destiny,
and the future was hardly worth speculating about.

He walked in his little orchard, for it was a morning
gilded with the mellow brilliance of October, and noted
the fallen apples.  After a while, turning, he saw the
Duc de la Roche-Guyon, his son and the Rector all
coming over the grass towards him, conversing with an
amiability which could have only one meaning.  And
dream-enveloped though he felt himself, leaf on the tide
of fate though he might be, for a second Tristram saw
nothing at all, neither figures, nor grass, nor sky, nor
the bricks of his house; he was conscious only of a
surging wave of rebellion that blotted them all out.
Then they reappeared, and Armand, coming forward
with both hands outstretched, said, in a voice of radiant
happiness:

"Congratulate me, mon ami!  And ah, how much I
owe it to you!"

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Next evening it was observed in Oriel Common Room
that Dormer was unusually quiet.  He withdrew earlier
even than his wont, and while Newman and Hurrell
Froude, going up their staircase, were commenting on
the absence of light from his windows on the other side
of the quadrangle, he was sitting by the fire, Tristram's
read and re-read letter on his knee, and the half-bitter
postscript of it running in his head, "Henceforward
your fanatical ideas will easily carry the day with me.
I shall never marry now."  What he had dreamed of
had come to pass—and his heart within him was
desolate with pity.





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   CHAPTER XIV

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Morning on the Downs, with the clean, the thrilling
wind, intoxicating even in autumn, the air that gives
the sensation of a draught of the barest and intensest
life, the air of the world's morning.  Add to this youth,
a good horse beneath you, and by your side, never
henceforth to leave it, that one person who to you sums up
the spirit of all these other things.  What can Heaven
give more?

So, flashingly, thought Horatia, as she and Armand
finished their gallop, and her green veil, outstreaming
from her tall hat, fell to a position a little more
composed.  Laughing, a trifle breathless, "O, I should like
to ride like this for ever!" she exclaimed, as the horses
fell to a walk.  "It was glorious!"

Armand de la Roche-Guyon, sitting his big brown
mare with the ease of the born rider—a lover of whom
any girl might be proud—bent on her a long and smiling
look.  "We shall often ride in Brittany," he said.  "If
the peasants know mythology—which I doubt—they
will take you for Diane chasseresse."

Moving on, they came to the edge of the Downs, the
great wind still blowing steadily upon them.

"There is Compton Regis, and there is Compton
Parva," observed Horatia, pointing with her whip.
"Do they not seem low from here?  And—do you see?—that
looks like Papa and Robin, deserting us and
making off home."  For the Rector, having ridden with
the affianced couple, for propriety's sake, as far as the
Downs, had refused to come any further.  The
protestations which his action had drawn forth had been
singularly lacking in fervour.

"I think," went on Horatia, "that before we have
another gallop, you had better tighten my girth for me,
if you will....  But what are you looking at, down
there?"

"I was trying to distinguish the road on which you
first came to me, like an angel of mercy," said the young
man, swinging off.  "And the spot where Mr. Hungerford's
horse so inexplicably cast a shoe!  By the way,"
he went on, pulling at the girth, "speaking of your
cousin, ma toute belle, reminds me that I have long
wanted to ask you——"

"My cousin!" broke in Horatia, laughing.  "Whom
do you mean?—That is tight enough, I think."

"Mais ce bon Tristram.  He is your kinsman ... or
have you all been deceiving me?"

"Certainly he is my kinsman, but a very distant one.
His mother was my mother's third cousin, or something
of the sort.  I never think of him as a cousin, exactly;
rather as a brother."

"Not in any other capacity?" inquired Armand, his
eyes mocking her as he leant against her horse's neck.
"I have no right to ask you, perhaps—si, I think I have
the right."  He laughed.  "If he were never in love
with you, he ought to have been."

Horatia looked away from his amused, lazily
penetrating glance.  "To tell you the truth," she said,
flushing a little, "he was once—years ago.  But that
is all over, and the proof is, that we have been very good
friends ever since."

"Ah, I wondered.  I am glad he had the good taste
to be a soupirant once.  Were you very cruel to him?
He is an original; but I am very grateful to him.  Had
he been a rival I should have found things much more
difficult."

"No, you would not," said Horatia suddenly.  "He
would have behaved just the same, when he found that
I really loved you."

The Comte lifted his expressive eyebrows.  "Forgive
me, my angel, but I am totally unable to follow you
there.  Men don't do those things nowadays; we are
not in the pages of Scudéry.  You have a soul of the
most romantic, my Horatia, in spite of your Greek and
Latin; but romance is not in harmony with facts.
Your 'cousin' is a capital fellow, but if I believed him
capable of that sort of thing, ma foi, I should be inclined
to recommend him for a madhouse.  As it is, shall we
ask him to stay with us one day?"

"If you like," said Horatia, looking at her horse's
ears.  There was a vague trouble in her voice.

"If *I* like!  But yes, that is perhaps what it comes
to.  I warn you, I shall be like a tiger for jealousy, and
you will turn every man's head who sees you....
Par exemple, I am sure you must have had many more
victims than you will acknowledge.  Passe Mr. Hungerford,
but what of that so dear friend of his at the college
of Oriel?"

Horatia looked absolutely horrified.  "Mr. Dormer!"

"Eh bien, why not?  You shrink, my angel, as if I
had suggested a thing improper, as though he were a
priest—one of our priests.  But he is not, and you must
have met sometimes, and he is bel homme too, for all
that austere air of his.  Why, now I come to think of it
in Mr. Hungerford's very drawing-room——"

"I cannot conceive why he talked to me that evening,"
said Horatia.  "I have often thought of it since....
But I will not be catechised about such absurdities.
And suppose I were to insist on knowing how many
fair ladies have been in love with you, Monsieur?"

"And pray, Mademoiselle, what would you think of
me if I answered that question?" asked her betrothed,
regaining his saddle.  "Ask me how many I have
admired, and some day—perhaps—I will tell you."

They rode on, talking of the—to French eyes—daring
honeymoon that they were to spend, alone, at the
Breton château, which had come to Armand through
his mother.  For, since they were to be married in
England, nobody could prevent their going straight to
Brittany after the tying, by civil as well as by double
religious rites, of the triple knot which should, as
Armand said, make the most beautiful hand in the world
so very securely his.


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Horatia was to stay in London with her aunt for
some weeks previous to her marriage.  The day before
her departure, Tristram rode over to say good-bye.  She
was out when he arrived, but he was told that she would
return shortly, and he went, he did not quite know why,
into the garden, where he had so often sat and walked
with her, where they had had so many discussions,
where—to go back into a life that now scarcely seemed
his own—he had run shouting as a boy, glad to escape
from his lessons.

Nothing remained of the glory of the summer, not
even the corpses of the hollyhocks and the great
sunflowers.  All had been tidily removed for burial.  It
would have been more consonant with the wintry misery
in his heart that those flowers which had witnessed his
happiness should have been there still, black and
withered, like his hopes.  But the past seemed to have
been neatly obliterated, for the Rector's gardener was
very sedulous; the whole place had cast off its last
guest and was ready for a new—the winter.  To welcome
this a bush or two of Michaelmas daisies was in flower,
and a robin was singing.  And it came into Tristram's
mind, a reminiscence of his year abroad, that in foreign
countries they would be keeping the festival of the dead,
for it was the second of November.

The garden was intolerable to him, yet he stayed
there, walking up and down in the chilly twilight,
because he was afraid that if he went in he would find
that she had returned, and the moment of farewell would
be upon him.  For though he had promised her that he
would be at her wedding—her threefold wedding—in
London, this was to him the real parting.  The other
could not hurt after this.

At last he saw the comfortable form of Mrs. Martha
Kemblet, Horatia's maid, coming towards him.

"Miss Horatia has just come in, Sir; she's in the
drawing-room."

"Thank you," said Tristram.  "By the way, you
are going to France with her, Mrs. Kemblet, are you
not?"

"Indeed I am, Sir," responded the faithful retainer
with emphasis.  She had been nurserymaid in the days
of Horatia's childhood, had returned to the Rectory on
her husband's death, and had successfully compassed
the airs of the old family nurse.  "My lamb shall have
someone English about her in the midst of them
jabbering foreigners."  Evidently Mrs. Kemblet was
not a fervent of the French marriage.

After all, their parting was unimaginably short.
Perhaps he would not have had it otherwise.

She was standing in the drawing-room, when he got
in, turning up a newly-lit lamp.

"Oh, my dear Tristram," she said, in a tone too
matter-of-fact to be natural.  "I am afraid that you
have been here a long time, waiting.  I am so sorry."

"I was in the garden," he answered.  "I could well
wait..."

"I shall see you in London?" asked Horatia
needlessly, turning to the lamp again.

"Yes, without fail.  But you will be so occupied
then that I must tell you now what I want to say.  It
is only this ... I want you to remember that if ever,
at any time, you need me to ... to do anything for
you, I am always ... I shall always..."  Firmly
as he had begun, he could not finish.

"You do not need to say that to me, Tristram,"
came her voice, very soft and moved.  She still had her
back half turned to him; the lamplight glanced through
her hair.  "I know it ... I am not worthy of it....
You have been a friend more kind..."  Then
she too stopped, and put her hands over her face.

Tristram stood like a stone.  He could not trust
himself to go nearer.  Moreover, the dark room, with its
island of light and her at the heart of it, was threatening
to turn round.  Seconds passed; then he said more
steadily, "I should very much like a memento of
you—something you have worn.  Is there anything you
could spare?"

He saw her drop her hands to her throat and unfasten
something—something which, still half turned away,
she held out to him without a word.  He went forward
to take it, and, dropping on one knee, kissed the hand
that gave it to him, the hand lost to him for ever.

Then he found himself outside the room, and in his
palm, warm from her throat, the little gold fibula,
saucer-shaped and delicately worked, which she
habitually wore.  A thousand years ago it had clasped
the cloak over the breast of a woman as beloved,
perhaps, as she, but the heart that had once beat under
it was not now more dust and ashes than his own.





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.. _`GARISH DAY`:

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   BOOK II

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   BOOK II

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   GARISH DAY

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   CHAPTER I

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A great deal of wind made its entry with Armand and
Horatia, and two dry leaves, scurrying gleefully over
the polished floor, hurled themselves into oblivion under
a chest.  Roland the deerhound paced, very dignified,
across the hall, and let himself down in front of the fire
with a sigh.  But his master and mistress lingered at
the door, and when the tails of old Jean's livery had
disappeared, Armand took Horatia into his arms and
kissed her three times without a word.  Then, hand in
hand, like lovers and like children, they also crossed the
hall to the fire.

"How I love coming in!" whispered Horatia.
"Everyday it is different.  Yesterday it was not so
dark, but the portraits looked rather forbidding.  To-day
they are more friendly.  Are they getting more used to
me, do you think?"  Her eyes ran along the row of
observers.

"They are getting more jealous of you, I am afraid,"
said the young man, devouring her face, all aglow from
the wind.  "Unfasten your furs—let me do it.  Not
one of them was ever as beautiful as you."  His hands
shook a little as he unclasped the pelerine of marten
skins.  "How could they help but be jealous?"

The heavy furs slipped to the ground.  "Am I
beautiful?" asked Horatia, slim and straight and
smiling.  "I never used to be."  She sat down in the
great carved chair in front of the fire, and pulled off her
gloves.  "Tell me about them; tell me about her."  She
indicated the portrait over the hearth—the lady in
flowing draperies, half reclining in a sylvan landscape,
a Louis Quinze Diana, the goddess's crescent moon
shining in her close-dressed powdered hair, and on her
lips a narrow riddle of a smile that already haunted the
newcomer.

"Another day," answered Armand, kneeling beside
her.  "She is not lucky, my great-great-grandmother.
I think I will have her removed from here.  Besides,
there is only one thing that I can possibly tell
you—that I love you, I love you ... and that none of
them was ever loved so much!"  And, prisoning her
hands, he kissed her.

Ancestors and ancestresses round the half-dusk hall
looked on unruffled, having seen something like this
not once nor twice in the centuries of their vigils, having
most of them enacted it themselves—except that young
man in wig and cuirass, faintly resembling Armand
himself, who fell at Fontenoy before he could bring
home his bride.  But Roland was disturbed by
something outside his comprehension, and getting up, he
tried to thrust his nose between the two.

"O, Armand, he is licking me—he is eating me!"
protested Horatia, who could not lift a hand to keep off
the intruder.  "Let me go, dearest; I must change my
dress."

"But I like you in your furs," answered Armand,
raising his head.  His dark blue eyes sparkled.  "I
thought when we were walking together just now that
you should always wear them.  They do something—I
don't know what—to that incomparable hair of yours."  He
touched it.  "Will you always wear your furs, to
please me?"

"Silly boy!" retorted his wife.  "And only two or
three years ago there was such an outcry against the
danger of wearing even cloth dresses instead of muslins
indoors!  What is more foolish than a man?"

"Nothing, indeed, but a woman," replied the Comte,
gazing at her.  "Well, I shall at least come and
prescribe what you are to wear for me to-night."

"For you, Monsieur!" exclaimed Horatia.  "Learn
that I dress entirely to please myself!  Adieu.  Bring
my furs."  And slipping cleverly from her chair she was
round it before he could get from his knees.  If she did
not actually run full-paced up the great staircase, at
any rate she flitted up it with little of the dignity of a
new-made wife.  Armand, snatching up the pelerine,
overtook her three stairs at a time.


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That was part of the charm of those wonderful days,
that Horatia found she could be a child, playing with
another child.  Armand was not only the most fervent
of lovers; he was an enchanting playmate as well.  It
seemed to come naturally to him, like all he did, and
Horatia was amazed to find how naturally it came to
her also, who had never played much in her childhood,
and who judged herself now, at twenty-four, so much
too old for such high spirits.  But there was no one of
their own condition to witness them, and most of the
servants were old and indulgent.

And not Armand only, but the house itself seemed to
conspire against Horatia's gravity.  Had her
imagination been nourished, like that of most of her
contemporaries, on the pseudo-Gothic poetry of the
Annuals, on the *Mysteries of Udolpho* or the *Tales of
Terror and Wonder*, she might have been disappointed
to find, in the château of Kerfontaine, neither
drawbridge, portcullis, nor moat, neither battlements from
which the heroine could espy the approach of her chosen
knight, nor dungeons where a hero could languish, but
only a residence of the time of Louis XIII, symmetrical,
many windowed, tall-chimneyed, steep-roofed, with an
atmosphere entirely unsuited to visors, palfreys,
distressed damsels, falchions, or jongleurs.  But the
history she knew was different; and here, in this house
which had its own harmony, she could place the people
who had really lived in it—ladies of the time of her
admired Arthénice, and of Madame de Sévigné, and
men who had rhymed in Paris with Voiture and fought
with the great Condé at Rocroi.  She was enchanted
with the odd nests of tiny rooms, dressing-rooms,
powdering closets, which squired all the bedrooms;
with the tall white doors, with the old pre-Revolution
furniture, with the absence of carpets, with the long
narrow gallery hung with armour; with old Jean the
butler, and young Françoise the laundry-maid, with
the dinner service of St. Cloud, with the yellowed books
on heraldry and hawking, with the thousand and one
things which Armand showed her when they explored
their domain.  And she knew not whether she were most
pleased to sit by the flaming log-fire in the hall, or in the
salon, which opened out by a double flight of curving
stone steps on to the lawn, a walk of cut lime-trees, and a
carefully contrived view of the little pièce d'eau, or
whether she preferred to walk in the garden, all dank
and flowerless as it was, and watch the leaves sailing on
the surface of the water, the three decrepit Tritons
blowing their soundless horns, and the little Florentine
boy in the fountain pressing the captive dolphin which
had not spouted for so many years.

And it was all hers, to do as she liked with.
Sometimes she and Armand planned alterations, chiefly for
the pleasure of the planning alone, for she would not
rearrange even the drawing-room under the eyes—though
they were so like Armand's—of that beautiful
mother of his who smiled above the spinet, looking down
over her shoulder in her yellow Empire gown.  And
Armand promised her new furniture; but she did not
want it.

There was indeed only one thing on earth that he
would not promise her at present, and that was, not to
go wolf-hunting.  When first she heard a rumour of the
existence of this sport in Brittany she did not believe
it; surely there were no wolves nowadays, and if
there were, he would not be so unkind as to go after
them and leave her.  But she was doubly mistaken;
there were wolves, and savage wolves, as she discovered
from questioning not only him, but the servants, and
her entreaties quite failed to move him.  He went...
It was a day of long-drawn agony, and she was almost
speechless with apprehension when at nightfall he
returned, dirty, dishevelled, bloodstained, and full of
the joyous fatigue of the successful hunter.  Sobbing
and clinging to him she reproached him with his cruelty
to her; he only laughed and kissed her, and next day
she was able to admire his courage.


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Full intimation had been given to Armand de la
Roche-Guyon from headquarters—in other words from
his grandmother the Duchesse—that he and his bride
must be in Paris for New Year's Day, that feast sacred
to the ties of kindred.  Before they left Kerfontaine,
Horatia and he felt it incumbent on them to give a
dinner-party for the neighbours on whom, as a
newly-married wife, she had called, and Horatia therefore sat
one morning in her boudoir writing out the invitations,
while her husband, leaning lazily against her escritoire,
made appropriate comments on each.  A little snow had
fallen, and lit up the room with its reflected light; and
Horatia, who loved snow, felt that only this was needed
to add the last touch of glamour to her home.

"I think I know where everyone lives now," she said,
putting down her pen.  "By the way, Armand, whose is
that rather large château in the classical style, which we
passed when we were riding two or three days ago?  I
forgot to ask you."

"You mean the ugly building on the way to
Lanvaudan?" inquired her husband.— "(Silly child,
you have inked your fingers.)—That is Saint-Clair,
which belongs to the Vicomtesse de Vigerie.  She is
away at present—in Italy, I believe."

"A widow, I suppose," commented Horatia, trying
to rub the dry ink off her fingers.  "Is she old or young?
It is a large place.  Why have you never told me about
her before?"

"Because," answered Armand, with equal candour
and cleverness, "I was within an ace or two of marrying
her."

Horatia jumped.  "O!" she exclaimed.  Her eyes
opened wide at him, and she could find no more to say.

"At least," went on the Comte, with entire tranquillity,
"that is what you will probably be told sooner
or later.  And, after all, it is better that I should tell
you myself."

Horatia was dumb.  The yellowing paint of the panel
behind Armand's head, with its impossible combinations
of the flowers of every season, seemed to intensify
the feeling of unreality.

"Did you ... did you...?"

"No, I did not.  And I doubt if she would have had
me in any case.—No, mon amie, your expression
flatters me too much.  But think, if I had!  However,
Providence sent me over to England in time..."  His
glance set Horatia's heart beating.

"Think, my angel," went on Armand, ticking off the
links on his fingers, "think, if the King had not
published the Ordonnances, there would not have been a
revolution; if there had not been a revolution, His
Majesty would not have fled to England; if he had not
fled to England my father would not have accompanied
him thither; if my father had not accompanied him I
should not have gone over to see my father; if I had
not gone over to see him..."

"O, did it need a revolution to bring us together!"
cried Horatia, half laughing, half serious, for indeed
effect and cause did not seem at that moment
disproportionate.

"Or think," continued Armand, "that if my brother
Emmanuel had not got to know that good Hungerford—what
is it you call him, Tristan?—at the Embassy
Ball..."

He went on developing his theme, but for a couple of
seconds Horatia did not hear him.  It passed over her,
swift as the wind, that she had never so much as given
a thought to Tristram since she left England—not so
much as one thought.

"... So you see," she heard Armand concluding,
"that it was very much an affair of chance, was it not?"

And, coming back fully to the present, she realised
that the half-jesting hypotheses were indeed playing
round the fringes of truth.  So very little—and they had
never met!

"O my darling!" she cried with a shudder.


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Half-past five on her last day at Kerfontaine found
Horatia, a trifle nervous, receiving her guests of the
dinner-party, all of that class of country gentry
forced by the modesty of their incomes to live on their
little estates, and able but rarely to afford a visit to
Paris.  The ladies' modes were a little antiquated, and
one old gentleman was even wearing powder.  It was
evident that all were curious to see the English bride.

Among the somewhat crude tones of the women's
dresses and the old-fashioned coloured coats of the men,
the village curé in his cassock was easily discernible,
and him, to Horatia's momentary surprise, she found
in the place of honour at her right hand when they were
at last seated round the table.  He was a little, snuffy
old man, very noticeably of peasant origin, and not
above relishing better fare than ordinary, for he looked
with an appreciative eye upon the large piece of boiled
beef in the middle of the table, and upon the other dishes
round it, the roast mutton, the sweetbreads, the pâtes
de cervelle.  He was also, to Horatia's further surprise,
served before any of the ladies, and made good use of his
start.

"Madame la Comtesse is not Catholic?" he asked
after a while, turning on her a not unkindly gaze.

"No," answered Horatia, flushing a little.  "I am
English, you know, M. le Curé."

"It will come, it will come," said the old man, and
he polished his plate strenuously with a bit of bread.
Then, his utterance impeded by the sodden morsel, he
added, "No doubt M. le Comte will get Monsignor de la
Roche-Guyon to convert you."

Armand, looking very handsome, gay and debonair
at the other end of the table, must have caught this
stifled remark, for he flashed an amused glance at his
wife.  But the subject was not pursued, and the old
Baron on Horatia's left hand, who had been all through
the Chouannerie, and had left two fingers in it, began to
discourse on the battle of Navarino, and after that the
lady nearest to him desired to know of Horatia the
motion of a steam-packet; oh, of course Madame had
not come by Calais, but by sailing-vessel to St. Malo;
and she actually preferred the long voyage?
Incredible! ...

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The last couple had scarcely taken their leave before
Armand gave a sigh of relief.  "Are they not strange
old fossils?" he inquired.  "I think you can have
nothing so curious in England.  Some of these ladies
have never been to Paris in their lives....  You shall
give me sixteen kisses, one for each guest."

The due was in course of payment when the young
man suddenly drew away with an ejaculation.  "What,
M. le Curé, are you still here?"  For a short, stout,
cassocked figure was standing under the crystal
chandelier regarding them with approbation.

"I wished," said the old priest benevolently, "to
give my blessing to you, M. le Comte, if you will permit
it, and to Madame la Comtesse also—though as yet a
heretic—and so I retired until the others should be gone.
But I have not heard what you were saying to each
other, only I perceive that you are indeed a wedded
pair, such as the Church approves, and I will give you
the Church's blessing on your union.  May it be
sanctified with mutual love and regard, and made happy by
many children, and ended only by a Christian death—*Benedicat
vos Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus*!"  He
cut the air crosswise with his not overclean hand,
and before the astonished couple could find speech, had
hurried from the room.

"Mort de ma vie, he has an assurance, our old
curé!" exclaimed Armand, staring after him.  "Darling,
do not look so startled; it is a sort of pious
compliment.  But I am glad that he had the tact to wait
until the rest had gone; not but what they would have
been edified by it.  Ces dames are all as devout as even
the heart of Prosper could desire."

"Prosper?" questioned Horatia doubtfully.

"My cousin the Monsignor, who is said to be going
to convert you, little heretic.  Not that it is necessary;
you would go straight to Heaven anyhow; and there
you would pray for your poor husband grilling in
Purgatory, would you not?—Come and sit by the fire
in the hall and confide to me the ideas of your Church
on the future state.  Ours, you know, are very consoling
to sinners like myself!"

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Armand had long ago stopped talking nonsense, and
lay silent on the floor, his head in Horatia's lap.  Her
fingers wandered slowly among the dark, fine, and
waving hair.  To come back to this dear intimacy after
the chatter was bliss too profound for speech.  The fire
began to sink; the deerhound sighed, fixing melancholy
eyes upon them, his nose along his paws, and Horatia,
with the weight of Armand's body against her, felt that
she should not know an hour more exquisite than this,
which the great clock was tolling so relentlessly into
eternity.  And again she wondered why such happiness
had been given to her, who had done so little to deserve
it; for surely no woman before her had known so
penetrating a joy!

Then suddenly she felt the gaze of the lady over the
hearth, and looked up.

"I, too, have known," the enigmatical, half-closed
eyes said to her—"and I have been dust and ashes these
many years—and so shall you be, and so shall he."  O,
it was awfully, cruelly true!  "Please God I die first!"
she thought, and sliding her hand round Armand's neck
kissed the head on her knee to register the hope.

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Next morning, amid all the clatter of an early
departure, she bent forward from the chaise for a last
look at the place of so much happiness.  The transient
snow had melted, and the château stood as she had first
seen it.

"I wonder shall I ever be so happy anywhere," she
murmured.  "Good-bye, dear house!"

"It appears to me," said Armand gaily, "that my
wife is on the way to love the house better than its owner."

No articulate response was, naturally, required to this
accusation, but after a moment Horatia said, still a little
wistfully, "I wish it were not all over!"

"You belong to the Romantics, mon amie, that is
clear," observed her husband, laughing outright.  "And
it is only just beginning."  He drew her head down to
his shoulder, and the horses sprang forward on the first
stage to Paris.





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   CHAPTER II

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Chartres, encircling its jewel of stone, was gone like
the dreams which Horatia might have dreamed there
the previous night if excitement had not kept her
wakeful, and now, Versailles, Sèvres, and Passy left in
turn behind the wheels of their chaise, she was entering
Paris for the first time in her life.  This was really the
Seine that they were crossing, this river sparkling in the
early afternoon sun of New Year's Eve, and the golden
dome glittering in front of them was the Invalides.
Streams of people were passing on the bridge as they
crossed it.

"Ah, but wait till to-morrow," said Armand.  "Yes,
it is cheerful, but what an awful thing to look forward
to is New Year's Day!  Truly we French are the last of
idiots to have made this annual giving of presents into
a nightmare, as we have.  And such presents, too!
Last year inkpots were all the rage—inkpots in the
shape of mandarins, of apples, of crayfishes—que
sais-je?  Everything you took up was an inkpot.  Mercifully
you could not put any ink in them....  Look, mon
ange, there is one of the new omnibuses!—Here we
are in the Rue St. Dominique already!"

But Horatia, instead of looking out, involuntarily
closed her eyes.  A momentary fear raced through her.
She was going to live with these people who had
hitherto only been names to her—that imperious old
Dowager Duchess whose fat money-bags kept up the
position of the ancient, impoverished family, and
Emmanuel, the elder brother, the heir, and his young
son—and to make the acquaintance of the other
relatives of whom she had vaguely heard.  This was the
real beginning of her new life....

"O, hold me close, Armand!" she whispered.

The chaise slackened, turned, and passed under an
archway into a courtyard.  Horatia had a fleeting
impression of steps and a pilastered doorway, then she
found Armand helping her to alight, and passed, on
his arm, into a room of extraordinary loftiness and
chill.  A tall man was standing in the middle; he
came forward.

"Ma soeur, soyez la bienvenue!" he said.  "Tu
permets, mon cher?"

"Put up your veil," whispered Armand, and when
Horatia had thrown back the lace over her bonnet, the
tall man kissed her on the cheek.  Evidently this was
the Marquis Emmanuel.

Armand looked a boy beside him.  He had dark hair
going grey, a rather melancholy mouth, deeply furrowed
at the corners, and eyes that were both troubled
and kind.

"I hope that you will be very happy in this house, my
sister," he said, with real warmth in his voice.  "Our
grandmother anxiously awaits the pleasure of your
acquaintance, but she thought that you would prefer
to repose yourself a little before she receives you."

There was consideration in this decree of the
Duchesse's, but also some suggestion of an awful
ceremony to come.  Horatia thanked her brother-in-law.

"Yes, that will be best," agreed Armand.  "Come,
mon amie, and we will go to our apartments.—Tudieu
Emmanuel, I was forgetting that I had not seen you
since August!"

"And you are four months older!" said his brother,
in a tone full of delicate implications, as they embraced.


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When Horatia, supported in spirit, and also to a lesser
degree in body, by her husband, entered for the first
time the apartments of the Duchess Dowager, she
knew that she had, in times past, rather over-estimated
the strength of her own self-possession.  Her knees
shook, while biting phrases of his aged kinswoman's,
repeated by Armand, came uncomfortably into her
mind.  However, there was nothing for it; the visit
had to be gone through.

Her first impression was that the room was suffocatingly
hot; the second, that it was not so large as she
had expected; the third, that it had a bed in it—rapidly
and not surprisingly following on this, the perception
that the Duchesse was receiving, French fashion, in her
bedroom.  And she had, fourthly, the conviction
that Madame la Duchesse Douairière de la Roche-Guyon
was the most hideous object that she had
ever seen.

The Dowager was enthroned in an armchair on the
left-hand side of the fireplace.  She wore a quilted
négligé of puce satin, very formless; but on her head,
whose scanty grey hair had been scraped up in the
latest—and most appalling—of fashions, à la Chinoise,
towered two enormous yellow ostrich feathers.  Where
the dressing-gown fell away from her withered neck it
revealed the fire of a perfect river of diamonds, and she
was painted in a style to recall the old days of the
Palais Royal; on her small hands were grey kid gloves.
Some sort of a dame de compagnie, sitting on the other
side of the hearth, rose, laid down the book in her hands,
and melted away.

"Tiens, tiens!" then said in a high voice this human
parrot (for as such she instantly struck Horatia).  "So
this is the English bride.  Well, my dear, I am very
glad to see you."

She held out her hand, and Horatia, rising from her
reverence, supposed she ought to salute its kid covering,
but the old lady, pulling her down, bestowed upon
her a kiss.  The tip of her large nose was exceedingly
cold.

"Well, scapegrace," then observed Madame de la
Roche-Guyon to her grandson, as he too kissed her,
"what have you to say for yourself?"

"Only this," replied Armand smiling, and indicating
Horatia.

"You probably get your penchant for red hair from
your grandfather," remarked the Duchesse irrelevantly.
"Sit down, ma fille; you must be tired."  Her voice,
though high, was, thought Horatia, the least disagreeable
part of her.  Armand pushed forward a chair, first
removing from it a pack of cards, and Horatia sat down.

"And so you have been in solitary bliss, English
fashion, at Kerfontaine?" said the old lady.  "Quite
alone, eh?  No one for either of you to flirt with?"

"No one," responded Armand.  "It is early days to
begin that, grandmother."

"Ah, but there is always an old flame or two to mourn
our marriage, is there not?"  The malicious look which
she shot at them with this remark might have been
intended for either, but the very expressive frown which
Armand bestowed on his jocular relative went unseen of
Horatia, for he was standing behind her.  It had,
however, the effect of shaking a cackle of laughter out of
the old lady.

"I am sure, my dear," she said, addressing herself to
Horatia, "that you left a great many broken hearts
behind you in England."

"Alas, Madame, not one, I fear," said the bride.

"Come, that is excellent, 'I fear,'" said the Dowager
approvingly.  "I thought you might have said,
'Thank God!'  Armand, my good child, I think you
might leave us.  Madame la Comtesse and I will have
a little conversation."

Armand came forward and kissed his ancestress's
hand obediently, while she murmured something inaudible
into his ear; and he went out, giving his wife
a look that seemed to incite her to courage.

The Duchesse studied her granddaughter-in-law for
a moment with her piercing eyes, and Horatia wondered
in her turn how it was that, in spite of her appearance,
she did somehow give the effect of having always been
used to the very highest company.

"You look strong and healthy, my child," was her
first observation, and so unmistakable was her
meaning that Horatia blushed hot crimson.

"La la!" ejaculated the Duchesse, "we must not
be prudish.  When Armand's son is born he will be heir
to my little estate in Burgundy.  There are
circumstances which prevent my settling it upon Armand
himself.  All my other property goes, of course, after
his father, to that poor Emmanuel, as the eldest son,
and to his ill-fated child."

(Why "poor" and "ill-fated," Horatia wondered.)

"I do not say," continued the Duchesse, with an
appalling frankness, "that if you present Armand with
sons I shall be able to provide for them all.  But
we shall see.  And, of course, he has his mother's money.
Did you like Kerfontaine?"

"Very much indeed, Madame."

"It will be considered exceedingly improper, your
spending your honeymoon alone there.  But I," said
the Duchesse, "did not raise any objections.  I move
with the times—in some things.  If you marry an
Englishwoman, you may, at the outset, be forgiven if
you do as the English do.  You can regard me as your
friend, my fille, for I never opposed your marriage, as
my son did."  She showed her yellow teeth in a brief
smile.  "A little fresh blood—However, we need not
go into that.  By the way, you saw my son in
England?"

"Yes, I had the honour of being presented to M. le
Duc," answered Horatia.  "He was also at my wedding."  Did
or did not this loquacious antique look old enough
to be the mother of that dignified elderly gentleman?

"Emmanuel's wife, as you probably know, is in a
mad-house," proceeded the Duchesse serenely, while
Horatia literally and unbecomingly gaped.  "It is not
of much consequence, for she was a person without
stamp or merit of any kind, but of course I am always
expecting to hear that Claude-Edmond has been
brought home raving from the Lycée some afternoon."

In after days, when Horatia had made the acquaintance
of that singularly sane and demure child, she
wondered how madness and he could be mentioned in
the same breath.  Now she was not even quite sure who
Claude-Edmond was, and dared not ask.  But the
Marquis' melancholy mouth was explained.

"It was no fault on Emmanuel's part, I will say that
for him," resumed Madame de la Roche-Guyon.  "He
was almost too model a husband; I trust Armand will
make one half as good—but you must not expect too
much of him, ma fille."

How little she knew Armand!  But it was more
politic not to show indignation, and Horatia only
murmured that she would remember.

"That is well," said the old lady.  "More ménages are
wrecked by that than by anything else in the world."  She
paused, scanning Horatia, and the girl wondered
what further gems of information or of counsel were
about to fall from her shrivelled, rose-red lips.  Her
next remark, however, was the usual question:

"You are not a Catholic, my child?"

"No, Madame," answered Horatia, saying to herself,
"Now she will bring out the family Monsignor to convert
me."

But the Duchesse did not; she merely said, "Well,
it is the best religion to die in; but, meanwhile, there
are other things more amusing....  My dear, would
you have the goodness to ring the bell for my
maid? ... No, I will get it myself.  Wait here!"  She got
out of the chair with no great difficulty, and, hobbling
across the floor, disappeared.

Now that its chief ornament was removed, Horatia
became conscious of many other things in the room;
of the little Italian greyhound in a basket near the
fire, hitherto hidden by the Duchesse's person; of
two very gallant, though scarcely indecent, coloured
engravings of the last century in a corner facing her,
immediately above a print of one of Rubens' Last
Judgments—a singularly edifying conjunction.  But
the room was so crowded with objects that it was hard
to fix the eye on any one in particular, and it took
Horatia several visits before she knew that a row of
shrouded objects on short stands were Madame de la
Roche-Guyon's wigs—for she did not usually appear
in her own hair—and that she habitually kept her false
teeth, when out of action, in the priceless little box of
Limoges enamel, representing the Flight into Egypt,
which now caught Horatia's attention on a side table.
Her diamonds, on the other hand, were frequently
tied up in a soiled handkerchief.

Then the Duchesse came back, and Horatia rose.
The Dowager had perhaps been rummaging in some
obscure corner, for one of the feathers was very much
awry.  But she possessed an awful majesty, short,
ludicrous, and (at the moment) amenable as she was.

"Here, ma fille, is something for you," she said,
putting into Horatia's hands an old green leather case.
"Open it!"

The bride did so.  Inside, on a dark and shabby
lining, a row of magnificent pearls made moonlight.

"O, Madame," gasped Horatia.  "I could not! they
are too..."

"Nonsense, child," said the old lady, pinching her
arm.  "You like them, I see.  You will not see any
finer at the Tuileries—not that you'll ever go there now.
I always meant them for Armand's wife.  They would
look well in that hair of yours, too.  There are earrings,
but I could not put my hand on them.  Try these on!
They belonged to my sister, the Comtesse de Craon,
who was guillotined in '93, and I did not recover them
till the Restoration."

"Guillotined!" exclaimed Horatia, startled.  How
was it possible to speak about it in that matter-of-fact
tone!  And the pearls—in whose hands had they
been—round whose neck...?

"Naturally," answered Madame de la Roche-Guyon
calmly.  "All my family were.  I was in prison myself
till Thermidor.  Well, perhaps you would like Armand
to put them on for you.  You can tell him that you are
to have the emeralds when—you understand perfectly
well what I mean!"


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Horatia wore the pearls, at her husband's request,
for the family gathering on New Year's Night.  She said
afterwards that they gave her courage, as proving her
an adopted member of the gens, but when, at the
conclusion of her toilet, Armand had clasped them round
her neck, she declared that she felt more anticipatory
terrors than had ever their owner on the way to the
guillotine.

"Very likely," said Armand, in high spirits, walking
round her approvingly.  "If my lamented great-aunt
was like my grandmother I do not suppose that she was
in the least afraid of La Veuve....  You look
charming; I like that dress."

"Armand," said poor Horatia, "this is certainly
worse than the guillotine.  Supposing Madame la
Duchesse does not approve of me to-night; supposing
that all your relations think me foreign or dowdy.  I
am sure their dresses will be quite different from mine."

"Their coiffures may be," agreed the young man.
"Some of them will wear their hair à la Chinoise and
look like Hurons; you must try not to laugh.  (And
let me warn you, chère amie, that if I see you disfiguring
your beautiful hair by adopting that style, I shall desert
you on the instant.)  Have you remembered all my other
warnings?  Do not forget that though my aunt des
Sablières is very deaf she cannot bear to be shouted at;
that if Charles X is mentioned, Madame de Camain will
probably burst into tears.  Somewhere in the dim past
the Comte d'Artois was—well, flirted with her.  Do not
talk of English admirals, ships, or sailors to the old
Comte de Fezensac; he lost an eye at the siege of
Gibraltar in 1779.  Above all remember to speak of the
Duc de Bordeaux as Henri V; you would do well to
refer occasionally to the Duchesse de Berry as the
Regent, for my father writes that she will shortly be
made so.  As you cannot disclose anything derogatory
to Louis-Philippe you had better not mention him at
all.  You must be friendly with my cousin Eulalie de
Beaulieu, for she will serve as your chaperon on
occasions.  I think that is all."  He pulled up his high
cravat, glanced at himself a moment critically in the
long glass, and said to Horatia, "My darling, a little
fright becomes you amazingly....  Let us go to
the scaffold!"





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   CHAPTER III

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If Kerfontaine had been to Horatia a kind of fairy
castle, the Faubourg St. Germain resembled a land half
savage, half enchanted, something between the domains
of Haroun al Raschid and the country round the Niger,
a place full of the oddest customs, and demanding
considerable intrepidity in the explorer.  The tribal
gathering on New Year's Day had been alarming, but
its members were kinder to her than she had expected.
Afterwards, her chief impressions were: of faded
dowagers, condescending or cold; of Madame la
Marquise de Beaulieu, a cousin of Armand's and her
destined chaperon, a high blonde of thirty-five or so,
coiffée à la Minerve, wearing a sky-blue velvet dress
encircled at the knees with a row of pink feathers; of
a little creeping old lady, as grey as dust, Mlle Claire
de la Roche-Guyon, some remote kinswoman of the
Duke's, who lived in the Hôtel; of men, old or middle-aged,
and extremely courtly and gallant; of two or three
youths, and a small boy of eleven, Claude-Edmond,
the "ill-fated" heir, quiet and extraordinarily
self-possessed, who, oddly enough, did not live in the house,
but boarded with a tutor near the Lycée Louis-le-Grand—and
of a tall, grey-haired priest with a young
face, Monsignor Prosper de la Roche-Guyon, a striking
figure in his cassock touched with purple, though ecclesiastical
garb had been unsafe to wear in the streets since
the Days of July.  Dominating all was the Duchesse in
her chair, crowned with a toupée in lustre like sealskin,
in hue like the pelt of a fox, accepting graciously the
offerings of her descendants—from one, the latest clock,
Queen Blanche in gold reclining on a seat, whereon were
marked the hours; from another, such an inkpot as
Armand had described, in the form of a crocodile; from
an undiscriminating but inspired great-nephew, one of
the newest parasols with eye-glasses in the handle.
And, though the Dowager scarcely ever went out, she
was pleased with this gift; while a highly suitable
foot-basket, lined with violet velvet and trimmed with
chinchilla, drew from her the snorting exclamation, that
the donor evidently regarded her as decrepit.  It was a
thoroughly matriarchal scene ...

Ere a couple of weeks had passed, Horatia had both
learnt and done many things.  She had had, first of all,
her visites de noces to pay; the earliest of these had
been to the oldest inhabitants of the Faubourg
St. Germain, the aged dowagers who never stirred from
their armchairs, but whose word was still a power.  To
them, as to some elders of a tribe, a bride must always
be taken for ten minutes' inspection; by them were
the frankest of opinions expressed on her looks and
gait, on eyes and teeth.  Three of these ancients, in
succession, having pronounced of Madame la Comtesse
de la Roche-Guyon that "elle était très bien," Horatia
was thenceforward established upon a proper footing.

She soon learnt, also, how many more visits she would
have had to pay but for recent political events.  (Those
events, too, had disposed of the question of her
presentation at Court, which would otherwise have taken
precedence of all else.)  Half the ladies of the Faubourg—or
at least of the ultra section of the Faubourg—had
shut up their hôtels, countermanded all their orders at
the shops, and reclaiming from their maids, so it was
said, their last year's dresses and hats, had gone to
endure the martyrdom of a winter in their châteaux in
the country, hoping thereby to ruin an ungrateful and
disloyal Paris.  Of those remaining Horatia found that
she might only know the elect, the ultras, the
"Carlistes," the "Dames de la Résistance," those who, in
the expressive phrase of the day, were "sulking"—those
who had not and never would bow the knee to
Baal in the person of Louis-Philippe and the Orleanist
monarchy.  One or two former friends of the Duchesse's
were reported to be among the "Dames de l'Attente,"
those who waited to see how the wind blew; they had
already been scratched off that lady's visiting list.
And one—O horror!—had gone over to the "Dames
du Mouvement," and had been received in the house
of Rimmon at the Palais-Royal (for Louis-Philippe had
not yet migrated to the Tuileries).  Of all objects in any
way connected with her—her old visiting-cards, a
forgotten pair of gloves, and what not—there had been,
so Armand assured his wife, a solemn auto-da-fé in the
Dowager's bedroom.

But some of the receptions which she was allowed to
attend were to Horatia rather trying.  Not Semiramis
nor Catherine of Russia could have presented a more
imposing front, nor have swayed a more despotic
sceptre, than Madame la Princesse de Ligniville, with
her little red-bordered eyes, her false front of fair hair,
her dropsical corpulence, who, seated almost
immoveably in her green damask armchair in her famous
library of lemon wood, and surrounded by a throng of
politicians, received her one evening.  Madame de
Ligniville could never have had any pretensions to
beauty, yet for years she had exercised an absolute
dominion.  She was very well read, by no means
religious, lively and sarcastic, and devoured with a
passion for politics.  Horatia, as well as being somewhat
terrified of the great lady herself, felt lost among these
political lights, whose names she did not even know.
The lemon-wood library was not a salon—it was a
throne-room.

There was, indeed, one salon which surprised Horatia
by its unlikeness to the rest, that of the Duchesse de
Montboissier.  Here seven ladies of varying ages, from
eighty to eighteen, sat round a table lit by a hanging
lamp and did fancy work while they chattered to their
guests—and these were some of the bluest blood in
France.  The conversation was lively, natural, and
totally devoid of any intellectual interest, circling
round tales of the day and fashions, and interspersed
with scandal.  The old Comtesse de Montboissier-Saligny,
who presided, contributed indeed anecdotes of
a kind highly unsuited to the ears of her youngest
granddaughter.  Horatia commented on this afterwards
to the Marquise de Beaulieu, her companion on this
occasion.

"Que voulez-vous?" asked that lady.  "It was not
the fashion to be prudish at the time of the emigration,
and the Comtesse, by all accounts, was by no means
averse to the society of the gallant abbés and worldly
prelates of the days before '93.  But you must not
think, ma chère," she added, "when you hear these
old dames telling racy stories, that their own morals
are questionable.  The more free their tongues, the
more irreproachable, probably, their past conduct.
One must have some compensation.  Our own respected
grandmother, for instance, makes even my hair stand
on end sometimes.  But I am sure she has always been
discretion itself."

Horatia did not like the Marquise de Beaulieu.


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By the beginning of February, Horatia was beginning
to feel much more at home in her new surroundings.
She knew what milliners to frequent, and frequented
them a good deal; she, whom the question of clothes
had always rather bored, and whose well-dressed
appearance in the past had been due chiefly to her
father's wish and the excellence of her dressmaker, now
spent hours in choosing a hat, days in deciding between
the attractions of drap d'Algers and soie de chaméléon,
between the becomingness, as colours, of Poland earth,
wood violet, lie de vin, and souris.  Rightly to
accompany the fashionable hats, her hair must be more
elaborately dressed than Martha's fingers could
accomplish, so Martha made way in this respect for one
Joséphine.  Armand had admired her pose, the turn
of her hand and wrist one afternoon when he had found
her doing embroidery, so she gave herself assiduously
to embroidery.  All these avocations took up an
immense amount of time.  Her days seemed very full.
She never opened a book, nor missed those once-constant
companions; the case of them which she had
brought with her was not even unpacked.  If she had
not Armand always to talk to, she had him to dress for,
for the hours she spent before her mirror, the afternoons
she fleeted in Herbault's shop, were far, very far, from
being ends in themselves.

Horatia's was indeed the exaggerated fervour of the
convert.  She looked back now on that blind and
self-complacent person who, in the Rectory garden, only a
few months ago, had wondered about her married friends
"how can they!"  Armand had come, and in a moment
of time she had realised "how they could."  Like all
converts she had turned against her old life, and found
nothing good in it at all.  She would gladly have burned
that which she once adored.  For this glorious thing was
love, and in her ignorance she had jeered at it; could
a life-long repentance and years vowed to the joys she
had once derided ever atone for her neglect?  Her books,
the tastes that she had shared with her father and
Tristram, all these things were hollow and useless, for
love had called to her, and she had answered.
Henceforward she would go singing through the world with
Armand, always with Armand.  Together they had
found and would keep the divine secret.

Together, at least, they saw Paris.  He showed her
sometimes the Paris of history in general, sometimes
the Paris of his own history.  For, wonderful and almost
terrible as it was to stand on the site of the guillotine in
the great Place, to shudder in the narrow cell of the
Conciergerie that had held Marie Antoinette, to walk
down the street where Henri IV had met his death, it
was even more wonderful to think that for twenty-six
years this other self of hers had inhabited the fortunate
city—and that she had not known it.  So her husband,
laughing at her, had to show her the haunts of his
boyhood, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he had been an
externe, the little private pension in the Rue d'Enfer
where he had boarded, even the academy at which he
had learnt to fence and to ride.  Pursuing her researches
into this delightful region of the past, she discovered
that Armand had previously had a private tutor, who,
in order more easily to lead an unruly pupil in the paths
of learning, had invented a method of combining
amusement and instruction on their walks abroad.  Hence
the Champs Elysées were sacred to her because here
the youthful Armand, taken to watch other children
playing at ball, learnt the laws of gravity, and she could
not see the old soldiers stooping at bowls under the
trees of the Invalides without remembering that this
sight had served to illustrate, to his childish mind, the
double law governing the movements of a spherical
body propelled along the ground.

When they drove or walked together, passers-by
sometimes turned smiling to bestow a glance on so much
youth and happiness.  Horatia was sure that Armand's
good looks were the magnet; he affirmed that it was
hers, or the fact that she was English.  This she would
deny, asserting that she was now indistinguishable from
a Frenchwoman.  But one day, in a perfumer's, before
she could even open her mouth, the owner of the shop
had pushed forward divers bottles of English
manufacture, had offered her "Vindsor soap" and Hunt's
blacking, and had shaken out before her a silk
handkerchief with a portrait of O'Connell in the middle of it.
Armand, delighted at her confusion, immediately led
her to a neighbouring pastry-cook's, displaying the
legend "Here is to be had all sorts of English pastry,"
and speaking, by notices in its windows, of such insular
delicacies as "hot mutton pies," "oyster patties,"
"Devonshire cider," and "Whitbread's entire."  "We
are suffering from Anglomania at present," he explained,
"and everything English is deemed 'romantic,' so you
need not, my angel, pretend to be French."

The magic word brought to Horatia's memory a
young man whom she had seen a few days ago walking
gloomily in the garden of the Luxembourg, a young man
evidently aspiring to the aspect of "l'homme fatal,"
with open shirt collar, tumbled black hair, wild,
melancholy eyes, and smile of conscious bitterness, in
whom she recognised a product of the new French
Byronism.  Although she hoped in time to meet some
of the adherents of this school, she was secretly glad
that Armand was not of its type.

Thus they visited the Jardin des Plantes and the
Boulevards, Notre Dame, the still unfinished Arc de
Triomphe, the pictures in the Louvre, and (not
altogether willingly on Armand's part) M. Sommerard's
collection of mediæval antiquities in the Rue Mesnars.


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Horatia was destined also to see Paris under a less
smiling aspect.

An air as mild as milk, a sun almost of May, saluted
her on the morning of the fourteenth of February, as
Armand helped her from the family coach outside
St. Germain l'Auxerrois.  She was going into that church,
of name ominous to Protestant ears, to hear her first
Mass, and that a Requiem—the Requiem for the Duc
de Berry, murdered in 1820, and father of the little
boy whom all good Legitimists now regarded as their
King.  The occasion was therefore gloomy, but it was
also exciting; though Horatia was clad in black she
had no grief in her heart for an assassinated prince whom
she had never seen, and though during the drive she
had composed her features to a decent melancholy, she
was secretly attacked by mirth at the overpoweringly
funereal aspect of the Duchesse.  It was an event when
that lady left the Hôtel; and she had left it now swathed
in crape, a-dangle with jet chains, and—unprecedented
mark of mourning—devoid of her toupée.  A large black
rosary depended from her wrist.  Armand and the
Marquis sat opposite.  Emmanuel had his usual air of
sad patience; he was in fact the only one of the four
who looked perfectly appropriate to the occasion (since
the Dowager was merely ludicrous), yet Horatia knew
that his Royalist sentiments were the least strong of all
his family.  Armand, his head thrown back against the
brown silk lining of the vehicle, directed from time to
time a glance at Horatia between his half-closed lids.
He looked very well in black.  From time to time also
the Duchesse speculated on the likelihood of there being
a riot; it was true that nothing of the sort had
occurred on the 21st of January, the anniversary of the
death of Louis XVI, when there had also been a
Requiem; moreover the Government was forewarned.
However, the fact that the ceremony had been forbidden
to take place at St. Roch looked, she said with some
unction, suspicious.  It was plain that the old lady had
no objection to the idea of a tumult, and perhaps even
pictured herself as a martyr to the throne and the altar.

There were already two rows of emblazoned carriages
on either side the church; a few curious sightseers, the
usual beggars.  The portals were hung with black.  The
Duchesse, on Emmanuel's arm, hobbled towards them;
the leather door squeaked, Armand caught it from his
brother, and they were inside.  The Comte dipped his
finger in the holy-water stoup and held it out
half-smiling to his wife; finding, however, that she had no
idea what he intended her to do, he crossed himself
carelessly and preceded her up the aisle.  The Swiss
(whose semi-martial appearance Horatia supposed to be
peculiar to this particular ceremony) having found seats
for the Dowager and the Marquis, waved them into two
chairs just behind.

The church too was hung with black—Horatia had
never imagined an effect so gloomy.  It was already
nearly full of bowed, sable figures.  In the middle
of the nave was a great black-draped catafalque
surrounded by enormous candles; the Bourbon arms
glinted on the top, and at the end hung a large wreath
of immortelles.

And the Mass began—but Horatia paid small attention
to what, after all, she could not follow.  Rather she
came increasingly to realise that this was history.  The
old white-haired priest of whom she could catch
glimpses at the altar, had, so they said, taken the last
consolations of religion forty years ago to the murdered
Queen; now he was praying (so she supposed) for the
soul of the murdered Prince, her nephew.  "Dona ei
requiem," sang the choir, and it became impossible for
her not to fancy that the Duc de Berry's actual body lay
under the pall.


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The Mass was finished, or nearly finished, Horatia
conjectured, for people were moving their chairs about, when
something was passed from hand to hand along the row
in front of her—a paper of some kind.  The Duchesse,
when it came to her, kissed it; the Marquis Emmanuel
glanced at it a moment and then, slightly turning,
passed it to his brother behind him.  And Horatia,
looking at it with her husband (and having imagined
it to be some holy relic) saw only a coloured lithograph
of a boy about ten years of age, wearing a crown and a
royal mantle.

"The Duc de Bordeaux—Henri V," whispered
Armand, and he passed it on.  Evidently there were
other copies going round the congregation, for a moment
or two later Horatia saw a young man in the uniform
of the National Guard walk up to the catafalque and
affix one to the end, just above the wreath of
immortelles.  A murmur rippled through the congregation
then chairs scraped in all directions, and half a dozen
ladies heavily veiled, and one or two men, were out of
their places detaching the flowers, which, after kissing,
they placed in their bosoms or their paroissiens.  More
came, till the catafalque was the centre of a crowd, and
it took Emmanuel a long time to get the flower for which
his grandmother asked him.  Progress down the church
was equally difficult, and Armand and Horatia became
separated from their elders, who were in front.  At the
door there was difficulty in getting out and a sound of
loud voices, and when they did at length emerge it was
into the midst of a vociferating and hostile crowd.

"Take tight hold of my arm!" said Armand.  "No,
it is all right—they will not dare to touch us, the
canaille!"  And indeed they got through to the coach
without much difficulty, except for the press of bodies.
Threats were flying about, but nothing else, and Horatia
was really more thrilled than frightened.  Emmanuel
was at the door of the coach, and opened it; Horatia,
relinquishing Armand's arm, put her foot on the step.
A man, slipping at that moment round the horses' heads,
shouted something almost in her face; startled, she
missed her footing on the high step, slipped and half
fell into Emmanuel's arms, and was by him pushed into
the coach, but not before she had a glimpse of Armand,
white with fury, striking out at the man's face.  The
man went down; she stumbled into the coach, saw the
Marquis catch his brother by the arm, and somehow,
in the midst of cries, the two men also were in, the door
was banged and the coach started.

It had all happened in a moment, and here was
Armand, with blazing blue eyes, leaning forward with
her hands in his, beseeching her to tell him that she was
not hurt, that the scoundrel had not really touched her.

"No, no," reiterated Horatia.  "He did not mean to,
I am sure.  It was my stupidity ... I slipped."

"Take my vinaigrette, child," said the Duchesse,
fumbling among her blackness and beads.

"My sister was not frightened," observed the Marquis
quietly.  It was true; but Armand continued to breathe
out slaughter all the way home.

"Well, it is over now," said the Dowager as they
turned into the courtyard, "and you need not work
yourself into a fever, mon petit."

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But it was not over, it was only beginning.  Late that
afternoon came the news that the mob was breaking
into St. Germain l'Auxerrois and pillaging it, smashing
the glass, the statues, the pictures, the confessionals,
all to the accompaniment of parodies of the services, in
the vestments of the church.  The great iron cross with
the three fleurs-de-lis, which surmounted the building,
was pulled down by order of the mayor of the district,
destroying the organ in its fall, and by night one of the
chef d'oeuvres of the Renaissance was merely bare
walls and a heap of debris.  Thus did the people of
Paris testify their objection to the Legitimists.

On the Legitimists fell also the displeasure of the
government, who, instead of proceeding against the
rioters, arrested a prominent Royalist or two and issued
warrants against the Archbishop of Paris (who was in
hiding) and the curé of St. Germain l'Auxerrois.  The
Duchesse, not from nervousness, but rather from the
joy of battle, ordered the great gates of the Hôtel de la
Roche-Guyon to be closed and barricaded.  But the
Faubourg was quite quiet, though hundreds were
howling outside the minister Dupin's house in the Rue
Coq-Héron.  And there were rumours that the mob had
publicly given itself rendez-vous for the next day
outside the Archbishop's palace.

On the morrow, therefore, Armand, unmoved by his
wife's entreaties, sallied forth to see what was afoot.
He was away about an hour and a half, a time that
seemed to Horatia as long as the whole day of the
wolf-hunt in Brittany.  When, to her inexpressible relief,
he returned, he announced that there was not a stone
left of the Archevêché, that even the iron railings were
gone, all the books and furniture in the river, and that
the rioters were threatening Notre-Dame itself.

But it passed, that brief sirocco of popular fury, and
Paris was gay again—had in fact been gay all the time,
after the manner of Paris (seeing it was carnival-tide),
though, or perhaps because, the richest ecclesiastical
library in France was voyaging down the Seine, and the
maskers on the quays were amusing themselves by
trying to fish out the Archbishop's furniture from the
stream.





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   CHAPTER IV

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"Then, if you please, Sir, will you have dinner at a
quarter after six?" suggested Mrs. Thwaites.  "Mr. Dormer
can hardly get here before six o'clock."

Tristram glanced at the leaden sky.  "I am afraid
that he will not be here then if we have snow, as seems
probable.  We had better say half-past.  You will see
that there is a good fire in his room, Mrs. Thwaites?
He is ill, you know."

When she had withdrawn he got up from his writing-table
and poked his own fire.  It was ten o'clock on a
morning late in February.  In eight or nine hours
Dormer would be here.  And after dinner they would
sit by the fire, and, if his friend were not too tired by
the journey, perhaps he could have the relief of talking
to him a little—or, if not that, at any rate the comfort
of being with him, as on that day at Oxford.  He was
intensely anxious to see how he was, for about the
beginning of December Dormer's headaches had
become of alarming severity, and he had been ordered
away from Oxford at a day or two's notice.  Having
spent the vacation and more at his brother's house at
Colyton, he had now been to London to consult a
well-known physician, and was at this moment on his way
to Compton Parva.

Tristram stood a moment with his elbow on the
mantelpiece, passed his hand once or twice over his
eyes, and with a short, quick sigh went back to his
letters.

As a watcher by the crisis of fever is cut off from all
else, untouched by the life of every day that surges
round the house but is powerless to enter it, unconcerned
at great calamities, unresponsive to great joys, so, until
Horatia's wedding-day, had it been with Tristram
Hungerford.  He was watching the last moments, as it
were, of the person he loved best on earth.  He did not
care that the whole country was in a state of ferment,
that the agricultural riots were spreading all over the
south, and that men were being hanged for them, that
there were tumults in London, nor even that in
mid-November Wellington and Peel resigned and were
succeeded by a Whig ministry under Lord Grey—which
meant Reform.  If the strain reached its acutest point
on the evening that he said farewell to Horatia in the
drawing-room at the Rectory, it was nevertheless prolonged,
with very little alleviation, until the day that he
stood behind her at the altar, and the vigil was over.
Some means of relief indeed he had, for he prayed as he
had never prayed before, fierce and desperate daily
prayers for strength to endure; and he knew, too, at
any rate, that his own life and circumstances would be
changed by his ordination.  More, he even saw, in the
interval before the wedding, when Horatia was gone
from Compton, a real ray of comfort in that prospect;
there was still something he could do in life.

Then had come the marriage in December, the triple
marriage.  And after that a numbness and a merciful
fatigue fell upon him for a while.  He had returned with
Mr. Grenville to Berkshire and taken up his ordinary
occupation.  Nearly every day he went over to see the
old man, and Horatia's spaniel leapt up at him, and he
sat in the rooms which would know her no more.  It
seemed to him sometimes that he was always there, to
such an extent did Mr. Grenville lean on him.  But so
mortal a weariness had laid hold of him, body and mind,
that he could not fully taste the pain.  He often fell asleep
in the middle of the morning, alarming Mrs. Thwaites.
At night he slept long and almost dreamlessly.  One
waking dream pursued him indeed, for once again he
stood behind Horatia in the little French Roman
Catholic chapel in King Street, with its memories of
banished royalty and the emigration, and in front of
him was a figure in white silk and swansdown, with
wired orange flowers, that shook when she moved, upon
her deep satin bonnet, and with the long veil of a bride.
At the time he had derived some self-control by
pretending that it was someone else.  "*Ego conjungo vos
in matrimonium, in nomine...*" he heard the words,
too, in the unfamiliar pronunciation of the old French
priest, and he saw the altar with its four pillars and
canopy and some dark picture that he could not
distinguish, and the strange little gallery beside it, and
the Rector, looking old and bowed, and the Duke ... and
another figure.  Neither the civil marriage at the
Embassy nor the more familiar ceremony at Margaret
Chapel remained with him like this ... and this,
he supposed, would wear itself off his brain in time; he
was too tired to wrestle with it.

This state of blurred consciousness continued till
about the middle of December.  Then one day, quite
suddenly, the fatigue, the mental mist, seemed to lift,
and brighter and sharper than before the picture shone
before him.  And gradually it came to him what it
meant.  He was in love with another man's wife.  He
could not present himself for Orders.  The straw of
comfort to which he had clung was swept away, and now
he saw, or thought he saw, the tarnished motives which
had made him look forward to his entrance to the
priesthood.  It was not wonderful that Dormer's coming
meant much to him, for he could not write about these
things—he was not even sure that he could bring
himself to talk about them.


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The two friends each suffered a shock at dinner, for
Tristram saw, in the full candle-light, how ill Dormer
looked, and Dormer noticed that in two months
Tristram had begun to grow grey at the temples.

But they talked during the meal of other things.
Once settled in the study before the fire, however,
Tristram began without preamble.

"Now, Charles, I want to hear exactly what the
doctor says."

"Oh, the usual silly sort of thing that can never be
carried out," replied Dormer with a weary smile.  "If
I were a farm labourer and lived out of doors and did
not use my brain, I should never have another headache."

"But, seriously, doesn't he think you any better for
these weeks at Colyton?"

"Not permanently, if at all."  Dormer stirred his
coffee.  "The worst of it is that I'm almost afraid that
he is right in what he says."

"What does he say—beyond the farm labourer
idea?" asked Tristram anxiously.

"He says that I cannot think of going back to work
this term; that if I do, I shall have a bad breakdown,
and it may be years before I am able to write another
word."

Tristram's heart sank.

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Well, there isn't much choice for me," responded
his friend sighing.  "He recommends, I might say he
orders, a voyage."

And as Dormer struck Tristram as being extraordinarily
submissive to this decree, Tristram was proportionately
alarmed.  But he concealed this fact, and
merely said, "So he recommends a voyage, does he?
Where to?"

"The Mediterranean."

"That," said Tristram with decision, "is where I
have wanted to go all my life.  I shall come with you."

"You!" exclaimed Dormer, a gleam of animation
on his face.  "I only wish it were possible.  But how
about your ordination?  Would it be worth while for
you to come for part of the time?  I admit I had
thought of you."

And in this confession he was certainly not
overstepping the mark, having indeed schemed to get
Tristram away at once from his present surroundings,
so full of painful memories, but not having hoped that
Tristram would himself jump at the idea.

"Certainly it would be worth it," replied his friend.
"Besides, there is no hurry about my ordination
... This is a godsend to me.  Now tell me what you have
done.  What about Rose and the Councils?"

"Rose is arranging for Newman to do them," replied
Dormer.  "He offered to wait for me, but I should not
like the work to be delayed on my account.  Newman
knows as much about the subject as I do—probably
more.  But there is a great deal of reading to be done,
and I should not be fit for that under a year.  Of course
I know that he is overworked as it is, and doesn't sleep
well, but as he sees the importance to the cause that
this particular book should not be delayed, he will drop
something else.  So that is settled."

Tristram vented his feelings without mercy on the
fire.  "I'm sorry to hear it," he observed very shortly.
"I think Rose might have waited."

"I knew you would feel like that," said his friend
with a half-amused smile that ended, despite himself,
in a sigh.  "Let's leave it alone ... About yourself—I
don't understand what you said about your ordination?"

"Oh, never mind that now," said Tristram, abandoning
the poker.  "I never did like those Cambridge
men!—Suppose we go to bed."

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As Tristram, later, sat stretched out alone by the fire,
he was realising acutely what it must mean to Dormer
to give up the work on which he had entered with such
hopes, and, quite unreasonably, he felt that he hated
Rose and Newman, although he knew quite well that
Dormer must have over-ridden both of them.  It was
just like him.  Life was a sorry place.  As for his own
troubles, how could he, with Charles looking like that,
risk keeping him awake by talking about them.  It was
not his sympathy that he wanted, for that he knew he
had always, under its veil of more than ordinary
reserve, but his counsel.  So badly did he want the
latter that it seemed an aggravation to have him in the
house and to be silent, to know that if he went upstairs
now he could have it—at a price for the giver.  But he
had not so learned friendship.


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Yet, after all, Dormer was not asleep.  The fire to
which Mrs. Thwaites had paid special attention was
burning with the disturbing brilliance which comes to a
fire when one is in bed and desires the dark, and, lying
wakeful, he watched it leaping on the faded chintzes.
And he, too, was going through a dark hour.

The austerity of Charles Dormer's religion was the
measure of its passion.  Knight and lover, he was set
upon a quest, whereof the road was holiness, and the
end—God.  And that he might not follow wandering
fires he had looked back for guidance to the first ages
of the Church, to the training of the confessors and
martyrs, who had learnt of the divine pattern from those
who had themselves seen the Lord.  In this school of
character he found no comfortable complacency, no
sickly sentimentality, but hardness, and reality and the
cross.

From a boy, just as he had been sure that he was called
to serve God as a priest, so had he been certain that he
would never marry.  It fitted in, therefore, with his own
instinct when he came to realise that the Fathers had
given honour to those who lived the life of sacrifice for
the kingdom of Heaven's sake, and that, taking literally
the words of their Master and of St. Paul, they had
applied them in particular to the priesthood.  The
memory that an almost renaissance love of the beautiful
had once entered into fierce conflict with this ideal
disposed him to follow still more closely the principles of
asceticism.  To observe the primitive duty of fasting
during the first decades of the nineteenth century, and
that in an Oxford college, might have seemed a task likely
to tax the highest ingenuity, but others besides Charles
Dormer accomplished it.  Like his friend Hurrell Froude,
though unknown to him, he devised methods of
self-chastisement which would have seemed morbid and
ludicrous not only to that generation but also to its
descendants.  Of their extent Keble knew a little and
Tristram guessed.  And now Dormer himself suspected—in
fact he partly knew—that his own self-discipline
was partly responsible for his state of health.  Had he
been right, or was it after all only some subtle form of
pride or self-will that had set him on this path?  Perhaps
he had been making an idol both of his warfare with
himself and of his work, and this was why he was going
to be taken away from both ... At any rate it was
clearly God's Will that he should be thus taken away,
and therefore, however hard, it was the best for him....
Tristram, too, was coming with him, and he fell
asleep, as the fire died down, wondering why it had been
so easy to persuade him to this course.

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When he came downstairs next morning, after
breakfasting, by orders, in his room, Dormer discovered
Tristram engaged with maps and guide-books, in the
business-like mood of one who intends to get things
settled up at once.  They talked over plans for about
an hour; after which, since there was a gleam of sun,
he was commanded to wrap up and come for a walk.

He laughed, and rallied Tristram on his despotism,
but it was pleasant enough, and he obeyed it.  There
had been no snow the previous day; it was yet to come.
They walked between the bare hedgerows, still talking
plans, discussing the rival attractions of Sicily and Corfu,
settling how, when Dormer was well enough, they would
take the opportunity of seeing Naples and Rome, and
possibly Florence, and returning by sea, perhaps, from
Leghorn, if they got as far north.  Animation grew upon
both of them as they realised the delightful possibilities
of their journey, and was not damped when a sudden
storm of sleet, descending on them, drove them into an
open shed by the side of the road, where, seated on the
shafts of a hay-waggon, they continued for a while,
scarcely conscious of the change of place.

At last, however, the subject suddenly ran dry, and
Tristram, getting up, went to the doorway to see if the
storm were over.

"I am afraid we must make up our minds to another
quarter of an hour or so," he reported.  "I do trust that
you are not cold, Charles.  Pull your cloak properly
about you."

Dormer obeyed, and then, still sitting on the shaft,
he launched a disturbing question.

"What did you mean last night, Tristram, when you
said that there was no hurry for your ordination?  Is
it that you are glad to get away because of all that has
happened, or is there something else?"

Tristram hesitated a second, then he took the plunge.
"I am glad to get away, but there is something else."

"I thought so," said his friend quietly.  "Do you
mean to tell me about it?"

"Of course," replied Tristram.  "I should have told
you last night, but I didn't want my affairs to keep you
awake."

"Well, what is it?  I am awake now and am not
going to bed for eight hours at least, so this is a good
opportunity to tell me," observed Dormer, who was not
troubled by incongruities of time or place.

"Charles, I cannot be ordained!"

The effort to get out these words was apparent; not
so the effort which it cost Dormer to hide the shock
they gave him.  He merely asked coolly, "Why not?"

"Because I'm thinking day and night of another
man's wife.  Charles, Charles, it's unbearable!  I see
her always as she was on her wedding-day, and ... I
see him standing beside her, too.  I picture them in
their own house.  The Rector reads little things from
her letters.  He does not say much, out of consideration
for me perhaps—only I know that she is happy so
far—thank God!—very happy."

Dormer looked at him compassionately as he sat, his
head in his hands, on a log near the door.  "My poor
Tristram!" he said gently.  "I know.  I quite
understand."  And then he was silent.

After a little he went on again.  "All the same I
hardly see how you could expect it to be otherwise.  Of
course you see her.  If one image has been in a person's
mind for many years, how can it be suddenly expelled
at a certain hour, on a certain day?  God does not ask
from us impossibilities."

"But I want her," said Tristram from between his
hands, "more than I have ever wanted her in my life
... and sometimes I think I could kill him!"

It appeared to Dormer that these statements might
or might not be serious.  For the present he ignored
them, and only said, "I'm thankful you are coming
away with me.  You need to give yourself a rest."  And
then, because, for Tristram's sake, he himself wanted
time to think, he got up and went to the door.  "The
storm is nearly over, isn't it?"

It was not, but since the carrier's cart was at that
moment descried coming along the road, and since
Tristram thought that Dormer looked cold, he felt
obliged to take the opportunity of getting him home
without further delay.  After all, his own affairs could
wait a little longer.


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But Tristram's need was too pressing to let them wait
for very long; and this time he made the opening
himself.  It was after dinner, and they were in the library
again, and Dormer was not looking nearly as tired as the
night before.  So he said, almost directly they had sat
down:

"Tell me what you think I should do, Charles.
Surely you see that I can't be ordained?"

And Dormer, who had spent the afternoon in preparation
for this question, said, gazing at the fire, "My
advice is that you should be patient with yourself.  You
see you have been through a long strain.  You have
acted, God knows.  Anyone would say that you had
given her up absolutely, and you have certainly been a
friend to both of them, to him as well as to her.  Give
yourself time, and your feelings will follow."

"Oh, yes, I've acted," said Tristram.  "But what
is that but a case of necessity after all?  All these years
I have watched her and tried ineffectually to do whatever
small things I could for her, so that it was impossible
to fail her in a big thing."

"Impossible for you, perhaps, but then you are one
of the most unselfish people I have ever met."

"If you think I'm unselfish," returned Tristram
rather bitterly, "how do you explain that at this
moment I hate Armand just because I know Horatia
to be blissfully happy with him?  If she were unhappy
I should hate him still more, but that does not affect
my present feeling."

"My dear Tristram, don't put yourself to the trouble
of telling me that sort of thing!  Of course it is wrong,
utterly wrong, but if your will is constant, if you hate
and repudiate such thoughts, they only amount to a
suggestion of the Evil One."

"I wish I could believe you."

"I am sure," said Dormer, "that in time you will
come to hold the same view.  And meanwhile I should
just put away the idea of ordination.  You were going
to wait till Lent anyhow if necessary, and you can wait
till June."

Tristram looked straight at him to see if he could
read anything more in his expression.

"I don't know that I can trust you, so to speak," he
said slowly.  "I think you are too kind—to other people."

Dormer raised his eyebrows with a little smile.  "Am I?"

"I know that I did what I could," went on Tristram
in a sort of outburst, "and it hurt all the time like a
knife.  But now I feel swamped with a sense of failure,
and I pray and go on praying, but there is no comfort
anywhere.  Sometimes I begin to wonder if, apart from
my own feelings, I did right in helping on the marriage
at all."  And he laughed, because he was conscious of
his own habit of introspection, and half ashamed to lay
it bare.

At that Dormer sat up a little in his chair, and turned
a very penetrating gaze upon him.  "Now what do you
mean exactly by that?  I thought you felt quite sure
from the beginning?"

"So I did," responded his friend, "and so I do, but—it's
no use.  I cannot really trust Armand.  I know
nothing against him, but I have a very shrewd suspicion
that he only thinks of himself, and that he will always
put his own interests before Horatia's.  And for all
Horatia's apparent independence she needs protection
far more than many of her sex."

"Well?"

"You see I know Horatia," pursued Tristram, "and
I realised that if she were once awakened, and then her
hopes were frustrated, it might be a very serious thing
for her; and there was always the chance that
Armand might turn out better than I expected.  Of
course I put all that to the Rector, and, as you know,
by degrees he came round."

"I quite understand.  It would have been hard
enough to resign her to a man whom you knew and
trusted, especially as it practically devolved on you to
plead your rival's cause, but it would have been easy
compared with this."

"Yes, that's just it.  It fairly breaks me to feel that
I have given her up, perhaps, only to sorrow and
neglect."

"You can't tell about that, Tristram," said Dormer
very gravely.  "When you resigned her, you gave her
absolutely into the hands of God, and that means you
gave her as you would give yourself, for joy or for
sorrow.  It has always seemed to me that it is quite
possible for vicarious resignation to the Divine Will to
be a higher thing than the resignation of oneself;
certainly it can be a harder....  And, besides," he went
on after a moment's pause, "I have something more to
say.  I have a favourite theory of my own.  That rather
hackneyed phrase of two people being made for one
another is capable of another interpretation.  It may
mean that from all eternity Providence has intended
two souls to meet to play upon each other, and that it is
only through the discipline of married life that they can
become what God intended them to become.  I should
never think of any two people as necessarily destined
to happiness, but as destined by their union to work out
God's Will.  After all, what have any of us to do with
happiness?"

There was a long silence.  Tristram lay back
in his chair, and Dormer looked as if he were
thinking that the two souls in question would perhaps
be the better for any kind of discipline.  But at last
he said:

"To go back to what you said this morning, that you
wanted her more than you have ever wanted her in your
life—"

"Yes?"

"The more I think of it the more I believe you to be
experiencing the inevitable struggle *after* the sacrifice
has been made.  Even our Lord knew what that was."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing was wanting to the completeness of the
sacrifice when He offered the Eucharist on Maundy
Thursday, and yet—afterwards—came the Agony in
the Garden."


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That night again his bedroom fire was the companion
of Dormer's vigil.  He sat long before it, thinking of all
that Tristram had told him.  He had always had a high
ideal for his friend, but now he had even a higher, for he
could not help the conviction that God was dealing
specially with him, and that disappointment meant that He
had some particular work for him to do.  But he saw that
Tristram had still a hard fight before him, for though he
was, perhaps, tormenting himself unnecessarily about
his feelings, yet if he was to become what Dormer
believed, more and more, that God meant him to be, his
loss must be turned from mere endurance into the painful
joy of sacrifice.  He guessed that it was possible for
a soul fully to submit, and yet to fret, and that such an
one would for the time lie beyond the reach of consolation.

Charles Dormer could never so much as think of
consolation without the memory of Mrs. Hungerford coming
back to him.  Yes, if anyone could have comforted
Tristram it would have been his own mother.  This was
her room; Dormer had it always when he stayed here,
and it seemed full of her.  Downstairs in the
dining-room—he had glanced at it several times to-day over
Tristram's head—was a picture, representing her as
standing and looking down at her husband, seated at a
table that bore a map of the West Indies outspread
upon its crimson cloth.  Curtains of a darker crimson,
looped back to columns, and a vista of mixed landscape
completed the ill-painted composition, which was only
made beautiful by Mrs. Hungerford's expression.  But,
looking at that, Dormer knew why, as boy and young
man, he had told her so many things.

It was impossible to think of her as anything else but
a mother, and yet she had not married till she was nearly
forty, and she had only had one child.  To him she had
always seemed the ideal of motherhood.  That he should
think so was no disloyalty to his own mother, to whose
memory he still gave the almost awed worship of his
childish days, for he saw now how that mother, despite
her early marriage and her five sons, had never had just
this gift which would always have been Mrs. Hungerford's,
married or single.  He knew that Mrs. Hungerford
had understood what his own mother had been to
him, as she understood everything else.  Perhaps,
indeed, she understood about Tristram now....





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   CHAPTER V

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The pillaging of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the fact that
it now bore the legend "Mairie of the Fourth Arrondissement"
upon its doors had, of course, no direct effect
on Horatia—beyond teaching her of what the Paris mob
was capable, and how exiguous were the titles to respect
of the Laffitte ministry, already on its deathbed.  Her
places of worship lay elsewhere—the Embassy chapel
in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, or that of the
Reverend Lewis Way in the Avenue de Neuilly.  For
the Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville, if he wished to
keep his daughter faithful to the Church of her baptism,
had done a very shrewd thing when he extracted from
her a promise to attend Morning Prayer every Sunday,
when possible, and, if not, to read it herself.  Horatia
kept her promise faithfully.  However bright the day,
however alluring the prospect of going out with Armand,
she resisted the temptation, and set forth, rather
scandalised at the crowd of pleasure-seekers in the
Tuileries gardens or elsewhere.

On the whole the service was pleasant to her, chiefly
because it was a link with all things English, and in
particular with her home.  However commonplace and
familiar "Dearly beloved brethren" might sound in
English sunoundings, Horatia found that it had power
greatly to stir her heart in a foreign land.  It gave her,
too, a sort of happy sadness to displace the Evangelical
minister by her father, and his chapel (which had been
a café) by Compton church.

Armand could not accompany Horatia to church,
nor could she go with him—if he ever went there.  This
separation she had, of course, anticipated from the first,
and it did not seem really to be of great importance.
It mattered more to her that he did not care so much
about the things of the past as she did—a discovery
which she was gradually making, and which appeared
to her all the more disconcerting because he, by his
ancestors, belonged to that past in a way that she never
could.  But it interested him infinitely less, convinced
and even fanatical Legitimist that he was.

She saw the thing clearly at last on the day that he
drove her to Versailles in his smart phaeton lined with
blue flower-dotted piqué, wherein, however, as a
"fashionable" should, he sat upon so high a seat that
it was extremely difficult to talk to him.  Besides, there
was the ridiculous little tiger behind, in his overcoat to
the ankles, his gaiters and his shiny hat, who could,
Horatia imagined, hear everything that they said.  But
she enjoyed the drive exceedingly, and looked forward
with keen pleasure to seeing the palace.  Yet, when they
got there, Armand displayed small concern as to which
part of the great pile had stood in the days of Louis the
Just, and which had been built by the Grand Monarque,
or on what balcony the King and Queen had showed
themselves to the mob on that wild day in October,
1789.  She could not but be disappointed, for she
regarded her husband, quite justly, as the scion of a long
line of devoted royalists, and she remembered how he
had spoken, in England, of the Lilies.  To her the
deserted palace, abandoned for want of means to keep
it up and shortly, it was said, to be converted into a
museum, was heart-rending in its associations of fallen
glory.  And Armand's ancestors had been among the
very people who had moved, gay and gallant, upon its
wide terraces; in no point would he have disgraced the
cohort himself.  But it was evident that the empty
basins of the royal fountains, the forlorn bosquets,
roused in him no pleasurable melancholy, and that the
Allée d'Apollon was merely a place where he could tell
her, undisturbed, how charming she looked, and laugh
at her sad face.  In the end he took her away before
she had seen all she desired, lest the drive back should
not be accomplished without rain, "and your pretty
dress be spoiled."


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Horatia had reason to remember that day at
Versailles, because of what occurred on the following
morning.

She was paying her accustomed visit to her
grandmother-in-law.  The Duchesse was sitting propped up
in bed, looking unusually grim, and not by any means
beautified by the wrap in which she was enveloped.

"My dear," said the old lady, after some desultory
conversation, "I have something to say to you which
you probably will not like.  You really must not see so
much of Armand."

"Not ... not see so much of Armand!" gasped
Horatia, stupefied.  "Not see so much of my husband!"

"No," replied Madame de la Roche-Guyon emphatically,
and the flaps on her lace cap waggled.  "You
are always about with him, and it is not convenable.
I hear that you spent the whole day together at
Versailles yesterday."

"But, Madame," ejaculated Horatia, scarcely believing
her ears, "I don't under——what can you possibly
mean?  If *I* cannot spend the day with Armand——"

"Now listen, ma fille," said the Duchesse, not
unkindly.  "I do not know how it may be with the
bourgeoisie, but in our world it is not the thing for a
husband to be always dancing attendance on his wife.
A man who does so, after the first few weeks of marriage,
is looked on as a nincompoop, or a bore.  He is, in fact,
despised.  And no one wants to receive husband and
wife together at their salons; it is gênant, it destroys
all wit and freedom of intercourse.  Armand will
naturally attach himself to some salon, and you must
not expect him to accompany you to those which you
frequent—nor, above all, to be constantly seen about
with you in public places.  It is not the part of a galant
homme.  And you have, for the present, the chaperon
we have provided for you, Eulalie de Beaulieu."

A red spot came into Horatia's cheek.  "But I do
not like Madame de Beaulieu.  I do not wish to go about
with her."

Even the snort which the Dowager permitted herself
did not destroy the air of cold dignity with which she
replied.  "You seem to forget the class of society into
which you have married.  It would be unheard of for
a bride to be seen about alone.  When her husband does
not accompany her—and, as I say, the time for that is
already long past—she must be under the escort of her
mother or her mother-in-law.  You have neither.  Did
my years and health permit I would myself fulfil the
duty, but if you do not wish to have my death at your
door you will accept the chaperonage of the Marquise
de Beaulieu.  When you have been married a year—above
all when you have had a child—you will be
perfectly free to go where you will, to receive whom you
will——"

"Even my own husband!" flashed Horatia.

For a second or two the Duchesse seemed staggered
by the interruption and its bitterness; then, for she
rather liked spirit, a slow smile revealed the absence of
her false teeth.

"Let me tell you, my child," she riposted, "that if
you do not take my advice you will end by making
Armand ridiculous.  Perhaps—having known him only
so short a time—you have not yet discovered that there
is nothing in the world that he hates so much.  I
counsel you to remember this."

The victory—or at all events the last stroke in
battle—undoubtedly remained with Madame de la Roche-Guyon.


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"'The Tenth Muse'?" asked Horatia.  "Who is she?"

The opulent but sentimental-looking lady in purple
who sat next her in Madame de Chastenay's drawing-room
lifted up her hands.  "Is it conceivable that you
have never heard of Mademoiselle Delphine Gay?" she
exclaimed.  "But I forgot that you were English.
Mademoiselle Gay is the literary prodigy of our sex;
figure to yourself a young girl already celebrated at
eighteen for her verse, pensioned by His Majesty, and
crowned at twenty-three in the Capitol, by the Academy
of the Tiber!"

"And she is going to read us some of her poems now?"

"To recite them.  She has a divine voice and manner."

Horatia looked round the room wherein, on this March
evening, were seated many ladies and a few men,
awaiting the intellectual treat in the midst of a light
reflected with dazzling effect from the chandeliers,
lustres and chimney-ornaments of cut steel, with which
the apartment had lately been beautified.  A little way
off Armand was bending over the chair of a lady whom
she did not know; he was evidently laughing.  More
than a week had passed since Horatia's passage of arms
with the Duchesse.  For two days she had refused to go
and see her, then, through the agency of old Mademoiselle
de la Roche-Guyon—a trembling mediator—a
truce was patched up between the combatants.  But
if the affair appeared to have passed from the Dowager's
mind it had not so quitted Horatia's.  She did not say
a word about it to Armand.  Once or twice she was
tempted to think the whole thing nonsense, the creation
of a malicious brain, and certainly this evening it
tended so to appear to her, for here was her husband
with her at this salon, and a literary salon too.  It was
the first of this class that Horatia had attended, and
devoutly did she hope that it might be the entry, at
last, into that heaven where Lamartine, Victor Hugo,
Chateaubriand, Alfred de Vigny, and so many constellations
swam in glory.

She was recalled from her musings by a stir.  Two
ladies entered the room—the elder with an indescribable
brio.  Madame Gay had been a celebrity of the Empire,
and kept about her an extraordinary aroma of those
great days, a suggestion of staff-officers, mamelukes,
the flash of sabres in the sun and the dust cloud over
wheeling squadrons, seeming indeed as if she might at
any moment break into "Partant pour la Syrie" or some
hymn to Glory and Victory.  Mademoiselle Delphine
gained by the contrast with her parent.  Tall,
well-built, with a fine head beautifully set on an equally
fine neck, clad in a simple white semi-classical dress
wearing no ornaments, and with her abundant fair hair
hanging in ringlets, she had something of the air of a
sibyl.  She looked about twenty-five, but was in reality
a little older.

Madame Gay settled herself, and the Tenth Muse was
led to a chair apart—an honourable chair, whose
horse-hair seat was painted with roses and camellias.  She
composed herself in a suitable attitude, brought her
beautiful bare arms to one side, clasped her hands
loosely together, and, looking up at the ceiling, began
to recite in a grave, deep, almost languorous voice, her
poem on the last days of Pompeii, commemorating the
fate of Théora the priestess of Apollo, and the young
warrior Paulus, and recounting how, two thousand
years after,

   |  "On trouva dans l'enceinte où le temple s'élève
   |  Sur l'autel une lyre ... et près du seuil un glaive."
   |

"Is it not touching!" said the purple lady to
Horatia.  The green plumes in her headdress quivered,
and she dabbed her eyes rather ostentatiously.  "Ces
pauvres gens....  Ah, she is beginning again!"

This time it was a Hymn to Ste Généviève.

   |  "Patronne de France, amour de nos aieux ..."
   |

At the conclusion of this poem, amid the hum of
applause, Madame Gay was observed to approach her
offspring, and to whisper something into her ear.  The
poetess shook her head; then, seeming to relent, and
smiling, she announced

   |  "Le bonheur d'être belle.  Dedicated to Madame
   |  Récamier."
   |
   |  "Quel bonheur d'être belle, alors qu'on est aimée!
   |  Autrefois de mes yeux je n'étais pas charmée;
   |  Je les croyais sans feu, sans douceur, sans regard;
   |  Je me trouvais jolie un moment par hasard.
   |  Maintenant ma beauté me parait admirable.
   |  Je m'aime de lui plaire, et je me crois aimable....
   |  Il le dit si souvent!  Je l'aime, et quand je vois
   |  Ses yeux avec plaisir se reposer sur moi,
   |  Au sentiment d'orgueil je ne suis point rebelle,
   |  Je bénis mes parents de m'avoir fait si belle.
   |  Mais ... pourquoi dans mon coeur ces subites alarmes?—
   |  Si notre amour tous deux nous trompait sur mes charmes:
   |  Si j'étais laide enfin?  Non ... il s'y connaît mieux!
   |  D'ailleurs pour m'admirer je ne veux que ses yeux!—
   |  Bientôt il va venir! bientôt il va me voir!
   |  Comme, en me regardant, il sera beau ce soir!
   |  Le voilà! je l'entends, c'est sa voix amoureuse!
   |  Quel bonheur d'être belle!  Oh, que je suis heureuse!"
   |

The extraordinary appropriateness of these verses to
Horatia's own attitude of mind during the past months
made her forget to join in the applause which followed
their recitation.  Yes, it had been exactly her own case;
she knew it, and Armand knew it too.  He would tease
her about them going home.  She looked round, with
a little half-shy smile, for her husband, but he was
nowhere to be seen, and she remembered that since
Mademoiselle Gay's entrance she had been too much
occupied to notice his whereabouts.

And then came his voice in her ear, sudden and by
no means "amoureuse."

"For God's sake let us go!"

Horatia turned round, startled.  "Certainly, if you
wish it," she responded, and, the recitation having
apparently come to an end, she was able to take her
leave almost at once.  Her first thought had been that
Armand was ill.

"You were bored, I am afraid?" she hazarded, as
the carriage started.

"Mon Dieu!" answered her husband, throwing
himself back in the corner, "could one be otherwise?
It was intolerable—to listen to all that stuff about
Pompeii and Ste. Généviève.  Madame de Chastenay is
preposterous with her female phenomena.  Don't ever
ask me to go there again!"

And, had it not been Armand who spoke, Horatia
would have thought the voice thoroughly bad-tempered.

"But, my dear Armand," she protested, putting a
hand on his arm, "I would willingly have come away
sooner if I had known.  I thought you were admiring
the poetess; she is very pretty—no, she is beautiful."

"Entendu.  It is a woman's business to be beautiful,
but not to declaim wearisome verses.  Don't ask me to
go to any more of these functions with you!"

Horatia turned a little pale and drew back.  Could it
be true after all, that incredible thing which the Duchess
had said, that she would make him ridiculous—that he
himself thought it, feared it?

Armand could not but perceive her shrink, and the
lover conquered the sulky male.  He caught her hand.

"My darling, forgive me!  I didn't mean to hurt you.
You know that there is no greater pleasure for me than
to be with you, but ... I *was* so bored!"

Impossible to resist the half-humorous, half-pleading
tone, and the look in his eyes.  As the carriage rolled
under their own gateway she bent forward and put a
light kiss on his temple.

"I forgive you," she said.

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"Mademoiselle Gay did not then give you the canto
of her poem on the Magdalene where the devil, to tempt
the saint, takes on the form of Joseph of Arimathea?"
inquired the Duchesse that evening.  "That must, ma
foi, be very striking, and I regret that I have never
even read it."





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   CHAPTER VI

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   |  "O temps, suspends ton vol, et vous, heures propices,
   |    Suspendez votre cours!
   |  Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices
   |    Des plus beaux de nos jours!"

—sang M. Alphonse de Lamartine to the Comtesse
Armand de la Roche-Guyon from the beautifully bound
copy of Les Meditations which, with his just-published
Harmonies, Horatia had found in her room.  A line
from Emmanuel had asked her to please him by accepting
them.  And, having turned over the new poems, she
had reverted to that earlier and famous elegy over past
happiness, Le Lac, and its passion and melancholy had
sent her into a half reverie.

How kind, how thoughtful, Emmanuel was!  This
gift could be but the outcome of his knowledge of her
desire for personal acquaintance with the poet.  He
could not give her that, and Armand would not.

"My dear child," the latter had said, "it is quite out
of the question.  If you want to see M. Victor Hugo,
Dumas, de Vigny, and this young de Musset, you must
go to the sort of club they have at Charles Nodier's,
the Cénacle I think they call it—and, of course, you
cannot do that.  Comte Alfred de Vigny does belong to
our world, it is true, but he hardly goes anywhere.  But
as for these Gautiers and Balzacs, where do you expect
to find them?  In some dingy lodgings in the Quarter,
not anywhere that you are likely to visit!"

"But a great many ladies of your world, as you call
them, have literary salons, surely," pleaded Horatia.

"Like the one the other day?  No, not many are left
now, and what there are are mostly Orleanist."

"What about Madame Récamier?" suggested
Horatia.  "Would not the presence of Monsieur de
Chateaubriand be a guarantee of right principles?"

Armand laughed.  "I cannot deny that.  Now that
there is no monarch the great Renæ is more of a monarchist
than ever.  Very well, little tease, I will get you
the entrée to the Abbaye-aux-Bois as soon as I can."

And with that promise—as yet unfulfilled, Horatia
was forced to be content....

Her eyes went back to her book.

   |  "O temps, suspends ton vol——"
   |

But the thoughts came bubbling up, displacing the
flow of the verses.  She did not want the flight of time
suspended this afternoon; rather the contrary.  Armand
was away, and would not be back till to-morrow; the
flight of time was a mere crawl.

   |  "Laissez-nous savourer les rapides délices..."
   |

But this was no fleet delight, to sit here in her boudoir,
full of flowers though it was, with nothing to do, and the
rain falling outside.  Besides, if she went out, it must
be with the Marquise.

The last time they had driven out together, Madame
de Beaulieu had taken her to see the villa outside Paris
which she was furnishing for a summer retreat—the
latest craze.  This was no ancestral château, and
everything in it must be new, and, said the Marquise, marked
by extreme simplicity of taste.  And in the
drawing-room, where the blinds were painted to resemble
stained-glass windows, where the chairs, stools and sofas were
of bamboo and Persian-figured chintz, the ottomans
and floorcloths of split reeds, Madame de Beaulieu
described the style of dress which she had designed for
herself when inhabiting this seclusion—a plain white
jacconet gown, with an apron of dove-coloured gros de
Naples, worked round with green foliage, the pockets
cut en coeur, the hair to be done smoothly with
but one high bow and a comb, and no ornaments whatsoever.

It was after this expedition that Horatia had suddenly
taken the resolution of unpacking her books.  She felt
haunted by the dove-coloured apron with green foliage
and heart-shaped pockets, and with Martha's assistance
she brought the prisoners once more to the light of day.
Some had been among her childhood's treasures—*Robinson
Crusoe*, *Don Quixote*, a few sheets of the
*Arabian Nights*, *The Scottish Chiefs*, *Susan Gray*—and
then there were all the favourites of later years.  She
welcomed them with an almost guilty pleasure, and
there they were now, most of them in a bookcase under
the window looking out into the Rue Saint-Dominique,
for under the other, which gave on to the courtyard of the
Hôtel, stood the Duchesse's New Year's gift to her—a
satinwood table inlaid with ebony, encumbered on
every side with drawers from which hung workbags of
blue satin, stocked with the requirements for a hundred
and one useless handicrafts—with velvet to make
flowers, and gauze for painting upon.  Horatia had
just opened these pouched drawers, no more, and at
present used the table rather ruthlessly for a sort of
jardinière, so that the inlay was slowly deteriorating
under pots of camellias and baskets of violets in moss.

She took up the other volume of Lamartine.  Between
the pages she had put an old letter of her father's to
mark the place, and idly she unfolded this and read it
again.  The Rector spoke of many things; among
others of Tristram's tour in Italy with his friend; they
were reported to be enjoying themselves and Mr. Dormer's
health was improving slowly.  A passage she
had forgotten struck her again.

"By the way, I have been having a correspondence
with the Duke of Devonshire, who is a very keen
numismatist, about some coins of mine; in the course
of it he mentioned that he supposed you and Lady
Granville (who is, as you know, his sister) had made
acquaintance with each other.  Thinking this over, I
came to the conclusion that, from what you tell me of
the political views of your new relations, it is improbable
that you have been presented at the Embassy, but I
cannot see any reason why you should not call upon
her privately if she has no objection, since you are, after
all, English by birth.  I met her many years ago at
Devonshire House with Tom Grenville; I think she
would remember me.  The Duke said he was going to
write to Lady Granville about you; I do not know if he
has done so; perhaps you have heard from her."

Horatia had not.  The letter passed on to the
projected Reform Bill which, Mr. Grenville wrote, was
occupying everybody to the exclusion of anything else,
and he heard that after dinner even ladies fell to at
Potwallopers, Outvoters and Rotten Boroughs!  "Now
it has once been broached," went on the writer, "the
rumpus if it is not carried will be appalling, in fact I
think immediate combustion will be the result.  It
seems to me impossible now that the people could ever
sit down quietly without Reform, or that they should be
content with less than they have been promised; but
the longer it is delayed the more exasperated they will
get.  Your cousin Chandos is much exercised about it."

Horatia looked at the date; it was the 9th of March.
As she knew, since those words were written, the first
reading of the Bill had been carried by a majority of
one.  But how little these great events seemed to touch
her here.

The letter concluded, "I hope, my darling, that you
are still very happy.  If you are, so is your old
Papa."

The letter fell on to *Les Harmonies*.  Was she "still
very happy?" .... How could she ask herself the
question!  Of course she was, blissfully happy—provided
Armand were with her.  But, of course, as she
often told herself—and thought how sensible she was
for being able to do so—he could not always be with
her.  Quite apart from the Dowager's odious
recommendations she was determined not to be a drag upon
him.  The time had come when she must try to fill in
her own life.  That had been one motive for the
unpacking of her books.  She attended, of her own volition,
one or two salons—that of the Marquise de Montglas, who
always received lying in a chaise longue, draped with
shawls, for she was a permanent invalid, though she
held firmly the threads of conversation in the circle
which spread fanwise round her couch—and that of her
sister, Madame de Juvelcourt.  The latter was deformed,
a fact of which Horatia had been warned; but she was
hardly prepared to find, as she did, a really hideous
little dwarf, black and vivacious, literally perched on
cushions, dressed in the latest fashion, making no
attempt to hide her disadvantages, and not, indeed,
seeming to mind them in the least.  She had received
the English wife very kindly, and as she was one of the
Duchesse's rare visitors, Horatia felt more at home at
her receptions than at any others.  She even managed
to enjoy herself there, and excited perhaps by Madame
de Juvelcourt's own gaiety and wit, to return full of
spirits, but when she got in her first inquiry was always
for Armand.  She was restless, feverishly restless,
despite her resolve, when she was not with him.  And
he had naturally his own avocations, the usual
diversions of a young man of fashion.  She did not expect to
share these, she did not even question him about them,
but as the weeks went on, she could not but be aware
that they seemed to claim him much more than they
had done.  He was always charming to her, and yet—and
yet, she was conscious of something slipping.  What
was it, this tiny foreboding at her heart, an asp in Eden?
She could not tell.  Was it possible that there could be
such a thing as over-sweetness, and had he begun to
feel it, was she herself beginning to feel it? ...

Horatia came back to her present surroundings.
Of course she did not really think these things—they
were treachery to her great love.  But one thought
she did not drive away, a thought that was daily
becoming more pursuing, the realisation of how much
she was in bondage in her own house—if indeed it
could be called her own.  Marriage had not given her
liberty; she had been far freer in Berkshire—free to
come and go, to walk or ride—free to do, within reasonable
limits, exactly as seemed good to her.  Here she
was more or less in the position of a child in the nursery.
And when, as now, reflection on this topic ended by
making her angry, she would try to stifle her impatience
with some occupation, or to forget in Armand's society
the price she was paying for it.  With an exclamation
she arose from her chair, and went to the window
to see if it were still raining.

Nothing was doing in the courtyard—nothing was
ever doing there.  The little trees stood orderly in
their tubs.  A childish desire seized Horatia to throw
something down ... Someone went out; it
was Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, summoned,
probably to the Duchesse, who had an attack of
indigestion and devotion.  She wished he had been to
see her.  She liked him, and he interested her;
she thought that he was probably of that particular
type of French piety represented by Fénelon.  But she
knew very little about him, and after all he had made
no attempt to convert her.

Certainly the rain was stopping, for the major-domo
was now observed by the watcher to go forth, armed
with an enormous bunchy umbrella, which, however
he did not unfurl.  Even he could go out, if not when
he liked, at least without being accompanied against
his will!  She would rather stay in than go driving
with the Marquise.

But then the sun suddenly began to shine, and Horatia
could withstand no longer.  She rang for her maid,
ordered the carriage, changed her dress, and drove
round to Madame de Beaulieu's house in the Rue de
l'Universite"—a five minutes' drive.

And there unexpected tidings greeted her ravished
ears.  "Madame la Marquise is indisposed; she prays
Madame la Comtesse to excuse her; she cannot go
out to-day."

"And I am expected to go home again like a good
child," thought Madame la Comtesse.  "Never!
Very well," she said to the footman, "tell Jean to
drive me to Herbault's."

The dome of the Invalides glittered again in the sun,
but as she crossed the river the giant statues on the
Pont de la Concorde looked threateningly at her.
She drove across the great expanse of the Place with the
feeling of a child let out of school.  The Rue Neuve
St. Augustin came all too soon.  She had no intention
of going into Herbault's, and had only mentioned the
famous shop because it would necessitate crossing the
Seine.  When the carriage was drawing up she leant
forward and said that she had changed her mind, and
would go to Houbigant's in the Rue St. Honoré instead.

At Houbigant's she went in and bought some
essence de mousseline, imagining that the other ladies
making purchases looked at her curiously.  As the
assistant was tying up the bottle of scent she racked
her brains to think what she could do next.  Though
her drives in the Bois de Boulogne had not enchanted
her, she would have gone thither, since it would have
been quiet, had she not known that Jean would
immediately say that it was too far for the horses—an
opinion which he shared or affected to share with
other ancient coachmen of the Faubourg.

Suddenly her father's old letter flashed into her mind.
Was not the English Embassy quite near, practically
in the same street? and had not the Duke of
Devonshire said that he would write?  This was certainly
her chance; she might never have such another.  She
could but be refused entrance if the Ambassadress did
did not wish to see her.  In a few moments she found
herself in front of the house which had been Princess
Borghese's.

The man admitted her and took her card, and
returning said that Madame l'Ambassadrice was in the
serre and would receive her.  He proceeded to conduct
her thither, and passing through a white and gold
drawing-room she came to a long gallery of a conservatory,
filled with spring flowers, where, on a divan in a
little grove of orange-trees and lilacs and double red
camellias, a lady of about forty, wrapped in a shawl,
was taking farewell of a youth of French appearance,
who was, however, talking very good English to her.
The young Frenchman passed Horatia, tall, very young,
good-looking.  She was announced, and found herself
being warmly greeted.

"And this is Stephen Grenville's daughter!  My
brother has just written to me about you.  My dear,
I would like to kiss you, but I have a horrible cold.
Come and sit on the divan by me if you are not afraid
of catching it.  I have gargled and blistered till I am
sure there can be no infection left!"

So Horatia sat down by the side of this daughter of
the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, who had not indeed
inherited her mother's looks, but who had to the full the
Cavendish charm of voice and manner, and, as she soon
discovered, inexhaustible supplies both of humour and
of wit.  Lady Granville assumed, rather to her visitor's
dismay, that her new relatives had "allowed" her
to come, whereat Horatia, feeling something like a
truant schoolgirl, had to confess that such was not the
case.  The Ambassadress looked grave, and Horatia
was still more uncomfortable when it transpired that
Lady Granville had, for her sake, relaxed her rule about
formal presentations to herself.  However, nobody
could have been more kind or amusing.  Horatia being
English born, Lady Granville was able to permit
herself some remarks on French society not
untinged with malice, asking her visitor if she had yet
become acquainted with "the type of woman made by
Herbault, Victorine and Alexandre, the woman who
looks to see if you have six curls or five on the side of
your head," and whether it had yet been patronisingly
said of her that no one would take her for an
Englishwoman—"just as I sometimes tell Charles de
Montalembert—that young man who was leaving as you came
in—that he will some day be taken for an Englishman.
But then he is half English, or rather Scotch.  Yet no
true Englishman would ever permit himself to be so
enthusiastic about the Church."

"The Church!" exclaimed Horatia.  "That young
man!  Oh, Lady Granville, how ... how unusual!
Is he going to be a priest?"

"Oh no, my dear.  He will be a peer of France when
his father dies.  He is an angel, rather too good for
this earth of ours, but enthusiastic to the last degree!
You have heard, I dare say, of Lamennais, the great
preacher?  Well, he and some friends started last
autumn a most violent clerical paper, called *L'Avenir*,
to which M. de Montalembert is one of the chief
contributors.  They want an alliance between Catholics
and the people, they have alienated the Legitimists,
hitherto the main supporters of the Church, by saying
they sacrificed their God to their King, and now they
are pressing the Bishops and clergy to give up all their
endowments and palaces, without thinking how the
poor things are to live.  And the latest is that Charles
and his great friend, a young abbé named Lacordaire,
are talking of opening a 'free school' next month, and
teaching in it themselves."

"And all this excitement is about the Church?"
said Horatia musingly.  "How strange, because in
England too—at least at Oxford..."

"My dear, *surely* there are no Charles de
Montalemberts at Oxford—of all places!  Besides, why
should there be?"

Horatia could not say, but the question had so
vividly called up another Charles—and his friend—that
for a moment she hardly heard Lady Granville
discussing the prospects of the Reform Bill.

When she took her leave, pressed by the Ambassadress
to come soon on one of her Mondays—her Fridays
were so crowded—she drove home in the highest spirits,
feeling that she had really made a friend, and a most
delightful friend.





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   CHAPTER VII

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Horatia drove with the Marquise next afternoon.
The Champs Elysées were very gay, and her spirits
always went up when the sun shone.  There was the
indefinable romance of spring, the eternal romance of
Paris—and Armand was coming back to-night.  She
was inclined to wonder at her restlessness of yesterday.

"Dear me," observed Madame de Beaulieu suddenly,
"I smell essence de mousseline.  When have you been
to Houbigant's?"  And without waiting for an
answer she went on, "You are improving, ma chère.
As a rule you English have organs for which no odour
is too strong, and no colour is too striking.  Lavender
is the basis of all your perfumes, and the rainbow of
all your colours."

As she spoke a very pretty woman, elaborately
dressed in violet drap d'Algers and swansdown, and
extravagantly painted, passed them for the third or
fourth time in her carriage.  She was alone, and was
driving very slowly; many glances, of which she seemed
pleasurably conscious, were cast at her from other
carriages and by the male loungers under the trees.
Chiefly to avoid the subject of Houbigant's, Horatia
asked who she was.

The Marquise put up her lorgnettes.  "That?"
she said carelessly—"oh, Mademoiselle Blanchette
Delmar of the Opera of course.  Yes, she is pretty,
isn't she?  Armand thought so once, too, but they
apparently got tired of each other very soon.  I forget
who is the favoured swain at present."

A curious sick coldness came over Horatia; yet the
red mounted to her cheeks.  The Marquise observed it.

"Ma chère," she said with a laugh, "surely you
have not been placing your husband on a pinnacle
apart from other men!  Armand as an anchorite!
Mon Dieu!"

"No, of course not," said Horatia, battling for
composure, "but..."

"But!" repeated Madame de Beaulieu, "But what?
The young person is very well, in her way.  And it is
quite a year ago.  Then you are shocked at me for
knowing about it?  Well, I grant you that we are not
supposed to know these things, for it is not good taste
for a gentleman to parade his love-affairs.  But pardon,
for perhaps in England (though I had not guessed it
such an Eden of purity) these things do not exist, and
I have soiled your innocence unnecessarily.  Forgive me!"

All the distaste of Horatia's soul for the Marquise
blossomed at this moment into a sudden flower of hatred.
She wanted to stop the carriage and get out.  What
need to have told her!  Her brain went on working
furiously as they continued to drive up and down and
the Marquise continued to talk.  Horatia had heard a
good many things since she came to Paris, but they
had never seemed to touch her—she had never imagined
that they could touch her....  It hurt; it burned
like poison....

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When she got back to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon
she was told, to her surprise, that M. le Comte had already
returned, and that he was waiting for her in her boudoir.

She had not expected him till night, and she went up
the stairs very slowly.  Part of her was crying out for
joy that he was back, would have liked to run to him,
to throw her arms round his neck and say to him,
"Darling, I don't think of it, now that you are here:
it is past, it is untrue."  And part of her did not feel
thus.

If she had had any intention of referring to the subject
she had not, in the event, much chance of doing so.
It was to be a day of shocks.  Armand was standing
with his back to her, looking out of the window giving
on to the courtyard; evidently he had been watching
her arrival.  He turned at her entrance, came forward
and kissed her hand, her cheek, and then said gravely,
"Horatia, I am sorry to have to scold you."

"What is it?" she asked, genuinely amazed.

"You went yesterday to the English Embassy."

"O, that!" she exclaimed, moved by the ludicrous
disparity between this enormity and what she had
been hearing of him.  And she began to walk across
the room, pulling off her gloves.

"And is 'that' so small a thing to you?" demanded
Armand angrily.  "You know that for nothing in the
world would one of us be seen setting foot in a house
which is on intimate terms with the Palais Royal,
which receives the Orléans princes.  Yet you choose
a day when I am away, when my cousin cannot
accompany you..."

Horatia turned round.  "Please be careful what you
are saying to me, Armand!  I think you cannot
realise that you are accusing me—me—of duplicity."

"Eh bien, what is it then?" asked her husband.

"Ignorance, stupidity, what you like, but not that,"
she said, "How was I to know of these ... these
petty restrictions?  I am English, and Lady Granville
is English, and knew my father."

"Pardon me, you are French now," retorted Armand.
"Permit me to remind you that you have duties
towards the name which you honoured me by accepting."

His tone a little suggested that the honour was the
other way round.  The caged feeling came over her
for a moment.  "I am the prisoner of the tribe,"
she thought to herself.  "Armand will never liberate
me."  She said coldly, "Lady Granville enlightened
me.  I am sorry, very sorry, if I have injured your
prestige, but it was done in ignorance."  With that
she turned her back on him once more, and went and
sat down by the window.  Her husband followed her,
biting his lip.

"I beg your pardon for supposing that you knew
what you were doing," he said, still rather stiffly.  "You
see, Horatia, do you not—"

"I see a great many things," she said.  "I see that
I am to have no friends, no will, no identity of my own.
I may not go out when I wish; I may not see you
when I wish..."

Suddenly she heard her own voice; it sounded
shrill.  The ache, the disgust of the afternoon swung
back on her.  Was she driving him to that?  She
stopped; and, more electric than a lightning flash, it
came to her how most triumphantly she could end this
situation.  So, rising, she laid her hand on his breast
and, looking up at him, said very gently and deliberately,

"Are you really angry with me, Armand?"

Her victory was instantaneous.


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Martha, pulling back her lamb's curtains next
morning, was, all unsuspecting, like the gaoler who
rouses the captive.  As the daylight flooded the room
Horatia woke more fully to the realisation of an
extraordinary weight on her spirits.  While she lay
there waiting for her coffee the whole of yesterday's
scene in the Champs Elysées played itself through again.
That woman with her laughing, reddened lips....
There was time to taste shock, and yet she did not
taste it fully; the soreness at her heart had in it much
more of the most primitive of all passions—jealousy.

Her coffee and rolls came; she could scarcely touch
them.  She wanted Armand to enter; but he had
been out late last night at the bal de l'Opéra.  He
might not come for a long time.  Tears began to well
out under her lashes; and presently Horatia de la
Roche-Guyon, her head half buried in the pillow, was
sobbing like a child that cries for it knows not what.

"Bon jour, chère amie!"

She had not heard his knock, nor his entrance.
Hastily and stealthily she dabbed at her eyes.

"You are late this morning," observed the Comte
cheerfully.  "Look at me, not home till three this
morning, but already risen....  My darling, what
is the matter?"

Horatia, her face nearly concealed by the pillow and
the tumbled masses of her hair, murmured something
unintelligible.

Armand sat down on the bed.  "My angel, what is
it?  Is it because I scolded you yesterday?  But you
forgave me....  Look at me, Horatia, and tell
me what is the matter."  He had gently to draw
away the hand which held the handkerchief to her
eyes.  "Come, my darling—Bon Dieu, what hair you
have!"  He took up a lock.

"Madame de Beaulieu says it is hideous," sighed
Horatia between two little sobs.

"That is because she cannot succeed in buying any
like it, I expect," retorted her husband.  "Is that why
you were crying, my child?  Listen then, and I will
tell you a secret.  The Duchesse is having a wig made
as nearly as possible the colour of your hair; she is
going to wear it on her fête or on the next saint's day.
There's a compliment for you!  Do not mind, therefore,
what my cousin says.  All women are jealous of one
another....  Come now, take away that handkerchief
and let me kiss you!"

She let him do so, and even clung to him.  "Promise
me, promise me, that you will always love me, Armand!"

"*The good old phrase again!*" whispered a little
imp in the young man's ear.  "Foolish, foolish child,"
he said, smiling his delightful smile.  "What do you
think I am made of then?"

"You do really forgive me for yesterday?" she
murmured, hiding her tear-stained face in his breast.  "It
must never happen again.  I could not bear that
anything should come between us....  As long as you are
with me, Armand, nothing can."

"My darling," he said, and kissed the top of her head.

"I am very, very sorry about Lady Granville,"
she went on after a moment, and with a heavy sigh.
"Is the Duchesse exceedingly angry with me?"

"Perhaps the slaughter she made of me yesterday
will content her," suggested her husband cheerfully.

Horatia clasped him closer, "O poor Armand!
I will never, never see Lady Granville again!  I will
write to her to-day and say so."

When, a few minutes later, Armand had gone, after
assuring her again that he would love her as long as
the Seine ran through Paris, that she was probably the
one woman in the world who could look beautiful
after tears, and that he had found the bal de l'Opéra
last night very dull because he could not hope to come
on a lock of her hair peeping out from the hood of a
domino, Horatia slipped out of bed and went to her
mirror.  Was she beautiful, pale and heavy-eyed as
she was?  She propped her face on her hands, her hair
falling about her shoulders in a cloud of sunset, and
stared into the glass.  As long as the Seine ran through
Paris!  Would he love her just as much when her
colour was not as clear and fresh as now it was, when
there were lines on her white forehead, when her
bright hair began to lose its lustre ... when, in
short, she was no longer young, and, as he called her now,
beautiful?  Would he?

And would he love her just as much ... or more ... if, if—

She was still gazing, with a dream in her half-smiling
eyes, when Martha came to dress her.





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   CHAPTER VIII

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Circumstances were beginning to prove, as usual,
too strong for Armand de la Roche-Guyon.  For all
his self-will he was generally at the mercy of his
surroundings; too light a bark to struggle with the
stream, too buoyant to be wholly swamped by it.  In
England Horatia had been his circumstances; before
her, Laurence de Vigerie; before her, not a few other
ladies; and now Paris, his friends, his family had
enveloped him again.  For it was quite true, as the
Duchesse had hinted, that his friends were beginning
to tease him about his devotion to his wife, while on
the other hand he suspected that his wife would soon
come to consider him not devoted enough.  This
morning's little scene was all very well in its way, but
a melancholy prescience whispered to him that the day
might dawn when he would find it a bore to keep on
assuring Horatia that he loved her.  There was no
excitement now in the situation, and she was so
entirely a captive that he felt his own chains.  A
certain standard of behaviour was evidently going to
be demanded of him, whereas what he craved for
was not obligations but diversion.  And that the two
things he most held in horror, the possibilities of
becoming ridiculous and of being made uncomfortable,
should descend upon him at once, from different quarters,
was rather damnable.

He was in this mood when he crossed the Pont
Royal that afternoon, turned to the left and began to
walk beside the wall of the Tuileries garden.  It was
two o'clock, the fashionable hour for promenaders
within, but Armand chose the comparative peace of
the quay.  The sun shone; a little breeze blew off
the Seine, and he walked along frowning, no less
handsome and attractive for his ill-temper, while two
soubrettes, linked arm in arm, turned to look after him
speculating on its cause.

Diversion, excitement, a stimulating uncertainty as
to his reception—all these had been his at the hands
of Madame de Vigerie.  Armand had long admired
this young, fashionable, and widowed lady, had paid
her marked court, and had arrived last summer at
the conclusion that, if she would have him—which
was by no means certain—he could not do better than
to marry her.  Then had come his visit to England, and
the intrusion of a sudden, genuine passion.  But
his intention had nevertheless held till the night of that
ball in Berkshire.  Afterwards he had lain awake till
morning fighting the new emotion with the remembrance
of the old, then, with a characteristic mixture of
coolness and impetuosity, had decided that the new
was better.  Probably it was, yet he wished that he
were at this moment on his way to the familiar
drawing room in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, if only to
have his present irritation put to flight.

So he walked, swinging his gold and tortoiseshell
cane, and behind him, in an open carriage, a lady in
lie-de-vin and ermine was overtaking him.  With her
furs she had a little parasol against the April sun;
a boa was wound twice round her neck.  She was not
pretty, but she was supremely elegant.  Leaning
forward, she spoke to her coachman; the pace of her
horses was moderated, and thus, while still overtaking
him, she was able to contemplate at her leisure the
figure of the young man to which she drew near.  And
she did so with a smile on her lips, and her head a little
on one side.

Abreast of Armand she called out softly,

"Monsieur de la Roche-Guyon!" and the carriage
drew up.

Armand turned.  It is always startling when the
subject of one's meditations suddenly appears before
one, and the slowness with which his hand went to his
hat was sufficient proof of the degree to which he was
amazed.

"You in Paris—you!" he exclaimed.

"With your permission," said the Vicomtesse,
smiling.  "Or even, Monsieur, without it."

Armand, hat in hand, stared at her.

"Where have you been all this while?" he asked at
last.

"In Italy," replied she.  "And you?"

"Further than that," returned the young man
rather meaningly, coming nearer to the carriage.  He
had now regained his composure, and looked at her
to see if she understood.  "I have—but may I not
come and tell you about it?"

"Mon Dieu, is it so tragic as all that?" asked
Madame de Vigerie with gravity.  "But, my poor friend,
I know all about it.  You are in the most serious of all
scrapes.  Yes, I know all about it.  Nevertheless, come
and see me some day," She rearranged her furs; the
coachman looked round for orders.

"When?" asked the Comte eagerly.  "At the usual
time—three?"

Madame de Vigerie shook her head.  "Oh no, not
now!  I am at home on Tuesdays at eight.—Yes, to the
Champs Elysées."

She drove off.  So she did not care the snap of a
finger ... unless she were dissembling very well.
And she had relegated him to the hour of her salon,
where, for the sake of a sight of her, he would have to
endure all sorts of bores.

Nevertheless, she was back, and Armand was
conscious of a distinct lightening of his spirits.


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It was, no doubt, a dark and shameful blot on the
family blazon that the heir of the house of La Roche-Guyon
should be an amateur botanist of some distinction.
Not the tragic life-in-death of his wife, nor the
unmothered state of his only son was to be compared,
in the eyes of the Dowager Duchess, with the fact that
Emmanuel, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon was delivered
over to a taste which she considered suitable enough
in an apothecary but unspeakably derogatory for a
man of family.  The Marquis, however, never betrayed
much discomposure at the sarcasms of his venerable
grand-parent.  Forty-one years of a not very happy
life had taught him calm, and, kindly and
unostentatiously courteous though he was to everyone,
he went his own way.  Despite his name and
connections, he had done nothing in the world of politics
or diplomacy, and never would; he was merely an
ineffective, reserved, tolerant and melancholy gentleman
who desired to lead the life of a recluse and did not
always succeed in doing it.

It was in accordance with his habits that when he
took his walks abroad such exercises were likely
sooner or later to lead him past the bookstalls on the
quays of the Seine—for he was something of a bibliophile
too.  On a certain afternoon in April therefore,
about ten days after Armand's meeting with the
Vicomtesse de Vigerie, he was passing slowly along
by the lidded boxes on the Quai Voltaire, when he
observed a fashionably dressed and elegant young
man turning over the old books at a stall a little
further on, and recognised, to his no small surprise,
his own brother.  Armand was humming a tune
between his teeth, and seemed gay above the ordinary;
the lamentable old proprietor of the box watched him
with respect.

"This is a new avocation for you, mon cher,"
observed the Marquis, tapping him on the shoulder.

"Just the person I wanted," retorted the young
man, glancing up.  "Find me that, and I will never
call you herbalist or bookworm again."  He put into
the hand of his elder a slip of paper inscribed in a
feminine writing.  Emmanuel looked at it and gave
it back.

"You are not in the least likely to find that here.
It is rather rare."

"Dame! so it seems.  I have ruined a clean pair
of gloves over the search already.  I must go to a
bookseller's, I suppose."

"Well, I was going to say that if you want it for
yourself or for your wife I have a copy, and would lend
it you with pleasure."

"A thousand thanks," replied Armand, turning
away from the box.  "But I want it for someone
else, so that would not do.  I must try down the Rue
des Saints-Pères.  Are you coming my way?  No;
au revoir then."

He crossed the road; and the Marquis looked after
his alert young back with a certain wistfulness before
he continued his peregrination.

A little later Armand emerged from a second-hand
bookshop in the Rue des Saints-Pères with the coveted
volume under his arm.  As he did so he saw himself
presenting it to Madame de Vigerie.  He had really
taken a good deal of trouble for her, and probably,
in his ignorance, paid twice as much as the book
was worth.  But that did not matter if Laurence was
pleased.  He had seen her now three times since their
meeting on the Quai des Tuileries—never alone, it
is true, nor had he succeeded in penetrating to her real
attitude of mind towards him.  He intended to make
the book an excuse for calling at an hour different from
that to which he had been restricted.  Since it was not
a matter of life and death to him he found it distinctly
exciting not to know what she really felt about him.
But that was part of Laurence's attraction.  Meditating
on the pleasant and even piquant prospect opening
before him he reached the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon.

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Horatia was sitting in the salon, wearing a gown in
which he had once expressly admired her—though,
as he had already forgotten this fact, the choice had
no significance for him.  A book lay open in her lap.
But as her husband came over to her and kissed her
hand, uttering one of the agreeable nothings that came
so easily to him, he was instantly aware that she had
been waiting for him, that she was on tiptoe with
expectation about something.  She was looking more
than usually beautiful.  He told her so, sitting down
beside her.

She gave him in return a bright, soft glance, and
closed the open book.  "I wanted to ask you
something, dear," she said.  "Do you think we could go
down to Brittany soon, next week perhaps....
I should like it so much."

"Tiens! what an odd idea!" said Armand.  His
voice sounded indolent and vaguely caressing, but
in his mind was surprise, considerable distaste, and
a premonition of conflict.

"I don't think that it is odd," urged Horatia
earnestly.  "I enjoyed Kerfontaine so much in the
winter.  We shall be going there in May, shall we
not? and it is nearly May now."

"Yes, if you consider the middle of April to be
nearly May," remarked her husband, putting his hands
behind his head and smiling at her with a sort of easy
indulgence.

"No, that was a foolish thing to say.  But surely it
would not matter so very much if we did go in April?"

"I am afraid that it would."

Horatia had been gripping the closed book with a
curious intensity.  "Why would it matter, Armand?
I do want so much to be there."

Armand shifted uneasily.  "My dear, I am very
sorry——"

"But, Armand, if you are really sorry surely you could
arrange it?  You see, it is the first thing I have ever
asked of you."

She looked so lovely and pleading that the young
man was annoyed with destiny, for he would have
liked to yield to her.  But he had not the slightest
intention of losing the way he had already made in his
recovered friendship with Madame de Vigerie.  He
unclasped his hands, sat up, and said firmly, "One has
one's own engagements and plans, you know, chère
amie; it is impossible to put them off and alter them
without due cause.  I am very sorry, as I said before,
but I could not do it."

Horatia leant forward, two bright spots in her
cheeks.  "Would it then be 'without due cause'
if the reason you gave your friends was that I had most
particularly asked you to do it?"

Armand raised his eyebrows.  "My dear, I am
afraid that is the last reason I could ever give them."

It took a second or two for the stinging though
unintentional brutality of this to penetrate, so
composedly and gently did it slip out.  All the more had
it the accent of truth....  The brilliant, wandering
colour went out of Horatia's face; she raised one
hand a little uncertainly, the book slipped from the
other.  Then she rose.

"I am much obliged to you for being so outspoken,"
she said in a slow, rather bewildered voice.  "I thin.
... I think I rather admire it.  It is better to know.
You see, I did not really believe what the Duchesse
said; now I do.  Yes, it is better to know...."  She
ended vaguely, turned, and began to move towards
the door of her boudoir.

"Know what?" asked Armand, uncomfortably
conscious that he had struck much harder than he
intended.  "Horatia, do not go like that.  I——"

Horatia did stop, and faced him.  "She said that
I should make you ridiculous."  The words seemed
to be forced from her.  Then, turning away, and in a
very different tone, she added, "But that is
impossible, is it not, when you take such good care of
yourself!"

"Horatia, listen to me!  Do not be so foolish!"
cried Armand, springing after her, for she was at the
door.  But she went through, and he heard the key
turn in the lock.


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The Comtesse Armand de la Roche-Guyon had
gathered in her boudoir all the relics that she cared to
preserve of Horatia Grenville, and in the place of
honour on the mantelpiece stood a silhouette of her
father as a young man, gazing straight in front of him
with the spirited yet stony gaze of its kind.  And,
having locked the door, Horatia went almost mechanically
towards it, and flinging herself down in the chair,
gave way to a tempest of tears—tears of rage,
humiliation, and the bitterest disappointment.

While she had, unaided, put on this dress this
afternoon, her hands shaking with excitement, she
had acted over the scene.  Armand would very
naturally be surprised at her request, would raise
objections perhaps, but in the end—or at the beginning,
for the matter of that—he would ask her why she was
so set on going to Kerfontaine.  And then she would
tell him her secret....

And this was the realisation of that dream, this was
the shallow pool to which all the sea of rapture of the
past had shrunk!  "I love him—I have given him
everything—I am to bear his child, and he thinks
more of his friends' laughter than of me...."  No
use to fight that tiny doubt that had been growing
lately in her heart, that he did not love her as she
loved him....  But what did that matter, doubt
or certainty, for she did not love him any more.  "I
shall not tell him now," was her thought, joined with
that other, half vengeful, half wistful, "Ah, if he only
knew!"

She looked up with swimming eyes at the silhouette
on the mantelpiece.  What was her father doing,
poor darling, without her?  Oh, if she could only have
gone with her news to him!  A passion of home-sickness
came over her; she was indeed alone in a strange land.
She had always known that she was setting out into
exile, but by Armand's side it could never have been
real banishment.  Now...

A quarter of an hour later she passed into her
bedroom, and, without ringing for her maid, took
off her dress, resolving that she would never wear it
again, bathed her eyes, put on a négligé and returned to
her boudoir.  Then, with an heroic attempt at
self-discipline, she selected a stiff book from the case and
sat down to read it.


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M. le Comte de la Roche-Guyon, when his wife's
boudoir door was shut in his face, gave a philosophical
little shrug of his shoulders and turned away without
more ado.  He proceeded to his own apartment, made
some changes in his attire, and taking up the book for
Madame de Vigerie, set out forthwith to bear it to
that lady, trusting that on his return the sky would
have cleared.

He did not, however, reach her house in the Rue de la
Chaussée d'Antin, for under the chestnut trees in the
Tuileries garden he happened upon the Vicomtesse herself,
seated with two other ladies upon the straw-bottomed
chairs that stood there.  He sat down beside her, and,
her companions being for the moment engrossed with
their own conversation, was able to say to her unheard,

"I was coming to see you.  I have got your book."

"So soon?" said she.  "You are a marvel; a thousand
thanks!"  And she held out her hand.

The young man shook his head, smiling.  "I was
coming to see you," he repeated.

Madame de Vigerie smiled too.  "Very well," she
said, "But not now, for I am not going home.  Come
some afternoon next week."

Armand's face fell a little.  "That is very much
deferred payment," he observed.  "And perhaps I
may not be in Paris."

"Indeed?  And where are you going?"

"My wife is absolutely set on going to Brittany at once."

"But why?"

"Heaven alone knows.  I do not."

The Vicomtesse considered a moment, the point
of her parasol patterning the gravel.  Then a sort of
flash passed over her countenance, "You will go,"
she predicted.  "So had you not better give me the
book now?"

Armand stared at her, nonplussed by the certainty
of her tone and by the mischievous amusement in her
face.  "Mark my words," she continued, "you will
not be here next week—though I am quite aware that
you were only using that possibility as a threat.  Adieu;
my friends, you see, are waiting for me.  We shall
see who is right.  I shall be at St. Clair in June; I
suppose I must resign myself to wait for the book
till then."  And so she left him, outraged with the
thought that she considered him the plaything of a
wife's idle wishes, and he returned, not too well pleased,
to the Rue St. Dominique.

But no sooner had he set foot there than he received
a message that the Duchesse desired to see him
immediately.  Up to the Dowager's suite he then mounted,
to find his venerable relative playing piquet with her
dame de compagnie.

"Aha! here you are at last!" said the Duchesse,
evidently in high good humour.  "Masson, you can
go.  Well, my child, what have you to say for yourself?"

Was it possible—incredible though it seemed—that
Horatia had been complaining to Madame de la Roche-Guyon?
If so, the old lady had evidently not taken
her part.

"What do you want me to say?" enquired the
Comte, cautiously.

"What do I want you to say?  Armand, you are
unpayable!"  And the Dowager went off into a
scream of laughter, causing the little Italian greyhound
to spring up shivering in his basket.  "Sit down,
and tell me why you rushed out of the house directly
you had heard the news.  I was waiting to send for you
to congratulate you."

"To congratulate me? ... On what?"  Enlightenment
came in the midst of his wonder.  "Juste
ciel!  So that was why——"

"You don't mean to say that you really did not
know—that she did not tell you just now?"

Armand sat down, feeling rather dizzy.  "No, not
a word.  She only said that she wanted to go to Brittany
at once, and I——  What a fool I was not to guess!"

"In that sentiment," observed his grandmother,
"I fully concur.  And what did you say about Brittany?"

"I—well, I refused to go."

The Duchesse appealed to the saints.  "It is true,
I have always known that men were idiots, but I did
think that in you, child, resided what little sense there
is in the family....  And you refused—you
refused!  You, to whom she is to give an heir in
December, refused her first request!"  More to the
same effect was proceeding from the Dowager when her
grandson, who had made no attempt to defend himself,
suddenly got up.

"I have been worse than a fool, I have been a brute,"
he said.  He was rather white.  "Forgive me if I go
to her now."  And waiting neither for further admonitions
nor even for permission he hurriedly kissed her
hand and left the room.

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So Horatia had not read more than four pages of
"Locke on the Human Understanding" (which she was
finding, if not consoling, at least astringent against
tears) when she heard his knock.  Upborne, probably,
by the philosopher (for it was the last thing that she
wanted to do), she rose, unlocked the door in silence,
and returning to her place without so much as looking
at the intruder, stood there, one hand on the marble
mantelshelf.

But Armand too came without a word to her side,
and just when—still not turning or looking at him—she
imagined that he was going to speak, perhaps to try
to take her in his arms, he dropped on one knee, and
taking a fold of her négligé put it silently to his lips.





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   CHAPTER IX

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In one of the enormous rooms of her château of St. Clair,
which not even her taste could make other than
oppressive, Laurence-Héloïse de Vigerie sat waiting for her
carriage.  The apartment, with its six great windows,
its consoles of alabaster, its porphyry vases and
chandelier of rock-crystal, still kept its air of pomp from the
time of Louvois, unsubdued by flowers or books.  Even
Madame de Vigerie herself had an air of being in
perpetual warfare with her stiff surroundings, an
appearance of being at this moment, in her pelisse of
lemon-yellow silk and her delicate white jacconet gown,
something rather incongruous and sylphlike shut up by
mistake in a monument.

Sitting near one of the great porphyry vases she looked
impatiently at the clock—monumental also—she tapped
with her little foot in its lilac cashmere boot; finally
she took a rose out of a jardinière and began to twirl it
round and round.  In a moment or two her lips parted
in a smile.  The scent of the rose reminded her of
something.

This time last summer, chance having kept her late
in Paris, some of these very roses had been sent by her
command from St. Clair.  Armand de la Roche-Guyon
had been with her when, somewhat faded, they had
arrived, and he had asked for one.  And she remembered
how, afterwards, with the fragrance of the dying
roses round her, she had pondered for a little time
whether she would marry Armand if he asked her—a
contingency obviously likely to occur any day.  She
had his measure by heart; she knew his fickleness, was
perfectly aware that he was the slave of caprice (his
own or another's), but she knew, too, that he always
came back to her in the end.  For her, with her
connections, wealth and position, it was no great match,
perhaps, the younger son of an impoverished though
very ancient house.  Yet sometimes ... Well, she
had never had to make up her mind!

And, after all, he had fallen under the sway of an empire
stronger, momentarily, than hers.  He had not come
back to her!  The news of his English marriage had
struck her, it is true, as an affront, but she was
persuaded that it was more of a wound to her pride than to
her heart.  And he would have been so much trouble to
keep!

Yet he had some curious quality of charm.  How
easy, in spite of his defection, it had been to take him
back into favour.  It was true that she had caused him
to feel anything but thoroughly reinstated....  And
now she was going to return his wife's visit.—Heigho,
what an odd world!

Madame de Vigerie had not seen Horatia, having been
out when the bride had called, but Armand had
described her.  Evidently she was beautiful.  But that,
in the Vicomtesse's experience, did not count for very
much, and certainly her own lack of beauty had never
troubled her.  Laurence de Vigerie was a finished type
of the belle laide, dowered with the attraction which,
once it has subjugated, can never lose its hold by the
mere passage of time.  Her power came from other
sources than her complexion or her hair.  Passing
through life as she did, always a little amused, apparently
rather cold, and inclined to experiment, elusive in her
relations, absolutely without petty jealousy and very
nearly without malice, she had given no cause for
scandal, and had driven more men distracted than she
cared, sometimes, to remember.


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Horatia put down her embroidery and rose.  She was
dreading this interview.  She was sure that she should
not like Madame de Vigerie, and she would probably
have to see a good deal of her.

Beneath the four upright ostrich plumes which topped
her lemon-yellow bonnet, beneath its wide brim lined
with Adelaide-blue crepe, Horatia saw the irregular
features of the woman who might have been in her
place.  And Laurence de Vigerie beheld the chosen
bride, the woman preferred before her, serious, rather
pale, with a crown of red-gold hair and a simple muslin
gown.  "She is but a child" was her first thought
(instantly corrected), and Horatia's, that the Vicomtesse
was not beautiful, not even pretty, as she had expected.
Among her gifts Madame de Vigerie possessed the
double power of making the banalities of ordinary
intercourse sound interesting, and of getting them over
quickly, for in the course of a few minutes they had been
left behind, and the two were conversing on more
interesting themes.

"You read a great deal, Madame, do you not?"

"I used to," answered Horatia rather wistfully.  "I
have always been fond of reading French," she added.

"Yes, indeed," said Madame de Vigerie, "it is easy
to see that your knowledge of our tongue is profound.
Perhaps if you are not well provided with French books,
you would allow me to send you over a few, I daresay
the library at Kerfontaine is not very up to date.
I know that mine is not, and I have to bring books from
Paris.  Let me lend you the new book of Hugo's which
everyone is devouring, *Notre Dame de Paris*."

Horatia thanked her warmly, and the visitor went on
to admire the garden and the fountain, "which I always
envy so much," she said.

Horatia, too, looked out of the window at the little
figure.

"I am very fond of it," she said, "and I wish I knew
something of its history, for I believe that an ancestor
of my husband's brought it from Italy, but I have never
been able to find out for certain."

Madame de Vigerie gave her a bright and friendly
glance.  "I can tell you all about it," she was beginning,
when the door opened and Armand came in.

He greeted her with composure.  "Do not let me
deprive my wife of the information which you were
about to give her, Vicomtesse," he said.  "Unless,
indeed, it be some fashionable detail of which I am better
left ignorant."

Madame de Vigerie's eyes, as they rested on him,
held a little sprite of mockery which he knew very well.
"We were discussing Art," she said gravely.  "Since
you permit it, Monsieur, I will continue.  Madame la
Comtesse is doubtless aware that her fountain is a copy
of Verrochio's famous boy and dolphin at Florence.
But you, Monsieur, have not told her how, in the
Italian wars of Louis XII, Raoul de Kerfontaine, your
grandfather heaven knows how many times removed
on the mother's side, being desirous of bringing a fairing
to his lady, decided on this not very portable mark of
his affection; how it took so long to copy and to
convey, that when he got back to Brittany the lady
was married to another.  So he set it up in his own
garden and, I daresay, used often to wander round it
in the moonlight, poor gentleman, thinking sad
thoughts."

"Vicomtesse," said Armand laughing, "you have
made that up!"

"Fi donc, Monsieur!" retorted the guest.  "You
do not know the history of your own family!"

"He is scandalously ignorant," agreed Horatia.
"But, Madame, if I may ask, how do you know it so
well?"

"Because," replied Madame de Vigerie, "by an
odd chance, the lady of M. de Kerfontaine's blighted
affections happened to be an ancestress of my husband's.
I can show you the tale in a book at St. Clair—not
of course that St. Clair in its present state existed
then....  And so M. le Comte has never shown
you, Madame, the inscription which the poor Raoul
had carved on the base of the statue?"

"Never.  But if you, Madame, would remedy his
negligence?"

"Willingly," responded the Vicomtesse.  "I am
never so happy as when I am imparting information."

Armand unfastened the window and followed them
out.  The visit was going well.  It was long since he had
seen Horatia so animated.  Feeling that there might be
a slight constraint in the situation, he had purposely
refrained from coming in until the two women should
have broken the ice, and even when he entered had
thought it possible that he should find the temperature
below freezing point.  But you could never tell about
women, for they seemed to have taken a fancy to each
other.  He followed the yellow pelisse and the white
muslin down between the lime-trees, wondering what
Laurence was thinking about.

"You see," said Madame de Vigerie, "what the
poor man thought of women."  She took off a glove and
traced with a delicate finger the remains of the eroded
fettering round the base of the bronze.  "*Cor muliebre
his aquis mutabilius*," she read, and Horatia fell an
instant convert to the continental mode of pronouncing
Latin.

"And was the faithless lady happy?" she asked.

"Supremely, I regret to say.  It was only sad for
M. le Comte's unlucky ancestor.  Mais que voulez-vous?
He should not have been so slow.  And you had
never been told this moving tale?"

"Certainly not," responded Armand.  "It is
derogatory to my ancestor, and for my part I am little
disposed to believe it now."

"In the face of that evidence?" asked Madame de
Vigerie, pointing to the statue.

"That inscription is a commonplace known to mankind
since the days of Horace," retorted the young man.
"It is just as true to-day as then, and is therefore no
evidence at all."

The Vicomtesse removed her gaze from him.
"Madame, you must not let your husband talk in this
manner.  But the real evidence is at St. Clair, and if
you will promise to come and see me soon I will hunt
out the old book.—M. le Comte, would you be good
enough to see if my carriage is there?"

Armand went obediently, but when he returned, he
found his wife and her visitor strayed into the
rose-garden, and talking of gardening matters.  Not even
when putting the Vicomtesse into her carriage had he
the opportunity of a word alone with her, for Horatia
accompanied them.  She had apparently been bidden
to St. Clair next day.

"I do not invite you, M. le Comte," was Madame de
Vigerie's parting remark.  "Since you do not believe
the legend, research would only bore you, and I want
no unwilling converts."


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Tristram Hungerford had been right; the Comte de
la Roche-Guyon, young as he was, did consider himself
to be thoroughly versed in the ways of women.  But
there were occasions during the next three or four weeks
of his sojourn in Brittany when the connoisseur found
himself hopelessly puzzled by the behaviour of the two
nearest specimens of the sex, women, too, of whose
idiosyncrasies he might have been supposed to have an
intimate knowledge—his wife that was and his wife
that might have been.  That these two, of characters
so different, placed in a mutual relationship not of the
most comfortable, should become, not mere acquaintances
but, apparently, actual friends, was beyond him.
And since, in that short space of time, this miracle had
happened; since two days did not pass that Laurence
did not come over to see Horatia, or Horatia go driving
with Laurence, and since miracles were not within his
sphere of belief, Armand refused to credit the evidence.
He thought that the two women were playing at being
friends, for some reason unknown.

But, since Armand had, along with the scepticism,
the logical mind of his race, he did not long occupy this
position.  He could not discover a motive strong
enough to produce so much dissimulation.  Horatia had
nothing very much to gain from intimacy with Madame
de Vigerie; she would naturally be predisposed against
the woman who might have had her place.  And as for
the Vicomtesse, Armand was not fatuous enough to
imagine that she was consciously cultivating a friendship
with the wife in order that she might see more of
the husband.  Indeed, Madame de Vigerie seemed to
take especial care that no such flattering thought should
find even a momentary lodging in his mind.  If he was
not definitely excluded from their society—which
would in a sense have been complimentary—he was
made to feel that his presence or absence was
immaterial.  His position began to be rather galling, and
he strongly suspected Laurence, with her diabolical
intuition, of being pleasantly aware of the fact.

He never saw her alone—a consummation which
could easily have been brought about had she wished
it.  Already she had begun to have her house full of
guests; their own, chiefly members of the family,
would soon be upon them.  But one day he got an
opportunity when, coming home from a ride, and going
into the garden in search of Horatia he perceived,
seated by the fountain in a lilac muslin gown, not his
wife, but Madame de Vigerie.

"At last!" said he, and approached.  The Vicomtesse's
large hat lay on the ground by her side; the
low sun struck gleams from her brown hair.  At his step
she looked round.

"How much I envy you this garden," she said, undisturbed.
"Above all I love this little green fountain."

Armand sat down on the rim of the basin, facing her.

"Permit me to offer it to you," he said.  "It should
have been yours this four hundred years or more."

"Ah, my fickle ancestress!" said Madame de
Vigerie, dabbling her hand in the water.  Goldfish from
all parts hurried towards it.

"What a bait!" said Armand below his breath....
"Where is my wife?"

"Showing a visitor round the garden.  You should
be there, too."

"Doubtless," replied the Comte, without stirring.
He crossed one booted leg over the other, and looked at
her.  She withdrew her hand, and, shaking it, dried it on
her handkerchief.

"Laurence," said the young man suddenly, "don't
you think that you are treating me very badly?"

"O, I hope not!" said the Vicomtesse quite seriously.

"We were friends once," said Armand.

"And now—surely not enemies?"

"On my soul, I had rather have you for an enemy
than for—an acquaintance!"

"A compliment?" asked the Vicomtesse.  "Yes,
I suppose it is....  Armand, I have fallen in love
... with your wife."

"If that is, in return, a compliment to me, I thank
you."

"Really, I do not know whether it is or no.  If you
will permit me to say so, I do not know how she came
to marry you."

"You find me not worthy?" he inquired.

For the first time Madame de Vigerie smiled, shaking
her head slightly.  "I will not mount into the pulpit,
mon ami, however much you press me.  The day when
I shall make you a homily is, I hope, distant.
Meanwhile, I wish you every happiness, and a son like his
mother....  Here they are returning."

When the visitor had departed and Armand, too, had
vanished, the two friends walked up and down under
the limes.

"I have a house full to-morrow," said Madame de
Vigerie.  "When can you come over and see me
quietly, ma chère.  Of course you will both dine with
us next week."

"The Marquis is coming next week," said Horatia,
"and Claude-Edmond.  And, rather to my horror, the
Duchesse has expressed a desire to stay here.  It is a
royal command."

"You will be as busy as I for the next few weeks, then?"

Horatia nodded.  "Yes, except that this house is not
so capacious as St. Clair.  I shall not be able to get much
time for reading, I expect.  I have finished *Ourika*,
however, and the other tales of Madame de Duras.  I
did not admire them very much; perhaps I ought
to have done so."

"They had a vogue some years ago," said Madame de
Vigerie, "probably because she was a great lady.  But I
do not think that any woman who keeps a famous
salon, as she did, can do much else."

"I do not want to write," said Horatia, "but it is a
dream of mine to have a little salon—a literary
salon—some day.  But my husband does not encourage it."

"Monsieur le Comte is quite right," responded
Madame de Vigerie rather unexpectedly.  "To have a
salon is a life in itself.  It is true that the possession of
one is a Frenchwoman's ambition in youth, and her
glory in old age.  But, mon Dieu, what sacrifices does
it not entail on her!  She can be neither wife, mother,
nor lover, and in friendship she can have but one
preference—for the most illustrious man whom she can
attract to her gatherings.  To retain him there she must
sacrifice everything else; she and all her surroundings
must be vowed to his cult.  If she cannot procure such
a great man for the pivot of her circle she must wear
herself out in attentions to a host of lesser lights.—My
dear, you are too good for either of these rôles; do not
regret your lost salon!"


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Madame de Vigerie, being gifted with the seeing eye,
found Horatia pathetic.  "She is losing him, and she
knows it," was her verdict now.  In this she was
perhaps attributing to the girl more clearness of vision
than she had yet attained to, but the tragedy of the
situation she had not overestimated.

On arrival at Kerfontaine, Horatia had tried hard
to pretend that things were as they had been in January.
But the very fact of the attempt had slain the chance
of its success.  It was idle to wander round the
rose-garden, now in fullest leaf and soon to be ablaze; it
had been warmer there under the early snow.  Something
had gone out of the spirit of the place, and not all
the cajolery of May could bring back the thrill of the
bare boughs.  And yet it was not that she wanted her
honeymoon over again.  She had no yearnings for the
romping happiness of the winter.  Then she had been
a girl; now she was a woman.  Even in Paris she had
realised that the time had come for her and Armand to
pass on to another stage—together, and now in the
shadow of motherhood she could understand much that
had been dark to her before.  Never again could their
love fail to satisfy, for it had found its fulfilment.

Something of this she tried to hint to Armand one
May evening in the garden.  He only said, "You amuse
me when you look so serious, Horatia.  I don't
understand what you are talking about.  Those furs become
you," (it was a chilly evening,) "you had better wear
them always."

They were the words he had used in the winter, and
she had thrilled then to hear them.  Now they were like
a sacrilege.  O, why would he not understand!  He
must enter with her into this new world.  She could not,
would not know its joys, and perhaps its fears, alone.

She came one day into his sanctum, where he was
doing something absorbing with a fowling-piece.

"Are you very busy, dear?  Yes, I see you are.  I
will come another time."

She looked very animated and charming, so the
young man laid down the gun and said with a smile.
"Of course I will, mon amie.  What is it that you want
of me?"

"I want you," replied Horatia, mysteriously sparkling,
"to come upstairs to the old armoury.  I have
something to ask you."

He followed her up the staircase, looking at the little
curls on the back of her neck.  She led him to the big,
disused room on the first floor which still held the
remains of what had been a fine collection of armour,
until the tenantry of Armand's maternal grandfather
had ransacked it for weapons during the Revolution,
the better to defend him.

"I do not know what you will say to my idea,"
began Horatia, standing in the midst of the rusty
accoutrements.  "I thought—but, of course, you will
say if you do not like it—that all this armour could
be cleaned, and cleared out and arranged along the
corridors.  There is not very much of it."

"And then?"

"Then ... if it were possible, this big room might
be partitioned into two, or even into three, for nurseries.
But perhaps you would rather not...."

It was a delightful subject for discussion, and
Horatia was quite ready to discuss, even to give way
altogether if he did not approve of her scheme, for she
thought it might seem to him rather revolutionary.

"Mais, mon Dieu, for what do you take me?" asked
her husband, laughing.  "Do you think that I care
where these rusty old pots are put?  Turn them out
anywhere you like, mon amie.  It was not necessary to
bring me up here to ask that!"

"But the partitioning——"

"Of course.  It is an excellent idea.  Do just as you
like."  And he turned to go.

"But, Armand, I thought you would advise me about
that.  You see, if the day nursery were at this side,
where the sun ..."

The faintest shade of impatience appeared on the
young man's face.  "My angel," he said, "I am no
expert on nurseries.  You want a married woman—and
a mason.  Get Thiébault's people down from Paris
to do it properly, if you like; or there is a good man at
Rennes.  I give you carte blanche, only you must not
expect me to arrange it for you.  Will you forgive me
now—the gamekeeper is coming in a few minutes."

And Armand's thought was, as he ran down the stairs,
that of all people he would least have expected Horatia
Grenville to turn into a Martha of domesticity.  No
doubt it was a good thing for the prospects of his heir,
but what if he were going to be pursued by entreaties
for advice about this and that detail!  He was not in
the least disappointed in his marriage.  He was a
Frenchman; marriage was an affair of arrangement,
not of rapture.  He had been luckier than most, for he
had had the rapture too.  He possessed a beautiful wife,
approved of by his family, who might be trusted never
to put him in the always ludicrous position of the
betrayed husband.  He would also have an heir.  If,
now, his wife would but consent to settle down, after their
brief idyll of passion, into the dignified mistress of his
household, and would not make uncomfortable claims
upon him, he need never regret having lost his head over
her in Berkshire.  Her perceptions must be much less
acute than he had imagined if she could not see that
the bonds of matrimony in her adoptive country held
in a different fashion from those of her own.  However,
no doubt everything would right itself in time; if
would be a good thing when the boy was born.

Upstairs, among the plundered armour, Horatia
stood with her head against the window and cried.





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   CHAPTER X

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Yet, three weeks later, on the eve of the arrival of
her guests, Horatia was banishing the paperers and
plasterers from the nearly finished nurseries.

She had made a valiant effort, not only to hide from
Armand the fact that he had deeply wounded her by
his lack of interest, but even to deny it to herself.  At
any rate she would not give way to pique in the matter;
she would carry it through alone, and it was very kind of
him not to have raised difficulties.  Henceforth she
must try to accommodate herself to him in every way,
and she set forward almost with ardour on this fatal
course of submission—fatal because, if she had but
realised it, nothing appealed less to her husband than
such an attitude.  He preferred something more
spirited.  Madame de Vigerie, had she consulted her on
this as on other matters, would have given her
very different advice on the management of men,
but Horatia was too proud and too loyal for such a
course.  She kept telling herself that she must make
allowances for differences of race; in which consideration
it was not given to her to see that if she herself
had been French she would not have taken the affair
so seriously.

And when she had got rid of the workmen she had to
entertain her guests.  The Dowager Duchess had not
been to Kerfontaine for many years.  Her coming
was evidently designed as a great honour to the young
couple.  It was certainly a stirring event.  Armies of
servants preceded and accompanied her; she travelled
in her own antiquated carriage.  Jean had wept in
his mistress's presence at the news of her approach,
but whether from joy or terror or a mixture of both
Horatia was not sure, and indeed the house was moved
to its foundations.  Would the Duchesse find her
rooms cold, damp, or uncomfortable?  It was some
sort of a consolation to feel certain that she was not
likely, in that case, to suffer silently.

However, after a few days, Madame de la Roche-Guyon,
finding her quarters to her liking, commanded
that her old friend the Comtesse de Léridant should
also be invited, and she came, an old lady of aggressive
piety, hung with medals, who cast up her eyes all day
long at "dear Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon" when the
latter paid a flying visit.  Madame de Beaulieu also
came, the family having intimated to Horatia that she
must ask her, and flirted with Armand under the nose
of her husband, whom she brought with her.  The
Marquis de Beaulieu, a middle-aged, bald-headed and
very uninteresting nobleman attempted unsuccessfully
to retaliate by flirting with Horatia.  Finally, Emmanuel
and his son completed the party, and in the youngest
of her guests Horatia found an unexpected well of
consolation.

Claude-Edmond, solemn as ever, had always shown
a disposition to attach himself to his young aunt, and
it sometimes occurred to Horatia that she might try
to make him less like a budding philosopher and more
of an ordinary boy.  She had once or twice asked him
what games he played at the Lycée; no clear impression
had resulted from his answers, and at any rate
he could not play alone.  The only relaxation he seemed
to permit himself at Kerfontaine was a game of
chess in the evening with his father.  And always it
was, "Ma tante, if you are walking may I accompany
you?"  "Ma tante, may I assist you to gather the
flowers?"  Sometimes Horatia pitied him intensely;
sometimes she could have shaken him.

Then one day, snatching a moment from her guests
to go up and look at the nurseries, she overtook
Claude-Edmond slowly climbing the staircase that led to them.

"Where are you going, Claude?" she asked.  "If
you are looking for the old armoury, you will not find
it, I am afraid."

The boy turned an amazed face to her.  "Has it
gone?  What is there, then?"

"It has been turned into nurseries.  Would you like
to see them?"

Mounting beside her, her nephew assented.  "But
for what purpose do you need nurseries?  I have not
seen any baby."

"There is no baby yet," returned Horatia gravely.
"But I feel sure that before very long the marchande
des choux will bring me one, or perhaps I shall find one
under a cabbage in the garden, as you know, Claude,
one does find them.  So I thought it best to begin
getting things ready."

"But certainly," agreed Claude-Edmond with his
wisest air.  "Though I have been told that it is not the
marchande des choux after all..."

"Never mind," interrupted Horatia quickly.  "Come
in and see how the room is altered.  It is ready for
the furniture now."

No one would have dreamed that the rooms had
once been an armoury.  Horatia had followed the
new mode of a trellised paper covering not only the
walls but the ceiling also, so that the effect, as Madame
de Vigerie had remarked, was of a cage of flowers to
imprison the angelic visitant.  But Horatia intended all
the arrangements to be English, and this design, which
she had never told her husband, she now found herself
confiding to the small French boy who stood drinking
in all she said with such serious attentive eyes.

"Nobody knows, Claude.  Shall we keep it as our
secret?  When I was a little girl at home, my bed
stood here, as it were, and from it I could see in the
morning the birds hopping about in the trees
outside—a silver birch it was—and singing, singing..."

Oh, home, home, and the unforgettable memories,
bitter and sweet at once, of those early mornings!

"You are not crying, ma tante?" asked Claude-Edmond
a little anxiously, as she stopped.

"No, no ... I was only wishing there were a
birch tree here too."

"We could easily find one and put it there," said
the boy, at once sympathetic.

Horatia smiled through the mist in her eyes.  "There
is something I should like almost better—a big screen
such as I used to have at the foot of my bed, all covered
over with pictures from children's books."

"But that we could make," suggested the practical
Claude-Edmond.

"Why, of course we could!" exclaimed his aunt,
struck with the idea.  "Claude, you are a genius!
There are plenty of screens in the house....  We
will do it up here, secretly, just we two—if you like,
Claude."

"*If I like!*" exclaimed the boy, enraptured.

And that was why the mistress of the house often
spent so much time in reposing herself in the
afternoon, and why Emmanuel sometimes sought his son
in vain at the same hour.  Both absented might
have been found, surrounded by litter and paste,
playing at being children again in the nursery.

Even Madame de Vigerie did not share their secret, for
her great house was now so full of guests that the
informal intercourse of the early summer was impossible,
though visits of ceremony were exchanged on both
sides.  Life at Kerfontaine was however less
unsociable than in the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, for
in the evening all the inmates gathered round the
domestic hearth, playing bouts-rimés, cards or loto,
or doing fancy-work.  On one such evening in
mid-June all the company was thus assembled in the salon:
the Duchesse, Mme. de Léridant, Emmanuel and M. de
Beaulieu were playing cards, Claude-Edmond was
deep in a book, while Horatia and the Marquise de
Beaulieu, the one embroidering, the other painting on
gauze, were listening to the gallantries of a
superannuated beau of the neighbourhood, who had been
dining with them, when suddenly the Vicomtesse de
Vigerie was announced.

She came in looking, for the first time, to Horatia's
eyes, almost beautiful, and having the effect of being
at once pale and flushed, breathless and collected.
Horatia hurried to greet her, and Armand to relieve
her of the cloak about her shoulders.

"I have news," said she, "news of the greatest
importance.  You have not heard? ... I thought
that perhaps M. le Duc...  Let me pay my respects
first to the Duchesse."  Smiling, excited, she curtsied
to that venerable dame, and then said, like a herald,
"The Regent has left England for Italy!"


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If Horatia was in any doubt as to the significance
of Madame de Vigerie's announcement that evening,
and puzzled at the enthusiasm with which it was
received, the weeks that followed amply enlightened
her.  That the Duchesse de Berry, Regent for her
little son, should have left her royal father-in-law at
Holyrood, meant only one thing, that she was meditating
a bold stroke of some kind.  Neapolitan by birth,
she gravitated naturally towards Italy, and for the
next month, while she was slowly traversing Holland,
Germany and Switzerland, a continual state of ferment
reigned at Kerfontaine and St. Clair.  Madame de
Vigerie was in exceptionally close touch with the
princess, for she had a cousin in her small retinue, and
St. Clair became in consequence a kind of Mecca for
the Legitimists of the neighbourhood.  The atmosphere
of intrigue grew still thicker when in mid-July the
devotees heard that Madame de Berry, arrived at
Sestri, had opened direct communication with some
of the Legitimist leaders, settled there to that end,
and was proportionately agitated when, a little later,
it was announced that Carlo Alberto of Sardinia,
under pressure from the French ambassador at Turin,
had intimated that the princess must leave his territory.
However, as the Duchesse did not fail piously to point
out, good emerged in this case from evil, for
Marie-Caroline in consequence removed to Massa, and here
she could conspire in comfort, since its ruler had
refused to recognise Louis-Philippe.  Hero indeed,
cordially received, and with the ducal palace at her
disposal, she set up a little court, and now the question
was how best to prepare for the rising which was to
take place in the West when the Regent should set
foot in France to claim the heritage of her son.

Before, however, this matter became at all pressing,
Horatia's guests had gradually drifted away—the
Duchesse back to Paris, Emmanuel and his son on
another visit.  M. and Mme. de Beaulieu were the
last to leave.  Unknown to Horatia, the Marquise
signalised her departure by a speech which was not
without its consequences.

"A thousand thanks for your charming hospitality,
my dear cousin," she had said to Armand as they
stood for a moment together on the steps.  "Now that
I am no longer able to play guardian angel, do not
make too conspicuous use of your freedom and go to
see a certain lady too often!"

A dozen people might have said these words to Armand
without offence, but he had never loved his kinswoman,
and his displeasure was instant on his face.  The
Marquise laughed her high little laugh.

"Touché?" she enquired.  "Yes, I counsel you to
be careful, Don Juan.  I have warned our dear Horatia
not to put too much faith in these constant political
interviews at St. Clair."

"I can hardly credit you with so much vulgarity,"
retorted Armand freezingly, and the Marquise went
unescorted down the steps.

Although the departure of the Duchesse was a
great relief, and although Horatia always preferred
Madame de Beaulieu's room to her company, it was
a little dull when the party had broken up.  August
was over the land, hot and languid; the country
had lost its freshness, the gardens flagged.  And
since Madame de Vigerie, and Armand with her, had
thrown herself with ardour into the scheme for
organising revolt in Brittany, she was really too busy for
Horatia to see much of her.  Armand, too, was always
riding hither and thither.  On one occasion he went as
far as Nantes, to interview the newly-formed Royalist
committee there, and talked sometimes of crossing the
Loire into Vendée, where the embers of the great
insurrection of '93 were being fanned to flame.  But
though these avocations took him so much away from
her Horatia was not sorry.  She felt that she had
misjudged him; he *was* capable of enthusiasm for
a cause, and a losing cause, and his attitude about the
Lilies had not been a pose, as she had sometimes been
tempted to think.  That nothing would ever come of
these efforts (as she was convinced) did not displease
her, and she never imagined her husband paying any
penalty for conspiracy about which there seemed to be
so much unguarded talk.

She had therefore no protests for him when he
announced, one morning at the end of August, that he
proposed to ride over to sound an old gentleman
living some miles away in the direction of Guéméné.
This person was a rich Royalist of an exceedingly
miserly disposition, who, could he be induced to unlock
his coffers for the cause, would be worth gaining.  But
Horatia felt more than usually lonely after her husband
had gone; it was now increasingly difficult for her to read,
for she seemed to have lost her powers of concentration,
and the attempt made her head ache.  So in the afternoon
she drove over to St. Clair to see her friend—and
had, on the way, a curious hallucination of seeing
Armand, or someone exactly like him and his horse,
appear for a moment on the road that crossed her own.
But he was too far off for her impression to be
anything but a surmise, and she supposed she was mistaken.

Disappointment awaited her at St. Clair.  Madame
la Vicomtesse was not receiving, and Horatia was
fain to drive home again.  Armand returned from
his expedition only in time to change his clothes for
dinner.  He was very cheerful and conversational
during the meal, and it was not till the servants had
left the room that Horatia asked suddenly,

"Armand, have you a double in these parts?"

"Not that I am aware of," responded her husband
tranquilly, without looking up from the apple that he
was peeling.  "Why?"

"Because, when I went over to St. Clair this afternoon,
I saw someone so like you in the distance, and of
course it could not have been you—unless you changed
your mind, and did not go to M. des Charnières after
all."

"I do not know who it could have been, but it
certainly was not I," responded Armand, the
apple-paring steadily growing in length.  "So you went to
see Madame de Vigerie this afternoon?"

"I went, but I did not see her.  She was not receiving.
Tell me about your visit to M. des Charnières."

"It was not a success," returned the emissary,
shrugging his shoulders.  "The old gentleman is not
going to part with his money for anything less than
absolute certainty.  He is of a meanness that leads
him into curious extravagances.  Conceive, ma chère,
that when he goes to Paris, he so hates paying hotel
bills that he has bought and furnished a house at
each of the stages.  Of course he has had to instal
servants also, but he can bear all that better than
paying at the time for a night's board and lodging.
He received me politely enough, in the only
living-room of the château that he occupies, and, taking
snuff the whole time, he detailed to me the various
reasons why the Regent could never succeed in her
attempt.  I shall not waste my energies over him
again."


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The long mirror in Madame de Vigerie's salon,
which terminated not far from the floor in a marble
shelf supported on curved legs, held the reflections
of a Psyche in marble, many thin-legged gilt chairs,
a fête champêtre after Watteau, and of two persons
seated, pen in hand, on opposite sides of a chilly inlaid
table, and sedulously bent over sheets of paper.  The
scribes were the mistress of the house and Armand de
la Roche-Guyon, and for at least an hour they had
been copying a list of the names of persons willing to
bear arms for the Duchesse de Berry in the Pontivy
division.

The Comte finished his task the first, but Madame
de Vigerie, following with one taper finger the roll
of names, proceeded with hers for a few moments
longer, though she could scarcely have been unconscious
that the young man opposite, leaning back in his chair,
was gazing at her in a manner not specially suggestive
of political absorption.

At last she too came to the end.

"There are a hundred and forty more names in
the other list," she said, biting the feathers of the
pen, and looking across at her fellow copyist.

"My fingers are quite stiff," protested Armand.
"What yours must be I cannot think."

"I am afraid, mon ami, that yours are not used to
the pen," remarked the Vicomtesse.  "Indeed, I
do not know what they are used to."

"Well, perhaps they will handle the sword one day,"
returned the Comte unperturbed.  "I know well that
you do not think them capable of it, but you will see
Madame!"

"You would never do for a soldier," said she.  "You
are too lazy and too insubordinate.—De grâce, do
not leave the table until you have put your list into
some sort of order!  Then give it to me."

"Insubordinate, forsooth!" muttered Armand,
obeying her.  "And lazy, ma foi!  Do not ask me to
copy any more lists for you!"

"I shall not have the opportunity of doing so,"
said the Vicomtesse, taking the papers that he handed
over.  "I am thinking of returning to Paris next week.

"Great Heavens, why?  Next week—it is only the
beginning of September!"

"I know," murmured Madame de Vigerie, busy
with the papers.  "But I have to go....  One,
two, three, five—where is page four?"

"Confound page four!  Laurence, cease being a
conspirator and be a human woman....  You
cannot go suddenly like that!"

"Four, five, six, seven, eight," finished the Vicomtesse.
"Please give me one of the pins at your elbow.  I am
not going to Paris for the cause, but for my own affairs.
I regret it, but I shall have to go.  Do not look so
sulky; it is not polite."

In answer to this Armand got up, and, turning his
back on her with very little ceremony, went to the
window.  Laurence de Vigerie immediately stopped
arranging her papers, and, had he but known it, there
was a very different expression in her eyes when his
own gaze was removed from her, and she looked at
him unwitnessed.

"I shall follow you to Paris," announced the Comte
de la Roche-Guyon after a moment's silence.

"Indeed you will not," riposted Madame de Vigerie.
"For one thing you are not to leave your wife.  I am
sorry to deprive myself of her company."

"I wish," broke out the young man petulantly,
swinging round from the window, "that you would
leave my wife out of this!"

The Vicomtesse laid down the lists and rising went
over to him.  "Listen to me, Armand," she said
quietly.  "We know each other very well ... at
least, I know you very well.  I am your friend; you
know that—but I shall never be anything else to you.
I have much feeling for your wife, and I shall never
permit you, if I can prevent it, to do anything that
may wound her.  If you follow me to Paris, if you
come here again, as you did last Wednesday when
you meant to go to see poor M. des Charnières, I shall
not admit you.  When you return to Paris in the
ordinary course of events, with your wife, I shall
be very glad if you come and see me as usual; and
she has been good enough to ask me to visit her....
Now do not bear me malice for speaking plainly, and
let us be friends again."

Armand looked down at the little hand which she
laid for an instant on his folded arms, but which,
perceiving the tremor which ran through him at her
touch, she instantly withdrew.

"I wonder," he said slowly, "if there is such a
thing as a good devil?  If there is, you are it."

"Merci!  Well, now my homily is over, shall we
copy the other list?"

"Not now," said Armand, his eyes burning.  "Give
it to me and I will copy it for you at home....
No, do not fear, I will not disturb the mysteries of
your preparations for departure by bringing it in person.
I will send it....  Good-bye, then, till Paris; I do
not know when that will be."  He took her hand and
kissed it coldly; and thereafter made his exit with a
good deal of dignity.

And the mirror then reflected a curious thing;
the little figure of Madame de Vigerie sitting once more
at the marble table with her hands locked over her
eyes—not at all the untouched moralist.  Fickle,
selfish, worthless, she knew Armand to be all these,
but directly he was gone she wished him back.  He
was too light to be worth a moment's serious thought;
why, then, did she think of him so much?  Sometimes,
when he had been with her, she had a vision of what he
would be in thirty years' time, a cynical viveur stained
with the print of past and present excesses; sometimes
she wished that she could save him, but did not see
any way.  Sometimes she had a strange maternal
yearning towards him.  But now, this afternoon,
when she had spoken so plainly, there was something
more in her heart—dismay, and a sense of conflict.

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When the list of names arrived in a couple of days'
time, it was addressed in Horatia's writing and had
no enclosure with it.





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   CHAPTER XI

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It was at Chartres, on the homeward journey to Paris,
that Armand's ingenious idea first occurred to him, and
that he matured it, pacing by moonlight round the
Place des Epars.  During that promenade there was
fully revealed to him the means whereby he might
break Madame de Vigerie's friendship with his wife.

The fortnight which had followed the Vicomtesse's
departure from St. Clair had given him ample time for
reflection.  That he should be prevented from seeing as
much as he wished of Laurence because Laurence had
entered upon a tiresome and totally unnecessary
friendship with Horatia, was preposterous.  This friendship
was evidently the cause of Madame de Vigerie's very
annoying attitude towards him.  It behoved him to
take some step about it.  Still more did he see the
necessity of this when he discovered part of the reason
why Horatia was suddenly as anxious to get back to
Paris as she had been to come down to Brittany.  She
missed Madame de Vigerie.

And this, it seemed to Armand, was carrying matters
too far.  It was ridiculous in itself; worse, it put him,
in his own eyes at least, in a ludicrous position.
Moreover, Horatia's submissive attitude had finished by
getting on his nerves.  Not that he was dissatisfied with
his bargain; every husband, he supposed, had
something to put up with.  Only he intended to have what
he wanted in another quarter to boot.

Horatia was far enough from guessing the source of
the preoccupation which was visible in him during the
last few days of their stay at Kerfontaine, nor had
she the faintest idea why he was in such good spirits the
morning that they left Chartres.  He judged it wiser,
however, not to put his plan into operation for two or
three days after their return to the Hôtel de la
Roche-Guyon, which still lacked the presence of Emmanuel
and his son, but which was re-adorned by that of the
Duchesse.  On the fourth morning he came into
Horatia's boudoir looking unusually grave, with his
hands full of papers.

"I have something to tell you, my dear, which you
will not like hearing, I am afraid," he said, looking down
at her as she sat at her writing table, an unfinished
letter to her father under her hand.

Horatia's colour went.  "No bad news from England,
I hope?" she said, and looking at her frail,
startled face, Armand had a momentary pang of
remorse for what he was about to do.  But it did not turn
him from his purpose, and he told her, gently, and with
apparent consideration, that all communication between
the Hôtel and Madame de Vigerie must cease for the
present.  The Government was opening a wakeful eye
upon both parties and was only waiting for some
tangible evidence of conspiracy to move against them.
He had this information, he said, from an unimpeachable
source.

Horatia said very little, only her eyes slowly filled
with tears, and seeing this Armand went away to the
mantelpiece behind her.  He was enjoying his ingenuity
less than he had expected.

"Then I cannot write to her, for you will not be
seeing her either?" came his wife's voice after a
moment.

"No, certainly I shall not be seeing her," replied the
Comte, studying the Rector's coal-black profile, and
wishing that this further sacrifice to truth were not
involved in his plan.  "It would be very serious for her
if she became further suspect to the Government; it
would be very serious for me also.  Even my friend
might lose his place if it were known that he had warned
us.  I daresay that it will only be for a time....  Of
course I need not ask for your promise, Horatia, that
you will not communicate with her in any way?"

She made no answer, and looking round Armand saw
that she had her handkerchief to her eyes, though not a
sound escaped her.  He bit his lip, hesitated, then went
and bent over her.

"My dear, I am so sorry," he said—and he *was*
sorry.  "See, I must go this evening and tell her—she
does not know yet—and you would like to write just
this once to her, would you not? and I will take the
letter for you."


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Some compensation for the discomfort of this little
scene was undoubtedly afforded to its author by the
reflection that the Vicomtesse would not be so easy to
dupe.  Conceivably, even, he might fail to persuade her
of his good faith.  The prospect of a battle of wits was
exhilarating, if momentous.

But his star, good or evil, fought for Armand, putting
into his pocket Horatia's depressed note to her
friend—convincing in that she, at least, had no
doubts—surrounding Madame de Vigerie that evening with an
unusually large circle of habitués, and thus giving the
Comte de la Roche-Guyon the opportunity of displaying
in the midst of them so gloomy and dejected an air that
his hostess could not fail to observe it, and yet was
unable at once to penetrate to its cause.  At last she
beckoned him aside into the embrasure of a window.

"What on earth is the matter with you this evening?"
she demanded.  "You look as if you had been to a
funeral."

Armand did not smile.  On the contrary he told her
his tale, garnishing it, as was necessary for her more
expert ear, with preciser details.  The Vicomtesse was
plainly staggered.

"But that is absurd!" she ejaculated.  "The
Government cannot possibly connect—Tiens, I will ask
M. de Chateaubriand before he goes."  And she looked
across to where the great man, his fine white head
supported on his hand, was standing in a favourite attitude
with his arm on the chimney-piece, an elevation which
his want of stature must have rendered difficult of
comfortable attainment.

Armand laid a hand on her arm.  "I implore you to
do nothing of the sort.  It will ruin my friend if this
gets about.  It is far best to submit, for prudence' sake,
to precautions which may only be temporary.  Needless
to say that I intend, however, to come and see you
sometimes—if you, too, will run the risk—but, of course,
it cannot be openly....  Meanwhile, here is a note
which I promised my wife to bring; but you must on
no account communicate with her."

"But if I am to see you occasionally, I can
communicate through you," protested Madame de Vigerie,
still amazed.

"This once, yes, for she knows that I am here, but
in the future, to avoid alarming her, I shall not tell her
when I come.  Perhaps, indeed, it will be better for me
not to come for a few weeks.  It will depend on what
my friend says."

But here the Vicomtesse, visibly perplexed, was reft
from him by M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, desiring
to take his leave...  And Armand's luck held, for
Chateaubriand, head as he was of the Royalist
Committee of Paris, strongly disapproved of the tendency to
push matters to too sudden an issue displayed by the
younger and more extravagant spirits of the party, and
he cast a glance of disapproval upon the Comte de la
Roche-Guyon.

"Do not, Madame," he said in a low tone, "commit
any imprudence just now.  The time is not ripe, and the
Government is on the watch."  He bowed over her
hand, and passed on.

After this unexpected reinforcement it seemed to
the Comte more diplomatic not to outstay the rest, as
he often did, but of a prudence more finished to leave
Madame de Vigerie still under the empire of M. de
Chateaubriand's warning and his own unusual
caution—his, who had often been reproached by her for
recklessness—and uneasy, perhaps, at the possible
cessation of his visits.  But before he left the Vicomtesse
had found time to scribble a pencil note to Horatia
(which he punctually delivered) and to say that if
it must be so, she could see him alone next Friday,
but that she did not wish him to run risks.  To which
he replied with suitable gravity that if he considered
it unwise, he would not come, and so departed, having
accomplished his object and gained to boot the spice
of clandestine intercourse.

He had, moreover, the fortitude not to go on the
appointed Friday after all, and, when he appeared the
following week in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, to
come armed with so many statistics of the progress of
Royalism in the West, and to keep so strictly to
conversation on the Duchesse de Berry's plans, that
Madame de Vigerie was thoroughly deceived.  But
gradually, almost as imperceptibly as September
merged into October, and the scorched leaves said
farewell to the trees of the Luxembourg and the
Tuileries, the stolen meetings lost something of the
political character which had given them birth.
Laurence de Vigerie was hardly conscious of the change,
or, at least, she shut her eyes to it.  She only knew that
she missed him when he did not come.  And Armand
came more and more frequently.


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And so, after all, the object for which Horatia had
wanted to return to Paris—Laurence's society—was
not to be hers.  She did not seem to desire that of
anyone else, and yet she was very lonely.  She went
out driving, perhaps, for an hour or two, but she neither
paid nor received calls now.  Always once a day at
least Armand would come to see her.  He was very
bright and very polite, and almost punctilious in his
enquiries after her health, but it was apparent to her
that, these courteous formalities at an end he was
anxious to make his exit, to pursue his own avocations,
whatever they might be.  She did not attempt to
detain him.  She would reply to him cheerfully, never
admit that she had a headache or felt tired, and he
would kiss her hand and say, "Do not wear out your eyes
over that embroidery, my dear; why not go to the
Rue Neuve des Augustins and order as much as you
want?"

Once or twice when he had shut the door and gone
out, and the great house seemed settled into silence,
she lay back on her couch and cried a little.  She
was very homesick, A dreadful lassitude took possession
of her, and she began to feel afraid.  Horatia
was not used to illness.  On the few occasions when she
had had a sore throat or some such slight indisposition,
the Rector had read to her by the hour, and enquiries
would come twice a day from Tristram, accompanied
by flowers or grapes or the latest "Edinburgh Review"
which he had ridden into Oxford to fetch for her.
All this attention she had then taken for granted,
almost as her due, and now that she could not longer
command it she seemed to herself but a poor creature
after all, for she had come to have only one conscious
wish, that some one should take care of her and
understand.  It was not that these new relatives were not
considerate, but that their solicitude seemed to spring
from a different source, and sometimes it almost
irritated her.  She felt as if she were in a palace, stifled
by the precautions taken to ensure the safe entrance
into the world of an heir apparent.

But at the worst she found always a spring of secret
joy, and this was in itself a surprise.  Before her
marriage she had never been able to analyse her feelings
about children.  Just as she had supposed that in
some distant future she would marry (in spite of her
protestations to the contrary) so also she imagined
that she would have children of her own.  But that
she should ardently desire to hold her own child in
her arms was an astonishment.  In the picture she
had made of him he was never a very small baby.
He appeared to her always as a child of eighteen months
or two years, and he had red-gold curls and grey eyes.
It was only after some time that she realised she was
thinking of a miniature of herself which hung in her
father's bedroom.  It had never so much as occurred
to her that Maurice might be like Armand.  For as
she had settled that the child would be a boy, so had
she fixed upon the English form of his name, by which
she meant always to call him.  He would of course
have a string of French names; she had heard them
several times: Maurice after his father, whose second
name it was (and fortunately Maurice was an English
name as well, though her English pronunciation of it
would probably give offence), and Stanislas after the
Duc, and Victor after the Dowager (suppose he should
be like the Dowager!), and Etienne after her own
father, and Marie, or Anne, or Elisabeth, she had
forgotten which, and probably Charles after the
dethroned monarch.

Almost every day now mysterious cases and parcels
arrived, addressed to her and bearing an English
postmark; a bath, painted on the outside with a design of
blue loops and knots, had recently found its way into
the Hôtel.  In a fortnight an English nurse was
expected, chosen by Aunt Julia, and she would have
plenty of time to become accustomed to the ways of the
house before her services would be needed.  The
married ladies of the family made their own comments
when they heard that all the babyclothes which Horatia
had not made herself had been sent direct from
England, and there was much hostile criticism on the
proposed addition of an English nurse to the household.
However, Armand had let it be known that his wife
should not be thwarted, and as she did not trouble him
about arrangements he was only too glad for her to
amuse herself in such a harmless fashion.  The nurseries
had been decorated by a well-known Paris firm, and
Horatia was pleased with the cream panelling of the
walls, and the cream curtains with their sprays of pink
roses caught up with pale blue ribbons, and lined with
deep rose pink to give a warm glow to the room.

The day that the painters and decorators left she had
a sudden idea.  There was in her boudoir a copy in oils
of that beautiful Madonna of Raphael's, which Ferdinand
III of Tuscany, discovering in a peasant's cottage,
so loved that it hung always over his bed.  Some
privileged person apparently had obtained permission
to have it copied; the copy had somehow found its way
to a dealer's, and the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, on an
Italian tour, had bought it and presented it to his wife,
Armand's mother.  It had made little appeal to Horatia
at first, but of late she had come to love it, congratulating
herself on being able to discriminate between the
natural beauty of this picture of a mother and her child,
and its superstitious associations.  Her fancy now was
to have the work of art, in its heavy Florentine frame,
removed from her sitting-room and hung over the
mantelpiece in the day nursery.  In these rather unusual
surroundings it could reign alone, and later on it would
be company for her and Maurice.

The order was executed by rather bewildered
servants, who secretly wondered what Madame la Comtesse
would command to be done next, and Horatia, in the
growing dusk, went to look at the effect.  The result was
beyond her expectations.

She sat down and gazed for a long time at the simplicity,
purity, and calm of the fair face.  Suddenly she
bent forward, and, hardly knowing what she was doing,
held out her arms to it with an indescribable gesture at
once of entreaty and of offering, and then as suddenly
leant back in her chair, and covering her face with her
hands began to cry.  She was terribly lonely.  But
it was not for long now.  It was not for long that she
would hold out empty arms....


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The next day it rained in torrents from an early hour,
the persistent rain of autumn.  Armand was away, but
this was nothing unusual.  The post brought her no
fresh parcels, and it was too wet to go out driving, and
her boudoir without the familiar picture seemed forlorn.
Seeking for a diversion she told Martha to light the fire
in the nursery.

"Yes, certainly, my lady," responded Mrs. Kemblet,
delighted, "and perhaps you would like to count
through the things Polly sent over yesterday, and there
is the christening robe to be put away."

"Of course, I had forgotten," said Horatia.  "We
will be very busy, and pretend we are at home in
England."

It was dusk before mistress and maid had finished
their task, and the last heap of small white garments
had been arranged, and the last drawer returned to its
place in the wide press against the wall.  Horatia gave
a sigh of satisfaction.  The occupation had soothed her.

"Now, Martha, if you will bring me a cushion I shall
want nothing more.  Just put that easy chair by the
fire, and a footstool, and I shall sit here till dinner time.
If anyone asks for me you can say I am resting."

She was tired with the small extra exertion, but, for
some reason extraordinarily happy this afternoon.  As
a rule the hours between four and six o'clock were the
longest, but to-night they hardly seemed long enough.
She settled herself deeper in the chair, looked up once
at the picture, and closed her eyes.  She had so much
to think about.

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An hour later and Armand's voice was saying,
"Horatia, Horatia, what are you doing here?  It is
very cold in this room; you will be chilled.  I cannot
think what possessed you to come and sit in such a
barn, though I hardly liked to wake you, for you were
smiling about something."





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   CHAPTER XII

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Horatia had been so little in shops of late that it was
quite a pleasure to find herself again in Herbault's,
whither, the day after this episode, she had gone on her
afternoon drive.  Smiling assistants hurried forward
in the big mirrored room, and when they found that
she only required a few yards of fine lace to match a
pattern, which she drew from her reticule, they were
just as eager to serve her as if she had been ordering one
of their most expensive hats.  Would Madame la
Comtesse be seated, and they would see what could be
done; was not the original lace from the border of a
hat frilling which Madame had of them in the spring?
It was, said Horatia, and she wanted some more if they
still had it.

"Madame la Comtesse will permit me to observe that
frillings round the face are out of date now," said the
assistant doubtfully.  "As Madame sees, we are not
using any at present."  She waved her hand at the rows
of hats and bonnets perched on their stands.

Horatia smiled a little.  "I want it for a different
purpose—for a small cap," she said.  "I liked the
pattern so much, and I thought that if it would not give
you too much trouble to find it..."

Nothing was too much trouble to serve Madame, she
was assured, and the young milliner fluttered away.

Horatia felt pleasantly languid, content to study the
latest creations, and to look at those who were trying
them on.  Not far away a customer was viewing, with
satisfaction, a béret of brilliant violet velvet, trimmed
with acanthus green, and quite close to her, on her left,
was a large gilt screen, behind which, to judge from the
conversation which flowed over it, two ladies were trying
on canezous, or blouses, and gossiping at the same time.
Horatia heard that though some unnamed "she"
passed for one of the best dressed women in Paris, the
speaker, for her part, thought otherwise.  The other
lady laughed, and said, "Are you not prejudiced, ma
chère, because she would not receive your cousin after
his little affair—you know what I mean?"

The first lady was plainly roused at this.  "It was
abominable of her!" she exclaimed.  "And poor
Georges, he was terribly chagrined about it.  Besides,
what business has she to set herself up as so much
better than her neighbours, when everybody knows
that she is overfond of Florian?"

"I thought that was only gossip," said the other.

"Gossip! when she sees him nearly every day!  Why,
everybody knows it.  It began this summer when they
were down in the country.  I know that for a fact; and
now, if you doubt it, come and stay in my appartement
and you will see him go into her house every day as
regular as clockwork, at hours when she receives no one
else.  I will wager you he is there now."

"After all," remarked the second lady thoughtfully,
"it would be rather natural, when he was, as report
says, so near marrying her.  And certainly it would be
difficult to be hardhearted where he is concerned.  But
it does not fall in with what we heard of his fondness
for his wife.  Why, they were always about together at
one time!"

"Like Armand and me!" thought Horatia with a
rather bitter amusement.  "What an offence it must
have been!  I wonder who is this too-attractive
'Florian.'"  Here the milliner brought her a card of
lace of the pattern required, but a little too wide,
intimating, however, her willingness to go back and have
another search for the narrower kind.

By the time that the girl had gone off again on her
errand there were signs that the ladies on the other side
of the screen were departing.  "Yes, send me those two
canezous, the pink and the white ... I don't think
Herbault's cut is as good as it used to be ... Shall
I drive you anywhere, Elise?  You are leaving your
reticule.—By the way, I forgot to tell you the cream of
the business about Florian's poor wife, as you call her,
the Englishwoman.  She and Madame de Vigerie were
bosom friends at one time—isn't it amusing?"  They
rustled away.

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"Madame is ill!" said the young milliner anxiously.
"Shall I get a glass of water—some eau-de-vie?  If
Madame would but sit down again!"

Horatia, as white as death, was standing up, supporting
herself by the back of her chair.  Seeing that she did
not even appear to understand what was said to her, the
girl hastily fetched an older assistant.  Horatia's maid
was also summoned from her errands in another part of
the shop, but by the time she arrived her mistress
appeared to have recovered herself, and was able, in a
few minutes, to return to her carriage.

Once there, deaf to the solicitous inquiries of
Joséphine, and almost, indeed, ignorant of her own
purpose, Horatia gave the order to drive to Madame de
Vigerie's house in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin,
She had no conscious thoughts during the short
transit.  There was no time for them—no room in her
head, round which a piercing band seemed to be drawn,
suffocating them.  But when the carriage began to
slacken something external to herself said:

"You cannot go in.  Ask at the porter's lodge if he
is still there, and say you have come to drive him home.
Then you will know!"

And she told the footman this.  He disappeared under
the archway.  It might yet all be a horrible lie.  The
concierge would be astonished, would tell the man that
M. de la Roche-Guyon never came there now.

The footman came back to the carriage and said
respectfully:

"M. le Comte left about a quarter of an hour ago,
Madame."

"I am too late, then," said Horatia quietly.  "Home,
please."


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Four or five dried specimens of rare seaweeds, neatly
fastened with slips of paper to little cards, lay before
the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon on his writing-table,
and he was agreeably occupied in identifying them, for
he was contemplating a monograph on the algæ of
France.  He would shortly have to ring for a light, but,
like all absorbed persons, he preferred working under
conditions which were momentarily becoming worse
to getting up to the bell.  There is always a spark of
hope, never realised, that the decline of daylight will
somehow be arrested.

However, though Emmanuel would not interrupt
himself, he was interrupted, with the last seaweed under
a magnifying glass, by a knock.

"Come in," he called out, rather vexed.  On removing
his gaze from the brown fronds, he beheld his sister-in-law.

"O, come in, my dear sister," he said, springing to
his feet.  "Permit me to clear you a chair.  I fear there
is not an empty one in the room.  It is rather dark—I
will ring for lights."

"Please do not trouble," returned Horatia.  "I only
wanted to ask you a trifling question.—How far is the
château of Rosdael from Kerfontaine?"

Emmanuel, already on his way to the bell, stopped,
looking surprised.  "Rosdael?  Do you mean where
old M. des Charnières used to live?"

"Used to live!" repeated Horatia like a flash.  "Why
do you say 'used to live'?  Does he not live there
now?"

"He died recently," replied the Marquis, drifting
back almost unconsciously to his writing-table, the
bell still unrung.  "What an extraordinary thing!"
he continued with fresh interest, "that you should
mention him, for I have just been buying some early
botanical works from the sale of his library.  They are
somewhere here."  He stooped to one of the many
piles of books on the floor.

Horatia sank on the nearest chair, book-laden as
it was.

"What do you mean, Emmanuel, by 'recently'?"
she asked.  "Last week—last month?"

The Marquis raised himself, looking thoughtful
and a little puzzled.  "I think it was in August, when
I was with you at Kerfontaine, though I did not
hear of it till afterwards, and I was so sorry, because
if I had known I might have gone over and bought——"

"Are you sure it was August?" interrupted Horatia
leaning forward.

"If you want to know the exact date," said
Emmanuel beginning to hunt about afresh, "I think I
can find you the sale catalogue of his books.  He had a
wonderful collection, mostly inherited.  I remember
having seen him once.  He was a great miser; nothing
would induce him to pay his night's lodging at a hotel,
so he bought a house at every stage to Paris."

"Yes, I have heard that story before," said Horatia
in a strange voice, which the Marquis was too busy to
notice.

"Here it is," he said triumphantly.  "You see,
he died on August the 12th."  And he handed her,
over the writing-table, a thin ill-printed little pamphlet,
the catalogue of the library of M. Adolphe des Charnières,
chevalier de St. Louis, décedé le 12 Août 1831.

"I am sure those books of his are here somewhere,"
he said, seeing the fixity with which his sister-in-law
was staring at the catalogue.  "I think they would
interest you if I could only find them."  And he made
another dive floorwards.

"Please do not trouble—another time..."
came in a breathless voice from Horatia, and when
Emmanuel turned, she had gone, taking the catalogue
with her.

"Dear me," thought the Marquis, "I must tell her
that it is no use trying to buy any books from that
list; they were all sold, every one."  And at last he
rang for a light.


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With the catalogue of M. des Charnières' books
still clutched tightly in her hands, Horatia was standing
perfectly still in the middle of the half-furnished
nursery.  She did not know when Armand would
return, nor how much more she would have of this
sick agony.  Why she had carried it to this place,
where it seemed a thousand times more poignant, she
did not know.

It was yesterday that she had sat here by the fire;
yesterday that she had had a happy dream; yesterday
that Armand, out of solicitude, had awakened her.
On the table lay the pattern of the little cap for
which she had been to get the lace; over the
mantel-piece the Madonna gazed with absorbed, serene eyes
at her Son....

Armand's step at the door—already.

"They said you wanted to see me at once," said
he, coming briskly in.  "I was sure I should find you
here.  But—whatever is the matter?"

Horatia looked at his handsome, alert face, and did
not hasten to answer.  Then she said, "I know now
why Madame de Vigerie and I are never to meet!"

"But you have always known it!" exclaimed her
husband, with every sign of amazement, "Politics——"

She checked him.  "Don't say it again—spare me
that!  Politics!  And I have only to go into a milliner's
to hear your 'politics' discussed!"

A demeanour of kindly calm descended on Armand.
"My dear, you ought not to be standing.  If you will
only sit down we will go into this.  I must insist."  He
pushed forward the big armchair from the fire,
and, partly because she could indeed no longer stand,
Horatia sank into it.  "Now, tell me what you have
been hearing in the milliner's?"

"What is the use," asked Horatia, "of being polite
and considerate in private and humiliating me in
public?  I, your wife, have only to enter Herbault's
to hear the whole story of your connection with
Madame de Vigerie, from its beginning in Brittany
this summer, under my eyes—to hear how you go to
see her every day, how ... O, I don't know how
I bore it!"  She buried her face in her shaking hands.

Armand bent over her.  "For Heaven's sake don't
agitate yourself so, Horatia!  Everybody is gossipped
about in Paris, you must know that, surely!  I give
you my word of honour that it is false.  I did not think
you were the sort of woman to listen to such things."

"Nor did I think—once—that you were the sort
of man to do them."

"I have not," said he steadily.  "Madame de
Vigerie is of a reputation as unsullied as you yourself."

Horatia smiled very bitterly.  "Do you usually leave
her house as early as you did this afternoon?"

"Not being in the habit of going there regularly, I
have naturally no 'usual' hour for leaving," countered
Armand.

"Ah, I forgot—you never go there now because of
'politics'; it is too dangerous!"

He was not to be caught so.  "I did not say that I
never went," he replied coolly.  "I have been occasionally.
Affairs demanded it.  As a matter of fact I was
there this afternoon."

"I knew that," said Horatia.

"I thought so," said her husband to himself.  "May
I ask how you knew it?"

"After what those women said, I came to see."

The young man shrugged his shoulders.  "In spite
of all my adjurations and your promise!  Well, let us
hope that nobody saw you!"

Horatia gave a little gasp of anger.  "And what of
the people who have seen you going there?"

"A man must take some risks," replied the Comte
indifferently.  "I knew that there was a certain amount
of danger, but I did not expect that you, of all people,
would be the person to denounce me."

His adroitness in constantly pushing her from her
position was maddening.  "O, if I were only a man!"
she broke out.  "Do you really think that I am still the
dupe, as I have been so long, of your pitiful 'politics'?
It is all lies—lies everywhere; they choke me—lies
here, lies in Brittany——did that woman ever really
have any letters from the Duchesse de Berry—were not
all your interviews with her just a cloak?  Why, I could
almost believe the Regent herself to be a lie, too—a lie
incarnate, as you are!"

"Horatia, for God's sake control yourself," said
Armand, rather anxiously.  "You do not know what
you are saying, and this agitation is very bad for you."

"For the child, you mean!  How can you pretend to
care for me—except that falsehood comes so easily to
you?  She helps you, I suppose, that treacherous woman,
to make up these plots for keeping me in the dark?"

Armand stiffened.  "Please do not speak of Madame
de Vigerie like that!  You have no right—none
whatever, on my soul."

Horatia laughed.  "It is your duty to champion her.
Which of you invented the story about your visit to
Rosdael last August?"

"Rosdael?  I do not know what you mean," said
Armand; but he looked uneasy.

"Is it possible that you have forgotten the interesting
account you gave me of your visit to old M. des
Charnières, and how he received you, that day when I
thought I had seen you riding near St. Clair, and was
fool enough to believe you when you said you had not
done so?  Whichever of you invented that tale to gull
me with blundered badly, did they not, when they
arranged for you a political interview with a man who
had been dead for nearly a week?  You had better take
this to your accomplice when next you 'run the risk'
of seeing her!"

The young man mechanically took the catalogue
which she held out to him, no doubt inwardly cursing
the antiquarian tastes of his brother, and there was
silence for a moment while he looked frowningly at
its date.

"You cannot, I imagine," pursued Horatia, "say
anything to that.  It was a pity that you did not know
that he was dead; still, it was very unlikely that I
should ever find out."

Armand lifted his head.  "As a matter of fact," he
said slowly, "I did know that M. des Charnières was
dead.  I will tell you exactly what happened.  I started
to ride to Rosdael, not knowing of his recent decease,
when I had gone two or three miles I heard of it, and
turned back.  It was necessary, owing to this check to
our plans, that I should see Madame de Vigerie at once.
I told you the lie—for I admit that it was a lie
... you will misunderstand me, I know—but as a precaution."

"Precaution!" exclaimed Horatia.  "Precaution
against what?"

Armand made a gesture.  "Ma chère, against the
very attitude which you are now taking up.  It seems
it was not unneeded."

There was a touch of faint derision and of triumph
in his tone.  How was it that he always got within her
guard?  Horatia's head swam for a moment; it was like
a duel, in which she knew her skill inferior.

"No, I do not understand you.  How could I ever
need to be told a lie, for any reason?"

"Well, because——  Did Eulalie de Beaulieu, when
she was at Kerfontaine, ever put any ideas into your
head about Madame de Vigerie and me?"

"Certainly not," replied Horatia haughtily.  "And
for one thing I should not have listened to her."

"No, you only listen to unknown scandalmongers in
milliners' shops, is it not?" riposted her husband like
lightning.  "It was against just such lying tongues as
those to whom you apparently gave this easy credence
that I was trying to protect Madame de Vigerie.  But
I was foolish in my choice of weapons.  It was senseless
of me to lie to you that day, and I sincerely ask your
pardon."

Horatia looked very fixedly at him.  "A lie cannot
be so easily wiped out," she said.  "You seem to hold
them very lightly, so that I see you will think nothing
of telling me others—have told them, doubtless, many,
many times.  Do not tell me another now, the greatest
of all, for I shall not believe it."

Armand drew himself up, the pattern of slandered
honour.

"I cannot accuse myself of what I have not done,"
he said with quiet dignity.  "I admit that things look
very black against me; but that is chiefly due to my
own incredible folly, and if you were generous you
would believe me when I swear to you, on the crucifix
if you like—no, that is nothing to you—that there is
not, and never has been, anything between me and
Madame de Vigerie.  If I cannot make you believe me
I am sorry, for your sake as well as mine; but it is the
truth, nevertheless."

"The truth," exclaimed Horatia, "when day after
day you have gone on deceiving me, pretending that
you never saw the Vicomtesse, pretending that I
must not see her—I do not know why you did that,
since you seem to have less sense of shame than I
thought—pretending that you were so concerned for
my comfort..."

She stopped abruptly, very white, with dilated eyes
sind a hand at her heart.

"I begin to see," she said in a strangled voice.
"You wanted an heir.  After that it did not matter.
O, how I loathe myself...."  And she began to
sob, putting her hands wildly to her head.  "Take the
picture down ... I don't want it there ... take
the child away..."  She struggled to get up,
but as Armand, greatly alarmed, bent over her to help
her she shrank back, trying to keep him off, and crying,
"Don't touch me, don't touch me! ... I hate
you! ... I hate your child!  I hate it, I hate it!"

Armand had the sense to dash to the bell and to
pull it furiously.

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Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la
Roche-Guyon was born next day, at half past eleven
in the morning.





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   CHAPTER XIII

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Mrs. Martha Kemblet to her sister Mrs. Polly White,
Paris, November 28th, 1831.

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"My dear Polly,

"Hoping this finds you quite well as it leaves me at
present.  I have not had time these weeks so much
as to send you a line, and now my head is all in a whirl,
and you were always one to want to know things
from the beginning.  The precious babe is well, thank
God, and in spite of all their Popish goings-on, which
are enough to scare a Christian woman.  Will you
believe it, before that dear child was many hours old,
with Miss Horatia at death's door as you may say,
they brought in that Monsenior, as they call him, to
christen him, and the beautiful christening robe as
I put away myself with his dear mother looking on,
not so much as two days before, all wasted.  When
his Reverence came over I did think it would be done
again properly, but no!  A fine string of names he has,
poor mite, but I will not try to write them.  Master
Maurice is enough for me, and it makes me wild to
hear that Joséphine speaking of Monsieur le Vicomte
this and Monsieur le Vicomte that.

"But Joséphine can't show off any of her airs now,
for we are all put to the right about by this Madam
Carry.  Even the old Madam was ready to go down
on her knees to her, and as for the Count I think he
would have given her a pound a minute.  It was a
pity to think that nice Mrs. Pole hadn't come already,
but who was to know that Miss Horatia was going to
take us all by surprise.  Only the day before she was
worrying her pretty head counting over all them
English baby clothes, with me, she knowing nothing
like, and she says to me, 'Martha, are you sure there
is enough?' and I says, 'Saving your presence, more
than enough for twins twice over.'  And there they
are, all lying just as we put them away, and the sweet
infant all bundled up in French ones, like any heathen
Indian.  It's pitiful to see him.

"The next day after we did this Miss Horatia went
out driving to buy some lace for a cap she had set her
mind on, and I met her as she was coming in, and said,
'Have you got the lace you wanted, Mam?' and she
says, looking strange, 'No, Martha,' and it seemed to
me she had forgotten all about it.  Then I went for a
turn myself, and when I came in (it might be six
o'clock or so) I found such a commotion as it might
have been St. Giles' Fair, and all of them jibbering
and jabbering so that I was put to it to know what
had happened, but just then the old Madam's lady
came screaming for me, and I ran upstairs to my
poor lamb.

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"It was sixteen hours before the babe was born; then
for three days she was give over, and they sent a messenger
to fetch his Reverence.  I will say that they spared
no expense, and that they took on terrible.  As you
know, the Count, for all his fair words, has never been
a favourite of mine, but I tell you I was sorry for that
young man.  He was scared pretty nearly out of his
life at first, and then it seemed to me that the family
looked pretty black at him, and it's my belief they had
cause.  That Jackanapes Jules, the Count's valet, told
me for gospel that the Count and she were shut up for a
long time in the nursery after she came in that
afternoon, and it's thought they had words.

"Well, as I was saying, his Reverence arrived, and
I took good care that things should be to his liking,
because, for all that the house is full of duchesses and
marquises as they call themselves, they don't know
how to make a body comfortable as *I* call comfortable.
The poor lamb seemed to cling to him like, but I don't
know that she ever so much as asked to see the Count;
so I drew my own conclusions.

"But that's five weeks ago now, and his Reverence
went home again, as you know, and now, though the
doctor says she may sit up on a couch a little every day
it seems as if she couldn't make the effort.  She just
lies there, white as a lily, so that it's pitiful to see her
and do you know, what's worse, she won't take no notice
of that pretty dear.  And here all these months she's
been wearing herself to death getting the nurseries
ready as if he'd been a royal prince, and she, who
never had a needle in her hand, sewing all day at his
little clothes.  The Lord knows best, I suppose,
but it makes my heart ache."


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The planets of larger bulk which revolved round
Maurice-Victor-Stanislas-Etienne-Marie-Charles de la
Roche-Guyon as their central sun were disturbed
in their courses, for Toinette, the least of these
luminaries, had just rushed into the nurseries to say that
M. le Comte was on his way thither.  It was not
the first time that this comet had impinged upon their
orbits, but it was the first time that he had disturbed
such a galaxy of subsidiary lights.  Joséphine, who had
no business to be there at all, slipped out by a side
door; Toinette, blushing deeply, paused but to make
a reverence and followed her; but Martha, with
merely the slightest sketch of a curtsey, folded her
arms and remained placidly in the background.  The
buxom Breton nurse, rising majestically from her
chair (the great consequence of the burden in her
arms warranting her in refraining from any movement
of respect) waited, as Armand approached, with the air
of a smiling priestess.

The centre of the solar system was looking that
morning more than usually careworn.  He was not
asleep; on the contrary some knotty problem of
existence or pre-existence was engaging his whole
mind.  His worried expression, however, slightly
relaxed as his father bent to look at him, and his
puckered face broke into a different series of
puckers.

"Aha! he recognises M. le Comte!" said the
Breton delightedly.  "He smiles at M. son père!"  (This
was a very free rendering of Maurice's facial
transformation.)  "Let M. le Comte give him his finger,
and he will see how strong he is."

The clutch of the tiny hand round Armand's forefinger
seemed to please him, for he said, "Tiens, Maurice,
do not damage me for life!"

"He resembles M. son père astonishingly," pursued
Madame Carré.  "Probably his hair will be the hair
of Madame la Comtesse, but who could doubt that his
eyes are those of M. le Comte?"

The eyes in question, which were indeed more
blue than grey, were now staring up unwinkingly
and rather disconcertingly at the young man.

"Dost thou recognise me, Maurice?" asked Armand.
"Thou art thyself unlike anyone or anything that I
have ever seen.  Is it possible that I am reminded of
a monkey?"

"M. le Comte would not wish to hold him?" suggested
the nurse.

"Si," answered Armand.  "Give him to me.  He
will not break, hein?"

He had the gift of doing everything deftly, and he
held his son in a manner to call forth praises from the
guardian.  Maurice still studied him, and was carried
over to Martha at the window.

"Well, my good Martha," said Armand, "what do
you think of him?"

"He takes to you, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet
weightily.  (Never, though she sometimes accorded her
"lamb" a title, did she address the source of that title
otherwise.)  "And there's no doubt he has your eyes."

"He has need to take to someone, has he not?"
observed Armand.

And though it had given Martha "a turn" to see
the poor innocent in his father's arms when he had
never been in his mother's, she rose in defence, knowing
the Breton ignorant of English.

"She'll be all right, Sir, my lady will, when she's
stronger, you'll see, and be as fond of him as never was,
she as wanted him so badly....  Will he go back
to his Nana now, the precious?"

"Martha," said the Comte, surrendering his
offspring, "never buy your bonnets at Herbault's.
But you don't, I suppose."

"Certainly not, Sir," responded Mrs. Kemblet, in
some indignation.  "I makes them myself, Sir, not
liking the French style, saving your presence....
Here he is, Mrs. Carry."

And, able then to ponder Armand's cryptic utterance,
she stood staring after him as he left the nursery,
and thought, "Poor young gentleman, it's pitiful!
Well, wild oats, as the saying is, always come home to
roost."  Nevertheless, from that day she had softer
thoughts of "the Count."


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All these agitations had, as may well be imagined,
reverberated nowhere more loudly than in the apartments
of Victorine, Duchesse Douairière de la
Roche-Guyon.  During the crisis she had performed the
customary miracle known as "rising to the occasion";
to her had come the terrified Armand, the distressed
Emmanuel, and from the top of the house she had directed,
as from a quarter-deck, the various manoeuvres which
were to guide the family ship once more into smooth
water.  Now, a veteran admiral, she a little took her
ease, though not relaxing her vigilance, for, to change
the metaphor, there was something savouring of a
mutiny below decks, and the mutineer was the English
wife.

The Dowager had been far too much occupied of late
to pay attention to that curious soul of hers, which
seemed to crave for ghostly nourishment only when her
body had received too much of material, and Monsignor
de la Roche-Guyon, paying a call upon her this
December morning, had not found her desirous of spiritual
intercourse.  He sat there now by her bedside, his
fingers tapping gently on the box of Limoges
enamel which enshrined her false teeth—but this he
did not know—his thin, refined prelate's face a little
flushed from the heat of the room after the cold outside,
while the Marquis, leaning rather gloomily against the
mantelpiece listened, like his cousin, to the venerable
lady's denunciation of her favourite grandson.

"Not," said the Duchesse, with a fine liberality of
view, "that I pronounce judgment upon his affair with
Madame de Vigerie—that is more in your province,
Prosper—but that I cannot conceive his not taking
sufficient precautions to prevent the slightest whisper
of it coming to Horatia's ears at this time.  All
Englishwomen are prudes, and he ought to have known what
the effect would be.  Heaven knows we do not want
another secluded wife in the family ... No, Emmanuel,
you know I do not blame you in the least ... That
she will scarcely speak to Armand is natural, but it is
not natural that she should refuse to take the slightest
interest in the child.  (Prosper, do leave off tapping your
fingers like that!)  As you know, it was never my wish
that she should nurse it, but though events have made
that impossible, I should at least desire——Ah, here
is Armand himself.  Good-morning, grandson!"

"Good-morning, bonne maman," said the young
man, saluting her extended claw.  "Good-morning,
Prosper.  I suppose you are sitting on my case as
usual?"

"Do not be flippant, Armand," said the Duchesse
with majesty.  "You ought to be on your knees
thanking the saints that the child is as healthy as it is,
and that your wife is not in her grave."

Armand sat down with an air of resignation, and
looked across the bed at Prosper.

"If you could make some novel contribution to the
joint sermon, cousin," he said pleasantly, "I should be
grateful.  The old text is getting threadbare."

"I don't want to preach you a sermon, my dear
Armand," replied the priest.  "I think recent events
must have done that."

"I will tell you what recent events have done for
me," retorted the young man with vigour.  "They have
shown me the truth of the English saying, 'as well be
hanged for a sheep as a lamb.'  You drive me, between
you, to wish heartily that I were what you say I am, the
lover of the lady to whom you assign me.  I should be
no worse off—in fact considerably better."

"Armand!" protested his grandmother, with prudery
so manifestly histrionic that even Prosper turned
away to hide a smile.


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"Is he a precious pet, then, and will he come to his
Martha, and would he like to go to his pretty Mamma?"
crooned Martha, rocking a bundle to and fro in her arms.
Maurice, just extricated from the voluminous embrace
of his foster-mother, gurgled assent.

"Has he had a nice walk then, and did he have a
beautiful sleepy sleep?" continued his faithful admirer,
hurrying along the corridor in the direction of her
mistress's bedroom.  Arrived there she stopped,
listened, and knocked.

It was the hour for Horatia to be sitting up in an
armchair.  She did this religiously, according to the
doctor's orders, from three to four, then wearily
allowed herself to be put to bed again.  Now she could
receive a few visitors.  Members of the family, and
connections, came to offer their congratulations, but
the conversation was extremely one-sided, and Martha
would not permit her charge even to say "Yes" and
"No" for longer than ten minutes at a time.  Even the
Duchesse, when she paid her state visit, found herself,
to her indignation, back again in her own apartments
almost as soon as she had left them, and so there was
nothing to do but to send the small parcel containing
the promised emeralds to Horatia, since she had not had
time to make the presentation in person.

It was a good thing, perhaps, that a kind Providence
had prevented this, for her granddaughter-in-law, just
glancing at the jewels, told Martha to put them away
and never to let her see them again.  She had cried after
the episode, and for a week no further visits had been
allowed.  Every day Armand came to kiss her hand.
His appearance seemed to make no difference one way or
the other.  Horatia would say, in answer to his enquiries,
"I am quite well, thank you," and turn her head, so
that there was nothing left for him to do but to go
away.  Her son she had scarcely seen, and her indifference
amounted to a positive distaste for his society.

Once or twice after his morning promenade the fat,
jolly Breton woman, to whom Maurice owed the preservation
of his tiny life, was invited to exhibit her charge,
but Horatia refused so much as to look at him, and
merely said, "Please ask that woman to go away.  I
cannot bear her great cap."  Martha regretfully
obeyed, and by evening was ready to agree to the
exclusion of the child altogether, when she saw how her
mistress's temperature had risen.  That was three
weeks earlier, and although Horatia's bitterness and
apathy continued the doctors had given it as their
opinion that there was a steady if slow improvement.
They were agreed that it would be a great step in the
right direction if Madame la Comtesse could be induced
to take some interest in her baby.  Martha had asked
and received permission to try again, and she now
stood with Maurice in her arms summoning up courage
to enter.  A fresh gurgle gave the necessary impetus;
she turned the handle of the door and went in.

Horatia, as white as her dressing-gown, was sitting
with her back to the door, looking into the fire, her
hands folded before her.

"Would he like to go to his pretty mamma? and he
shall then," said Martha, laying down the bundle in
Horatia's lap.  Horatia started, but with the child
already on her knee it was impossible to resist.

"Now, Miss Horatia, just put your hand under his
little head and hold him a moment for me while I poke
the fire.  He wouldn't cry, no, he wouldn't, Mother's
poppet," she went on, as the infant showed signs of weeping.

Horatia put her hand under his head as she was told,
and awkwardly tried to make a lap for the tiny creature,
who decided at last that his puckerings should end in a
smile.  The fire needed a great deal of making up, and
as soon as Mrs. Kemblet had finished she found that
there were handkerchiefs which that careless Joséphine
had not yet put away.  Horatia appeared afraid to move,
while Maurice clutched wildly at his own thumbs, and
seemed for the moment content with his rapid change of
quarters.

"Martha," came at last the languid voice, "do you
think he is my baby at all?"

"Why, Miss Horatia, how can you talk so!  Whose
else should he be, and his forehead like his Reverence's
own?  Pick him up and cuddle him, my lady; he might
be a poor orphan, not so much as seeing his own mother."

But Maurice at this point, probably feeling himself
an orphan, began to cry.  In an instant the wily Martha
had slipped out of the room, and closed the door
behind her.

"My heart was thumping fit to burst," she afterwards
wrote to Polly.  "But the precious did not cry for
long."  And indeed, when, a quarter of an hour later,
she cautiously opened the door, Horatia was bending
over the child in her lap.  She half turned, and raised a
warning finger.  Maurice was fast asleep.





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   CHAPTER XIV

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It was New Year's Day, 1832, and the Duchesse was
doing up a small packet.  She believed absolutely in a
system of rewards and punishments, and she thought
that when people had done what was right they should
be suitably recompensed.  This, therefore, was a present
of five hundred francs for Martha.

The doctor called in to attend an attack which the
Dowager now permitted herself had given it as his
opinion that the family of La Roche-Guyon had to
thank the English attendant for the recovery of
Madame la Comtesse.  It was three weeks now since
Martha's fortunate experiment, and a marked change
had taken place in its subject.  Horatia was beginning
to be about again as usual.  She drove out daily, and
was receiving visitors.  She had entirely dropped her
peculiar attitude towards the child, and was behaving
like a reasonable being, far more reasonably, indeed,
than the Duchesse could have expected.  To the
Dowager her unnatural dislike of her son had been no
more objectionable than her absorption before his
birth, her extravagant preparations for his advent,
her intention of having an English nurse for him.
Providence, however, had defeated the latter project,
and had caused that treasure Madame Carré to be
installed.  And the latitude which Armand had allowed
to Horatia's fancies for redecoration and upholstery of
the nurseries the Dowager had put down to his shrewdness,
for which she had a considerable respect.  No doubt
the young scamp was glad to see his wife so harmlessly
occupied, so long as he had his own freedom.  It was
true that the consequences of his indulgence in that
freedom had been rather disastrous, but, though the
Duchesse could not be got to believe his protestations of
innocence, she no longer treated him to homilies on the
subject, considering that the conditions of his ménage
were improving.  For not only did Horatia, though she
visited the nursery daily, refrain from disturbing the
régime established by the Duchesse herself, but she had
consented to appear publicly with Armand next week,
so, evidently, the breach was healed.  Could anything
be more satisfactory?

The old lady finished sealing up the packet for
Martha.  It then occurred to her to reward the Blessed
Virgin also, and she wrote an order on her bank for
one of Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's charities.


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In reality the domestic affairs of the Comte and
Comtesse were not prospering as the dispenser of
rewards upstairs believed.  At the very moment when
the Duchesse was indulging in these reflections, Horatia
was on the point of doing something she had long
intended to do.

Armand had just come into her boudoir with his arms
full of flowers.

"I have brought you some lilac," he said, laying
down a sheaf of white blossoms, and with them,
almost furtively, a leather case which, from its shape,
contained a necklace.  "Here are some roses, too.  I
thought you might like them as a New Year's gift for
Maurice, It is his first New Year's Day."

"You are very kind," replied his wife evenly.  "If
you will ring for Joséphine I will tell her to put them
in the nursery."

Armand walked across the room in silence to the bell.
Then he moved away without ringing it, murmuring
something about taking the flowers to Maurice himself.

"Armand," said his wife, looking at the unopened
case, "I think I would rather that you did not give
me presents.  I am afraid that you do not understand."

"Understand what?" asked the young man uneasily.
"I understand, my dear, that you are getting better at
last, and that you are more beautiful than ever."

Horatia motioned him back.  "I am afraid that is
not true," she said in a very matter-of-fact way.  "Will
you sit down?  I have been waiting to be strong enough
to have a talk with you."

Armand did not sit down.  "I see that you have not
forgiven me for my ever-to-be-regretted deception,"
he said, regarding her with some apprehension.

"I do not think that there is much question of forgiving,
or of not forgiving," replied Horatia.  "I really
do not mind if you deceive me or no; I am past that
now.  Since my illness something has happened to
me—I am different.  I believe that the last thing I said
before I fainted was that I hated you.  I take that back;
it is not true.  One cannot hate a ... a person who
does not exist ... I would rather you understood."

"Merci, mon amie, you make yourself perfectly
plain," said Armand with a rather forced lightness.  He
had broken off a stem of the lilac and holding it in his
hand, was gazing at it.  "But I assure you that I do
not regard myself as a ghost, ma foi, not in the least!"

Suddenly he looked up and met her glance full.  "Then
you still do not believe me?"

"I cannot I am sorry," said his wife in a low voice,
and, leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes.  She
was no longer, as before, a duellist needing to see what
parry her antagonist would next use; she was a judge,
pronouncing sentence.  Armand said something under
his breath, breaking up the lilac stem.

But in a moment Horatia reopened her eyes and sat
up.  "I have been so humiliated already," she resumed,
"that I cannot bear any more.  Must I make myself
more explicit?  Take your freedom; do what you like
with it.  I shall ask no questions."

"You are proposing, then, to make a scandal,"
returned her husband, lifting angry eyes.  "That will
not do much to silence the other gossip, which you found
so objectionable, will it?"

"That story does not touch me now," said Horatia.
"And there shall be no scandal, I promise you that.  In
public I shall be your wife.  I will do my duty by your
child.  When we have to appear together I do not think
you will have any cause to complain of me."

Armand suddenly flung the tortured branch of lilac
into the fire.  "For the last time, Horatia, will you
believe me?" he said with passion.  "I have given you
my word of honour; do you expect me to beg your
forgiveness for a fault which I have not committed?  I
have been patient, for you have been very ill—you are
ill now, or you would not create this causeless and
ridiculous situation."

"O, do not delude yourself with that idea," returned
his wife.  "I am quite well now, and I know what I am
saying, and I mean it.  I have not been near death
without learning many things.  I am sorry if the
situation seems to you ridiculous; to me it is more
than that.  I do not want you to speak any more about
forgiveness.  I can never believe you, and that is the
end of the matter."

Armand was whiter even than she.  But the armour
of weakness and weariness which, unrealising, she wore,
was potent.  He controlled himself with obvious
difficulty.

"That is your last word, Horatia?"

"Yes, I think so," said she wearily.  "Would you
mind going now, and telling Martha to come to me."

"Soit!" said the Comte between his teeth, and
walked to the door.

"There is one thing more," said the tired, even voice.
"Would you be so good as to explain matters to
Madame de Vigerie.  She has called twice to see me.
Naturally I shall not receive her, and I have not yet
learned how to lie."

It is enormously to Armand's credit that he did not
bang the door.


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As soon as her husband's footsteps had died away
Horatia got up rather unsteadily from her chair and
turned the key in the lock.  Somehow or other victory
had intensified rather than relieved the misery of life.
She had got what she wanted, and she was frightened
at her own success.  She was not accustomed to
compromise with her conscience, and she had an uneasy
feeling that she was not acting quite rightly—and yet
how otherwise could she go on living in the same house
with Armand?  He ought to be thankful that she had
not insisted on returning to her father.  Now, of course,
he would go at once to that woman!

It was curious that her jealous hate should still be
mixed with pain, and that the treachery of her friend
should still have power to wound her, when greater
things than friendship were at stake, but she had been
very near loving the Vicomtesse, and she had trusted
her from the first time that she had seen her.  For no
other woman before had she ever had quite the same
feeling....  Well, it only proved that even liars
could sometimes speak the truth, for Armand had said
over and over again that no woman could be true to
another.  So that was the last of her illusions.  There
was nothing left to live for, and every day she was
getting stronger.

A door opened and shut at the end of the corridor,
but in the short interval there came the cry of an
infant.  Horatia sat up intent and listening—half rose,
and leant back again.  She was determined not to yield
to the absurd weakness of being unable to sit still and
hear Maurice cry.  There were plenty of people to
quiet him, and besides, in such a world he might as well
get used to crying ...  It was no good.  She got up,
unlocked her door, and listened.  The sound had ceased.

Horatia was very far now from feeling any kind of
repulsion for the baby.  All the strange obsession of her
illness had vanished that afternoon when Martha had
had the temerity to leave him on her lap.  The living
warmth of his tiny body had unsealed the frozen
spring of tenderness, and for that reason it was very
seldom that she allowed herself to take him in her arms.
He was Armand's son, and she was determined not to
forget it—Armand's, who had deceived her and lied to
her from the beginning.  With the shock of her husband's
treachery, the realisation that the unborn child
was his as well as hers, had seemed to burn itself into
her consciousness.  It had wrung from her the cry, "I
hate you, I hate your child!"  She did not hate Armand
now, for, as she had told him, he was dead to her, and
she did not hate Maurice, but he was not the child of her
dreams.  He was Armand's son, a stranger and a
foreigner, a captive already to the family tradition.
He would grow up French in nurture, French in
thought; he would grow up like his father.  And this
was the child who was to have been welcomed into a
world wholly English, prepared for him by his mother.
She could hardly bear to enter the nursery now, to
hear French spoken, where only English was to have
been, and to know that the press against the wall
remained closed, because his nurses could not or would
not dress him in the English babyclothes laid there
lovingly so short a time before.  The beautiful copy of
the Raphael Madonna was all that remained to remind
her of a child and his mother, and a nursery that might
have been.


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The reason for the abrupt cessation of Armand's
visits at the end of October was not known to Madame
de Vigerie for some days.  Then she had a note from him
telling her the news, but without any hint of what had
occasioned the premature arrival of his heir.  The
Vicomtesse was greatly perturbed on Horatia's account
(though understanding that she was now out of danger),
and she went herself to the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon
to inquire, and sent her flowers, more than once or
twice, having no suspicion how those flowers would
have been received had Armand allowed them to reach
his wife's sick-room.  When Madame de Vigerie heard
that Horatia was well enough to receive an intimate
friend for a few minutes she called again, fully expecting
to be admitted, since she was well aware that she herself
was the only friend with the slightest claim to real
intimacy with the English girl.  Much to her disappointment
a message was brought that Madame la Comtesse
was too tired to see her that day.  There was, however,
no hope expressed that she would call again, and
Laurence de Vigerie drove away feeling rather dashed.

Possibly, she told herself, Horatia was shocked at her
temerity in venturing to the house in spite of Armand's
prohibition.  As a matter of fact the Vicomtesse
considered that she had disposed of that prohibition, about
the necessity of which she had more than once had
doubts.  She was sure now, from what she had heard,
that the reason for the secrecy of Armand's visits had
gone—but with its vanishing had ceased the visits, too.
For nine weeks she neither saw him nor heard from him.
And it was during those weeks that she learnt to miss
him more and more intensely, to hope that each
succeeding winter's day might bring him, as of old.

The winter's day which brought him, at length, was
the second of the New Year.  Paris was ringing with the
festivities of the season, and Madame de Vigerie's salon
was full of gifts and flowers.  Into this warm, lamplit,
scented atmosphere, when her other visitors had
departed, came at last Armand de la Roche-Guyon,
pale, almost grim, and empty-handed.

Laurence de Vigerie's heart moved in her breast to
meet him, and she made no attempt to disguise that she
was glad.

"My dear friend," she exclaimed, giving him both
her hands, "where have you been these years—these
centuries?  And how is Horatia?"

"She is better, thank you," replied Armand in a
curious tone, as he lifted her hands to his lips.  "And
I ... O, I have been playing the devoted husband
... to very small purpose."

After so explicit an avowal the extraction of the
whole story was not difficult.  Laurence de Vigerie sat
motionless while, pacing restlessly to and fro, the
young man unfolded it to her.  All his bitterly hurt
self-esteem was in the tale.

"I have lied to Horatia and I have lied to you," he
ended.  "You see what wreckage I have made.  I have
alienated my wife for ever; I have involved you in a
scandal.  It seems to me that there is nothing left but
to blow my brains out, or to slip into the Seine."

"I think Horatia should have believed you," said
Madame de Vigerie in rather a hard voice.

"I had lied too much," answered Armand, and there
was silence.  A petal from a hothouse flower fell on the
shining table at the Vicomtesse's elbow.  She took it
up and began to twist it in her fingers.  At the other side
of the room, Armand sat on a couch with his head in his
hands.

"If I had been seeing her as I used to do it could
never have happened.  Why did you make up that story
to keep us apart?"

The young man gave a sound like a groan.  "Must
you know the real reason?"

"If I am ever to forgive you."

"It was because I wanted you so madly, and because
I saw that I had no chance while you were her friend.
You were too honourable.  It was a base trick ... but
I would have stooped to anything ... I suppose
you will never have anything to do with me again, and
I have nothing but my own cursed folly to thank for it.
If I had not been blinded I should have seen long ago
that you were the only woman in the universe for
me—Laurence, Laurence, you could have made something
of me ... and I have deceived you, and damaged
your reputation.  I will say good-bye, I think, before
you send me away."  He got up.  Madame de Vigerie
had buried her face in her hands.

"Good-bye," he repeated.  "Do not fear that I am
going to shoot myself.  I am not worth such an heroic
ending."  He laughed unsteadily.  "Will you not even
say good-bye, Laurence?"

Never, in all his hours of gaiety and success had
Armand de la Roche-Guyon so appealed to Laurence de
Vigerie as now.  He *had* made wreckage, and he
would be the first to suffer.  She saw him swept to the
feet of the worthless.

"O, I must save you!" she cried, more to herself
than to him.  "Armand, my poor Armand, I do not
cast off my friends like that..."  She held out her
hands, her eyes full of tears.





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   CHAPTER XV

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Ensconced on the Tuscan slope of the Apennines, on
the road from Bologna to Florence, stood an inn,
frequented by travellers less for its comforts than for its
convenient situation, and here, under a pergola, on a
warm September morning of 1831, Tristram and Dormer
were seated.  The road, visible from their present
position, clung desperately to the side of the mountain;
down below was a torrent, faintly clamouring, and
opposite rose another mountain wall, green and
thickly wooded.  At this wall Charles Dormer was now
absently gazing, thinking of the spot, further back,
from which they had seen, vast and indistinct, the plain
of Lombardy, and beyond it, just visible above the
horizon like a flock of small clouds, the summits of the
Alps.  For it was out of the Alps, after all, that they
had come to see Florence.

The voyage had done him good, but as soon as they
landed and he had begun to sightsee, his headaches
came back again.  Then he would abstain for a little—and
try once more.  Matters came at last to a climax in
April, at Rome, and very unwillingly indeed he had
obeyed the English doctor whom Tristram called in,
and gone up to Switzerland for the summer.  The air
of the mountains and the quiet had worked something
of a miracle, and so, having promised themselves, during
their exile, that they would still fulfil their intention of
seeing Florence, they had recrossed the Alps, proposing,
after seeing that city, to take ship at Leghorn.  But
this morning Dormer, to whom this plan was chiefly
due, being in the mood when one can survey oneself
with a rather cynical amusement, was quite conscious
that he was not now so burningly anxious to see
Florence as he had been, for he was beginning to chafe
to get back to Oxford.  The long letter in his hand had
not lessened that anxiety.

He looked across the table at Tristram, who was
reading an old English newspaper.  If he himself had
gained physical health from his travels Tristram had
equally come to a measure of spiritual.  Dormer knew
now that what he had hoped was the true explanation
of Tristram's perplexity was indeed true, and that
Tristram no longer felt a barrier between himself and
the priesthood; in fact he was going to be ordained at
Christmas.

"In how many weeks shall we be home again, did
you say?" he asked suddenly.

Tristram raised a bronzed face from his newspaper.
"In about six, I reckon.  Why?  Is anything the matter?"

"Oh, no," returned his friend.  "I was only wondering
if we could just get an idea of Florence in two or
three days and then go on to Leghorn."

"But you have been wanting all the summer to be in
Florence," said Tristram, laying down his paper.

"Yes, I know, but..."

"What has Newman been writing to you?" asked
Tristram suspiciously.

"An enthusiastic account of the woods of Dart.  He
has been staying with Froude, you know."

"We have seen better things than the Dart—or even
the Axe—for that matter," observed Tristram.  "Anything else?"

Dormer turned over the pages of his letter.  "He
sends me a tirade against Liberalism and the
anti-dogmatic principle, which makes me long to be home.
He says the Bill is bound to pass and the nation is for
revolution."

"Well, I suppose we knew that," returned Tristram,
unimpressed.  "How is he getting on with the
Councils?"

"Very well, I think.  I told you, Tristram, that he
was the right man."

"Oh, I dare say he is good enough," was the grudging
reply.

"Listen to this," said Dormer.  "'My work opens a
grand and most interesting field to me, but how I shall
ever be able to make one assertion, much less to write
one page, I cannot tell.'  That will be all right."

No response from Tristram.  Dormer smiled to himself
and, seeing the mood he was in, omitted the rest of
the page where Newman confided to him his fear that
he should be obliged to confine himself to the one
Council dealing with the Arian heresy.

"Here is something about you.  'It seems very
unlikely that Froude will be able to join Mozley at
St. Ebbe's.  His father and Keble are both against it,
and he himself wants to try his hand first at the
Ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages.  What a pity
it is not a year later, when I suppose Hungerford would
have been in priest's orders.  It would have been just
the thing for him.  Remember, anyhow, that Oxford is
the proper sphere for him and do not let him escape
elsewhere.  If, as you say, he must have work amongst
the poor, Keble agrees with me that something must
be found for him near at hand.  The times are troublous,
and Oxford will want hot-headed men.'"

"I am much obliged to Newman.  No one has ever
called me hot-headed before."

"Oh, you know what he means," said Dormer.

"Anyhow, I can't see what good he thinks I am
going to be to him.  But for the next few years I don't
mind very much what I do.  Eventually, of course, I
should like my parish to be a poor one, and as I shall
never marry I shall be able to live in it, however squalid
it may be."

"I quite agree," said Dormer conciliatingly, "that
you are made for that sort of thing, but for the time
being, perhaps..."

"These poor, ignorant, dirty priests are at least one
with their people," pursued Tristram unregarding, his
eyes fixed on the road below them.  "I expect the mere
fact of their being quite alone makes them more
accessible.  Yes, there is a great deal, Charles, from the
practical standpoint, in your celibate views.  I wish
the accompaniments of that state were not sometimes
so ugly.  I should have expected anyone as fastidious
as you to be the first to see that side of it.  Look
there!"  And he pointed to a snuffy, cassocked form toiling up
the slope.  "If he had had a wife his clothes might have
been mended, and perhaps he might even have washed
his face sometimes."

"If you come to think of it," said Dormer in a
matter-of-fact tone, "the accompaniments of a
martyrdom could never have been anything but ugly."

"My dear fellow," retorted Tristram, smiling, "I
think I have heard you in that vein before.  You are an
idealist, and no doubt it's very comforting.  I have the
misfortune to be unable to get away from facts.
Read about this boat race between Oxford and
London amateurs which took place in June.  I must
go and pack if we are to reach Florence to-night."

He threw Dormer the paper, stooped to pat the
flea-ridden puppy of the hotel, and went in.


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And they might have reached Florence that night if
it had not been for Giulia Barlozzi.

To the human eye Giulia Barlozzi, sitting by the
roadside to beg, appeared little but a bundle of rags.
To the equine perception she was evidently something
much more portentous, and the horses testified their
aversion in a very effective way.  The postilion basely
if prudently contrived to slip off before the pace became
impossible, and the masterless animals tore unchecked
down the steep Apennine road, the open carriage
swaying and banging behind them.  The crash came at
the bottom, where, to make matters really final, there
was a sharp turn and a stone bridge.  Tristram was
flung clear, landing, slightly stunned, not six inches
from the parapet.  When he picked himself up, half
stupefied, peasants, miraculously sprung from nowhere,
had seized the horses and were dragging Dormer,
apparently dead, from beneath the shattered carriage.

Frenzied with apprehension, Tristram struggled
across the road, but before he got to his friend a curtain
seemed to come down over his vision.  He heard
excited, encouraging voices in his ears, arms supported
him, and, half carried, half led, he found himself,
after an uncertain interval, seated in a room with
someone bathing his head.  Around him was a babel
more awful than he had ever imagined could proceed
from the human tongue, lamentations, explanations,
curses, cries and prayers.  And on a table in the middle
of the room, white, dusty, and bleeding a little from a
cut on the temple, lay Dormer, very still.

"Charles!" cried Tristram in a voice of anguish,
springing to his feet.  Instantly the torrent of talk was
turned on to him.

"Non è morto! non è morto!" he was volubly
assured a score of times before he had satisfied himself
that it was true.  A pæan of inward thanksgiving burst
from him when he ascertained that Dormer, though
unconscious, was certainly breathing.  Voices of
commiseration and intense sympathy surged round him as
he bent over his friend, voices appreciative of Dormer's
appearance—"he has a face like San Giovanni himself"—voices
informing him that the priest had been sent for——

"A priest!" cried Tristram in his stumbling Italian.
"It is a doctor that is wanted!"  But when he tried
to explain that he and his friend did not belong to their
Church, a dirty hand waved before his eyes a missal
which Dormer had bought at Bologna, and which had
been jerked out of his pocket in the catastrophe, and he
was assured that his friend was a Christian, and that
the parroco was coming as fast as he could.  However,
when Tristram gathered that the medical skill of this
ecclesiastic—which was represented as being very
great—was all that he was likely to obtain that day, there
being no doctor within many miles, he was prepared to
welcome him more warmly, especially as just at that
juncture he had made the unpleasant discovery that
Dormer's right leg was certainly broken.

The parroco had not arrived, and discussion was still
raging round the table and its burden when Dormer
came back to consciousness.  Tristram, who was wetting
his lips with brandy at the time, stopped as he saw his
friend's eyes open, and said, in no very steady voice,
"Thank God! ... Charles, my dear fellow, I am
afraid your leg is broken.  But I thought ... O,
thank God it is no worse."

Dormer lay quiet a moment, his head on Tristram's
arm.  "This ... reminds me ... of Eton, he
said at last, faintly.  And, sick with pain, he added, very
characteristically, "It is entirely my own fault
... for insisting on returning ... to Florence."





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   CHAPTER XVI

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That Tristram Hungerford, nearly four months later,
should still be in Italy, should, indeed, be walking up
and down the Cascine at Florence, among other
promenaders, on a fine day in January, was due to the
fact that an obscure Italian parroco had received from art
a shadowy acquaintance with medicine and from nature,
unbounded confidence wherewith to make use of it.

Never again was Tristram likely to allow a physician
of souls to try his hand at mending a body, least of all
the body of a friend.  Priestly surgery, as it had been
practised on Dormer, he would henceforth eschew like
the plague.  For the result of the parroco's ministrations
had been disastrous, and his setting of the broken
leg so bungling that at last Tristram had Dormer
removed to Florence and procured the services of a
first-class surgeon.  The latter pulled a long face, and said
that if the English signor did not want to walk lame all
his days the leg must be re-set.  At the stage then
reached this involved breaking the bone again.  It is
probable that Tristram, sitting in the next room with
his hands over his ears, suffered quite as much as the
victim himself.  The surgeon indeed told him afterwards
that, had not his friend been a heretic, he might
have thought he had been miraculously relieved, as were
sometimes the holy martyrs.  Not, however, that when
he saw Dormer afterwards, Tristram could discern much
evidence of alleviation of any kind.

However, in a week or ten days now they were going
home.  Dormer's accident had not, at any rate, brought
back his headaches; he affirmed, on the contrary, that
the long, enforced rest had done just what he needed.
He had borne the pain and tedium serenely, almost
lightly; the only thing that seemed to try him was his
absence from Oxford, and the fact that his misfortune
had delayed his friend's ordination.  Their prolonged
stay had brought them several acquaintances among
the English colony at Florence, and of late they had
come to know an Italian gentleman connected with the
Court, a certain Signor della Torre Vecchia, who had
become smitten with an immense admiration for
Dormer.  Tristram had indeed rather suffered from
this worship, and so, though the Italian had been
exceedingly kind to them both, putting a carriage at
their disposal and doing his utmost to carry off Dormer
from their hotel to his villa at Fiesole, Tristram was
not altogether sorry that their benefactor was leaving
Florence that very afternoon.  For when Signor della
Torre Vecchia could get Tristram alone he did nothing
but talk about his dilettissimo amico, his charm, his
looks ("one would say a portrait by Van Dyck,
signore"), his intellectual distinction.  He drove
Tristram into promising him Dormer's book on the
Non-Jurors, for he had been in England and manifested
a most inexplicable interest in the English Church,
though, despite their endeavours to prove to him that
she was a part of the Church Catholic—instancing the
Catholicity of her Prayer-Book, while admitting the
Protestantism of her practice—he persisted in regarding
her as a phenomenon, and they never got any further.
Afterwards he would take Tristram aside and reiterate
his conviction that nobody like Dormer could possibly
remain permanently outside the True Church.  The
only consolation which Tristram derived from these
confidences was the power of chaffing Dormer
unmercifully on the effect produced by his "romantic
appearance."

Towards Horatia Tristram's feelings had changed.
He would always, he supposed, love her better than
anyone else in the world, but he did not love her now
as a lover.  Besides the fierce struggle of the past
months to tear from his heart what he regarded as sin,
a struggle which had slowly been successful, there was
the knowledge, conveyed to him by the Rector, that she
was about to have a child.  Unconsciously this made a
difference to him.  He felt now as he imagined an elder
brother might feel towards a sister who had always been
very dear to him, full of an affection essentially
protective.  The time had been that, even though the sense
of sin had left him, he could not receive a letter from her
without being plunged in depression.  But now he
would have been very glad of a letter, for, whether they
were lost or delayed in the notoriously uncertain
Italian posts, or whether they were non-existent, no
communications from the Rector or from Horatia had
reached him since August, and he sometimes imagined
horrible things, as that Horatia was dead, for he did not
know when her child was expected.

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Another change, too, had gradually wrought in his
spirit, He was, in a sense, quite honest when he mocked
at Dormer's idealisation of the single life, though perhaps
his mockery was due to the knowledge that the ideas
which he derided were not really so very alien to his
mind.

Now, indeed, if the truth were known, they had even
begun to have a curious attraction for him—a speculative
attraction.  What if to some souls there did really
come a call to win "that little coronet or special reward
which God hath prepared (extraordinary and beside the
great Crown of all faithful souls)" as the author of *Holy
Living* had it, for those who had made the sacrifice of
earthly affection and ties.  And persons *did* make
that sacrifice, in numbers—as witness the not very
attractive religious whom he saw about the streets of
Florence.  Most of all, unforgettable, recurring again
and again to his mind, there was the great fresco in
the monastery of San Marco, where S. Dominic, kneeling
at the foot of the Cross, embraces it in a passion of love
and pain, and the Crucified looks down at him.  It had
taken Tristram's breath away when first he saw it at
the end of the cloister.  After some time he went and
looked at it again—and came away very sad.  Its message
was not for him, whose obedience was loveless.  All that
the picture's spiritual beauty could do for him now was
to remind him painfully of Keble's words, so applicable
to himself, of the shame of the thought—

   |  "That souls in refuge, holding by the cross
   |  Should wince and fret at this world's little loss."

Yes, to walk among the lilies might be given to such
an one as Dormer, but not to a commonplace person like
himself, who had been forced into sacrifice.  He had
nothing to give of his own free-will.  That he would
henceforth live without earthly ties was not because he
had been smitten by a vision from on high, but because
the woman he loved had been taken from him.  It was
enough for him if he could echo the close of those same
lines—

   |  "Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,
   |    O let my heart no further roam,
   |  'Tis Thine by vows and hopes and fears
   |    Long since——"
   |

Some way off a stir among the promenaders and the
sight of the Ducal livery, portending, probably, that the
Grand Duke was taking the air, reminded Tristram of
Torre Vecchia, and his impending departure.  Pulling
out his watch, he hurried off.

As he entered the hotel he was stopped by the porter.

"The post is in, Excellency, and there are two
English letters for you."

The letters were both addressed in Mr. Grenville's
handwriting, and one had been posted no less than three
months before.


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Dormer crumpled up the paper on which he had been
scribbling and pushed it under his cushions, where he lay
on a couch near a window looking out on to the Arno.
The translation which he had been making of a portion
of Andrewes' *Preces Privatae* did not please his difficult
taste, and he took up instead the other book lying beside
him—Serenus Cressy's edition of Father Augustine
Baker's *Sancta Sophia*, or *Directions for the Prayer of
Contemplation*, a relic of one of his Jacobite ancestors
who had afterwards become a Benedictine, which he had
found, at his mother's death, among her books.  He
glanced at the title page, where the hand which more
than a hundred years ago had written its owner's
name—and his—Carolus Dormer—had traced below a cross
and the family motto, 'Ciò che Dio vuole, io
voglio—God's Will my will'; and began to read the chapter
"Of the Great Desolation."  Perhaps because he lived
almost always in the conscious presence of God the
description of "this most sharp purgatory of love"
had for him a curious fascination.

"For what has a soul left to fear that can with a
peaceable mind support, yea, and make her benefit of
the absence of God Himself."

He closed the book and lay back, gazing out of the
window, yet San Miniato and its cypresses were nothing
but a blur....

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The door opened, and the landlord admitted a tall,
fair Italian, wrapped in an ample cloak.

"Do not rise, do not rise, my dear friend, I implore
you!" exclaimed the visitor, swooping down upon
Dormer and seizing both his hands.  "And how do you
find yourself this afternoon?  Not in pain, I trust!"

"But I am perfectly well," protested Dormer,
laughing.  Accustomed as he was to these effusive
greetings, he was always glad when Tristram was not
by to witness them.  "In a few days we, too, shall be
leaving Florence."

Standing over him in his great black cloak, Signor
della Torre Vecchia shook his head dolefully.  "I doubt
if it is wise—whether you will really be fit to travel."

At this point the landlord, with many apologies, desired
to be permitted to set down the coffee on the table
near the couch, and the guest had to make way for him.

"Your Excellencies have everything they require?"
asked he.  "Signor Ungerford is just come in; he reads
his correspondence.  The courier has arrived, but there
are no other letters."  One overflowing smile, he bowed
himself out.

"Pray sit down, Signore," said Dormer.  "We will
not wait for Mr. Hungerford."  And he stretched out
his arm to the coffee.

"Ah, but you must allow me, in the circumstances,
to do that!" said Torre Vecchia quickly, and he
snatched away the tray.  "With what pleasure should
I not have done this for you up at Fiesole," he observed
wistfully, as he poured out the coffee.  "It will always
be a life-long regret to me that you would not permit
me to remove you to Villa San Giuliano."

"As if I were not sufficiently indebted to you
without that!" exclaimed the Englishman.  "For all your
kindness to a stranger I can make no return but to hope
that, when you visit England again, you will come to
Oxford as my guest."

Torre Vecchia gave him, with his coffee, a promise
that he would do so, and flowed on in a gentle but
swift-running stream of converse, while Dormer began to
wonder why Tristram did not join them.  Finally he
apologised for him, suggesting that he did not know of
the Italian's presence.  Torre Vecchia made a large
gesture that excused him.

"We were told," said he, "that he is reading his
letters, and who can say whether there is not one from
his betrothed.  Pray do not have him disturbed....
You know, Signore, that your Church is very fortunate
in possessing material of the type of Signor Hungerford
for her pastors—for I understand that he is about to
enter that estate.  Is it not true that the English
country gentleman has an equal, if not a superior, in the
parson, who is a man of the world, with a training of the
University, whereas ours are ... to put it delicately,
not high born, and seminary bred....  But here I
am on this topic again—and I hope, Signore, that in
our most interesting conversation of yesterday, when
I said how much I disliked our system of enforced
celibacy for the clergy, I did not seem to be criticising
Holy Church, of which I trust I am a faithful son."

Dormer relieved him of this apprehension, and he
continued:

"But there are these two points which, when I feel
I shall not be misunderstood, I cannot help deploring—most
of all the enforced celibacy."  Torre Vecchia
dropped his voice and looked round, apparently to
make sure that they were alone, ere he went on
earnestly, "'Signore, consider the isolated position of
the ordinary priest, consider the number of things
enjoyed by his fellow-men that he must renounce—above
all, that great happiness, which our holy religion
sanctifies for others, but which it forbids him even to
think of for himself.  His life may inspire respect, even
admiration, but it excites—in me, at least—regret for
so much rigour, which is surely in contradiction with
what Nature and God Himself have implanted....
I find it so extraordinary that you, a divine of the
English Church, do not agree with me!"

"But I do, in a sense," retorted Dormer.  "I rejoice
that our clergy are free to marry or not to marry; only
I would wish to see the majority unmarried."

"You would deprive them then of those pure pleasures
which your Church allows, the pleasures of a
home, of a wife, of children?"

"I would not deprive them of these.  But I would
have the greater number deprive themselves."

Torre Vecchia lifted his hands and eyes to heaven.
"But this is the spirit of Catholic asceticism, and yet
you are not a Catholic!  I am more puzzled than ever.
You and your friends, you tell me, believe in the Real
Presence, in the apostolical succession, in the power of
the keys, and yet when I was in England last I never
met a single person who seemed even to have heard of
such things!"

"Perhaps not, but they will hear some day," said
Dormer quietly, and at that moment Tristram entered,
full of apologies, which were met by counter-apologies
from the Italian, and finally merged into a scene of
leavetaking, as the latter discovered that it was later
than he thought.

"You must make amends for your absence now,
Signore," he said, smiling at Tristram, "by allowing
me to call upon you when next I am in England.  And
in spite of your friend's views (which never cease to
astonish me) I cannot help hoping that this will be in
one of those delicious country parsonages, embowered
in roses, bright with wife and child, to which I have
before now been welcomed—at what you call the
'family-living,' in short!"

He left Tristram deprived of speech and once more
bent over Dormer.  "And for you, my dear friend, how
I wish I could have seen you restored to perfect health
before I left!  I am putting a carriage at your entire
disposal.  Every afternoon one of my people shall come
round and see if you need it.  No, no thanks, I beg
... I must veritably fly.  Addio, caro amico; I
trust I may say a rivederci."  Uttering further swift
and polite phrases, and flinging his cloak round him
with the art of the South, he was gone.

Almost ere the door had closed Dormer had rolled
over like a boy and buried his face in the sofa-cushions.
"Why did you not come in before, you wretch!" he
ejaculated.  "I have been having such a disquisition,
all to myself.  What on earth were you doing?  It was
no time for reading letters."  Turning over again, as a
thought struck him, he said abruptly: "I hope that
well-meaning blunderer did not hurt you?"

"Of course not," answered his friend.  "But ... I've
just had bad news."  And he went and sat down in
the Italian's vacant place.

Dormer struggled off the sofa.  "My dear fellow,
what is it?"

"She's been very ill.  The Rector had to go
over—her child was born prematurely."

Dormer gave an exclamation.  "Did it live?"

"She was in great danger for four days," said
Tristram, running his hands through his hair, "in
great danger, and I never knew!  It must have been
about the time that we got here.  The letter was
temporarily lost, I suppose.  Yes, the child lived.  This
second letter of the Rector's, dated about a month ago,
which has reached me at the same time as the first, says
that he is not satisfied with the reports he has of her,
and that he would be very glad if I could see her before
crossing the Channel."





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   CHAPTER XVII

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A fortnight later they drove into Paris.

Tristram had written to Horatia announcing the
probable date of their arrival, but, as in his trouble he
had omitted to give their address, there was no letter
to greet him, no invitation to stay instead at the Hôtel
de la Roche-Guyon, as there would have been had she
known where he would be.  He was rather glad when
he realised, on arrival, what he had done.  It was late.
Next day he sent a note by a messenger saying that he
and Dormer would call in the early afternoon.

In the morning he went out by himself, and leaning
over the Pont Royal watched the Seine running to the
sea.  Much water had slipped under that bridge since
last he was in Paris.  He smiled at the commonplaceness
of the thought; but it was true, nevertheless.  Did
Horatia ever cross the bridge?—of course she must
often do so.  Paris was different from the Paris of
old—different from any other city in the world, now.

One of the views of the world was before him, where
up the stream Notre Dame lay magnificently at anchor.
In his lonely walks in Florence Tristram had acquired the
habit of going almost every day into some church or
other; the desire to enter one now came upon him, and
he left his post and made his way, not however to Notre
Dame, but to the church which was to him the most
attractive in Paris, St. Etienne du Mont.

The beautiful jubé burst on his senses with a new
surprise; the splendid windows blazed again.  He
knelt down, undisturbed by a couple of tourists who
were wandering round.  The church was full of light;
the wonderful exultant lines of the screen caught up his
spirit, and he saw once more, not with the faint sense of
regret which once he had, that the most jewelled of the
windows were set up high in the clerestory, where the
eye had to seek for them.  St. Etienne meant that,
then—the rapture, the ardour, the flaming ecstasy of
sacrifice—more, of sacrifice that seemed uncalled for.
Would he ever know it, or must he always feel that
he gave, not grudgingly indeed, but without a grain of
the incense of joy?


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He thought of the church as he and Dormer walked
rather silently along the Rue St. Dominique that
afternoon and came at last to the gateway of the Hôtel de la
Roche-Guyon.  Yes, he had made the sacrifice completely;
it could not be redemanded now, even though
he was to see her, to touch her hand.  It was relief
unspeakable to know this; nine months, six months ago
he could not have met her.  Yet he had a quite ordinary
dread of the encounter, of its strangeness, of the feeling
that something had come down and shut her off.  Would
she be looking ill?

He had said to Dormer that he rather anticipated
being received in the midst of a family gathering, since
he was known to the Marquis as well, and since Armand
was indeed no little in his debt.  He was pleased to find
that this was not the case.  The lackey led them up the
stairs to Horatia's boudoir.  Madame la Comtesse (how
unfamiliar!) was expecting them.

At first sight, as Horatia rose to greet them, Tristram
thought, "Yes, she has been ill, she looks a woman, but
she is the same."  She had for a moment all her old
vivacity, her delightful smile, the same trick of screwing
her eyes up when she talked.  She gave him just the
welcome that he might have had in Berkshire.  He was
even able to remember, as she held out her hand to
Dormer, all the hits she used to aim at his friend.

"I hope you are quite recovered from your accident,
Mr. Dormer," she said.  "You must not stand a moment,
I am sure.  Let us all sit down, and we can gossip
comfortably."

She waved them into chairs.  The voice, the words,
were just Horatia's own; the air a little more assured,
more mature—that of Madame la Comtesse de la
Roche-Guyon.  No harm in that.

She talked on lightly.  Papa, she was certain, had been
alarming Tristram unnecessarily; she was as well as ever
she had been in her life.  And why had not Tristram
given her an address?—could they not come and stay
at the Hôtel now?  Presently they must see her son,
and Armand would soon be in.

And as she talked the sense of effort began to be
apparent, the glow, the first illusion faded.  She was
not the same Horatia; she was not even the Comtesse
de la Roche-Guyon, an Horatia ripened by her station,
she was somehow different.  She had not the same
vitality.  This was what her illness had done to her,
thought Tristram—drained away some of that almost
childish and petulant animation which he used to love
in her.  Spring had left those green boughs, perhaps not
to revisit them.  He was sad; and sat a little silent
while she talked, without telling them much, about
Armand, about this, that, and the other, about her own
pleasure in seeing them, ending at last by saying,
"Perhaps we had better be going now into the salon."

So they followed her to that apartment where, throned
in state on a sofa, out of deference to the English
prejudice against being received in a bedroom, sat the
Duchesse—and Tristram was momentarily startled to
perceive that her hair, as he innocently supposed it to
be, was of almost the same shade as Horatia's.  Beside
her, talking with great animation, was a young and
fashionably dressed woman, the Marquise de Beaulieu.
His old acquaintance Emmanuel was standing by these
two, and in a window a tall ecclesiastic whom he did
not know was conversing with a shrivelled little old lady
equally unknown to him.

"Aha!" said the Dowager, "so this is the celebrated
M. Hungerford to whom, I understand, our young couple
owe their present felicity."  And she tendered her small
aged hand with a smile that unmasked the full battery
of her false teeth.  "I have also to thank you, Monsieur,
for your kind hospitality to my son, as well as to my
grandson.  And why, I pray, are we to be given no
opportunity of returning so many obligations?"  And
while, with half-bantering condescension, she proceeded
in this vein, and Emmanuel greeted him again with
genuine pleasure, Tristram was conscious that Dormer,
rescued from his momentary fall into the clutches of
Madame de Beaulieu, was borne off and presented by
Horatia to the priest in the window.  Then Armand
appeared, with a smile for everybody, delighted to see
his former host, very gallant to his wife.  *He* had not
altered.  Eventually he separated Tristram from the
Duchesse and his brother, and began to make courteous
and tactful inquiries about his "old friends" at Compton,
but all the while Tristram's mind was busy trying
to account for the change in Horatia.  He was beginning
to think it due, not to her illness exactly, but to the
atmosphere in which she lived, to these over-many
relations, amongst whom her identity, once so strong,
seemed almost lost.

Presently further stir, and Maurice was borne in like
a relic, and deposited in a strange shrine, his
great-grandmother's lap.  Somewhat to Tristram's surprise,
Armand immediately went over to him and presented
his finger; the infant, whose face had assumed an
anxious expression, crowed loudly and seized it.

"Small doubt that he is thy son, mauvais sujet,"
Tristram heard the Duchesse to remark sotto voce to
her grandson.  "His eyes are more like thine every day.
Do not throw thyself about thus, little one; I have
held many children before thee."

But Tristram, the prey of a curious fascination,
remained where he was.  And all this while, too,
Horatia was sitting leaning her head on her hand, at
the other side of the room, alone, almost unnoticed,
except that Dormer, though still talking to Monsignor
de la Roche-Guyon, was looking at her intently.  It was
true that Horatia's eyes were fixed upon the group
round the sofa, or rather upon its centre; their
expression was not to be read, but the weariness, the
profound lassitude of her pose was the ineffaceable thing
which Tristram carried away from the scene—that,
and Armand's look as he stooped over their child.





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   CHAPTER XVIII

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When Tristram and Dormer had departed, and the
family party broken up, the Comtesse de la
Roche-Guyon went to her own apartments and wept
hysterically.  The following Sunday she resumed her
attendance at Morning Prayer.

The reason for her action was not far to seek.  Of all
the emotions which the sight of Tristram had called up,
homesickness was the most piercing.  She had not let
him see it; she had not thought, before he came, that
she was capable of any more feeling.  She had told
herself, when she got his letter from Italy, that she was
far too miserable to care whether he came or no.  But
when she talked with him, when the sound of his voice
had rekindled all the past years of happiness, she
desired passionately the things of home, more even
than when her father had come over, for then she had
hardly strength for a wish of any kind.

She had long been putting off going again to the
Embassy chapel, on the score that she was not well
enough; on the same pretext she did not read Morning
Prayer with Martha either.  It was only occasionally
that she said her own prayers.  She told herself that
probably there was no God at all.  But now, with
Tristram's visit, there sprang up immediately the desire
for this renewal of contact with things English, because
she felt that there she could indulge in a very luxury
of unhappiness.  She went with that intention.

But the effect was wholly different from her
anticipations.  Morning Prayer, both in its religious and
national aspects, may be said to produce an atmosphere
if repeated often enough.  It disposes the mind to the
ideals of duty, uprightness, and faithfulness.  It does
not move immediately to the heights and depths of
great sacrifices, as the Mass will do, though in the end
the result is perhaps the same.  Horatia came away
that Sunday from the Embassy Chapel with a most
uncomfortable doubt whether she were really being,
not a noble, injured, suffering wife, but a rather
ignominious and cowardly person.  Would not her
father be shocked at her failure in wifely duty?  Would
not all the generations of Grenvilles behind her have
been shocked?

The idea was so unpleasant that she strove with it,
and, having actually caught a slight cold during the
week, absolved herself from attending Divine Service
for some time.


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Madame de Vigerie, since her astonishing reception
of him at the New Year, had been many times called by
Armand de la Roche-Guyon his good angel and his
guiding star.  And, in a political sense at least, she was
not unworthy of these appellations.  Horatia never
knew to whom she owed it that her husband was not
implicated in the conspiracy of the Rue des Prouvaires
to gain access to the Tuileries and assassinate the Royal
Family, the discovery of which, at the beginning of
February, shook Paris.  The enterprise was not
chivalrous enough for Laurence de Vigerie's taste.
There were more stirring plans afoot, for a rising on
which all was to be staked was now much more
imminent than it had been in the summer, and she was in
even closer communication than before with the
Regent's little court at Massa, that combination of the
Coblentz of the emigration and the Paris of the Fronde.
There was much to keep them occupied, for there was
division not only among Madame's immediate counsellors,
but also in the Royalist committees in France.
That in Paris wished the rising adjourned; those in the
provinces desired it immediately.  These problems
demanded daily intercourse, and, indeed, now that his
wife had disavowed all interest in his doings, Armand
considered himself free to visit the Rue de la Chaussée
d'Antin as often as he liked.  To many a moth the light of
a guiding star may well be attractive above all others.

February slipped away, with the discovery of the
plot, the trials of the implicated.  The salons of the
Faubourg were divided between those who, denying
the conspiracy, ridiculed Louis-Philippe's baseless fears,
and those who mourned its ill-success.  Tristram
Hungerford came and left, March entered, and Lent;
Maurice was producing his first tooth, and George Sand
her first novel.  In England the Reform Bill passed the
Commons; and in France Horatia was combatting the
influence of Morning Prayer.

But to Armand himself the most important event of
the month was a little conversation which occurred
during its second week.  He had sent Madame de
Vigerie flowers, as he constantly did, and came in one
afternoon to find her bending over some lilies of the
valley.

"I wonder who gave me these," she said.

"Cannot you guess?" asked Armand.  He took out
a spray and held it towards her.  "They were meant
for a better place than that vase."

The Vicomtesse smiled and shook her head.  "I
never wear flowers, save those that I pick myself."

"I have noticed that you never wear mine," said Armand.

"Nor anybody else's."

"Why not?"

"Just a whim," said Madame de Vigerie, turning away.

"I believe I can read your mind," said Armand
slowly.  "Laurence, you are like a bird of the woods.
You will not come to any man's whistling, and it means
too much to you to wear a favour."

She turned on him half grave, half gay.  "Mon ami,
you have guessed right.  But I love your flowers
... I love to have them near me.  I will do anything but
wear them."

"And some day," said the young man softly, "you
will do that.  Or am I never to hope for it, Laurence?"

"No," she said, "I shall never wear them."  But
she did not meet his eyes.

"But if you ever did..."

"O, suppose that I wore the stars as a necklace!"
cried she.  "It is as likely."

"But if you ever did," persisted Armand.  "Laurence,
if you ever did..."

"Yes," she said, turning very pale....


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March had all but completed its course with dust and
wind, and at its extreme end Lent had come to a
temporary pause for the Carnival.

Armand de la Roche-Guyon had just finished
dressing for a costume ball.  The long mirror in his
dressing-room, reflected him, clad from head to foot in
white and gold, in ruff, doublet and hose, a gentleman
of the Valois court.  The dress, blazing with jewels, had
been copied from a well-known picture of Charles IX.
From the little flat cap with a feather set on the side of
his handsome head to his shoes the costume suited him
admirably, and his valet, standing by him, had just
expressed this opinion.

"The mask, M. le Comte, and the domino?"

"No dominos to-night, but I will take it for a cloak.
At what time did I order the carriage to be ready?"

"Not for a quarter of an hour yet, M. le Comte."

"Well, you can go.  Give me the mask."

The man departed, and Armand, humming an air,
the mask dangling from his hand, tried altering by at
inch or two the position of the dagger at his hip.  Then
he looked at the clock, and on what seemed a sudden
impulse, threw down the mask upon a sofa and went
out of the room.

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"He'll be frightened to death if he sees you like that,
Sir," said Martha, looking with disapprobation at the
costume which had already given her "a turn" in the
corridor, where she now stood with its wearer.

"But since he is asleep..." said Armand ingratiatingly.

Mrs. Kemblet shook her head, but opening the door
with infinite precautions, allowed her master to enter,
and watched from the doorway.

"Extraordinary how fond he is of him, to be sure,"
thought she, to whom the male heart was a perpetual
mystery.  Horatia very rarely came to say Good-night
to the child; and the female heart being an even
profounder riddle it was not given to Mrs. Kemblet nor to
anyone else to know how often she longed to do so.

As it befell, however, this night the desire had been
too strong for her.

Martha saw the Comtesse far down the corridor.  She
was in her dressing-gown, her hair hanging in great
plaits.  Two courses were open to Mrs. Kemblet; to
prevent, by warning her mistress, a meeting which in
the circumstances might have softening consequences,
or to further it by removing herself.  She chose the
latter, and vanished before she could be seen.

The door, ajar and unguarded, surprised Horatia.
Very gently, so as to run no risk of waking the child,
she pushed it a little wider.  Her eyes, accustomed to
the brighter light of the corridor, took in slowly the dim
room, the shaded nightlight, and, by the side of the
crib, a slim silkclad figure stooped over the occupant,
its dark head almost touching the pillow.

Without a sound Horatia looked; without a sound
she moved away.


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At the door of the ballroom Armand paused a moment
adjusted his mask, and entered.

Although everybody was masked none were wearing
dominos, and provided a guest's disguise were already
known it was easy to identify him.  But there was so
great a crowd that it was difficult to find a given person,
and Armand looked in vain among the throng of
monks, courtiers, dancing girls and devils, for the high
headdress of Madame de Vigerie's fourteenth century
costume, in which, as he knew, she was impersonating
Jeanne de Flandre, the wife of Jean de Montfort, Duke
of Brittany, as she rode with him into Nantes in 1341.
But at last he saw in a doorway, above the sea of heads
the peak of the hennin, with its floating veil of golden
gauze.  It must be she.  Before he could get through
the crowd he had to watch the hennin vanish without
having seen the face beneath it, and ere he could
pursue it further he was seized upon by an acquaintance
and led up to a mask who represented Esmeralda, the
heroine of Hugo's successful novel of the previous year.
The lady was lively, and he was engaged in converse
with her when, halfway down the long room, he caught
sight of the tall headdress again, in the company of a
Dominican friar, and he turned eagerly to look.

Yes, it was Laurence, in a flowing dress of purple over
gold.  The room suddenly filled with mist ... for
on her breast, tucked into the high golden girdle, lay
two white roses, the flowers he had sent her that
afternoon....

"Beau masque, you are pale," said the voice of
Esmeralda in his ear.  "What has disturbed you—you
are ill, perhaps?"

The violins struck up as, for answer, Armand seized
her.  "You shall see if I am ill!  Can you dance till
daybreak, Esmeralda?"

In the frenzy of rapture that possessed him he scarcely
knew how his partners changed.  Now he was dancing
deliriously with an odalisque, now with a nun.  His
tongue ran riot like his blood; but he never came on
the gold and purple dress again, though once or twice
he saw it in the distance.  Well, he could wait
... And at last, the pendulum swinging from exultation
into dreams, he escaped from the hot ballroom into the
quiet of the garden, and tried to think.

When he came back, twenty minutes later, the
dancing had ceased, though the violins were still
playing madly.  On the shining floor of the great room
the dancers were broken up into groups, talking in low
voices.  Many had unmasked, and showed faces oddly
whitened; some were hurrying away.  At one end of
the room a woman was screaming; near him another,
the odalisque, had fainted.  No one was caring for her.
What had happened?  He thought at first that Louis
Philippe had been assassinated, that the Duchesse de
Berry was dead.

Then he caught the awful whisper that was passing
from mouth to mouth.  And hearing it, half-crazy with
terror, he ran wildly out into the street, in the direction
of the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin.


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The Marquis Emmanuel de la Roche-Guyon, never
a very good sleeper, was wakeful to-night.  He had
worked till nearly twelve o'clock at his monograph on
the seaweeds of France, now approaching completion.
Then he had sat a long time with his chin on his hand,
thinking of the past, the only person awake in the
great house, where they kept early hours.  The lamp
lit up his comfortable, untidy, prosperous surroundings,
and the little bits of feathered stuff from the deep on
which he tried to nourish a starved heart.

After a while he sighed and stirred.  The room seemed
hot; he would take a turn in the courtyard before
retiring, and perhaps the fresh air would bring him
sleep.

It was thus that he met his brother.  Across the
courtyard, lit by a faint, clouded moon and by the single
oil lamp that burnt all night, there was coming,
staggering, a figure which at first Emmanuel could not
believe in, much less recognise—a gallant of the court of
the later Valois, in ruff, doublet and hose.  The Marquis
almost rubbed his eyes; was it a ghost?  Then, as the
apparition drew nearer, he saw that it was his brother,
with a face like death.

"Armand, in God's name, what is the matter?" he
cried, catching hold of him as he lurched by.  "Are you
hurt?  are you drunk?"

Armand threw back his head.  "They would not let
me in!" he said between his teeth.  "They would not
let me in, and she is dying ... Stand out of the way!
I am going to get my pistols."

"Indeed you are not!" said his elder, understanding
nothing of his speech, but reading a very frenzy of
desperation in his demeanour.  He seized him by the
shoulders.  "You do not go into the house until you
have explained yourself.  Where have you been?  Who
is dying?"

"Let me go, curse you!" exclaimed Armand, struggling
in his grip.  Then the strength seemed suddenly
to ebb from him.  "It is Laurence, Madame de Vigerie,"
he gasped.  "She was at the ball—I saw her myself;
then she disappeared before I could speak to her
... and she was wearing my flowers ... do you hear,
Emmanuel, she was wearing my flowers!  Then I
heard ... she was dying ... I went to her house
... I sat a long time on the steps ... they would
not let me in ... then I came here ... she was
wearing my roses ... and now she is dying——"

"Dying!" ejaculated his brother.  "And at the
ball!  What——"

"The cholera!" said Armand in a choking voice.

"O my God!"  He freed himself from Emmanuel's
loosened hold, and throwing himself down on the steps
lay there like one bereft of life, his face hidden.

So the pendent sword had descended!  The cholera
had been advancing on France for years; this,
Carnival-tide, was then its chosen time of striking.  The
Marquis's first thought was of what was to come on
Paris; his second, of the immediate future.  If Horatia
were to see Armand in this condition! ...

He bent over the huddled form, plucking it by the
short velvet cloak whose flame-coloured lining showed
pale in the faint light.

"Armand, get up!  You must not give way like this.
Come with me, and I will take you to our cousin's."

He dragged his brother, unresisting, to his feet, and
piloted him out into the street, past the horrified
concierge, and somehow, a little later, they found
themselves at Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's door.  Prosper
seemed to keep later hours than his secular kin, and
they were admitted without difficulty.  Armand
wandered unsteadily to a chair and threw himself down
in it, and at that moment the curtain at the end of the
long room was pulled aside, and Monsignor de la
Roche-Guyon, looking startlingly tall in his long cassock,
came out of what was, in effect, his private oratory.

"Who is that?" he asked in surprise, pointing to the
white figure.

His cousin in a low voice gave him a short review of
the situation.  "Can you keep him here, at least for the
night?" he asked in conclusion.  "He is scarcely
responsible, I think, for his actions."

Prosper's keen, grave gaze ran over the details of
costume; of face he could see nothing.  "Do you think
he is likely to do himself an injury?" he whispered.
He too could act quickly on occasions.  He went to
his cousin.  "Armand!" he said, laying a hand on
the bowed shoulders, while with the other he successfully
plucked from its sheath the jewelled dagger at the
young man's hip.  This he held out behind his back to
Emmanuel, who took and concealed it.

The Comte slowly lifted his head.  "What do you
want with me?" he asked stupidly.  "Are you come
to bury her already?"

"Armand," said his cousin, "could you not sleep a
little?  No one will disturb you here, and in the
morning..."

"In the morning she will be dead.  They will put my
white roses on her coffin.  She should not have worn
them ... Why are you staring at me like that,
Prosper?  You had better get back to your candles and
things in there ... No, do not say that you will pray
for her!  She does not want it—no, nor I, by God!
I did not come here to be prayed over ... though I
suppose you would like to ... Yes, I suppose you
would call it the judgment of God.  Isn't that so?
Answer me, priest—though you are my cousin!"

Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon did not flinch.  "I
should call it the mercy of God," he said very gently.

An angry flush dyed Armand's pale face.  For a
second he looked as if he were going to strike Prosper;
then he changed his mind, and shrugging his shoulders,
he turned away.  "Priests will be priests," he said with
a sneer.  "Come, Emmanuel, I have had my benediction.
Let us be going."

"I think it is too late to go back," observed the
Marquis quietly.  "Prosper will give us hospitality
to-night."

His brother gave a short scornful laugh.  "So that
was why you brought me here!  Very well—only for
God's sake go away and don't stand staring at me.  I
don't want a bed.  Do you suppose I shall sleep?—Go,
you guardians of respectability!"

They left him: there was nothing else to do.

Towards dawn the Marquis came into the room again.
All was quiet but the fire, and at first he could not see
his brother anywhere.  Then for a second or two his
heart stood still, for he perceived Armand stretched
motionless on the floor in front of the hearth, and there
was something ominous in his attitude, in the pool of
deep colour round his body, in the living, moving stains
of crimson on the breast of his doublet....

It was only a moment's illusion, gone as the elder man
came quickly towards the fire.  Worn out with emotion,
Armand had evidently flung himself down there, had
fallen profoundly asleep where he lay on the red Eastern
rug, and the firelight winked on the jewels of his
masquerade.  Nevertheless, as he lay with sealed eyes at
Emmanuel's feet, clad in the dress of that period of
violent deaths, with one arm outflung on the parquet,
his upturned face haggard and unfamiliar in the
close-fitting ruff, he looked so lifeless that the Marquis was
glad to think that Prosper had abstracted the poniard
from its sheath.

Though, indeed, he knew his brother too well to
imagine that he would ever dream of sacrificing his life,
even for the person he loved best at the moment.  A
faintly cynical but not untender smile came to Emmanuel's
lips as he stood there.  "Sleep well, my brother,"
he said under his breath, and went very quietly out of
the room.


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"Cholera?  Oh dear no, nor anything like it," said
the doctor next morning to the anxious cousins.
"Nervous shock, a touch of fever.  I have let him blood.
Keep him quiet and he will be all right in a couple of
days.  I wish we were all as far from the grave.  But,
Messieurs, as for the cholera, though M. le Comte has
it not, we are all going to see more of it, I doubt, than
we shall like..."

"You have told him, I suppose, that Madame de
Vigerie is likely to recover?" asked Monsignor de la
Roche-Guyon as the doctor left the room.

"Yes," said Emmanuel, "and also that it has already
been arranged for my sister and the children to go to
Plaisance at once."

He went in again to his brother, in the priest's
own, narrow, cell-like bedroom with its carved
prie-dieu, its sacred prints and its agonised ivory
crucifix.  Armand, pale, but no longer ghastly,
was lying back in an arm-chair without his
doublet, his knees wrapped in a quilt, with a
bandaged left arm to testify to the doctor's activity.
He smiled at his visitor.

"Mon vieux, what made you think I had the cholera?
I was never so well in my life—since your news, bien
entendu.  Do you think Prosper will tell me how many
candles I should put up to Our Lady—but perhaps
St. Roch or St. Sebastian would be more appropriate.
Now that old butcher has gone I must dress and go
round to the Chaussée d'Antin; but I have no clothes
suitable to the streets in daylight.  Will Prosper lend
me a cassock, think you?  I believe I was rather rude
to him last night, but his duty as a Christian will oblige
him to forgive me....  Sais-tu, Emmanuel, that the
cholera, if only it strike hard enough, may be the best
ally that Henri V could have?  And how can I work
for Henri V sitting here in my shirt among these objects
of piety?  As well be a sacristan...."





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   CHAPTER XIX

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Out of a cloudless sky a hard, bright, metallic sun was
shining upon Paris, as it had shone, without variation,
for the last five weeks, looking down unwinking on a
Terror worse than that of '93.  And along the deserted
streets its companion, the glacial East wind, frolicked
in a dance of death, stirring the April dust, and
fluttering, on the Pont Neuf, the black flag which Henri
Quatre held in his hands of stone.  Neither Charles X
nor Louis-Philippe reigned in Paris now, but the
cholera.  Long ago the supply of hearses had proved
insufficient, and there crawled along, to gather up the
daily harvest of eight or nine hundred dead, artillery
waggons, furniture vans, even fiacres.  Even so, a
sheeted corpse could often be seen in a doorway awaiting
burial—to receive it, perhaps, at the hands of that
devoted company of young men which numbered some
of the first names of France.  Yet the machinery of life
worked on as usual—the Chambers and the law courts
sat, the Bourse was open, professors lectured and the
theatres were far from empty, though not a soul had
more than half a hope of seeing the sun rise next day,
and every time a man left his home he said farewell to
wife and child.

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From an archway in the long Rue de Sèvres, literally
a street of the dead, for on one side at least there was
not a single house unstricken, came suddenly a tall
priest in a cassock, a garb not seen till now, in the
streets of Paris, since the Days of July.  His eyes, sunk
in a tired, strained face, blinked a little as they met the
light, for it had been dark in the garret where he had
just confessed the dying man—the fourth cholera
patient whom he had visited that day.  He pulled the
cloak he was wearing closer over his breast as he turned
north-eastward and met the wind.

As he crossed the end of the Rue du Bac a fiacre
passed him at a lumbering trot, a coffin across the seat.
Ere the noise and rattle had died away in the sunny,
silent street, the priest heard alert steps behind him,
and a voice that he knew well crying, "Prosper!
Prosper! que diable! stop a moment!"

Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon slackened his pace and
turned his head, but did not stop.  "I have just come
from a case."

Armand, arriving abreast of his cousin, sniffed at the
saturated handkerchief which he held.  "Peste, so I
supposed.  (By the way, how very apt is that expletive
just now!)  But everybody has either come from a case,
or is going to a case ... or is about to become a
case, so that is nothing.  I will walk with you; I am
going this way."

"How is our grandmother?" asked the priest, as
they fell into step together.

"Never better.  Strange how she fears a cold and
defies the plague.  She keeps her rooms inundated with
camphor and chloride.  But Madame de Camain died
last night, and the Comtesse de Montlivault, I hear this
morning, is 'prise.'".

"God have mercy on them!" said Prosper, crossing
himself.  "It seems to me that in the last few days the
Faubourg St. Germain has suffered more than the
poorer quarters."

"That is so, I believe," returned his cousin.  "Figure
to yourself that the rabbit warren of the Palais-Royal
is apparently more healthy than our large houses with
their gardens, for I am told that there has not been a
single case in those airless glass passages."

They walked on in silence for a little, their footsteps
echoing in the deserted street, the icy wind cold on their
faces, the sun fierce overhead.  Even Armand,
untouched by the pest, by labours for the stricken, or,
apparently, by apprehension, looked ill, though he was
jauntily dressed in the new spring fashions, in a
peacock-blue coat with olive-green collar, a flowered
waistcoat and white cashmere trousers.  The sight of a man
hurrying past them, holding an onion to his nose, struck
him into speech again.

"Heavens!" he exclaimed, "I had really rather
have the cholera than carry about a raw onion.  You
do not carry anything, I notice, Prosper; not, I dare
say, that it is much good.—By the way, I have long
been wanting to tell you that I regard you as the
bravest man I know, and if (as is probable) you have
heard me say anything uncomplimentary about priests
I beg you will consider it unsaid.  I am really proud to
be your kinsman....  Don't spoil it by saying that
you are only doing your duty, or tell me that the
Archbishop of Paris has come out of hiding and the
Archbishop of Besançon returned from Rome to do the same
as you are doing, for I do not believe that even his
Eminence of Rohan dislikes it as much as you.  Mort
de ma vie, but you must have seen some horrible
things lately!"

"The worst thing that I have seen," said Monsignor
de la Roche-Guyon sadly, "was not the visitation of the
plague, but the outburst of the vile passions of men,
excited by fear, and played upon by the unscrupulous."

"You mean the murders, at the beginning of the
outbreak, due to the report that it was caused by
poison?  But what can you expect?  There was a man
hanged on a lamp-post, as in the good old times, in one
of those very streets, for the same reason.  And the
Republican newspapers have proclaimed that even the
cholera is a scourge less cruel than the government of
Louis-Philippe.  You remember how the Duc d'Orléans
went with the late Casimir Périer to the Hôtel-Dieu
to visit the sick?  Well, they said that Louis-Philippe
had sent his son there to gloat over the misery of the
people, and that the people would return his visit
... after the manner of the Tenth of August and the
Twenty-ninth of July!"

The young man's tone was not free from satisfaction.
The priest, aware of the alliance between a certain
section of the Legitimists and the Extreme Left,
turned and looked at him.

"I hope," he said sternly, "that Madame's party
does not stain their cause by using such weapons."

"We have no need," returned Armand with an air.
"You will soon see the gleam of the noblest weapon of
all—the sword."

"The sword, so be it!" said Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon.
"But not the dagger—not another conspiracy
of the Rue des Prouvaires, I trust."

They had come to the Place St. Sulpice, and stopped.

"You speak as if I had been implicated in that," said
his cousin, rather aggrieved.  "Or as if I were M. de
Berthier, who tried to run over the King and Queen.
No, I am for a stroke of a different kind.  Wait a little,
a very little, Prosper, and you will see the South in
flames for Marie-Caroline, and then the West, Brittany,
and Vendée..."

"And then?"

"Then you will see Louis-Philippe, his large family
and his umbrella, disencumbering the Tuileries of their
presence, and at Rheims a child—a mother and
child—crowned ... as you may see at this hour in
there."  He pointed with one hand to the façade of St. Sulpice,
while with the other he tugged something from his
pocket.

"Cousin, you do not serve your cause by blasphemy!"
said the priest sharply.

Armand looked innocent.  "But I thought the idea
would appeal to you!  It occurs to me, as an omen,
every time I enter a church.  *Mea culpa!* ... Take
this for your cholera cases, Monsignor, in expiation.  I
was going to give it you in any case, but now it will
atone, perhaps, for comparing Marie-Caroline to Our
Lady.  Au revoir—if the Fates permit."  He thrust a roll
of notes into his cousin's hand, lifted his hat, and turned
down the Rue du Pot-de-Fer towards the Luxembourg.


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It was not to admire the spring foliage of the trees
in that now deserted garden that Armand walked
slowly eastwards along one of its alleys.  Yet he was
engaged, rather strangely, in counting the trunks.
When he reached the thirty-fifth, he stopped, looked
about for the nearest seat, and sitting down upon
it, pulled an opened letter from his pocket and
re-read it.

It was from his wife at Plaisance, the family seat in
Normandy, whither she and the child had been sent for
safety.  It informed him merely that she and Maurice
were very well, and concluded by hoping that all at the
Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon were in the same condition.

Armand made a slight grimace as he folded and refolded
this epistle.  Stretched out on the seat, his eyes
raised to the new leaves, it occurred to him again to
wish that his wife were a Catholic, and had a director,
who might perhaps prescribe to her a more conciliatory
line of conduct.  Once, indeed, he had congratulated
himself that in his domestic affairs, at least, no priest
could intermeddle; now he thought regretfully of a
certain friend of his acquaintance, a great deal more
culpable than he, whose wife, in obedience (he
suspected) to her confessor, was trying to win back her
husband by a demeanour of unvarying amiability.
Well, that was certainly not Horatia's way at present,
nor was he sure that he would have liked it if it had
been; but it would have made things more comfortable.

He had not set eyes on Laurence de Vigerie since the
fatal night of the masked ball a month ago.  As soon
as she could be moved she had been hurried out of Paris
under medical supervision, and she was now completing
her convalescence at Spa, whence she wrote to him
every few days.  It had needed all her influence to keep
him from following her thither, indeed he had only been
restrained by her express prohibition, and the knowledge
that if he left Paris at this juncture he cut himself off
from communication with the cause for which they were
both working.  For, as Armand had hinted to his
cousin, a crisis in Legitimist affairs was very near now.
Since February the Duchesse de Berry had definitely
resolved to come to France.  The younger and more
ardent spirits of her party, impatient of delay,
continually wrote urging her to hasten.  Now, with the
cholera occupying the attention of the government,
which had, moreover, lost Casimir-Périer from its head,
with the Republicans about to rise, so it was rumoured,
against Louis-Philippe, the favourable moment seemed
at last arrived.  And Armand, deprived of his regular
channel of information through Madame de Vigerie,
had come to this peaceful resort in quest of news.

He had not long to wait, for there presently
approached along the deserted avenue, from the opposite
direction, another gilded youth of about his own age,
muffled almost up to his eyes in a cloak.  He also
appeared to be counting the trees, and when he arrived
opposite Armand's seat came and sat down on it,
without looking at its occupant.  Then, without
warning, he suddenly shot out the word "Marie."

"Caroline," responded Armand instantly.

And they both looked at each other and laughed, for
if these conspirators resorted sometimes to the methods
of opéra-bouffe, they did not take them very seriously.

"Any news this morning?" inquired Armand.

"The best," answered the other.  "Late last night
the Committee received a letter from Madame for
transmission to the chiefs in the West, warning them to
be ready by the third of May.  She has probably
embarked by now!"

Armand stared at him a moment.  Then he sprang to
his feet, and lifting his olive-green hat, cried aloud to
the empty garden: "At last, at last!  Vive la guerre!"





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   CHAPTER XX

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"But, my aunt," protested Claude-Edmond, "what
is a 'calender'?  It is evidently not an almanac, but
a person."

Horatia laid down the "Arabian Nights" and laughed,
a little laugh of real enjoyment.  "Do you know,
Claude," she said, "that I have never been quite sure
myself.  If you would find out for me I should be very
grateful to you."  She slid her hand a moment over
her nephew's head, and Claude-Edmond, a Gallic child,
caught and conveyed it with respect and affection to
his lips.

It was impossible to be unhappy this morning.  It was
May.  Behind Horatia's back lay the great mass of
Plaisance, all built in the style of the stables of Chantilly,
with flanking pavilions, chapel and laundry, and in
front the two immense lime-tree avenues, now gloriously
green, and the artificial pieces of water reminiscent of
Versailles, with stone urns of tortured design, and stone
animals, wolves and lions.  On the grass by Claude-Edmond
lay the rod with which he had been unsuccessfully
fishing for carp in these lakes, before his aunt began
her present occupation of reading the "Arabian Nights"
to him in English.  A little way off Maurice was being
slowly walked to and fro in Martha's arms.  And it
was May.

"With your permission, I should like to kiss my
cousin," said Claude-Edmond suddenly, indicating his
infant relative.

"I have the same desire myself," returned Horatia,
and Martha, coming to a stand, offered her charge for
inspection.

"Did I once have only two teeth—only one tooth?"
inquired Charles-Edmond.

"No teeth at all, once," responded his aunt.

Claude felt his existing dental arrangements.  "There
is one loose now," he announced.  "May I pull it out?"

"Let me see," said Horatia; and, after inspection,
"I should wait a little if I were you, Claude.  It will be
looser yet.  Besides, it will hurt."

"I know," said the child.  "But one must learn to
bear pain, must one not?"

"I wish you were not such a little prig," thought
Horatia, and instantly repented of the thought.  "Yes,"
she said gently, "but we need not inflict it on ourselves
unnecessarily.  Give Maurice to me for a little, Martha.
Claude, could you fetch my chair over here?"

Delightedly the boy sped off.  That his aunt should
give him something to do for her was the summit of his
desires.  When Horatia sat down he stood by her,
studying Maurice, who, sucking his fist, in his turn
studied the sky.

"He does not remind me greatly of Uncle Armand,"
observed his cousin.  "His face is ... is..."  He
paused for a word.

"Never mind," said Horatia.  "I know what you mean."

Claude Edmond sat down upon the grass at her feet.
After a moment or two of silence he said with solemnity,
"Ma tante, I will confide to you my great ambition.
It is to grow up like Uncle Armand."

Horatia made a movement.  "You should desire to
resemble your father."

"But that goes without saying," returned the boy,
rather shocked.  "I meant, in outward things, voyez-vous.
I desire to have the learning of Papa, and to be
able to ride like Uncle Armand, to know about plants
and flowers and books—yes, and perhaps about
animals—and to be able to fence and shoot...."

The child babbled on, but Horatia had fallen
suddenly silent, and after a few moments, seeing her for
once unresponsive, and mindful of having been warned
by his father never to weary her, he tactfully announced
that he would return to his attempts on the carp, and
went off.

"I'll take the precious now, Mam, if you please,"
said Martha, bearing down on her mistress.  "I don't
want you to tire yourself, when you are getting some
of your roses back again."

"Oh, I'm not tired," said Horatia smiling, but she
kissed and surrendered her son, and having done so
leant back in her chair and watched the distant figure of
Claude-Edmond, in the eternally hopeful pose of the
fisher, and trusted that he would not fall into the water.

It was true, she was not tired.  Six weeks in the air
of Plaisance had done wonders for her physical
well-being.  And something—could it have been the power
of dulness?—had healed her mind of much of its
malady.  She was young and healthy, and she no longer
troubled to make herself remember that Maurice was
Armand's son.  Here he was hers.

No doubt of Armand's guilt ever entered her mind.
But Claude-Edmond's words about him had roused a
picture ... Was it possible that she had behaved like
a foolish girl?  She had often heard Aunt Julia say,
and had been irritated by the dictum, that a woman
could make what she liked of her husband.  And, though
she had had everything in her favour, she had given up
the attempt at the first difficulty.  If he had gone
straight to his mistress, it was largely her own fault.

But if she were regretting that she had not disputed
with the Vicomtesse for Armand, that meant that
Armand was worth fighting for, and over and over
again she had told herself that he was nothing to her now.
But was that quite true?  If it were, how was it that
she scanned so eagerly what newspapers she could procure
for accounts of the progress of the cholera in Paris?
His own short, polite notes to her told her little of it,
but the sight of them stirred her, she could not quite
say how.

Something else was stirring in her too.  Suppose she
had not merely acted foolishly, but wrongly?

The feelings which had surprised her that morning in
the Embassy Chapel had returned, but on a different
plane.  "We have erred and strayed ... there is no
health in us."  What if the over-familiar words really
had a meaning, what if she herself, who uttered them
so often and so lightly, had actually done wrong, grave
wrong?  This conviction grew in her.  It was to
Horatia the first vivid connection between the spiritual
and material worlds, and was bringing her to the resolve
that, when she returned, she would in some degree
forgive Armand.  She would admit that she had been a
little hard.  And the thought of this great concession
pleased her; being in the future, it took on something
of the glamour of the noble things we mean to do one day.


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A week later a letter from the Duchesse announced
that it was safe for her and the children to return to
Paris, where the scourge, though still present, seemed
to have spent its force.  So they went back.

An air of calamity still brooded over the capital, and
as they stopped at the barrier Horatia shuddered to see
the street urchins playing at "cholera morbus,"
dragging one of their companions, a simulated corpse,
along the ground.  But her mind, after all, was full of
a more personal concern.  As she drew nearer to the
Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon, as Claude-Edmond, looking
out of the window of the post-chaise, announced, "Here
we are in the Place Vendôme," or, "Now we are turning
into the Rue de Rivoli," it did not seem so easy a
matter to bestow a pardon to which the culprit might
now be indifferent.

Emmanuel, not Armand, was on the steps to receive
her.  He came down and helped her to alight.  Claude-Edmond
flung himself into his father's arms.  And all
at once Horatia knew that she was bitterly hurt.  That
Armand should not care whether she returned or no was
one thing; that he should affront her before her
brother-in-law and the servants was quite another.  Too proud
to make any remark at the moment on his absence, she
turned to busying herself over Maurice, but once inside
she said to Emmanuel, as lightly as she could, "I
suppose that Armand was not expecting me so early?"

The Marquis looked disconcerted.  "My dear sister,
has the letter not reached you?  He went very suddenly,
the day before yesterday, to join Madame in Vendée."


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Not by the tragic words "Too late" was the
situation thus created summed up in Horatia's mind, for
she had never been able to take the Duchesse de Berry
very seriously.  And though she was told that the
princess had undoubtedly landed near Marseilles one
dark night at the end of April, the very fact that the
conflagration in the South which was to spring up at her
appearance absolutely failed to emit a single spark only
confirmed the English girl in her conviction.  Nor
did Marie-Caroline's romantic journey in disguise to
Vendée (now matter of knowledge in Royalist circles)
impress Horatia; it seemed to her too much like Walter
Scott to be quite real, and she could not fancy that there
would be actual fighting round such a fantastic heroine.
Emmanuel did not seem to think so, either; at any rate
he took no rosy views of her chances.  The Duchesse, on
the other hand, was at once more sanguine and more
alarming, continually preaching with a mixture of
resignation and elation a sort of version of "Paris vaut
une messe," thus conceived: "If Henri V. cannot be
set on the throne without the life-blood of one of our
family, then I am willing that it should be given."  This
attitude seemed to Horatia so uncalled for that it
irritated rather than dismayed her.  Nor could she help
feeling a tinge of annoyance, even if she would not
confess it, at the check given by Armand's absence to
her plan of forgiveness, for now she could not set herself
right with him.  She must wait till his return.

Yet she had her hours of apprehension.  As a fortnight,
three weeks passed without news these grew more
frequent.  And at last, when the Republican riots of the
5th and 6th of June burst over Paris, what she heard of
the fierce street fighting, the stand at Saint-Merri, the
eight hundred slain, brought home to her the political
passions of the time with a horrible vividness, and she
was at last nakedly afraid.  The Duchesse, incurable
Frondeuse that she was, was pleased at anything that
shook or embarrassed the government, and declared that
the news would be very encouraging to Madame's party.

When she made this declaration Madame's party as
such no longer existed.  Two days later, Horatia,
having said good-night to Maurice, found Emmanuel,
looking very grave, waiting for her in her boudoir.

"Horatia," he said, "we have news at last.  The
whole rising has failed.  There have been several
engagements, and Charette has been defeated.  They are
all scattered; it is a sauve qui peut.  My grandmother
does not know yet."

"And Armand?"

"We can only hope for the best.  If he could cross the
Loire he would go and lie hidden at Kerfontaine.  He
told me that before he went."

"There has been a battle, you say?  But perhaps he
was not in it ... you do not even know that? ... O
Emmanuel, have you no news of him?"

"Absolutely none; it is impossible.  We can only
hope for the best, as I say.  I think that if he is alive he
will probably succeed in making his way up to Brittany."

"I must go down there," she said feverishly.  "I
must go at once.  Emmanuel, you must help me!"

"My dear," said the Marquis, rather amazed, "you
cannot do any good by going.  Please God, Armand is
alive.  If he escapes, he escapes....  In any case your
presence at Kerfontaine cannot help him."

"I must go," she repeated, twisting her hands
together.  "It is very important.  Emmanuel, you said
you would do anything for me...."  Her voice began
to break.

Her brother-in-law did not fully understand, but he
took her hands with his accustomed kindness, and said
that if she wished it, she should go, and he would take
her.  And so, in spite of the vehement opposition of the
Duchesse, who was quite broken down by the bad news,
but who finally said, weeping, that they could at least
bring back Armand's body if it was found, they started
early next morning on the road to Chartres.





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   CHAPTER XXI

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There had been a time when Armand de la Roche-Guyon
had certainly not anticipated ever seeing
Brittany again, yet here he was in Brittany after all.

When he left Paris in the middle of May he had gone
straight down to join Charette in Vendée, for he wanted
to offer his sword in person to Madame.  He had done
so; he had seen her, "Petit-Pierre," in her peasant
boy's attire, gay and indomitable, and had kissed her
hand in a farmhouse kitchen.  Other young men like
himself were there, full of hope and ardour; though
even then it was beginning to be apparent that Vendée
was not really ready to rise, and some of the chiefs did
their utmost to dissuade the princess at the eleventh
hour from the scheme.  The fatal mistake was made of
postponing the insurrection, already fixed for the 24th
of May, by a counter order, circulated only two days
beforehand.  When the fourth of June came, much of
the fervour of the peasants had evaporated and the
Philippistes were on the alert.  Nevertheless, two days
afterwards, at the hamlet of Le Chêne, Armand had
been one of the little band, only two hundred and
twenty strong, who, splashing through the ford or firing
(in the old manner) from behind the orchard hedges,
had beaten off two bodies of Government troops, only
to be routed by a third.  Nor was theirs the only defeat.
It was over, the chance of a restoration, and,
disillusioned but unhurt, Armand had, with difficulty and
danger, made his way across the Loire.

Yet for prudence' sake he had come back, not to
Kerfontaine itself, but to the tiny shooting-box in the
wood of St. Clair, and therein, this June evening, the
day before Horatia's arrival at Kerfontaine, he lay
at full length on a settle, his hands behind his head,
and thoughtfully surveyed the unceiled rafters, where
the twilight was beginning to weave a veil.

The shooting-box belonged to the château of St. Clair,
and stood on the edge of a little clearing in the
forest; it consisted only of one room, but a portion had
been partitioned off as a kitchen.  Armand had known
it full of sportsmen.  On the table in the centre lay, at
this moment, his pistols, in company with a half empty
bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, and a ham; for the
place had been provisioned against his coming.  He had
kicked off his long boots, and flung his cloak on a chair.
It was very odd to be, not only without a valet, but
without a cook; it did not amuse him, for he was both
tired and bored.  Already, since his arrival in the early
morning, he was beginning to think his concealment
absurd.  He had heard vague rumours of the presence
of soldiers, but since the nearest (and abortive) rising
was twenty miles away, he was not disposed to believe
them.  At any rate, as soon as it was darker he was
going to venture out.

For he was back near Laurence de Vigerie, and all
that the past week had held of death and broken hopes
was shrivelled up in that knowledge.  She was at
St. Clair, and they, who had never seen each other since the
night when she had worn the tell-tale roses in the
masquerade, would meet at last.  No problematic
peril was likely to keep him from her.

The cobwebs of twilight, dropping lower and lower
from the rafters, began to reach the young man where
he lay on the settle.  Surely he could go now.  He pulled
himself off the hard couch, drew on his boots, picked up
his cloak, then, remembering prudence, removed, with
visible annoyance, the remains of his meal, and, locking
the door behind him, stepped out into the evening.

The wood was sinking into sleep.  A gust of subtle,
heady scent immediately assailed him, and he saw,
on the other side of the little clearing by the hut,
a thicket of tall elderbushes, intruders in the ranks of
forest trees.  The over-fragrant smell seemed to be
blown after him down the twilight ride; it was still in
his nostrils when he came, twenty minutes later, on the
great mass of the château of St. Clair.  He jumped
down into the fosse, climbed up on the other side, and
began cautiously to make his way through the rose
garden towards the one lighted window on the ground
floor, a long window hung over only with some thin
blind or curtain.  It was that of Madame de Vigerie's
smaller salon, and since there was a light she must be
there.  Probably, indeed, she was expecting him.

Had the window been open he might have walked in
upon her, but since it was closed and he could not see
through, she might not be alone.  The traditional method
of summons would serve him as well as any.  He caught
up a handful of gravel from the path and flung it
sharply against the glass.  Almost immediately the
light within was extinguished; then a hasp was heard
to turn, and the window opened outward, the panes
shimmering a little in the dim light.  A figure slipped
out.

"Who is it?" asked Madame de Vigerie.  But there
was that in her voice which made the question
unnecessary.

Armand gave no answer at all, but taking a step or
two forward, caught both her hands.  Then, with a sob
of laughter, she was in his arms, and he was kissing her
lips, her hair....  Was she not given back to him
from the grave?

In a little they were wandering among the
dew-drenched roses.  Roses and nightingales after the
reddened swamps of Le Chêne—it was like a dream.
For he, too, had been through his baptism of fire, and
bore the singe of it, to make him for the moment to the
woman by his side what he had never been
before—stronger than she.

"You are at the shooting-box, then?" she said at
last.  "It is well provisioned?  I gave orders."

"It wants only one thing."

"What is that?"

"You."

"I cannot come there," said Madame de Vigerie.
"Not now, I know.  I would not ask it.  But
to-morrow ... in the afternoon, when the sun is
getting low, you will come...?"

She did not answer, but he could feel her tremble.

"I am starving, Laurence.  If anyone should see
you, it is easy to explain.  I am a fugitive—you are a
conspirator, too."

"I was not counting *that* cost," she said in a low
voice.  "O Armand, Armand, why will you not go
away and leave me in peace!"

"Because, at last, you love me."

And she made no denial, but breaking from his hold,
stood in the midst of the roses with her face in her hands.

"There is the nightingale," said Armand softly.  "It
sings for us.  There are no nightingales in the forest,
nor roses.  But if you came to me there, Laurence, in
the little hut, it would not lack either.  O my world, my
rose ... I have waited so long, so patiently! ... Has
not death itself spared us for this...?"

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Half an hour later he was groping his way across the
hut.  It was foolish to strike a light, so, wrapping
himself in his cloak, he lay down in the dark on the settle.
But his brain was on fire, and phantasmagoric figures
danced before his eyes—Charette, and the little princess
in her boy's clothes, and he heard himself saying, as he
had said to Marie-Caroline, when he had kissed that
royal, adventurous hand, "I would gladly die for you,
Madame."  But in the half-dream Madame had the
face of Laurence de Vigerie.

He came back from it.  The settle was confoundedly
hard, as hard as a coffin.  Then he remembered having
seen, lying dead on a couch just like this, in a peasant's
cottage at Le Chêne, before the engagement began, a
young man shot by an Orleanist patrol.  He had been
sorry for him then; he was sorrier now, for perhaps the
blood had once raced and pounded in his veins as now
in his own, and he, too, had thought, perhaps,
"To-morrow! to-morrow...."


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That night, the last of her journey, the cloud of
apprehension lifted from Horatia's mind, and sitting
by her window in the inn at Ploermel, she had a clear
conviction that Armand was alive, and had escaped
from Vendée.  She would not be too late.  She would
forgive him; she would even ask him to forgive her
the hardness she had shown him.  And—who knew—they
might perhaps take up their life together again
where it had been broken off, for she had experience now.

But who knows when the cup of experience is fully
drained?

When Kerfontaine came in sight next morning
she could hardly control herself.  Would he have had
any word of her approach; was he there at all? ...

"Yes, we know for certain that M. le Comte has
escaped from Vendée, praise the saints," said old Jean
to Horatia and Emmanuel.  "But he has not been here,
and we think he is probably in hiding in the wood for a
day or two.  Then he will come here.  It was arranged so."

"He might come any time—to-day even?"

"Yes, Madame la Comtesse, any time, when it is
safe.  And M. le Comte was never one to be over-cautious."

"But there are no soldiers about here, surely?"
asked Emmanuel.

"We have not seen any, Monsieur le Marquis, but
there are reported to be some in Pontivy."

Emmanuel drew his sister-in-law aside.  "I think I
will ride over to Pontivy," he said, "and see if I can
get any information.  I am not known in these parts,
and I may be able to find out something."

So, after déjeuner, he set out.  The afternoon crawled
slowly on.  Horatia went over the château, most of
which was shut up.  The nurseries were still unfurnished,
and behind the screen which she and Claude-Edmond
had made a year ago she found a heap of dusty pictures
and a pot with dried relics of paste.  After supper she
sat in the salon.  The suspense was beginning to tell on
her—not the suspense about Armand's safety, for as he
had succeeded in getting away from Vendée he must be
out of danger now—but the suspense about his entrance.
At any moment he might come in.  Would he be
surprised to see her there?  She could not picture their
meeting; she would not try to; she must trust that
with the moment would come the right words.

About nine o'clock she wandered out into the hall.
What time would Emmanuel be back?  The sardonic
smile of the ancestress over the hearth followed her,
as on that night when Armand had lain there, his
head on her knee, and she had hoped to be the first to
die.  Nothing now could ever restore the perfume of
that rapture; but the broken vase, which once held
it, might yet be pieced together....

... Surely that was a horse's hoofs in the avenue,
the hoofs of a horse approaching at breakneck pace.  If
it was Emmanuel he evidently had important news.
Horatia ran to the door and opened it herself.  A
mounted man was tearing up between the trees, had
flung himself off his panting horse and dashed up the
steps, a little square of white in his hand.

"For Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon," he
said, thrusting it into her hold.  "Give it to her at
once!"  And she was aware that he wore Madame de
Vigerie's livery.  How strange; she had not known
that she was here!

She read the letter in the hall.  It was very short.
When she had done so she put her hands over her eyes,
read it again, and hurried to the bell-pull.

"Jean," she said, "order the carriage at once!  I
am going to St. Clair.  There is not a moment to lose....
Give this letter to Monsieur le Marquis directly
he returns."


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It was six o'clock in the evening of the longest day
that Armand de la Roche-Guyon had ever spent.  He
had hardly slept all night; at dawn he had risen and
gone out, but since that time he had been a self-constituted
prisoner.  If, at any time, there was risk in his
being seen—which he could not bring himself to
believe—that risk was much greater in the day-time.  Besides,
he had Laurence to think of.

So he sat before the fireless hearth, he paced up and
down, he flung himself on the settle, he examined over
and over again all the heads of beasts upon the walls,
the only ornaments of the place.  The hut was very
tidy, but he could not deck it as befitted the guest.  He
had told her last night that there were no roses, but
it now occurred to him that he might at least have
gathered this morning a branch of something green
and living—a branch, for instance, of the flowering
elder just outside.  Thinking of these bushes, but
without any intention of going out to rifle them,
his restless feet carried him to the little
half-shuttered window.  Yes, there they stood, with their
broad flat masses of blossom.  How strong the scent
had been last night!  She would smell it as she came;
she would hear the birds beginning their vespers.  This
golden sun would shine on her; would she ride or walk?

Leaning idly by the window, Armand looked at his
watch.  Half an hour still.  He glanced at the
elder-bushes again ... and suddenly even Laurence was
forgotten, and the little trees were everything in the
world to him.  For among the leaves he had caught
sight of a leaf of other kind, thin and shining.  It was a
bayonet.

Armand stood a moment incapable of thought or
movement.  Then the truth stabbed him with a cold
and sickening pang.  He looked again.  Further along
they had scarcely troubled to take cover; he could see
the uniforms among the tree-trunks.  He went a little
white round the mouth, and moving away sank into a
chair by the table and hid his face in his hands.

What he had thought so absurd, so incredible, had
happened!  He had been tracked or betrayed, and they
were waiting to shoot him as he came out.  They did
not mean to force an entrance, that was obvious, or
they would have done so by now.  They had no
intention, the careful Philippistes, of running any risks.
They would wait there in ambush until he came out....

... Or till he came in.  It might be that they were
watching for his entrance, not knowing that he was there
already.  And that was, after all, a more likely
explanation of their present inaction.  More than that, it
gave him a chance, a feeble glimmering chance, for his
life.  It was just conceivable that, seeing no one
enter, they would go away without searching the hut.
It was a chance, a chance ... O God! it was a
chance....

But even as his mind caught at that slender hope,
embracing it fiercely, the very heart in his body stopped
beating.  *Seeing no one enter*!  Why, in half an hour
Laurence would come along the clearing, and then
... He heard the report, saw her writhing on the ground...
Why should they hesitate because she was a woman
the men who could shoot a girl of sixteen in cold blood.
She was a Carliste.  It might even be she that they were
expecting.

Armand raised his face, grown old and haggard.  On
him lay the burden of her coming there; it was for him
to avert, if by any means he could, so horrible a thing.
They must be sent away before she came.  And there
was only one way of doing that.  It might not be
successful.  That he would never know.  But he had to
do it; he had to do it.

He pressed his hands tightly round his head, where
the whirling thoughts drove like bees, and where the
remembrance of Horatia, and his courtship, and Maurice,
and the consciousness of the sunshine outside, the
knowledge that in an incredibly short space of time he
would lie out in it and neither feel nor see it, clear and
vehement in themselves, were all subordinated to a
vision of Laurence coming along the forest path.  He
looked once more at his watch.  Twenty-five minutes—not
a second to lose, since they must be gone some
distance before she came, and they would probably
spend some time in searching his body and the hut
before they left.  His brain had suddenly become as clear
as ice.  He stood up, turned out his pockets, put his
money and watch on the table, took up his pistols, which
were loaded; then laid them down again.  It would
waste time, and be quite useless.  For a moment more
he stood looking round the room which had been so
irradiated by the thought of her presence, where—it
was his last prayer—she would never come now.

And then, since with whatever of less worthy commingled,
there ran in his veins the blood of a long line
that had never stayed for mortal peril, Armand de la
Roche-Guyon set his teeth, and, opening the door,
walked out to death.

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The two wood pigeons on the roof, who had been
frightened away by the noise of the volley, had returned,
and their sleepy, liquid notes melted into the peace of
the summer afternoon as Madame de Vigerie came riding
in her green amazone through the wood.  As the hut
came into sight she dropped into a walk.  At first she
merely noticed, though with an instant surprise, that
the door stood open.

But her horse knew, before she did, and stopped,
trembling.  Laurence de Vigerie gave a broken scream,
and put her hands instinctively over her eyes.  The
next moment she had slid to the ground, and catching
up the folds of her long habit, was running to him.

Armand lay face downwards on the woodland grass,
about ten paces from the open door, in an attitude not
wholly unlike a sleeper's.  Except by one shoulder,
there was little sign of blood, till, tugging at him, she
had turned him over.  But his head, when she raised
it, fell back inert on her arm, the face uninjured, but of
a mortal greyness, the half open eyes rolled upwards
almost out of sight.  A thin scarlet stream had trickled
down from one corner of his mouth; his right hand
clutched a tuft of grass.  Three or four patches of wet
blood on his clothes, his left sleeve, soaked from shoulder
to wrist—the arm was broken and the hand shot
through—and the one pool on the ground which was
already crimsoning her habit, were more than enough to
show her what had happened.  Yet she tore off his
neck-cloth and unfastened his coat and shirt before she knew,
shuddering, that here was ruin beyond human repairing,
And she caught the riddled body in her arms, crying to
him, kissing him, while the pigeons cooed in the sun,
and, to windward of the evidence of slaughter, her
horse grazed reassured.





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   CHAPTER XXII

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The brilliance of the hall at St. Clair dazzled Horatia.
Someone took her gently by the arm, and led her up the
great staircase into a little room full of books.  Not till
she got there did she realise even the sex of the person,
and found that her conductor was a grey-haired man.

"Madame," he said, "I am the surgeon, and I must
tell you the truth ... if you are strong enough to
bear it?"

"I am strong enough," said Horatia.

"Your husband is dying.  He was shot by the
Philippistes in the forest about six this evening; he
was found an hour later unconscious but alive, and
brought here as soon as possible.  But—I should be
doing you a great injury to deceive you—he cannot live
till morning....  Will you see him now?"

"Can't you do *anything*?" asked Horatia, passionately.

He shook his head.  "It is a miracle that he is still
alive, Madame—with eight bullet wounds.  Madame
de Vigerie did not know that you were here; as soon
as she heard she sent for you."  He paused at the door,
and looking at her with the same stern pity, said,
"Remember, Madame, if he talks wildly, that he is
still in great pain.  I have given him what opiates I
dared, but they have little effect, I fear.  He will know
you now, but later on he may become delirious, so that
you should see him at once.  There is nothing to do;
only do not lift him up.  I shall be outside the door,
within call."  He preceded her out of the room.

A priest was going down the stairs—the old curé
who had given them his blessing.  Where was Madame
de Vigerie?

She forgot to think of her when she was inside.  Was
that really Armand?  All the shadows in the big, lofty
room seemed centred in his face, so sharp and incredibly
grey against the white of the bed-linen.  He lay on his
back in the great sculptured bed; one pillow only
out of its many supported him; the rest had been
thrown in a heap on the floor.  His eyes were closed;
he had only a sheet over him, and under it his
motionless body had a sinister rigidity.  A table with basins,
with cloths and lint trailing over it had been pushed,
only half out of sight, behind a curtain, and a chair
near it bore his blood-soaked clothes, cast there just
as they had been cut off him.

She saw all these details, grasped their full meaning,
but had thought only for one thing, and going round the
foot of the bed, entered the sanctuary of the screen
that kept off the candle-light.  Armand's right hand,
the fingers twitching a little, lay on the edge of the bed.
Horatia fell on her knees beside him.

And Armand opened dark, misty eyes upon her.  He
seemed to consider for a moment, and then there came
about his ashen lips a phantom of the smile that had
once charmed her, and he lifted his hand a little way,
pointing.

"Your hair ... makes a light," he said faintly.
The candles were behind her.

"Armand——" she began, choking.

"Yes," he said with more strength, "I know.  It
is ... a long business, it seems.  They do not shoot
very straight, the Orleanists ... I should like to see
you better ... if you would move a candle
... Merci."  He relapsed into French.  "My dear, you
would make a beautiful angel, you who believe in the
angels.  I shall not see a fairer ... Oh, do not be
anxious; M. le Curé ... has arranged all that."

She saw now that he was in deadly pain, and the
bantering words went past her in a passion of pity and
remorse.  Her scalding tears fell on his cold hand, and
on her own, that clasped it.

"Armand, Armand, forgive me!"

"Ma chère, for what?  I thought it was to be ... the
other way."  A little tortured laugh came from him.
"You, to make the ... the conventional death-bed
scene!  Was that why ... you came all this distance?"

"I came when I heard that the rising had failed
... when I thought ... O Armand, cannot *something* be
done!"

"You were really too kind, mon amie.  It is such a
long way ... Did you have a ... good journey?"

"Armand, for God's sake!" cried Horatia, agonised
at the tone.  But he had closed his eyes again; perhaps
he did not even hear her.  And lying there helpless,
broken, ghastly, he was suddenly once more all that he
had ever been to her—the lover, triumphant and
adorable, who had kissed her in the field of stubble,
the married lover of those days in Brittany ... But
it was too late now, she saw that; not only too
late to save his body, but to make any appeal to the
spirit that was leaving it.  The time for that was past.

He spoke again, without opening his eyes, very
faintly but just as politely.  "That glass on the table
... if I might trouble you..."  When she stooped
over him with it she remembered the doctor's injunction,
and, slipping her hand with all possible precaution
under his head, raised it only a little way.  Even at
that movement a contraction passed over his face, and
he shut his teeth on a groan.  Then he drank, and she
lowered his head to the pillow.  She longed to touch his
hair again, and dared not.

"Thank you," said Armand, and lay silent for a
moment, the sweat gathering on his forehead.  Then,
with an effort, he began again.  "I should like,
... while I can ... to speak about the boy....  Perhaps
... an English school ... I believe I put that ... in
my will the other day ... but I cannot remember....
He will be like ... you ... when he grows up."

"Oh, I hope not!" was torn, in a whisper, from
Horatia.

The expressive eyebrows lifted a fraction.  "Mais
... you surely ... do not wish him ... like
... me ... And you ... will marry again, ma chère
... you might marry ce bon Tristan..."

Another pause; and his voice had grown almost
inaudible when he added, "I would give you my
... benediction, the benediction ... of a ghost ... It is
not long ago ... you told me I ... I did not exist
... you had the gift ... of prophecy..."

This time the pause was longer still.  At the foot of
the bed, where his last speech had cast her, Horatia was
pressing a handful of the sheet against her mouth, lest
she should cry out in her own pain.  She did not know
whether she was saying anything; only she was aware
of the thought that these were perhaps the last words
she should ever hear from him...

Suddenly, however, quite changed in tone, the voice
said—and she was not sure whether it was addressing
her or someone else, "Mais, voyez-vous, I am not at all
content to be a ghost ... at my age ... except that
it is the only way ... to be rid of these damnable
bullets ... But if the curé tells you that I was
resigned ... do not believe him..."

And with these words, in which youth and strength
and the soul which had so lightly companioned them,
made their last protest against the wrecking of their
habitation, Armand de la Roche-Guyon's head rolled
slowly over to one side.


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The next thing that Horatia knew was that, somehow
the surgeon was in the room again, bending over the
bed.  "I expected this," she heard him mutter.  Then
he turned to her abruptly.

"He has only fainted," he said.  "He must have
tried to move.  I shall not revive him, Madame; it is
cruel kindness."  He stood a moment looking down at
the unconscious face.  "Poor boy," he added to
himself, "he will not die easily....  Now, Madame, I
think you had better come away.  He will not know
you again, I think, and I will stay with him."

"No, no!" exclaimed Horatia, clinging to the pillar
of the bed as if she feared to be removed by force.  "I
will stay—I insist—it is my right!  He is quite quiet;
I will call you if I need you.  Be outside the door!  I
must stay!"

So he went, and, sitting there, Horatia began her
vigil.  It was very still.  Breaths of the scented June
night, poignant of jasmine, came now and then through
the open windows, and stirred the candle-flames.  For
a long time Armand lay without moving; she could
only hear his difficult breathing.  The screen by the bed
was worked with landscapes in silk, autumn scenes of
bright brown, amber and gold, like the trees under which
they had first met ... But between that first
meeting and this——  How could it be that life was so shorn
across?  She had pictured long years of estrangement,
or, perhaps, years when after forgiving him she had
tried with a heavy heart to do her duty—and there was
this instead.  O, if God would only give her those
imagined years!  And forgiveness—what had that
word to do here....

And suddenly in the garden a nightingale began to
sing, and that magic voice, with all its thrilling burden
of pain and passion, the voice which can never be heard
without a stirring of the heart, pierced her like a sword.
Crouching down in the chair, her arms across her face
to stifle the sound, she wept.

She did not weep for long.  As if the bird, or her sobs,
had roused him, Armand was drifting back to consciousness;
she heard him moan.  She sprang up.  She would
have given everything in the world to speak to him
again, but she did not want him to come back to bodily
anguish.  "Armand, do not wake!" she whispered,
the tears streaming down her face.  "Sleep, my darling,
sleep; do not wake again!"  With all her will she
strove to push him back; and since he was hers more
certainly in unconsciousness, since he could not look at
her now with eyes that held mockery and too much
remembrance, she bent and kissed him many times, and
her tears fell on his hair.

It was vain, for another phantom was flitting before
him in the mists of death, drawing him from peace.  In
a little she knew it.  "Laurence, why do you not come?"
he began restlessly, and went on begging her at one
moment to disregard her scruples, at another not to
leave him to die alone, since he had give his life for
her.  And Horatia, kneeling, frozen, by the bed, learnt
from the broken, pregnant sentences all the truth.
Whatever his desires, he had never been Laurence's
lover.  She had to believe him now.  Her own name
was mingled in the stream.  "Horatia does not believe
me," said the failing voice.  "Leave your scruples,
Laurence; she does not believe me."  And again,
"Why do you send for Horatia?  She would not
care ... I am nothing to her now ... she
told me so."

But chiefly, and with a growing and dangerous agitation,
he implored Laurence to come to him, seeming to
imagine that he was lying in the wood, that it was dark,
and that she would not come.  Hardly knowing what
she said, stunned by the revelations which at the
moment she was not able fully to grasp, Horatia tried
to soothe him, calling upon him by all the names of
their brief happiness; but to all her efforts he merely
responded by crying more insistently for Laurence,
Laurence, Laurence, till the name seemed to eat into
her brain in letters of fire.  At last, at the end of
endurance, she got up from the bedside and went dizzily
towards a window, towards the air.  That Madame de
Vigerie's presence might really have power to quiet him
never occurred to her; she was too agonised for thought.

Until that moment Armand had not betrayed the
slightest consciousness of her, looking always with
haunted eyes beyond her for the figure which was not
there.  But directly she moved away a change came
over him, and he seemed suddenly enveloped by a
cloud from the past thicker than those in which he
wandered.  He began to struggle.

"Let me go to her—she is dying ... they have
shut the door and will not let me in.  Let me go,
Emmanuel!  I tell you she is dying ... and she was
wearing my flowers..."

He tried, ineffectually, to raise himself in the bed,
and as Horatia hurried towards him there sprang out
on the white sheet, just over his breast, a little crimson
patch.  For the second or two that she stared at it,
terrified, it grew larger, bright and menacing.  Gasping,
she ran to the door and flung it open, expecting
to find the surgeon outside.  There was no one
there.

To get help, from any quarter, was the sole clamorous
idea in Horatia's brain.  Opposite her was a door; light
streamed from beneath it.  In an instant she was across
the landing, and had opened it.  Only then did she
realise whose room she had entered.

Madame de Vigerie was sitting motionless, relaxed,
in a chair by the elaborate bed.  She had the air of
having sat thus for hours.  She was still in her riding-habit,
stiff, in one place, with Armand's blood; her head
was thrown back against the rose-coloured satin of the
hangings.

"You must come at once!" cried Horatia.  "He is dying!"

Madame de Vigerie rose stiffly, as if she were cramped;
her face was absolutely colourless and almost without
expression.

"Go back," she said dully.  "It is your place.  I
have no right there."

Horatia fell on her knees, sobbing out, "For God's
sake, come!  You do not understand—I implore you,
I, his wife ... I think a wound has opened ... blood..."

A noisy darkness came down on her; she sank
sideways to the floor.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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Did it really happen, or was it a vision?  She seemed
to be back in the room where Armand had taken his
farewell of life.  It was very quiet now.  The oasis of
candle-light at the far side of the bed was beginning to
be flooded out by the cold waves of dawn; the first birds
were already chirping.  Armand was where he had
craved to be, for Madame de Vigerie had him in her
arms.  She had lifted him away from the pillow, and
his head was lying back on her shoulder.  Laurence de
Vigerie's own head was bent; she did not move either,
but there was that in her attitude which was piercingly
maternal—the mother, not the lover, with her dead.
For that Armand was gone Horatia was instinctively
sure.  Billows of mist broke over her, and she seemed to
fall...


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Long, long afterwards—and yet she knew that it was
only next morning—Horatia stood by Emmanuel's
side and looked down at what had been Armand.  She
had shrunk a little from going in, remembering the
gloomy catafalque at St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and
fearing the sable French palls besprinkled with tears
and skulls.  It was hard to associate things like that
with Armand.  She need not have been afraid.  The
windows were closely curtained, and there were great
candles burning at the foot of the bed, and between
them a prie-dieu, but nothing of gloom.  Even the
conventional white flowers were not there; for Horatia
slowly realised, with an under-current of wonder, that
the spotless drapery of the bed was splashed with trails
and mounds of crimson roses.

And Armand lay in the midst of them indifferent and
serene, all the traces of his difficult dying smoothed
away, the shadow of a smile round his mouth—but as
far removed from the lover and husband she had
known as from the tortured stranger of last night.
The fingers of his uninjured right hand, which alone lay
on his breast, held, not the usual crucifix, but a tiny
sprig of laurel.  Only she who had put it there, and she
who now gazed at it, knew why.

The candles were blurred in tears.  Emmanuel stooped
and kissed the tranquillised dead face.

"Sleep well, my brother," he whispered, using the
words he had uttered, with a different thought, not long
ago.

Horatia slipped to her knees, and her head sank
forward among the roses.





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.. _`LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT`:

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   BOOK III

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   BOOK III

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   LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

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   CHAPTER I

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   (\1)

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The strains of the violin lingered and died away in the
October twilight, and the musician, sitting on the deep
window-seat of Dormer's rooms at Oriel, took the
instrument from under his chin.

"Go on," said his listener, who lay full length on the
sofa.  But the player shook his head.

"Music is the worst trade under the sun in a blow-up,"
he observed.  "The lyre is only heard in feasts."

Dormer moved.  "My dear fellow, you sound
gloomy!  The present is not a feast, granted, but
neither is it a blow-up."

John Henry Newman said nothing, but, with a little
sigh, laid the violin and the bow carefully on the
window-seat.  The fading light gleamed for a moment
on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and threw up, as
he turned, the great nose and the rather prominent
underlip of his lean face.

"I could wish, after all," he said, "that I had not
fallen in with the Froudes' plan.  I do not really want
to leave England just now.  I grudge the time, the
expense, the trouble.  Then suppose I were to fall ill,
too.  It is quite enough that Hurrell should be an
invalid.  And yet I suppose it may be a duty to consult
for one's health, to enlarge one's ideas, to break one's
studies, and to have the name of a travelled man."

"Yet a few weeks ago," commented Dormer, undisturbed,
"you seemed pleased about it."

"So I was; in fact, the prospect fairly unsettled me.
I remember feeling quite ashamed to be so excited, for
it showed me how little real stability of mind I had yet
attained.—But I shall go, of course, when term is over."

"It will do you good, now that the Arians are off
your hands," said Dormer—"provided that you don't
meet with a mishap like mine.  Still more, must we
hope, will it do Froude good."

"Indeed, we must hope that," answered Froude's
friend very gravely, and in the darkening room the
shadow of a great apprehension seemed to float for a
moment between the two men.

"I wish I were not going to be away from England
when the Reformed Parliament meets," resumed the
silver-clear voice.  "Reform apparently connoting nowadays
change at any price, without regard to its direction,
we need have no delusions that the threats against the
Church which have been dinned into our ears for so long
will not be put into execution.  I know that Keble is
preaching the duty of passivity for us clergy until the
Liturgy itself is actually attacked, but if that is what
he is waiting for, I don't think he will have to wait long.
Revenues to-day, creeds to-morrow.  I really incline
to the hope that the Whig spirit will keep in, and the
Church be set adrift.  If this were the case we should be
so very independent of things temporal, for we only, as
individuals, should suffer."

"You will probably be confirmed in that hope, then,"
remarked his friend, "when you get abroad and see
with your own eyes, as I did, the whole Western Catholic
world suffering from the same lack of power because it
has compromised with the State for the sake of its
endowments."

"That was what struck you in Italy?"

"That, and the infidelity of most of the thinking
laity."

"It seems sometimes," said Newman despondently,
"as if the gift of truth once lost was lost for ever, and
that, with so much infidelity and profaneness, the
whole world is tending towards some dreadful crisis."

"Yes," said Dormer, "one is rather tempted to think
so sometimes.  But perhaps that feeling is an incentive,
if we needed one, to set our own house in order."

Newman sighed.  "I do believe what you say, in
my heart, but there are times, as you know, when it
looks as if the Almighty had forsaken His habitation."

Dormer got off the sofa, and came and sat down by
him on the window-seat.  "You know that you do not
really think that, Neander.  You are only tired and
overworked.  I will show you that you don't think it.
What was it that you wrote to me in July when the
cholera was at its worst here?  You said, if I remember
rightly, that one's time had come, or it had not come,
and that in your case you were sure that it had not,
because you felt you were destined for some work which
you had not yet accomplished.  Do you remember
writing that?"

Looking at him, Newman seemed to rouse himself.
"I do remember.  It was a strong impression that I
had just after the fatal case of cholera at Littlemore.
I know that a strong impression is not a good argument,
yet I have the feeling still at times.  But why do you
ask me?"

"Because what you feel about yourself—and feel, I
am convinced, most rightly—I feel about the English
Church.  I think that God, instead of leaving His
sanctuary, is about to come into it with power.  I
think that this will mean purgation and suffering for all
of us, but that we have deserved.  Do you remember the
profession of faith that Bishop Ken made in his will?"

"No, I was not brought up on Ken; as I know you were."

"Well, I know it by heart," said Dormer.  "'I die in
the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith, professed by the
whole Church before the disunion of East and West,
more particularly I die in the communion of the Church
of England as it stands distinguished from all papal
and puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the
doctrine of the Cross.'  That seems to me to be not
only a profession of belief, but a vision of what the
Church of England might be if she awoke to the knowledge
of what it is really to possess the Holy Catholic
and Apostolic Faith."

"Yes, it is a vision, and a 'vision splendid,'"
assented Newman, "but—since I have used the
phrase—you know how Mr. Wordsworth continues, how—

   |  'At length the man perceives it die away
   |  And fade into the light of common day.'"
   |

"It has not really faded; it cannot fade.  It is our
eyes that have forgotten how to look at it.  No," went
on Dormer with a sudden smile, "I would rather think
that the vision seems to have faded because its
guardians have shrouded it up, and then gone to sleep."

"You think, then," said Newman, with an answering
smile, "that it is for us to wake them up?"

"Yes," confessed his friend, "or, if that is impossible,
to break through ourselves and unveil the vision."

"Sometimes you remind me of Froude," said
Newman musingly, "except that he has more of the
schoolboy about him....  I think you have the real
light, and I only a glimmer that comes and goes, and
gives me just enough guidance for the day's journey
and no more....  But as to these slumbering guardians,"
he continued, rousing himself from his own
reflections, "have you ever thought any more about
that idea of yours, the publishing something in a cheap
short form—a sort of tracts—to stir people up?"

"No," said Dormer, "I made a present of it to you.
In fact I have been wondering if you had thought of it
again.  It's not in my line, you know."

"My dear fellow, what nonsense!  Yes, it did occur
to me the other day how it would be exactly the kind
of thing that a group of friends like ourselves might
manage very well—sharpshooting, as it were.  I will
talk seriously of it to Froude when we meet.  I have
another scheme, however, that is more feasible at
present.  Now that Rose has started the 'British
Magazine' I thought we might have a poetical section in it
to rouse people to realise that there is a crisis.  I am
going to look for recruits.  We will get Keble to write for
it, of course, and you and I, and Isaac Williams, and
I shall enlist Rogers if I can—and what about your
friend Hungerford?"

"Tristram may have his faults," said Dormer,
laughing, "but of the crime of writing verses he is,
so far as I know, absolutely guiltless."

"Oh, anybody can write verses," pronounced
Newman cheerfully, taking up his violin.

.. vspace:: 2

When Newman had gone Dormer lit a lamp and sat
down to his translation of Andrewes (having the habit
of forcing himself, regardless of his own inclinations, to
work at stated hours).  But he had not got very far
before he suddenly pushed books and papers away,
and flinging out his arms on the table, buried his face
in them.  How dared he think that he was worthy to
set his hand to the unveiling of that shrouded vision!
And yet, and yet...

.. vspace:: 2

Later, he was standing looking out of the window
across the dark quadrangle, where, against a clear sky
already pierced with one or two stars, Merton tower
lifted its crown of pinnacles.  He felt rather lonely,
and wished that Tristram would come in.  But Tristram
was in London.  Then he remembered, with pleasure,
that they would meet to-morrow at Compton, where he
himself was going over to preach for Mr. Grenville,
and where Tristram also had arranged to spend a couple
of nights on his homeward journey to Oxford.

He went back to his writing-table, but he was still
thinking of the same person.  Since Tristram, having
yielded to Keble's and Newman's wish that he should
not leave Oxford, was working in the parish of
S. Thomas's he had taken his place naturally among the
little group of Oriel friends.  Yet, in spite of all this,
Dormer felt that somehow or other he knew less about
him.  He could not but observe that he seemed happier
and more settled, and when, after the death of Horatia's
husband, he heard him discussing with Froude the idea
of a college of unmarried priests he was not so very
greatly surprised.  He wished that Tristram would
talk sometimes about his own affairs, but he would
comfort himself with the thought that Tristram could
always now, if he desired it, have access to that guide
and inspiration of them all, John Keble.





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   CHAPTER II

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A sort of holiday feeling not very difficult to account
for enveloped Tristram Hungerford as he walked over
the Downs this September afternoon with his face set
towards Compton Regis.  His short sojourn in London
with relatives of his father's had made him feel, as usual,
the gulf between himself and these good and pious
people, which had sprung into existence when he was
sent to a public school, had widened when he went to
Oxford, and was fairly yawning now that he had
become a High Churchman.  It was not unnatural that
he should look forward to his stay, with Dormer, in a
more congenial atmosphere, rather as a schoolboy looks
forward to an exeat, and it chimed with his mood
that he must leave the coach at Lambourn and walk to
Compton over the Downs.  It was good to have the
short springy grass once more underfoot, to breathe
again that light intoxicating air, to see the great
rolling distances which had been his inheritance since
boyhood.  Oxford and work were good, but this was
good too.

Tristram had been rather happy these last months,
for Keble had told him that, contrary to what he himself
felt, he had much to offer, and so at his ordination
as deacon he at last took the step from which only an
obstinate humility had been holding him back, and, in
his own mind, dedicated himself to the single life.

He had also been very busy.  St. Thomas's, the most
populous and the most degraded parish in Oxford, lay,
a beggar full of sores, almost at the gates of Christ
Church, in whose gift was the living.  Its incumbent,
who was also precentor of the Cathedral, did not reside
in the parish; indeed it would have been hard to find,
in that huddle of old houses, a suitable dwelling.
Dirt, squalor, and vice reigned everywhere.  The little
twelfth century church, dedicated to St. Thomas of
Canterbury, was damp and in ill-repair, though it had
recently been repewed; during the flood its aisle was
often under water.  It was opened only for service on
Sundays.  Tristram Hungerford resolved that there
should be a parson in the parish, and, letting his house
at Compton Parva, he took rooms in Hollybush Row,
undismayed by the open ditch which ran along in front
of his window.  His coming was not looked upon with
favour in a district given over to thieves and
prostitutes.  It was not without considerable personal risk
that he visited the narrow winding passages between
the dirty old seventeenth century houses; the men who
lurked there regarded him as a spy, the women screamed
abuse.  He was more than once warned of plans to set on
him some dark night.  The warning had only the effect of
making him more determined to remain where he was;
he had no objection at all to the idea of a scuffle, and
it may have been this evident readiness, joined to the
appearance which he bore of being a man of his hands,
which secured him against actual molestation.

He had also another ally, the cholera, which, starting
in June with two fatal cases at the Castle gaol, in the
parish of St. Thomas's itself, swept the south-west
quarter of Oxford before it migrated to the north-west,
and the suburb of St. Clement's.  For the lost three
months Tristram had been to the district doctor,
nurse—and friend.

.. vspace:: 2

And was it, he sometimes wondered, because he
moved daily in activity and peril, or was he so
profoundly changed that the news of Armand's
death—amazing in its sudden tragedy—had so little effect
upon him?  He was indeed deeply grieved for Horatia.
He thought of her as heart-broken.  For after he had
seen her in Paris he had come definitely to the
conclusion, already dawning on him there, that the change
in her was not due in any way to Armand, but to her new
relatives.  He still had an uneasiness for which he
could not account, but Mr. Grenville having, by the
exercise of great discretion and self-restraint, kept
Horatia's secret, there was nothing to make him suspect
the real state of affairs.  Hence when, only about a
fortnight ago, the Rector had suddenly told him most
of the truth about Armand he was divided between
anger and pity, but the revelation did not seem to
affect him personally.  He was curiously absorbed in
his work; since his services during the cholera he had
been very differently received in the dens of
St. Thomas's, and had even had a transient success when,
(encouraged by the fact that during the epidemic the
Senior Proctor had provided daily Morning and
Evening Prayer in the House of Observation in St. Aldate's),
he began to read it in the church, hoping that
it might attract those who had escaped or recovered
from the scourge.  At first he had a sprinkling of people,
then two or three, then he read the service in an echoing
silence, but, having begun, he continued to read it.

He nourished indeed a hope that one day this little
fast-closed church, named for an English saint and so
typically English with its quiet graveyard and its
ancient yew, might mean something to those who lived
round it, that it might be a home to them, like the
always-open churches he had seen in Italy.  More, having now
a practical experience of the bitter spiritual needs of
the poor in a small neglected town parish, he indulged
sometimes in what he felt to be an almost chimerical
vision, of a church, spacious and beautiful as it might be,
set in some great manufacturing town where life was
thickly pent and had no hope or outlet—a church for
the poor, served by the poor.  When he was tired, which
was not unseldom, he used to think of this dream
structure of his, even picturing some of its architectural
details.  Of late he had admitted Dormer to the same
occupation, and though to the latter the grimy
surroundings of the imaginary fabric were clearly not an
attraction, as they were to its original designer, the
idea gained substance from his participation in it.
Having ruled out galleries, family pews and the Royal
arms, settled that the holy table should not only be
fenced off from desecration, but that it should be
restored to the position at present usurped by the pulpit,
they—or rather Dormer—had even gone so far as to
decide on the dedication.  Hence at this very moment,
while his eyes were fixed on a great white bastion of
cloud rising exultant over the sky-line, Tristram was
thinking that if his dining-room table at Compton, relic
of the solid hospitality of Clapham days, was to be used
in the refectory of the attached college of priests, the
said college would have to be built on a more generous
scale than Dormer seemed to think necessary; he
should tell him so this evening.  It would be a waste
to sell that table.

He began to walk faster, exulting in the wind that
resisted him, in the song of the larks above him, in the
great cloud, in the wonderful feeling both of loneliness
and of life at the highest pitch.  Scraps of that
incomparable Te Deum, the hundred and forty-eighth Psalm,
came into his mind—"Praise the Lord upon earth, ye
dragons and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapours;
wind and storm, fulfilling his word; mountains and all
hills, fruitful trees and all cedars..."

At this point he perceived, rather to his astonishment,
that he was not alone upon the Downs.  About
a quarter of a mile off two people had emerged upon the
smooth curve of the hill that rose before him, walking
swiftly, a sheep-dog heralding their way.  They must
have come up by the old track in the hollow to have
remained hidden until that moment, thought Tristram
as he idly watched them.  They were too far off for him
to see anything distinctive; he could make no guess
at their identity, only, by their movements, they were
young, and they were man and woman.  But as he
looked a curious interest seized upon him.  It seemed to
him almost as if the pulsing life around had centred in
these two figures, instinct with joy and youth.

They reached the summit of the hill.  A lark rose in
the sky, a tiny speck against the cloud; the wind
fluttered the woman's dress.  Suddenly they stopped,
turned, and kissed each other.  There was no trace of
courting or of timidity in the action; it was beautiful
and fitting, as though the sun and wind had met
together and praised God for the fulness of joy.  The
dog leapt round them barking.  In another instant they
were walking on as quickly as before, till they were
swallowed up in a dip of the Downs.

Tristram had stopped too.  In less time than it takes
a pebble to fall from a cliff, the sun, the wind, the clouds,
the very grass were clothed in a new significance.  This,
the close of the great Psalm, this was the highest thing
that existence had to offer, and he was putting it by—he
was putting by deliberately, with the hand of a
madman, the draught which it was no longer sin to
contemplate.  Those two figures!  He flung himself down
on the ground, the lark's song beating in his brain, and
prayed passionately to know the same joy before life
was done.


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Two hours later, as he drew near Compton Rectory,
he saw down the long road a horseman cantering
towards him on the wayside grass.  In all his life
Tristram had known only two men who sat a horse with so
supreme an ease; one was his friend, the other his
rival.  And at that moment he could have wished it
were Armand risen, from his bloody grave.

Dormer came on; drew rein and bent down.  "I
thought it was you," he said as they shook hands.  "I
guess that you left the coach at Lambourn and walked
over the Downs."

"I did," answered Tristram.

"That must have been delightful," remarked the
other, and Tristram, without answering, opened the
Rectory gate and watched him pass in.

There was no denying that the Rector had aged
during the past year, but to-night he was quite
rejuvenated.

"I am really not without hopes of having Horatia
home for Christmas," he announced, as they sat down
to dinner.  "Of course you know, Mr. Dormer, that I
lost my son-in-law last June under very tragic
circumstances.  He took part in the rising organised by that
misguided woman the Duchesse de Berry, and was shot,
poor boy, by the soldiers of the Government.  A
dreadful business; he died in my daughter's arms.  The
shock completely prostrated her, as you may imagine;
she was ill for some time, then there were endless legal
formalities, and it is only now that she talks of being
able to come over and pay me a long visit at Christmas."

"Does she not intend to make her home in England?"
asked Dormer.

"She wishes to, naturally," replied Mr. Grenville,
"and by French law she can do as she likes, but whether
poor Armand's relatives will bring pressure to bear to
keep her in France I don't know.  I try not to meet
trouble half-way.  At any rate she will be here for
Christmas.  There will be a child in the house again;
Christmas seems to demand that.  And to think that
you have both seen my grandson since I have!"

Neither of the young men waxed communicative on
the subject of the infant; Dormer, indeed, had
suddenly become rather thoughtful.

"Tristram, you will have to come over here at
Christmas-time," went on the Rector.  "We must hang
up a stocking for Maurice.  They don't keep Christmas
in France, I understand."

Tristram murmured something about being busy at
Christmas, and that he would be taking his priest's
orders just before that festival.

"Oh, I daresay you'll be able to manage it," said the
Rector easily.  "A few days in the country now and
then would set you up, living as you do in that
plague-spot.  By the way, I hear you exposed yourself very
unnecessarily in the cholera there—most laudable of
course, but you young men are so rash.  It's just the
same with this foolish and shocking idea of throwing
over the supremacy of the State which you have got
into your heads.  Church and State, to any right-thinking
mind, are as inseparable as body and soul, and
it will be a black day for England if they are ever torn
apart.  How you, Mr. Dormer, with your ultra-Tory
ancestry ... but there, I suppose it is just because
they *were* Non-jurors that the idea is not as repugnant
to you as it ought to be."

"Dormer's not a Tory, Rector," remarked Tristram.
"He's a Radical, like me, now."

"Oh, indeed," returned Mr. Grenville, not much
perturbed.  "Well, I won't upset your convictions; but,
Tories or Radicals, I don't fancy you will welcome this
new Parliament of ours when we get it."

"Why not, Mr. Grenville?" asked Dormer.

"Because, if ever there was a middle-class measure,
it is this Reform Act!  You mark my words, it will be
worse, not better, for the poor man now than under the
old state of things."

"I fully agree with you," observed Dormer.

"It is quite pathetic," pursued the Rector, "to see
how every class thinks the Millennium is coming because
of the extension of the franchise.  Wages are going to
rise, and the price of corn is going to fall....  No,
what is really wanted is Poor Law reform.  Am I not
right, Tristram?"

Tristram wearily agreed.  It seemed to him that the
evening would never end.  He only desired one thing,
to be alone.  In the study after dinner the Rector
rallied him once or twice on his silence, and he was half
afraid to meet Dormer's eyes, which always saw so
much.  Yet when at last Mr. Grenville, taking up his
own candlestick, had said paternally, "Now don't you
young men stay talking here till the small hours," and
himself departed to bed, Tristram sat down again by
the fire, lest the abrupt exit which he longed to make
should either wound his friend or give him cause for
speculation.  And he then embarked on such an
unnecessarily detailed account of the pressing need of
better drainage, not only in the parish of St. Thomas's
but also in St. Clement's, in fact throughout the whole
of Oxford, that his somewhat unresponsive listener
came to the conclusion that he was thoroughly overdone
oy the cholera, and suggested of his own accord that
they should go to bed.





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   CHAPTER III

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Great things were vouchsafed on Saturday, the 14th
of December, 1832, to Mrs. Polly White, sister and
correspondent of Mrs. Martha Kemblet, for, it being the
day on which she went to "do" at the Rectory, she
was enabled to combine the fine drawing of a tablecloth
(an art in which she was proficient) with the sight
of the arrival of Miss Horatia and the Rector, the
precious babe and her own sister.  Mr. Grenville had
gone to Dover to meet the packet, and the party was
expected from Oxford, by chaise, some time in the
afternoon.

The village was all agog about Horatia's return, and
some spirits, lacking delicacy rather than enthusiasm,
had entertained the idea of an evergreen arch across the
Rectory gate, to bear the words "Welcome Home,"
and to be adorned with such decorations as had
survived from the Coronation festivities fifteen months
before.  The impropriety of so receiving a newly-made
widow having been pointed out, gossip had then spent
itself in speculations as to how Miss 'Ratia would look,
not only in her weeds, poor dear, but in the status of
a French countess, or whatever she was, for it was felt
that in some way she would be a different person from
the Miss 'Ratia they had known.  One old man, however,
dratting them all, announced his unalterable intention
of putting a couple of lighted candles in his window, for
if his darter had taken and married a Frenchy, and had
come home again after so disastrous a step, widder or
no widder, he should consider it a clear case of "This
my darter wur dead, and be alive again; and wur lost
and be found."  Such was indeed the general feeling in
Compton Regis, where only a few impressionable
damsels were found to remark that Miss 'Ratia's
husband had been a proper young man, and that 'twas
a gurt pity he had been killed in them foreign wars.

Mrs. White deplored all this chatter though she would
fain have contributed to it.  When, therefore, about
four o'clock, Ellen rushed into the room where she was
working to say that the chaise was turning in at the
gate, she flew with the rest of the domestics to the front
door.  And thus, curtseying like them, she was privileged
to see the black and yellow post-chaise from the *Angel*
at Oxford draw up at the steps, to behold the Rector
emerge and assist to alight, first a lady in the deepest
mourning, a long crape veil such as Mrs. White had
never seen covering her from head to foot, secondly, a
foreign-looking nurse or nursemaid (disliked by
Mrs. White on the spot, though bearing a priceless burden),
and lastly her own dear comfortable, capable sister,
not changed a bit.  And she saw the Comtesse put back
her long veil, and come up the steps on her father's arm,
looking that sweet, but so sad!  The Rector, poor dear
gentleman, seemed moved, as who wouldn't be.  Miss
'Ratia, when you saw her in the light, was older, a little,
and thin in the cheeks, but the weeds set off her hair
and complexion beautiful.  As for the lovely infant, he
was asleep, and Mrs. White preferred in any case to view
him when Martha could act as show-woman.  And so,
as the party mounted the stairs, she returned to her
napery, hoping that her sister would shortly appear.

But Martha was indeed unchanged, and it was not
until things were "to her liking," the nurse properly
installed, the child in bed, her mistress's trunks
unpacked, and her mistress at table with his Reverence,
that she permitted herself to seek out and to embrace
her sister.  Then, due greeting and inquiries having
passed, Mrs. Kemblet, seated in a restful chair, began
her desired narration.

"I wish I could have got my lamb to go to bed at
once, and have her dinner there.  However, she's a
sight stronger than she was, and has stood the journey
wonderful, considering.  Rough it was, too, and the
packet rolling something horrible.  But here we all are
safely, thanks to One Above, and the infant none the
worse, though a trifle fractious, bless his heart!"

"Ah, but what *she* must have been through, Martha!"
said Mrs. White feelingly.

This was a whip to a willing horse.  "You may well
say that, Polly," responded her sister.  "What with
being fetched like that all sudden at night, to find the
poor young gentleman weltering in an agony—for he
was shot something terrible, they said—and him dying
in her arms (all unprepared, too, I'm afraid), and then
going back to Paris with his body, and the household
off their heads, and the funeral—I don't know what we
should have done without the elder one, the Marquis
as they call him..."

"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. White, as the narrator
paused for breath.  "And where was the poor young
man buried, then?"

"At the grand family place where we was during
the cholera time....  Well, to go back to the dreadful
occurrence" (impossible to deny that there was relish
in Mrs. Kemblet's tone over these words) "when Miss
Horatia gets this letter and rushes off to this place,
St. Clair, without even telling me where she was going, we
couldn't none of us do anything till the Marquis comes
back next morning early.  Off he goes then to St. Clair;
then he comes back and says his brother is lying dead
in the big house there, having been shot in the wood by
the Government soldiers, and that he is going to have
him brought away, and to fetch Miss Horatia too.  And,
by and by, they brought him, carrying him on a bier
with a flag over him, not that red, white, and blue thing
they use now in France, but the old one, the white one.
And they laid him in the chapel at his own place, where
we was, with candles all burning; hardly Christian in a
way, not being in a coffin, but I must say he looked
beautiful, and when I went in to see him, I cried like a
baby; for though I always begrudged him having Miss
Horatia, and never trusted him, it did seem dreadful
him being cut off like that, so young; and I daresay he
would have settled down if he had been spared."

Mrs. White wiped her sympathetic eyes, but caught
at the last words.  "He wasn't what you'd call a good
husband to Miss Horatia then?"

"I don't say that," returned Martha, slightly
stiffening.  "All them young men over there are wild,"
she explained, with an air of profound acquaintance
with Gallic youth.  "The less said about it the better,
that's my motto.  And really I begun to wonder if I'd
not been mistook, seeing the state my poor lamb was
in after he was killed.  For weeks after we got back to
Paris she could not sleep without I was in the little
room off hers—always seeing him in her dreams she was,
and calling out that he was bleeding to death, and
begging him to forgive her—the Lord knows why—and
imploring someone to go to him.  She fainted on the day of
the funeral; a grand funeral it was, with a Bishop to
bury him, and a sermon saying he was a martyr for the
altar and the throne, whatever that meant.  The old
Madam nearly went out of her mind over it all, she
was that fond of the Count.  Then when she—the old
one—was quieted down a bit nothing would serve but
she must be having the child up in her nasty stuffy
bedroom at all hours of the day, saying it was all that
was left her, and things like that."

"But surely Miss Horatia had something to say to that?"

Martha leant forward very impressively.  "You
mark my words, Polly, there's going to be a tussle
over that child!  You and me thinks he's English, bless
him, because he's Miss Horatia's, but by law he's
French, and belongs over there, and you wouldn't
believe the difficulty there's been about our leaving
Paris.  I've not been told, and it's not for me to ask,
whether we're coming here on long visits, or whether
my Lady will make her home here.  But this I do say,
they've got their eye on him, the poor innocent, and
it'll be worse as he grows up."

"What a shame!" said Mrs. White indignantly.
"And he no older than my Harriet's Willy!"

Mrs. Kemblet rose with majesty, and with majesty
she replied, "That's as it may be, but I don't think you
realise, Polly, that when the old Duke and his son dies,
there'll be only one life between the Count asleep
upstairs and the dukedom."

"Lor!" ejaculated Mrs. White.

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And by the child upstairs there stood his grandfather
and his mother, looking down at him in his rosy
abandonment of slumber.

"Papa, he was very fond of him," said Horatia at
last, and turning, she threw herself weeping into her
father's arms.





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   CHAPTER IV

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All through the falling of the leaves—the creeper
leaves that dropped slowly, resplendent in death, from
college walls, the narrow willow leaves that were
whirled floating on to the streams, the leaves that
made a carpet, the leaves that were like rain, the leaves
that laughed as they fell, the leaves that fluttered to
the ground like wounded birds—Tristram wrestled
with the angel of bewilderment.

Not even Dormer could help him.  He had known
that from the night at the Rectory.  The matter was
too intimately between himself and God; he must
struggle through alone.  And though, when he was back
in Oxford, Dormer had come and sought him out in
his lodgings, in order to tell him that he thought he
was overworking, and ought to spare himself a little
more, Tristram merely said that he was quite well,
and let him go without a sign.

He was in a mist of anguish and perplexity.  If he
could only see the path, he told himself, he was ready
to follow it, however sharp its flints.  But where lay
his road?  If that reawakened desire of his, hidden from
his own eyes till the wind of the Downs had rent the
curtain, were sin, then he would cut it from him, at
whatever cost.  For even then the self that prayed
with such intensity for happiness was so much the
captive of a surrendered will that at the last it
had struggled towards obedience with *Non voluntas
mea*....

But how could his desire be sin?  He was not a
Roman Catholic priest; he was a member of a body
where marriage was almost expected.  Even if, at his
ordination, his intention had been plain to himself,
he had taken no formal vow of celibacy.  Newman,
in spite of his ascetic views, thought that vows were
foolish, and showed a lack of trust in Providence.
Moreover, might not Horatia's sudden liberation be
a sign that she was meant for him after all?  And
how could she hinder him in his work?—she would
be a help to any man.  He thought of what she might
be as a companion, as an inspiration.  And he wanted
her for herself; he wanted the warm and ordered
joys of home.  Was that wrong?  How could such
desires be wrong, when God Himself had implanted
them?  Had not Jeremy Taylor called marriage "the
nursery of heaven?"

But he knew now that this very exaltation of marriage
by the Christian Church was only the other side of her
exaltation of virginity.  This lost truth, the heart of
early asceticism—positive offence though it was even
to persons who prided themselves on taking literally
every other Gospel precept—he had learnt unwillingly
enough.  He too had found it a hard saying, but like
his friends at Oriel, having once admitted it, he could
not conveniently forget it.  And though these men,
because of their intense belief in the Divine plan for
every individual life, would never presume to demand
from him that he should not marry, yet, with their
severe ideals, they would certainly expect that he should
not go back on a line once chosen.  And he had chosen;
no use to deny that.  He knew, if no other human being
knew, how deeply he was committed to the idea of the
life without ties.  It was impossible for him to blink the
fact that, had Horatia not become free, he would have
gone on in the direction in which his mind was set.  This
present hesitation meant, then, that when, in his heart,
he had made a dedication of his life to God, it was only
because the one woman he wanted had been taken from
him—an offering, as he had always felt, but little worth,
though the best that he could bring.  But now, now that
the offering was to cost him more dear, he was desirous
of taking it back again.  And he reflected how such
conduct would appear in worldly matters.  It did not
seem to him that its transference to another plane of
values would render it any the more creditable.

Yes, said another voice, but you cannot set your
relations with the Almighty on a sort of business
footing.  Do you imagine that the Architect of the
Universe keeps a strict ledger account with the dust he
has called into being, that he does not know the weak
and childish heart of it, and accept its poor offerings, not
like a merchant, but like a king?

To and fro went the warring armies in his soul, while
his body carried him about his business among the poor
of St. Thomas's.  But all the time the tide of combat
was setting in one direction, and at last he knew it.

There was a certain old woman in one of the courts
to whom he used to read every day.  Though dirty and
illiterate she was methodical and self-willed, and,
oblivious of the lessons of the day, selected what book of
the Bible she pleased to be read straight through to
her.  In this way, after a course of Deuteronomy, she had
pitched upon St. Mark.

"You was reading yesterday, Sir, how we should cut
off our 'ands and feet and cast them into 'ell fire," she
observed one morning as Tristram sat down in her little
room.  "It seems a 'ard thing to be told to do, don't it?"

Scarcely encouraged by this result of his ministrations,
Tristram promptly turned to the end of the ninth
chapter and re-read the passage, trying to explain as
simply as possible its meaning.  But the attitude of the
old dame was that of one taking her stand on the rock
of the Word—"the Good Book says so, and it don't
become us to say otherwise"—and after a while, seeing
that his exegesis was making no impression, he desisted,
and went on to the tenth chapter.  He was reading it,
truth to tell, without attending much to the words,
his mind occupied half unconsciously with the eternal
conflict, when he found that he was in the midst of
the story of the young ruler, and that his lips were
repeating the familiar words, "One thing thou lackest
... sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor
... and come, take up the cross, and follow Me."

All the rest of the day the story kept running in
his head.  He could not quite think why, except that
it was one of those scenes in the Gospel, dealing with
an individual, which had always interested him.  With
his mother's charity he had often hoped that the
young ruler came back after all.  He remembered once
having a talk with Dormer, who said that there was some
sort of tradition that he returned, but that he, Dormer,
thought there was very little ground for such a hope.
On the same occasion he had enunciated a theory
which Tristram had thought rather austere—that
certain people, often good people, who had kept
the commandments from their youth up, could only
be saved at all by enduring hardness.  Such people were
constantly asked to make decisions involving sacrifice,
and whereas others seemed able to compass the heavenly
ascent by a tolerably easy road, they, if they were
to reach the same summit, must climb by a very
different path.

And somehow Tristram began to apply these
conditions to himself.  He had kept the commandments,
he had great possessions—friends, enough to live upon,
perhaps the possession that he had coveted all these
years.  What if he were in the position of the young ruler,
although he had already begun to obey the command.
He had thought that God was perhaps calling him to the
single life because he could serve the poor better in that
state.  He had found how happy he could be at
St. Thomas's, and experience had convinced him that for
such work a man must be single.  It was not just the
fact of marrying Horatia.  He would have responsibilities
which would clash with what he hoped to do.
He could not take her to live in the midst of dirt and
poverty to risk her health, and the health of their
children.  If he married her he would be turning his
back on his work.  According to Dormer's theory he
might be turning his back on Christ.

And so, in no romantic surroundings but among the
trying adornments of his little room in Hollybush
Row—the waxen bouquets springing from woolwork mats
and shrined under domes of glass, the very bad
engraving of the entry of the Allies into Paris, the lustre
jugs, the framed announcement of the Oxford coaches
and the wall-paper that oppressed the very soul—he
fought his way through to the conclusion that Horatia
was not for him now any more than she had been two
years ago.  He must take the harder path, he must go
on as he had begun.

The stuffed parrot in the centre of his mantelpiece,
at which, unknowing, he had been staring fixedly for the
last hour, regarded him with a cynical and leering eye.
"*So this is religion!*" it seemed to say.  "*And this is
a man!*"

Tristram, though appreciating the taunt, got up and
put the critic outside the door.


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Three weeks later, at two o'clock in the afternoon of
Christmas Eve, he was stepping into the post-chaise
which was to take him out to Compton Regis to see
Horatia for the first time since her return.  He had been
ordained priest only yesterday.  The Rector had been
in the Cathedral, and Tristram, touched by his presence,
had accepted his urgent invitation to come over to
Compton on the morrow, Christmas Eve though it was.
For this summons he had, indeed, been preparing
himself, since whatever course he should afterwards decide
upon, he must at least go out and see Horatia once.

Yesterday afternoon, amid the frightful Christmas
bustle outside the *Mitre*, in the clamour of departing
coaches laden with geese and turkeys, he had said
farewell to Dormer, who had stayed thus late in Oxford
for his sake, and was posting to Whitchurch, where he
would catch the London and Exeter mail in the
morning.  Even so his expectant nephews and nieces at
Colyton would all be in bed long before he reached his
brother's house on Christmas Eve.  Tristram had
deprecated this sacrifice, but Dormer had insisted on
staying to see him ordained.

Down past the front of Christ Church went the chaise,
over the river, and towards the hill—ways so familiar.
But the self that travelled them to-day was different.
The tortures of indecision were over.  Yesterday had
put the seal on his dedication.  Wonderfully,
unbelievably, the choice had been offered to him after
all—the reality of sacrifice, not mere acquiescence in past
suffering, and because his attitude was no more that
of a loveless obedience, he almost longed to feel the
pain which he knew was before him.  And, even if
there was combat to come, he would know now on which
side he fought, he would not go away sorrowful.

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The drawing-room at Compton Rectory was not
empty, as he had at first thought, for in a chair
before the fire, with her back to him, was seated
Horatia herself.  On a fold of her black dress lay some
immature woolly object which he could not identify,
and in the crook of her right arm rested a little motionless
head clothed, none too thickly, with curling rings
of bronze-gold hair.

Tristram stopped in his advance.  And at that she
lifted her head and spoke.

"Tristram!  Is that you already?  He is asleep.
Come round here, if you will."  He came to her other
side, and his lips met the wedding ring on the hand
which she tendered to him, smiling.

"Dear Tristram!" she said, in the same soft tones
of welcome, looking up at him.  "How kind of you to
come!  Will you get yourself a chair?"

He obeyed, still rather speechless, and when he had
sat down she asked him if he had ridden or driven,
whether the Rector knew that he was there, all in a
quiet and unembarrassed manner.  Then she suddenly
bent her head and said, "Maurice, it is time that you
woke up and spoke to this gentleman."

Long lashes as black as night lay on the cheeks of
Maurice-Victor-Stanislas de la Roche-Guyon, and one
hand grasped firmly a string of jet beads hanging from
his mother's neck.  His slumber was profound and
determined.  Tristram gazed at him, his mind in
something of a whirl.

"He got tired, playing with his lamb," vouchsafed
Horatia, and as she looked down at the sleeping child a
most divine little smile came over her face.

The revelation of that look, and the presence of her
son somehow almost deprived Tristram of the power
to ask her the thousand questions about herself that
were on his lips.  He got out a few, in a lowered tone,
and then, with little warning but a sudden drowsy
stretching, Maurice awoke, and out of Armand's eyes:
but bluer and more innocent, looked up straight at the
visitor.

The effect was disconcerting to both.  Tristram
disguised his feelings, but the younger person, giving way
to whatever emotion he may have felt, silently buried
his head in his mother's arm.

Horatia smiled that new smile of hers, and put a kiss
on the curls.

"I was so sorry that I could not come to your
ordination yesterday, Tristram," she was beginning.
"Papa would not let me take the long drive, but I
wished very much to come..."

But just then the Rector entered, and the talk became
general, even, on Horatia's side, rather disjointed, for the
Comte de la Roche-Guyon, demanding to be put down,
crawled meanwhile with an extraordinary rapidity about
the floor, addressing in obscure terms every object that
he encountered on his route, footstools, hearthrug, even
the flora of the carpet.  Finally he embraced with
fervour one of Tristram's legs, and Tristram, after a
moment or two, stooped and lifted him on to his knee.
After all, he might as well accustom himself to children,
though he would rather have gone to school with the
child of someone else.  Maurice smiled.

"Up!" he observed pertinently, and kicked out his
feet with happy vigour, somewhat endangering his
balance.

"He doesn't often take to people like that!" observed
his mother and grandfather simultaneously, and
with the usual amount of truth...

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It was over.  And as the post-chaise jolted him back
in the darkness to Oxford, Tristram's whole heart was
so swamped with the thought of Horatia, what she must
have gone through, how miraculously she had changed,
that there was little room for the contemplation of
himself.  She had now what she wanted; he was
sure of it; she held it in her arms.  The great surprise
of it, after Paris, only made him the more convinced.
God had given her compensation for what she had
suffered.  Yet the more he thought, with all a man's
touch of sentiment, about the little group in the
firelight, the more that it seemed to him wonderful,
beautiful, and, for Horatia, consummatory, the more did
he realise the cost of selling that great possession which
he might have had.  Just as he had stood and looked
on at mother and child this evening, so must he always
stand now and look on—no more—at the sanctities of
home.

And he had a sudden vision, too, of Dormer, surrounded
to-morrow in church by the fair heads of his brother's
many children, kneeling in the midst of a bevy who
were none of his.  He had once told Tristram of the
whispered communications that were wont to be made
to him in service-time, of the happy terror in the eyes
that would follow the small pointing finger up "Little
Choke-a-bone Alley" to the tomb of the girl of royal
lineage choked, hundreds of years ago, "by a fish-bone,
Uncle Charles!"—to the effigy which had thrilled him
himself as a boy....  There are veils which the hand
of a close friend is the last to touch, and whether
Dormer had ever suffered as he had suffered, or whether
the vision which he had always followed shone with a
light so effulgent that no other joys had radiance,
Tristram could never pity him.  But, remembering his
long patience and hope, he desired suddenly to give him
a Christmas gift, and though the letter could not reach
him on the feast itself, and though it cost him
something to do it, he sat down, when he got back, and told
him what he had kept from him yesterday, that he had
indeed, at last, sold whatsoever he had.

And, when he offered the Eucharist for the first time
on Christmas morning, he made his own oblation,
mingled of pain and joy.





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   CHAPTER V

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The Rector had just closed the door of his study on the
retreating form of Mary Straker, a blushing village
damsel who had come to impart to him the news of
approaching matrimony.  Mr. Grenville had a peculiar
interest in the announcement, for some three years
previously he had intervened to shield her inamorato
from the consequences of a poaching adventure, and
had emigrated him up to Yorkshire as a groom.  The
grateful swain had now written to his betrothed to
inform her that he had saved enough money to marry
upon, and that he intended to return this spring for the
ceremony, and would Mary please tell his Reverence so,
and he hoped, with his best respects, as his Reverence
would say the words over them come Easter.

Mr. Grenville was pleased, and went smiling to the
window.  Drumming on the pane a moment, he looked
out at the young green of March, and hoped Tom
Hollings and little Polly would be happy.  In his parish
the Rector was something of a matchmaker.  He had
an obscure conviction that one had only to put two
people together and they would hit it off somehow; in
fact he had always taken a rosy view of marriage—until
the marriage of his own daughter.  He thought of that
now, and, suddenly sighing, came away from the window.

He was really worried about Horatia, in spite of the
fact that she looked distinctly better since her return
three months ago.  But she seemed sometimes as if she
would never recover from her sadness.  She had lost
her habit of teasing him; she was, for her, rather too
sweetly reasonable.  And yet he could not help her.
Poor darling! he could not bear to think that she knew
so much of evil, and had grown so much older in such
a short time.  In some ways the thing that he most
resented in the whole unhappy affair was the smirching
of her innocence.  While he was in Paris he had been
really shocked at the Duchesse's broad views when,
with her accustomed frankness, she had laid before him
the reason for his grandson's premature arrival,
emphasising the fact that she was annoyed not with
Armand's conduct in itself, but with his carelessness.
And though he was half unwilling to listen to Martha,
there were things which she insisted on telling him,
prefacing them with "And I think you ought to know, Sir."

But because Armand was dead he thought of him now
as "that poor young man," and, to his mind, his tragic
removal somehow whitewashed his conduct and made
it "better not to think of it."  At the same time he did
not fail, in his inmost heart, to feel that removal a direct
work of Providence, and was deeply ashamed of this
feeling, especially when he considered Maurice's
fatherless condition.  Often, indeed, watching him with his
mother, was Mr. Grenville struck with the pathos of
the situation.  He loved to see them together, especially
when Horatia did not know that he was looking at them;
she seemed to him so beautifully maternal, and he could
hardly believe that there had been a time when she did
not care for the child.

Mr. Grenville began to pace up and down, his hands
behind his back, and not for the first time did he wonder
whether the comfort which he was powerless to give
Horatia might not, after all, come from another quarter.
He had, for his part, a distinct objection to second
marriages, and had acted on it in his own case, but he would
be easier to Horatia than he had been to himself.  Horatia
was still so young, the fatherless Maurice so tiny, her
married life—her unhappy married life—had been so
short ... eighteen months!  Then the presence of
Tristram, still unmarried and, as far as he knew,
unchanged in his feelings towards Horatia, seemed to him
almost providential.  Tristram Hungerford indeed was
steadfastness incarnate; he could not conceive of his
changing.  But, of course, he did not know what
Tristram thought of second marriages.  In any case,
however, his present attitude was very proper, not
intruding upon Horatia's grief.  Besides, he was
probably waiting till he had a living.  Yet, second
marriages...

Mr. Grenville stopped in his promenade, and with a
look on his face as of one about to drink medicine, took
down Jeremy Taylor from a shelf and turned over the
pages till he came to that divine's remarks on the
widowed state.  Tightening his lips, he shut up the book
after a moment with something like a bang, and
replaced it.  Yes, second marriages ... But, after
all, he was going on rather fast.


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When the Rector returned, late that afternoon, from
visiting his parishioners, he was rather surprised to find
Horatia sitting on a stool in front of his study fire, which
had only just been lit.  As soon as he had sat down
beside her she put her head on his knee, and said, with
the directness of a child,

"Papa, dear, I want to talk to you.  I am so
unhappy!  I must talk to someone."

The Rector put his hand on her hair, half alarmed,
half pleased that she had come to him.  "What is it,
my love?" he said tenderly.  "Only this morning I
was thinking of you and wishing I could comfort you."

"O Papa, I can't say it to you.  I am so wicked!"  And
she began to cry.

"My dearest child," said the Rector, astonished,
"what do you mean?  How can you have been
wicked?  Come, then, tell me all about it.  There is
nothing you cannot say to me.  I can understand
how you loved him in spite—in spite of many things."

"But that is just it," answered Horatia, sobbing.
"I did not really love him."  Then she went on in an
outburst, "You think now that I'm grieving for him
because I loved him.  It isn't true.  I'm grieving just
because I didn't love him.  I want to say to people,
Don't be sorry for me, don't look at my black dress!
I am a wicked woman, I did not love my husband.
I did not even do my duty."

Mr. Grenville put an arm round his daughter's
shoulders and bent over her.  "My child, you mustn't
talk like this.  We know that poor Armand was not all
that he might have been to you, and I daresay I know
more than you think.  You married him for better or for
worse, and in some ways ... for although he is dead
we must face facts ... I have little doubt it was for
worse.  It was a shock to your innocence to find out
much that you ought never to have known.  I ought to
have warned you more, to have told you more.  My
darling child, your old father has been greatly to blame.
If only your dear mother had been alive!"

"Papa, you did warn me," she said, drying her eyes.
"I was very wilful; I thought I knew best.  But it
seemed then as if Armand came and opened a new world
to me, and I thought it was love ... but it could not
have been ... and then I began to hear things
... and before Maurice was born..."

"I know, my dear," said the Rector, smoothing her
hair.

"And Maurice, the darling, I was so wicked I would
not look at him ... and as for Armand, I believe I
almost hated him ... and I told him he was dead to
me ... and now he is dead really ... and how can
I say I loved him!"

The Rector reflected a little before replying.

"I would not think too much, Horatia, of whether
you loved him or did not love him.  I understand that
you are trying to be honest with yourself, but now you
have told me do not fret about that part of it.  You
made mistakes, and it is all very sad, but try to
remember that we are in the hands of a merciful Creator.
'He knoweth whereof we are made; He remembereth
that we are but dust."

"If only I could be like you, Papa, and could have
your trust!  It frightens me to think about him."

"Tell me, my dear."

"O, he did not want to die.  He was so young, and
he loved life.  He said one thing that I shall never
forget: 'If they tell you that I was resigned, do not
believe them.'"

"Poor boy, poor boy!" murmured the Rector huskily.

"And the way he died was so dreadful!  I had never
seen anyone die before, and I did not know how awful
it could be.  O, I have been so frightened!" said
Horatia, now almost incoherent.  "I see him always
with the blood spreading through the linen, and I hear
him always calling in that terrible voice, 'Laurence,
Laurence! ..."

"Ah!" said the Rector, compressing his lips.  He
made an effort to control himself.  "Don't go on,
Horatia; don't distress yourself!  I know all about it.
We must try not to judge the dead—and may God have
mercy on us all!"

There was a pause, during which Mr. Grenville blew
his nose violently.

"Dear, dear," he resumed at length, "you ought
never to have suffered this—and to think of your being
alone at such a time!  I have been much to blame,
much to blame! ... There, there, my child, you will
stay with me, now, and you are young, and in time you
will forget——"

"Never, never!" exclaimed Horatia, raising her head.

"No; well, perhaps, I should not say that, but the
old know that we must forget even if we do not want to,
and as I said, you are young, and there is Maurice.  He
can help you more than anyone else.—You will stay
with me, Horatia?"

She flung her arms tightly round his neck.  "Oh,
yes.  Papa, if you will keep me.  Two or three months
every year I must go back to France, but for the rest
there is no reason why I should not stay with you if you
will have me."  She sat still for a moment, leaning
against her father's knee, and when she was a little
calmer, went on, "You remember that I wrote and told
you about the will, that Armand wished Maurice to go
to an English school.  He was very fond of him, Papa."

"Yes, my dear."

A pause.

"The more I think of it, Horatia," began
Mr. Grenville solemnly, "the more I believe that you
ought to find your comfort in this provision of your
husband's will.  It seems to me to prove that, far
from doubting your affection, he felt that he owed
something to you, and that this was the way he tried
to make up to you.  Poor young man, there was
much good in him!  Try to think of this, my love, and
say your prayers and do your duty—and now, dear
me, it is nearly dinner-time!"





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   CHAPTER VI

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"Want!" observed the Comte de la Roche-Guyon,
stretching out a fat hand from his wheeled bassinette
towards the huge red poppy nodding in the flowerbed
beside him.  "Want, want, want!" he repeated
beating with the same member upon the satin coverlet.

Grimes the gardener, clipping the hedge near by,
looked round.  "And so you shall, my pretty!"
quoth he.  Turning, he broke off the object of Maurice's
desires, and presented it to him, and Maurice, after
tearing off the flaming petals, inserted the fascinating
remainder into his mouth.

He had not time, however, to try his newest teeth
upon the green dainty before it was torn from him and
flung whirling into the bed as Martha—who had but
left her charge for a moment—emptied the vials of
her wrath upon the luckless donor.  "And you a
married man not to know better than that!  You might
have poisoned the precious child under his mother's
very eyes!  Come away, my beautiful ... now
don't cry after the nasty thing!"

As the hand of indignation wheeled Maurice away
from the vicinity of the unworthy Grimes it removed
him also out of Horatia's field of vision, where she
sat under the acacia tree on the lawn, a book on her
lap and a workbasket by her side.  Horatia flew something
of her old colour in her cheeks.  Her father, after
her outburst in the spring, had told her to say her
prayers and to do her duty.  To do her duty, or
what she knew that her father would conceive to be
her duty, was easy—anything was easy that served
to take her mind off herself.  She did all she could
for Maurice, and was unaware that Martha generally
did it all over again.  She paid visits and went to local
shows, proceedings that before her marriage had been
very distasteful to her.  The Rector thought her so
brave, and wonderfully softened, for now she seemed
to suffer fools gladly.  She did, for any company was
better than her own.

But to say her prayers was a different matter,
for though she repeated a form of words she could not
pray, and she hated being in church, for there her mind
invariably became clear, and all that she had shut away
in a box marked "Paris" would emerge, and be,
not a dream of the past, but a present reality.  At
any moment this box was not over-securely fastened.
Inside were remorse and hatred.  Every letter
from France shook the lid—though such letters
were not very frequent—one or two melancholy
epistles from the Duc, a few kind notes from Emmanuel,
some, not so benevolent, from the Dowager, and one
malicious communication from the Marquise de Beaulieu,
informing her that Madame de Vigerie had not been
seen in society this year, and that every one was
wondering why....  How she hated the
Vicomtesse!  It was she who had cast the first poisoned
fruit into their Eden, it was she who had deceived her
with a show of friendship, she who had caused her to
condemn Armand innocent, she who had lured him
on—lured him on to his death.  Merely to think of her
was to revive, in its fadeless colours, that picture or
dream of him, lying dead in her arms....

Better than saying her prayers or doing her duty
were Tristram's visits.

She did not take them as a matter of course, but
looked forward to them almost eagerly, comparing
them with the many times he had come in old days.
She was changed, she knew, but so was he.  The fact
of his becoming a clergyman might have been expected
to make him more sedate, but it had had the opposite
effect.  At times he was quite lighthearted and full
of hope, and seemed to find no little enjoyment in the
prospect of a fight to come.  The hope and the joy
of battle were for the Church, for the Church was in
danger, and yet Horatia no longer wanted to laugh
at him or to tease him.  He would tell her that he
and his friends at Oriel were conspirators, and that
one day the conspiracy would break out, that Oxford
was going to lead another hope, and not a forlorn one.
In July he had said that they only waited for Newman
to come back from Italy, that Froude was full of fire,
and that if Keble could only be got to move he would
be more potent than anyone.

Horatia had watched eagerly to see what the
Reformed Parliament would do, and, when the bill for
the suppression of the Irish bishoprics was introduced,
she was pleasurably thrilled at the thought then
presented to her that perhaps an era of persecution
had really begun.  She was full of elation when
Mr. Keble preached his stirring Assize sermon in July and
of regret that she herself had not heard it.  In August
she felt the futility of the meeting at Hadleigh, and
she was as convinced as Tristram could have wished
that no great movement was ever successfully conducted
by an association; she was sure that it must be the
work of individuals.  And now she was waiting for
the appearance of the first-fruits of that idea—the
projected series of Tracts.

It was like an exciting game, for Horatia's interest
was, after all, purely intellectual.  And her instinct
told her that even if Mr. Froude could speak jestingly
of a conspiracy, and the friends could use, out of
reverence for holy things, a "little language" which
to the outsider appeared merely flippant, there was
within them a spirit which made her shrink.  She knew
that they had a profound belief in Providence, that they
believed they had a work to do, and were but tools for
its execution.  This alone was a disturbing thought.
And she perceived in them a moral force, a severity
and a relentlessness which she had never met before.
If, as people said, they wished to copy the Roman
Catholics, she was at a loss to know where in that
body, as she knew it, they had found their exemplar,
for not even in Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, reputed
and sincerely believed by her to be a saint, had she
seen any trace of this spirit.  But it was to be found,
no doubt, in the religious orders.  It also occurred to
Horatia that this reformation of the Church for which
Tristram's friends were so eager would mean a change
in the lives of the clergy.  It would mean the disappearance
of the hunting parson, of the prosperous rector of
the "three-bottle school," even, she supposed, of the
fashionable Evangelical preacher.  But it might mean,
too, a change in the people who were taught by the
clergy....  She much preferred not to hear about
this sort of thing from Tristram, and yet he was so
eager, when once set on to talk, that she often started
him for the mere pleasure of watching him.  She
could laugh at its absurdity, yet she felt a lurking
sympathy with Lord Melbourne's plaint, that things
were coming to a pretty pass if religion was to invade
the affairs of daily life, for thought hovering round
this connection was apt to become personal in its
application, and that which served generally as a
diversion would end by making her conscience still
more uneasy.

Tristram might come any day now in his round
of distributing these new Tracts.  As Maurice was
wheeled away Horatia took up the August number of
the "British Magazine" on her knee to look at the
"Lyra Apostolica" for that month, which she had not yet
read.  It would be interesting to see whether she could
guess the authorship of each of these unsigned poems,
and to tell Tristram her surmise.  She suspected
Mr. Newman, who edited them, of writing most of them
himself.

There were only three poems under that heading last
month, she found, and they all referred in some way or
other to "the Golden Keys."  The first, short and
somewhat cryptic, was called "The Three Absolutions."

What were the three absolutions?  Two she knew of;
a little note said that the third was to be found in the
Office for the Visitation of the Sick.  She must look
it up one day....  Then, suddenly remembering
that there was an old Prayer Book somewhere in her
workbasket, she stopped and found it, and, turning
up the place, suffered considerable amazement....

She looked again at the poem—

   |  "Full of the past, all shuddering thought,
   |    Man waits his hour with upward eye—
   |  The Golden Keys in love are brought
   |    That he may hold by them and die."
   |

In her own Church then she could have Absolution
if she were dying.  She felt that when she came to
die she would like to have it, and remembered that
there had been a time when she had thought that,
if she were to go on living, she must have it, a
time when she had not excused herself, but when, in
the first weeks of horror and misery, she had taken all
the blame, had been too much overwhelmed with
self-accusation and remorse even to taste perfectly her
hatred of Madame de Vigerie.

And with the thought the gates opened, and the
whole tide of memory burst upon her, full-waved, bearing
her out of the safe and quiet English garden to a little
church in Paris, holding a warm incense-burdened air,
and flooded with a soft dusk in which the winking
light before the altar seemed doubly alive and significant,
and the irregular concourse of candles by the statue
of the Madonna burnt with a speaking radiance.  And
she was kneeling in a rush-bottomed kneeling-chair,
weighed down by her deep mourning, unable to pray,
her mind a maze of inarticulate pain, not knowing
how or why she had strayed into this place, except
that it was peaceful.  A few persons scattered about
among the disordered chairs got up one by one, moved
away, and after a while knelt down again, and there
was a murmur of voices.  In a moment or two Horatia
realised that they were making their confessions, an idea
which had once been full of a fascinated horror.  Now
it suddenly seemed reasonable.  That woman, for
instance, a widow like herself, coming back from the
confessional to her place, what had she been saying, what
had she been told to do, what was she feeling like now?
Supposing it had been she herself ... for no one
could say hard enough things to her, nor could any
penance equal the anguish that it would be to put
her self-accusation into words, and to acknowledge
her wrongdoing.  Yet anguish she would have
welcomed.  Had she been of the faith of these people
she could have comfort too....  But that was
impossible.

And there came for the hundredth time the vision of
Armand going in bitterness and agony down the slope
to death, with the ironic little smile on his wryed
mouth, the livid circles round the eyes which once
had held for her all the light in the world.  For she
knew now—and the knowledge was only an added
pang—that the reawakened feeling of that terrible
night was only a transient emotion.  She buried her
face in her hands, and the heartrending pity of it
surged over her, the horror and the tragedy of death,
of his death, young and reluctant.  Kneeling there, her
face hidden, every voice of her soul went out suddenly
to plead for him, though she knew not what to plead...
"O God, it was my doing!  The blame was not his,
not his, O God....  He was kind to me, always.
Have mercy, have mercy...."

So, after many days, had she prayed—but not for
herself.

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Horatia came back as one wakens from a painful
dream, and, as sometimes in such an awakening, there
were tears on her cheeks.  She sprang up wildly from her
chair.  No, it was past, and here was reality, and
comfort, and things of the safe, ordinary life—the
sound of the gardener's shears, the smell of cut box,
a horse trotting along the road, someone opening a
window in an upper storey, the voice of Dash in the
kitchen garden yelping after a bird.  She drew a
long breath, and put out a hand to touch something
palpable and present, the rough trunk of the acacia-tree.

"Please, ma'am, Reverend 'Ungerford," said the
voice of Ellen behind her.

"Ask him to come out here," said Horatia.  Going
back to her chair she passed her handkerchief quickly
over her eyes, and snatched a small garment and
needle and thread from her basket.

And Tristram, looking unusually elated, almost
boyish, and also rather hot, approached her over the
grass pulling something from a wallet.

"I'm too dusty to come near you," he said, coming
nevertheless.  "This is the sixth parsonage I've
descended on this afternoon.  I think I may say without
vanity that 'the dun deer's hide on fleeter foot was
never tied'—except that the foot in question belongs
to a livery stable."  He almost threw into her lap a
small bundle of pamphlets, and crossed the lawn to
get another chair.

Horatia looked at his back with a curious expression,
but when he turned her gaze was on the uppermost
Tract.

"*Fellow-Labourers*," began the first of its four small
pages, "*I am but one of yourselves—a Presbyter....*"

"Newman's," said Tristram, sitting down beside
her.  "We're going to make a row in the world at last!"


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For the next six weeks or so, while various persons,
clerical and lay, of the same opinions as Tristram
Hungerford were riding about the country to the same
end, or packing up for distribution large parcels of
the new *Tracts for the Times by Residents in Oxford*,
while the clergy thus bombarded were recovering from
the shock of being told by "A Presbyter" of their
apostolical descent, while Hurrell Froude, ordered to
Barbados in the vain pursuit of health, was showing,
as usual, his daring spirit by urging Newman to break
an impossible alliance with the conservative High
Church—while all these portents were taking place
Horatia de la Roche-Guyon was paying a number of
visits.  Though sorry to leave the neighbourhood
of Oxford just as the fiery cross was going round, she
did not altogether regret the change of scene, for she
was beginning to wonder whither these pleasant
conversations with Tristram were leading, and she
thought that absence might enable her to gain a clearer
view of the situation.

By the end of October she found herself staying with her
friend Emilia Strangways (whom once she had declared
she would not go to see again for seven years) at the house
in Devonshire to which her husband had succeeded on
the death of an uncle.  Only one more visit remained,
a short sojourn with the Puseys at Oxford on her way
home.  Maurice, who had accompanied her on her
first visits nearer Compton, had not been brought
so far, but, with or without her son, Horatia was now
able to bear an honoured part in the continual and
detailed conversations on the uprearing of children
(Emilia being by now the parent of a boy and girl)
and threw herself with zest into discussions on the
dangers of teething and the proper thickness of infantile
winter clothing, feeling sure, with something of her
old insight, that Mrs. Strangways commented to her
husband upon "the improvement in dear Horatia."  On
the wheels of these domestic conferences the visit
passed away, uneventful until its last day, when
Henry Strangways descended to breakfast with a set
face, and a saucer upon which reposed a minute fleck
of something flabby and green.

"In my shaving water, Emilia," he said in a tense
voice.  "I have questioned the servants most closely.
They are positive that it did not occur in the kitchen.
So that means it has all begun again!"

Emilia rose with concern from behind the coffee
cups, while Horatia lightly asked the nature of the
intruder.

"I think," replied her host very seriously, bringing
round the saucer for her inspection, "that it is cabbage.
At least I fear that it is cabbage.  Having in the first
place been cooked, and having also been a long time
in the water, it is not readily distinguishable.
Whatever it is fever will probably come of it.  And the
Mother Superior promised me most solemnly that it
should not happen again."

Horatia lifted puzzled eyes from the sodden speck.

"The nuns up at the Manor, dear," explained
Emilia.  "Our water comes through the Manor
grounds, and they will throw things from the kitchen
into it.  Henry has written twice; at last he went
himself and had an interview with the Mother Superior.
Since then it has been better."

"I think I shall see the Lord Lieutenant about it,"
said Mr. Strangways.  "That I and my family should
succumb to fever because these misguided
women—foreigners, too, most of them—have been brought up
without the most elementary notions of sanitation
is preposterous.  The whole thing is preposterous,
that they should be established in this country at all,
polluting at once our water supply and the faith of
the villagers!"

"But you will write again, Henry, will you not?"
urged his wife.  "Or perhaps you would go again and
see the Mother?"

"No, I shall not consent to another interview of that
kind," returned Mr. Strangways.  "I shall now put
the matter in the hands of the proper authorities.
*Mother*, indeed!  But I shall certainly write as well,
and at once.  I think I shall enclose this ... this
vegetable matter.  Would it not be rather to the point,
Emilia, if I sent up the saucer with my compliments,
and nothing else?"

Horatia burst out laughing, and then perceived that
she had done the wrong thing.  Her host did not mean
to be funny; he never did.  Finally it was settled
that he should write a letter of protestation, and that,
instead of its being sent by a menial hand, Emilia and
her guest should walk up with it.

"I thought you might like to see the outside of the
Manor," said Mrs. Strangways, as they started out
over the fallen leaves.  "You see, it once belonged
to Henry's uncle, and he most unfortunately sold it,
at the time of the French Revolution, to these nuns.
As Henry says, he ought not to have been allowed to
do it.  The grounds are rather fine, much better than
ours, and I don't know what they can want with them,
for they never go out, and it is really very terrible to
feel that they are throwing all sorts of refuse into the
water, and might any day poison the children."

"But the convents I have seen in France were so
very clean," objected Horatia.  "And these are French
nuns, you say?  Why do they not go back?"

"I don't know," replied her informant.  "I suppose
they find themselves better off here.  Besides, it may
not be clean inside; nobody knows, for no one is
allowed further than the parlour.  I daresay awful
things go on, for they are said to be a very severe order.
I have heard that they sleep on plank beds, and hardly
ever speak, and live on bread and water...."

"And cabbage!"

"Yes, I suppose so.  Anyhow it is a fact that no
meat ever goes in there.  And they do nothing
but pray—I mean, they don't embroider, or make
lace, or anything useful, but just pray all day long.
But Henry says it isn't tedious to them because, of
course, after a few months of it, they go out of their
minds."

"What do they pray for?" asked Horatia.

A shade of enjoyable horror appeared on the fair
face under the beaver bonnet.  "They call it Perpetual
Intercession.  That means praying for wicked people.
I know they pray for the dead too—think of that,
Horatia!  Henry says it's worse than idolatry."

And on this theological dictum of Mr. Strangways
they turned through a wide gateway and saw before
them, through a fading glory of beech-trees, a large
Elizabethan house of mellowed brick.  To its left
stood the chapel, an incongruous late Georgian building,
and up to the main entrance led an ugly covered way
of still more modern construction, topped by a statue of
the Virgin and Child.  Along this way Emilia preceded
her guest, for it was barred only by a low oaken gate,
which at the moment stood open, perhaps because
a novice was scrubbing the stone floor within.  Horatia
glanced curiously as she passed at the grey-clad figure
on its hands and knees, noticing that the hands in
question were very small and white, and seemed to
have had no past connection with bristles or soapsuds.
She would rather have liked to see what sort of a face
went with those hands.

The aged portress who took the note from Emilia
revealed, as she opened the door, a glimpse of the
square Tudor hall that had once known song and
carousing but was now lamentably bare and empty.  Facing
all who entered, and stretching up from the floor
against the whitewashed panelling, was a gigantic
crucifix in relief, rather more than life-size, of the most
startling realism, a realism that had gone so far as to
suggest that the base of the cross was sunk in the floor
of the hall, for it appeared to be fixed there with large
wedges.  A skull lay at its foot.

"Is it not horrible?" whispered Emilia as the door
shut once more.  "The first time I saw it I had
nightmare....  I think it is so *wrong* to remind oneself
like that ... Oh, merci, ma soeur!"

For the novice, who had now reached the middle of
the passage had risen from her knees, and, removing
her bucket out of their way, stood aside with downcast
eyes for them to pass.  And so Horatia's idle wish was
gratified, and she saw her face—the face of Laurence de
Vigerie.





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   CHAPTER VII

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"More particularly am I bound to pray for the good
estate of Oriel College, and herein for the Reverend the
Provost, Fellows, Clerks, and all other members of that
society...."

It was not the first time that Horatia had listened to
the bidding prayer which prefaces a sermon before the
University of Oxford, nor even the first time that she
had heard mentioned therein "the munificence of
founders and benefactors, such as were King Edward the
Second, the Founder of Oriel College, Adam de Brome,
his almoner, and other benefactors of the same."  But it
was the first occasion on which she had heard the prayer
from the lips of the preacher who, two mornings afterwards,
occupied the pulpit of St. Mary-the-Virgin.  And
as she sat down by Mrs. Pusey's side, behind the Heads
and Doctors in their scarlet and crimson, and looked up
at Charles Dormer, she felt a curious accession of
interest, as though she had never seen him before.  In
the black gown and bands he seemed, she thought,
absurdly young to be addressing that august assembly.
Then she remembered that, being just Tristram's age,
he must be a year older than the Vicar of St. Mary's,
who so often addressed them.  But he did not look it.

The congregation settled down in the peculiarly
arranged nave, and in rather a low voice Dormer gave
out his text, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God."

And Horatia's momentarily excited interest sank
again.  She felt that she knew the kind of sermon which
would be preached on that text, and she did not want
to hear it.  She wished with all her heart that she were
not in church at all.  She had not wanted to come to
hear Mr. Dormer; she had only done so to fulfil a
promise made to Tristram.  If it had been Mr. Newman
now—or Mr. Keble preaching his Assize sermon—she
would have listened....  Laurence de Vigerie
scrubbing a stone floor....  In the coach, at the
Puseys at Christ Church, here now in St. Mary's—Laurence,
the shapeless figure, the veil, the rough dress....

A miracle had happened to Horatia, and she hardly
knew it for a miracle.  What religion and conscience
could not bring about, human feeling and Protestant
indignation had accomplished.  That one moment's
contact with a—to her—shocking reality had swept
away, on a flood of horrified pity, not only her hatred but
even the thought of forgiveness as a duty.  She knew
nothing of either now, only that her heart (preparing as
it was to welcome a happiness of its own) was aching
with compassion.  Why was Laurence doing this awful
thing?  It was not right to punish herself like that,
why had she not spoken to her!  "*Laurence, I am so
sorry.  It was more his fault than yours; I know it.
Don't, don't make yourself so unhappy.  It is all wrong
... all a mistake....*"

Her brain worked on, and the tears came hot into her
eyes.  She must concentrate her mind on something
else, or she would really cry.  Definite words in a clear
voice came to her, and she remembered that she was
supposed to be listening to Mr. Dormer, and that he
must be three parts through by now.  She looked up at
him again, over the distinguished heads in front of her,
this man not so very much older than herself, who was
Tristram's greatest friend, and whom she had never
liked, as he stood, using no gestures, in the new wooden
pulpit that reared itself up against a slender column of
nave, the rows of Masters of Arts below.  A pillar in
front of her, somewhat to her left, and the edge of the
north gallery for undergraduates, beneath which she
sat, made two sides of a square to frame him, as if for
herself alone.  She listened.

"What is a pure heart?  A German mystic has said
that it is a heart which finds its whole and only
satisfaction in God, whose thoughts and intents are ever
occupied with God, which makes all joys and griefs, all
outward cares and anxieties work together for the glory
of God.

"How far does such a temper of mind seem to be from
all of us who call ourselves Christians! and yet our
Lord has definitely contemplated a class of persons who
are capable of this peculiar consecration, and to whom
is as definitely promised the vision of Him Whom the
saints desire to see.  This same teacher, taking St. John
as the type of the pure in heart, would seem to indicate
that all Christians are given the opportunity of making
by degrees a gradual and more perfect response to the
Divine Call, and that, as our Lord revealed Himself to
the beloved disciple in a threefold manner, as His
Master, his Friend, and his God, so He still shows
Himself to those who surrender themselves, not only to the
joy of His friendship but also to the fellowship of His
sufferings.

"As our Lord thus called St. John, He calls us out of
the world.  And, like His beloved disciple, the darlings
of His love, sheltered in the life of the Church, hear a
gracious invitation, and so abide with Him that day and
many days.  But there are others with the same capacity
for purity of heart, who, in sin or unbelief, have wandered
far from their true home, and for these a different call
is needed.

"In the frustration of hopes and ambitions, in the
sudden fear that for us life has no meaning, in the
realisation that death is coming, and after death the
judgment, God is calling to us.  We have gone on for a long
way in our loves and hates, our vanities and pleasures,
our imaginations and our sins, and one day the road
crumbles beneath us.  The beloved is dead, youth is
dead, pleasure is dead.  Nothing matters now.  Why
plan for the morrow, when the only reality is death?"

Dormer paused, moved a little, and said, still more
quietly, "It is true that for us this is the only
reality—the death of the soul."

There was no doubt about Horatia's interest now.
How was it that he knew the very horror that gripped
her, the fear of death, the fear of life?  She held her
hands tightly together in her muff, wishing with all her
heart that she had listened earlier.  He went on,
speaking of the ways that God uses to save a soul from
death, but, because of her very anxiety to hear, his
utterance, exquisite as it was, dulled for a moment or
two to a mere buzz in her ears.  Then her senses cleared,
and she heard him say:

"And, to save us from this death, it may be that God
will use, as His last weapon, loneliness.  In loneliness
He asks us, 'What seek ye?'  In loneliness we confess
that we do not know His dwelling-place; in loneliness,
at last, we can no longer escape the challenge of His
merciful displeasure that bids us 'Come and see.'  If
still we hesitate, it may be our very honesty that makes
us afraid to go and see where He dwells, for if we go
with Him we must admit His claim, we must acknowledge
our fault, we must forgive the friend who has
done us irreparable wrong, we can never be as we were
before.

"But if in the Divine mercy we yield ourselves
captives to His love, and loosed from sin we know Him in
Whom we have believed, yet we may not rest in this,
the first sight of Jesus, for, like St. John, we are called
to a yet more intimate knowledge—the friendship of
the Lord.  And here sincerity that is to become purity
will pass into singleness of heart.  For if the surrender
of ourselves to the Divine Will has to be made over and
over again before God can be glorified in us, still our
intention must be pure, our purpose must be sincere.
He calls us, indeed, to communion with Himself in
sacrament and prayer while as yet the work of
transformation is hardly begun.  And those who live with
Him day by day may still be a prey to resentment and
to pride, to jealousy and to ambition, and those who
rest on His heart may fail to watch with Him, may even
forsake Him when wicked men lay hold on Him.  But
if, like St. John, greatly, though dimly, desiring the
Beatific Vision, they grasp the cup of His Passion,
crying out that they are able to drink of it, our Lord,
it may be, will take them at their word, and the
power of His Cross shall do for them what the joy
of His Presence could never do.

"Who are the pure in heart, and whence came they?
These are they which came out of great tribulation
and have washed their robes and made them white in
the Blood of the Lamb."


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Horatia emerged with her hostess between the
twisted pillars of the porch into the High, to a crowd of
people, and the prospect of an Oxford Sunday such as
she loved.  But she would have given anything to go
back, alone, into the emptying church, to pray to this
new Christ, who had called her—*her*—and to Whom she
had not come.  But she would come, she would come,
if only she could find the way....  "Where
dwellest Thou?"

"Excuse me a moment," said Mrs. Pusey, stopping to
speak to someone, and Horatia, waiting in the
momentary press, heard one gentleman commoner say to
another, "Couldn't make anything of the sermon.
Are all your Fellows as unintelligible as that?"  To
which his companion, evidently an Oriel man, responded,
"I don't often hear them.  But I can stand 'Mercy and
Judgment' because he is at least short.—By Gad, there
he is, with Mr. Denison!"  And he capped the two
Fellows as they crossed the street.  Dormer was smiling
as he returned the salute.

Horatia followed them with her eyes.  Did he then
know the friendship of the Lord, walking in sober
academic garb along an Oxford street?  Could people
other than those in stained glass windows, dressed
in reds and blues against a background of palm-tree
and lake, hear His call, know His friendship, carry His
cross? ...

"Pray forgive me!" said Mrs. Pusey's voice at her
side.  "Shall we go past Oriel; it is shortest.  No doubt
we shall encounter Edward on his way to meet us, if
Cathedral is over, as I should guess it to be.  Then we
might perhaps take a turn in the Broad Walk.  It will
do Edward good, for his health is so precarious just now
that I do not know how he is to get on to the end of
term."

As Horatia murmured her sympathy the two gowns
disappeared under Oriel gateway.

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"Where dwellest Thou?"  All through the remainder
of the day the question persisted, wrecking everything
she did in the pleasant, dignified atmosphere of
Mr. Pusey's house.  Were these kind, learned people who
sat round the Sunday dinner-table, were they the
captives of His love; had they been loosed from sin?
She wished that Tristram could have been there, sitting
opposite to her.  His familiar presence would have
steadied her.  Even if he knew the meaning of all these
phrases there was nothing disturbing about him.

Later in the afternoon she watched Mr. Newman,
the friend of the family, sitting with the two elder
children on his knee, while he put his spectacles on
their noses, or told them a story.  What would happen
if she suddenly interrupted the story with her insistent
question—"Do *you* know where He dwells?"

The interminable day came to an end at last, and she
was alone in her room.  Without waiting to undress she
flung herself down beside the bed.  "Where dwellest
Thou, where dwellest Thou?"  There was no one to
answer, nothing to see, only the rose and jasmine of the
wall-paper, distorted through the rain of tears.

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She woke next morning in a very different frame of
mind, more than a little ashamed of her emotion of the
day before.  She might have been a Methodist!  It was
not for her, this enthusiasm, and she ought not to have
been so discomposed.  To have been carried away,
against her will, by the words of a man whom she
disliked!  She disliked, too, some of what he had said, now
that more of it came back to her.  Life was made for
happiness; though sorrow intruded it was an incident
to be forgotten, not to be dwelt upon.  Comfortably
eating her breakfast in her well-appointed room she
felt sure of this, and knew that she, who was certainly
not ignorant of suffering, did not approve of its
glorification.  What did Mr. Dormer know about it?

And yet ... she knew that she should not forget St. Mary's.





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   CHAPTER VIII

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Mr. Dormer of Oriel was accustomed to assert that he
felt no ill effects from his Italian carriage accident, but,
as a matter of fact, he never went up or down any
prolonged flight of stairs without being reminded of the
slight muscular weakness which it had left.  So that
when, about six weeks after his sermon at St. Mary's, he
came rather fast down the sixty-five steps of the
Bodleian library, and at the end of every group of five
arrived with some force upon his injured leg, he was
so reminded.

Outside, in the archway facing the Radcliffe and
St. Mary's, their gowns blown about by the wind which
commonly sweeps through that passage, he came on
Newman and his curate, Isaac Williams, in converse
with Mr. Pusey.

"Wait a minute, Dormer," exclaimed the first-named,
catching at him as he was about to pass.  "We
are having a most interesting conversation."

"I was just saying to Mr. Newman," said the Canon,
smiling and wrapping his gown round him after a habit
he had, "that I think you are all too hard upon the
Evangelicals.  You should conciliate the Peculiars, as
you would call them.  I am thinking of writing a letter
myself for that purpose."

"Were you!" exclaimed Newman.  "Well, suppose
you let us have that for one of the Tracts?"

The young Regius Professor smiled his particularly
sweet smile.  "Oh, no!" he replied, "I will not be one
of you!" and they all moved out of the archway
together, Dormer taking the opportunity to ask Isaac
Williams for news of Keble.

Meanwhile Newman seemed to be arguing with his
friend, and at last, as they stood on the steps, he could
be heard saying, "Suppose you let us have that letter
of yours, which you intend writing, and attach your own
name or signature to it?  You would then not be mixed
up with us, or be in any way responsible for the Tracts."

"Well," said Pusey after a little hesitation, "if you
will let me do that I will."

He gave them a smiling farewell, and went off, in his
usual rather abstracted fashion, down Brasenose Lane.

"Come out with me to Littlemore, Dormer," urged
Newman.  "It is a beautiful day.  Isaac has some
business of his own, I don't know what, in Oxford.  Come
along, and we will sing pæans of thanksgiving for the
great victory obtained by the Apostolicals over the
Regius Professor of Hebrew."

And he set out with his curious swift gait, as if walking
in heelless slippers, along the side of All Souls, where
two years ago a daring hand had painted "No Bristol
Riots."

"I must write to Froude at once," he continued.
"How I wish we dared take his advice and throw the
Establishment men overboard!  I am sure that if he
knew the trouble I have had with that good Palmer, on
the question of continuing the Tracts, he would pity me."

"If Pusey should end by casting in his lot with us,"
observed Dormer thoughtfully, "it might make a
difference."

"You mean that if we had him we could venture to
row our own little boat, because he could be all that
Rose might be?"

"Well, yes, with his influence and his easy relations
with the University authorities.—Excuse me a moment,
there's Mr. Grenville of Compton Regis.  I must just
go across."

For they had by this time come abreast of the Angel
in High Street, where an elderly cleric was about to
enter a post-chaise.

"Ah, Mr. Dormer," said the Rector heartily, "That's
very kind of you to come and speak to an old man.  I'm
just returned from a jaunt, I suppose you may call it,
to London, to my sister-in-law's.  Oxford is looking
its best this morning.  Yes, thanks, I'm very well,
too, although I am so bombarded with these Tracts—rather
a turning of the tables, you know, for we clergy
are more accustomed to distributing than to receiving
such things.  And I ought to obtain a meed of praise
from you, too, for I have just arranged a meeting next
week, to get signatures to the address to the
Archbishops—though I think it rather a milk-and-water
thing myself ... Well, good-day."

"I hope Madame de la Roche-Guyon is well," observed
Dormer, in the tones of convention, as he opened
the chaise door for him.

"Yes, quite well, thank you," replied the Rector, his
foot on the step.  He hesitated, withdrew that member,
and glancing round lowered his voice to a confidential
tone: "When I see how she welcomes *our friend's*
visits, I really begin to hope that it will all come right
in the end!  So perhaps what has happened has been
for the best!"  His face beamed.  "How little we trust
in Providence, Mr. Dormer!  But there, I mustn't
keep you.  Good-day!"

John Henry Newman had a rather silent companion
on his walk to Littlemore.


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The chaise conveying Mr. Grenville from Oxford to
Compton was, unknown to Tristram, but a few miles in
advance of him as he trotted along the frosty Berkshire
lanes that afternoon, revolving in his mind the points
in his tract on "The Church the Home of the Poor," of
which he had left the proofs with Horatia—proofs
which he was going to reclaim before he left next
week for a "missionary tour" in Northamptonshire
on business connected with the Tracts.

Last Christmas, when he had come to think over
his afternoon at Compton, he knew that he would
rather not see Horatia often.  And a gradual abstention
would have been possible, though a little awkward, but
the Rector had insisted so much on the cheering effect
of his visits, and the necessity for Horatia of some
outside interest that, as always where she was
concerned, he allowed his own feelings to be overridden.
This was not the time to consider himself, when she was
in a situation so poignantly pathetic, and when, for the
first time in his life, he was really able to be of some use
to her.  That there should be any talk in the
neighbourhood about his going to the Rectory seemed very
unlikely, seeing that it had been a second home to him
since boyhood.  Had he suddenly kept away, there might
have been something to talk about.  And that there
should be any wrong impression left upon her mind was
quite unthinkable after he had once seen her.  Never,
in her teasing days, had she seemed so remote as now in
her kindness, and her sadness and her motherhood.
Nearly always, when he got back to Oxford, one or other
of the different strands of pain would ache almost
unbearably, but since the call to arms in July, and still
more since the forging of weapons was begun in
September, this great interest which she shared with him
had made things easier for him.  His going out there
was no longer an emotional strain, but almost a
soldier's visit to a comrade at an outpost, woman
though she was.  And this was indeed the spirit in
which he rode out to her to-day to reclaim his proofs.

But Mr. Grenville, blowing his nose very hard, met
him in the hall.  "Horatia is greatly distressed," he
said huskily.  "She has had sad news from France.
I've only just got back myself and heard it.  That
child—but there, I think you had better go in to her."

In the dining-room, her head on the table, which was
strewn with sewing materials, Horatia was crying as if
her heart would break.

"It is poor little Claude-Edmond," she said between
her sobs.  "He's dead ... poor darling ... poor
dear little boy..."  And she broke into fresh
weeping.

"Dead!" exclaimed Tristram horrified.  "Emmanuel's
son—that little fellow!  How..."

She could give him no answer for a moment, and in
that pause, rent with sobbing, he knew without
acknowledging it that the sight of her grief meant
immeasurably more to him than its cause.  He could not
bear to see her cry!

After a moment she raised her head and dabbed at
her eyes, and lifted them, all reddened and swollen, to his.

"You remember him, Tristram—such a dear little
boy, so solemn and polite?  He was riding in the Bois
de Boulogne a few days ago when his horse took fright,
and he was thrown—against a tree ... He only
lived a few hours....  O Tristram, when I think
... and he was such a comfort to me once ... and
they say he asked for me ... I can't bear it!"

And during this short recital of that almost intolerable
tragedy, a child's death, every vestige of colour
ebbed from Tristram's face.  Before she had ended he
had turned it from her.

"And does this ... this very sad news ... will
it make any difference to you, Horatia?"

"Any difference?" repeated she, not catching his
real meaning, so completely was she absorbed in
thoughts of the dead boy.  "Oh, you mean Maurice
being the heir now."  Utterance failed her and she
began to cry again.  "O, I can't bear to think of it!"

"Yes," said Tristram's voice, curiously insistent and
toneless, "but will it make any difference to you
personally ... will you have to go away—to live
in France?  I thought perhaps..."

"No, O, no, I don't think so."  She sighed heavily.
"I can do as I please, I think.  I suppose I shall be there
more often, perhaps ... O Tristram, why is God
so cruel?"

He did not take up the challenge, but he looked at
her very gravely.

"I do not know," he said.  "I ... I must go
back and write to poor Emmanuel.  I will come for
those proofs again, or you can send them.  I am going
away next week ... when I come back, perhaps..."

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The Oxford road saw that evening the return of a
man who, in all good faith, had attempted a task beyond
his strength, and who was now paying bitterly enough
for the discovery.





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   CHAPTER IX

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From the bottom of Maurice's crib, wherein he lay fast
asleep, his favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against
the rails, stared at him reproachfully, for the little boy
had taken to bed with him, against all precedent, an
old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose
hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his
own.  The rag soldier probably felt his world tumbling
around him.

And, indeed, the whole night-nursery was rather
topsy-turvy.  Maurice's bath things were not cleared
away, though the water was long cold, and in the midst
of downflung towels, soap, sponge and powder-puffs,
sat his mother herself, doing nothing.  It was she who
was responsible for the disorder, for that dislocation in
fact of the whole day which had been so pleasant to
Maurice.  He was certainly not likely to complain when,
after breakfast, Mamma had sent Martha away and
announced that she was going to have him to herself,
for a special reason.  The reason was less than nothing
to Maurice, but the fact was delightful, implying a free
hand with the coal-box, while Mamma, instead of
wanting to change his frock, kept herself quiet with a
piece of paper covered with black marks, on which she
from time to time let fall those tears which Maurice
himself could produce, though seldom so silently.  The
culmination of being bathed by Mamma had led to a
great deal of splashing, and to the exhibition, which
Martha would never let him complete, of his powers
of drinking water from his sponge.  That his mother
was quite incapable of clearing up the mess which he
and she had made together was not likely to trouble
him either, indeed he fell asleep too soon to realise this
deficiency.

And Horatia sat in the midst of the confusion, her
eyes full of tears, her chin on her hand, watching the
sleeping child.  She could not get poor little
Claude-Edmond out of her head.  Most clearly of all she
remembered him at Plaisance, confiding to her his
desire to resemble Armand, to be able to ride, to fence....
Now they would neither of them ever ride again....
And the death of the little boy had thrown
across her own life a shadow not only of regret, but of
menace.  For in her lap lay the testimony to the
triumph of the indomitable spirit of an old lady over
the Code Napoléon, under whose ægis Horatia had
fondly imagined herself and Maurice to be sheltering.

The letter had come yesterday morning, the third
day after her interview with Tristram.  It was quite
simple.  The Duchesse's lawyer wrote that his
venerable client was about to make her will for the last
time, a course necessitated by the recent unfortunate
death of the little heir.  As Madame la Comtesse
was no doubt aware, the ancient and noble family of
La Roche-Guyon was extremely impoverished.  Nothing
indeed but the great private fortune of the Dowager
Duchess had enabled it to keep up the appearance due
to its rank.  The bulk of this fortune the Duchesse
was now proposing to settle upon the child of her late
dearly-beloved younger grandson—on one condition.
Madame la Comtesse must renounce entirely her plan
of bringing him up in England; with or without her
he must return to France by the time he was
five—though in deference to the last wishes of her dear
grandson he should be allowed to pass some years
at an English school.  But he must be brought up as
a Frenchman, as the heir of the family which he would
one day represent, and Madame la Comtesse was to
signify her willingness to return to Paris for three or
four months as early as possible in the New Year.  If
she refused to comply with these conditions the
Duchesse's money, after the deaths of her son and
elder grandson, would be left to distant relatives of
her own family, and the future Duc de la Roche-Guyon
would find himself the almost penniless inheritor of
his great name and position.

Stunning though this ultimatum was, it had not
taken Horatia long to decide that Maurice must go.
She could not be the means of beggaring her child.
He must go—but was she to go too?  It was true that
the Duchesse had not had the brutality to suggest an
immediate separation from his mother, but the two
years and ten months which lay between him and his
fifth birthday would soon pass.  If she went, good-bye
to all her old home life, taken up again and found so
peaceful and so dear; good-bye to her father who had
recovered her with so much joy.

And good-bye to Tristram.....

But if she stayed, good-bye to that head of curls on
the pillow.  O no, no, she could never do that!  She
slipped to her knees and clutched at the cot rails.
"My darling!  I could not!  I could not!"

And yet, on the other side of the crib seemed to
stand Tristram, looking at her as he had looked three
mornings ago, his voice fallen to that strange tone,
"Will it make any difference to you, Horatia?" the
only real evidence that she had of his wanting her—since
his visits and his obvious pleasure in them could all be
accounted for by their long friendship—but evidence
enough.  Yes, it had actually come to the choice, all
unforeseen, between her child and the man ... she
loved.  The issue must be decided, too, within a week,
for the Duchesse insisted on an immediate answer.
This was why she had spent the day with Maurice,
"to help her to decide"—a proceeding not free from
the charge of indulgence in sentiment.


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And yet she had not made up her mind when she
heard her father, who had been out all day, coming
heavily up the nursery stairs.

"My dear," he said, astonished, "why are you up
here alone?  Martha is wandering about outside
waiting to come in to you.  It is too much for you to do
all this for the child by yourself, and why should you?"

To which his daughter responded, in an appealing
tone not far from tears, "O Papa, I can't leave him, I
can't leave him!"

"Well, my dear," remarked Mr. Grenville, approaching
the crib, "you can leave him now, at any rate, for
he is fast asleep, and Martha can sit with him instead
of catching cold on the landing.  Come, come, we will
go down into the library and leave her to clear up.
Yes, come in!"  And as Martha entered and fell to
work on the disorder he put Horatia's hand through his
arm and led her out.

In the library she settled down in her favourite
attitude on a stool at his feet, and for a time nothing much
was said, except that the Rector, as he stroked her hair,
would mutter, "It is very hard, very difficult, my love,"
and, at intervals, "I should never have expected it
of them, never!"

At last Horatia broke out passionately, "I can't let
Maurice be a pauper!  He will have to go, and I—I
think I must go with him."  With that she escaped
from her father's caress, and putting her head in her
hands began to cry.

The Rector got up, found a box of Prometheans, went
successfully through the process of pinching out the
sulphuric acid, at the end, on to the chlorate of potash
and sugar (in which he generally burnt his fingers),
obtained a flame and lit a couple of candles.  Then he
sighed heavily, sat down again, and drawing his chair
up close to Horatia took hold of a hand and made her
rest her head on his knee.

"Now, my dearest child," he began, "I am going
to speak very plainly to you.  I do not think these tears
are for me.  No, don't say anything about that!  It's
all quite right.  I should not wish them to be.  I think
Tristram is at the bottom of this."

For answer he saw her getting crimson behind the
ears, and heard her murmur faintly, "O Papa!"

"Well, my dear, it's very right and natural, and
nothing to be ashamed of.  I have thought that I have
seen signs, for some time, and I have been very thankful,
very thankful.  He is the right husband for you."

"I thought, Papa," came a stifled voice, "that you
did not approve of second marriages."

"Perhaps not," replied the Rector, "but this is
different, and Tristram has wanted you all his life."

"But how do I know that he wants me now?"

"That," said the Rector with conviction, "is very
apparent; in fact, I was on the verge of speaking to him
about it last week."

"Papa!" ejaculated his daughter, sitting up.

"Yes, we understand one another," went on Mr. Grenville,
smiling, for there was unmistakably more
pleasure than horror in her protest.  "I have known
more about all this, my dear, than you have.  You
never knew, because Tristram would not allow me to tell
you, but he was going to propose to you, the very week
that poor Armand came to visit him."

"Tristram was going to propose to me again," said
Horatia slowly, "and yet he made the way easy for me
to marry Armand!"

"One of his extraordinary notions, my dear.  'If
she wanted the moon, I would get it for her,' he
said.  I have often thought that it was not for nothing
that he had a fanatic for a father.  He is one in a
thousand, but of course, before now, he has seemed to
me unnecessarily quixotic.  I have meant to tell you
this, Horatia, but I thought things were best without
my interference.  Still it is but right, now that the
crisis has come, for you to know all that I do.  It is
my belief that Tristram is only hindered at this very
moment from speaking by some idea of propriety.
Or perhaps he feels that his prospects are not yet assured.
Still, it is clear that he must declare himself in the near
future, unless he wants to lose you altogether.  If only
it were possible to give him a little encouragement!"

"*I* couldn't give him encouragement!" exclaimed
Horatia in a tone of horror.

"I was not suggesting such a thing for a moment, my
love.  I was only saying if it were possible.  I feel
something could be done, ought to be done ... Let me see,
how much time have we?"

Horatia had twisted round on her footstool and was
now facing him with flushed cheeks.  "A week.  And,
O Papa, even if he did ... if he wanted me to marry
him, how could I let Maurice go without me?"

The Rector bent forward.  He had the air of thorough
and pleasurable mastery of the situation.

"My dear, let us be quite clear about that anyhow!
I'm as fond of the boy as if he were my own, but I think
you would do very wrong to deprive him of a stepfather
like Tristram.  After all, if you take him to France for
a few months next year you may keep him until he is
five years old.  It was the Jesuits who said, 'Give us a
child until he is five and we will make anything of him.'  (No,
now I come to think of it, it is 'until he is seven,'
but no matter.)  Very well then, until that age you and
Tristram can bring him up, and you see already how he
takes to Tristram.  After that the parting will be hard
for you, I do not doubt, but the time will soon come for
him to return to England to school, and, if you agree in
the main to the conditions, the Duchesse is not likely
to wish to drive such a hard bargain that you cannot
occasionally have him for his holidays ... Besides,
we may hope that you will have other children."

"Papa, do you really mean all this?" asked Horatia
thoughtfully.  "I have never looked at it in that light."

"I do indeed mean it, but the question is, what is to
be done?  There is not too much time," said the Rector,
pursing his lips.  "This needs careful consideration."  And,
apparently, he considered, and Horatia too.  At
any rate she was silent, looking into the fire.

Finally Mr. Grenville gave an exclamation.  "I have
it!  Did you not say, my dear, that you had to send back
a proof of Tristram's to him?  What more natural than
to enclose the letter from the Duchesse's lawyer, and say
that you would value his advice, or something of the
sort?"

Horatia turned over and over the locket with the
little curl of Maurice's hair that she wore.

Then she said, very quietly, "Yes, I will do it."


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"My dear Horatia,

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"I feel with you very much in the difficulty of the
decision.  It will be hard for the Rector to part with you
again so soon, but I know you both too well to imagine
that you can hesitate for long where Maurice's interests are
concerned.

"For myself, I need not say how, after this year of
renewed friendship, I shall miss your help and sympathy,
but I have come to feel that my life is not my own.
Wherever you go, whatever you do, may God bless you
always!—T.H."

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This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast
four mornings later, and which lay in her pocket all
through that meal and for some time afterwards, not
because she did not wish her father to see it, since he was
away for the night, but because she dared not open it.
In her own room, the door locked, she read it at last,
once not understanding, the second time unbelieving,
the third time understanding too well.

Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to
hide the scorching blush that, though she was alone,
spread itself from the nape of her neck to the roots of
her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of fire over
her whole body.  He had refused her!  Under the guise
of asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la
Roche-Guyon—Horatia Grenville—had, practically,
offered herself to a man, and he had refused her!  And
this man was Tristram!

After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took
up the letter again, and, reading it for the fourth time,
she received yet a new impression.  This did not seem
to be Tristram at all who wrote to her; it was like the
voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a veil
hung between her and the man who had penned those
words—words which, as she could see, had been chosen
to spare her, words which made no reference to what
the writer must have known was in her mind.  But they
were final enough, in all conscience!

She put the letter down on her dressing-table.  Yes,
that was what it was like—a dictated letter, a letter
which another person had made him write....

There was something that she did not understand.
She got up and began to walk about the room, the first
biting shame of the repulse a little blunted by contact
with her own imperious temper and by a certain
bewilderment.  She had a feeling that there was, somewhere,
what her father would have called "hokey-pokey."  And,
as she arrived at that conclusion, she saw it all in a
flash, and wondered how she could have been so stupid.
Tristram had of course been "got hold of" by the Oriel
people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on
celibacy.  That was what he meant by writing that
he had come to feel his life not his own.  That was,
no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had
taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable
glorification of suffering as a part of Christianity at
which her whole soul revolted.

Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger.
Illogically enough, though she had endured many
qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his
refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram
himself wanted to marry her, that "they" were preventing
him.  Well, they should see!

She carried this fighting mood about with her for an
hour or so while she ordered the household and visited
Maurice, who this morning was greatly intrigued by the
presence of frost on the window-pane, a phenomenon,
like many others, still strange to him.  But all the while
she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was
slowly slipping away from her.  At half-past ten she
returned to her room, took out the letter and read it
again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.

No, it was not so simple.  Something much more was
here than the combatting of the influence of others.
One thing, if one alone in life, the most ardent fighter
should shrink from lifting sword against, a man's
conscience.  Had she not recently felt the reawakened
stirrings of her own?  And in this matter, however it
came there, was some deep conviction of Tristram's.
He could not, otherwise, have written so.

And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking
of him whom she knew so well, she began to realise
what he must be suffering at having to answer her thus.
She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and
thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion,
that would do anything in the world for her, so as it was
not against his conscience.  Could not she, then, who had
never, perhaps, been anything but a source of pain to
him, could not she do something for him—take the
disturbing element of herself out of his life, because,
for his real happiness, she would be better gone, and go,
without an attempt to hold him, to that other life
where duty was calling her? ... The way was open,
if she were strong enough to follow it.

But she must be sure that such a renunciation
would be for Tristram's happiness.  She must be sure
that he really had this conviction.  In her present
mood she could almost have gone and asked
Tristram himself, had she not known that he was
away from Oxford.  And the time was drawing
very near when she must answer the Duchesse's letter.

But there was one person who could probably tell her
as well as Tristram himself—Mr. Dormer, if he had not
gone down.  She could not write to him on such a matter.
She would have to go and see him.  The unusualness of
the step gave her only a momentary pause.  Even
though it were not proper for her, a young woman—if
a widow—to go and call on an unmarried man in his
College rooms she did not care.  At the worst she could
get the Puseys to ask him to Christ Church and she
could talk to him there.  But she knew that only the
most direct method would really satisfy her.  The
matter was too pressing and too desperate to admit of
considering the proprieties.

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Nevertheless, some three hours later, as she followed
the porter across the quadrangle at Oriel, she was
already regretting her precipitancy, and it was with
a throbbing heart that she heard him announce her
name in the mangled fashion to which she was becoming
accustomed in England.

But the room was empty.  It was undeniable relief,
and had the porter, apologising for his mistake, not
adjured her to take a seat, as Mr. Dormer could not be
long, she would have brought out the words of excuse
already on her lips and fled.  But that everyday form—its
visage not untouched by curiosity—was a barrier to
escape more effectual than any sword-girt angel, and
she obeyed.

So she was left, with a sulky little fire for company,
to wait.  For some time she was too restless to sit down,
and wandered between the fireplace and the window.
The room did not strike her as uncomfortable, and it was
very orderly, except for the big table in the middle,
which was strewn with books and papers, as if the
occupant had been interrupted in his work.  There was a
good deal of old furniture, some of it beautiful, and the
walls could not look bare, for they were almost
completely lined with books.  Indeed the only picture that
she noticed was an engraving over the hearth of Velasquez'
Christ on the Cross, straight and stark against its
background of more than night, the face shadowed by
the falling hair.  Horatia felt suddenly afraid, she knew
not of what, and going as far as possible from the print,
sat down by the window.

The only thing that comforted her was the sight of
some Christmas roses in a saucer, standing among the
books and papers, close to their owner's chair.





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   CHAPTER X

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Dormer, in academical dress, was entering under Oriel
gateway when the porter accosted him.

"If you please, Sir, there's a lady waiting to see you
in your rooms.  She asked for you, and thinking you
was there I showed her up.  A French name, I fancy."

The young Fellow mechanically took the card held
out to him.  "A French name" could announce only one
lady.  But on what errand had she come?  For the first
time in his life he was afraid.  Then he set his face like a
flint and crossed the quadrangle towards his staircase.

And in his sitting-room, in the low chair by the
window where, in his time at least, no woman had ever
sat, very pale, clad in black but wearing costly furs,
with the light on her hair, was the woman who had
wasted Tristram's years, and whose happiness was
always to be bought at the cost of his.

"I must apologise for keeping you waiting, Madam,"
he said coldly, as he closed the door.  "Please do not
move!  The porter told me you were here."  He laid his
cap on the table.  "There is something particular that
you wish to see me about?"

"Yes," said Horatia, "there is something that I
have come to ask you."  She turned her head and
glanced out of the window, and then looked again at
her host, standing with exceeding stiffness in his gown
and hood.  "But now that I am here I hardly know how
to put it into words."

"If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate,"
observed Dormer with icy politeness, and then, seeing
that she did not speak, he sat down by the side of his
big table and looked away.  He felt miserably sure that
she had come to say something about Tristram, but
that, being a lady, she would not reach the point for
another half-hour or so.  He was therefore entirely
taken by surprise when he heard her say, after a moment:

"I am going to ask you a very extraordinary question,
Mr. Dormer.  I want you to tell me if Tristram—if
Mr. Hungerford has come to think that it is better
for the clergy not to marry?"

Startled though he was, Dormer fell instantly on
guard.  "Is not that a question, Madam," he returned,
"which it would be better for you to ask Mr. Hungerford
himself?"

"Could I bring myself to that," assented Horatia,
"it would be better."

"He is not in Oxford at present, I know," suggested
Dormer, "but he will be back by the sixteenth."

"I must know before that," said Horatia gravely.

And Dormer had a sudden temptation.  He felt more
sure than ever that Tristram had got himself into a
tangle.  Here and now he could probably cut it for him.
But he would not play Providence.  It was one thing
to warn Tristram, quite another to extricate him behind
his back and without his consent ... So his tone
was even colder than before as he said, "If the matter
is urgent I regret that I cannot help you, but I think
you can understand that I am unwilling to discuss my
friend's affairs, even with another of his friends."  And
he rose, as if to intimate that the interview was over.

But his visitor did not rise.  On the contrary she said,
with warmth, "Yes, I quite see that, but..."  She
bit her lip.  "If you knew, you would not be so
punctilious, Mr. Dormer.  Will you not let me tell you?"

"Really," said Dormer, hesitating a trifle, "I hardly
know what to say, but I would much rather not be the
recipient of any confidences.  Surely, Madam, the
matter is not so pressing but that you can wait for
Tristram's return."

Horatia laughed rather bitterly.

"Mr. Dormer, you need not be so much afraid.  We
will not speak of Tristram then.  If you will tell me
your own views on the subject it will be quite enough.
It is not easy for me to come to you—you must know
that!  I only do it because ... O, well, that does not
matter."

Dormer sat down with a resigned sigh by the side of
the table, and said briefly, "Please tell me anything
you wish."

"Thank you," said Horatia; collected herself and
started.  "I am afraid I must trouble you with some
personal details.  You probably know that a good many
years ago Tristram asked me to marry him.  I was
singularly young and foolish, and I refused him.  You may
also know that, as I have learnt quite recently, he was
on the verge of asking me again in the autumn of
1830."  Dormer inclined his head.  "What my answer would
have been I do not know.  But shortly afterwards I
married my late husband.  Our marriage was an
unhappy one."

Here she came to a full stop, and got no help from her
listener, who was looking down at an ink-pot.

"It was largely my own fault, but I have suffered,
and if ever anyone wanted to forget the past I have
wanted to forget it."  For a second her voice trembled,
then it recovered.  "In my old home again, with my
father, it seemed sometimes as if I should succeed.
And although Tristram was changed, yet he was the
same, and latterly it has seemed to me that he was
indeed the same, and that ... it is very difficult for
me to tell you..."

Dormer looked up.  "I think I can understand," he
said, with something different in his voice.

"Thank you.  I was right ... and I was wrong.  I
cannot explain it, but I must just ask you to believe
that I was not utterly blinded by vanity, and on the
other hand that Tristram did and said nothing that
could not be accounted for by his long and
extraordinary friendship."

"That is quite easy for me to believe," replied
Dormer; but he seemed to have a slight difficulty in
speaking.

"The end came a week ago," pursued Horatia.  And
she explained, as shortly as she could, the bombshell
which the Dowager Duchesse had cast into her plans,
finishing by saying, "I felt almost confident that
Tristram only waited for some sign from me ... and
yet I could not bring myself to give it.  But time was
pressing, and I must decide about the boy.  My father
urged me to send the letter I had received to Tristram,
and to ask his advice.  It ... it was ... unusual, I
know ... but I did so—and this morning I received
his answer.  I think you had better read it."

Dormer got up and took with obvious reluctance the
paper which she held out to him.  He read it, flushed
violently, and became very pale.

"I don't want you to say anything," said Horatia
hurriedly.  "When I got this letter this morning I saw
it all in a flash.  It has only needed your hesitation to
make me quite sure that I was right.  From time to
time I have heard the views of his friends here at Oriel
about the marriage of the clergy, but somehow—it was
stupid of me—it never occurred to me that he shared
them.  But that of course is the key to the situation.
He is bound by some vow not to marry."

Her hearer during this speech had stationed himself
by the fire, his head bent, with a hand on the high
mantelshelf; his arm, in consequence, hid his face.  She
could not even see it now, as he said, in a voice
noticeably less hostile.  "There I think you are wrong.  As
I see now that it is quite unnecessary for me to keep
anything from you, I can tell you that, to my knowledge,
he has never taken any kind of vow, but that, even
before his ordination as priest, he had a solemn intention
to embrace the life of sacrifice to the glory of God.  But
it was a solemn intention, not a vow."

"Intention or vow," returned Horatia, "it would be
all the same to Tristram.  And please do not speak to
me of sacrifice and the glory of God!  I do not believe
that the Creator is glorified by the self-inflicted suffering
of His creatures.  But if you speak to me of Tristram's
happiness, or of his conscience, which is more than
happiness to him, then I can understand you."

"You are right about Tristram's conscience," said
Tristram's friend.

"Yet I believe that I can still bring him back to me
if I choose to," said Horatia rather defiantly.  The
challenge drew from Charles Dormer a bow which was
more eloquent than many words.

"But I do not mean to try," she finished.  "I am
quite sure that Tristram is deluded, yet if this delusion
has become a matter of conscience with him, he would
not long remain happy with me.  What I want to find
out is how firmly he is fixed in this idea, and how he
would look at his action later on if he married me.  This
is where you can help me, Mr. Dormer, for I know that
you are his second self.  In the end he would come to
think as you think now.  I want you to tell me, first,
if in your opinion it would ever be right to go back upon
what you call a solemn intention?"

Dormer saw now that he was being forced into the
position which he had a short time ago rejected almost
with regret—that of an executioner.  Now, strangely
enough, he hated it.

"Yes," he said, "from our point of view it would be
right ... under certain circumstances."

"And would you think," asked Horatia, looking
down and hesitating, "would you consider the fact
that I have become a widow since his resolve was taken
an exceptional circumstance?"

"I am afraid," replied Dormer reluctantly, "that it
would entirely depend on how far Tristram had
committed himself already to the idea of the single life.
You see it is impossible for me to discuss this from any
but what I am sure you would call a fanatical
standpoint."  He smiled fleetingly, without mirth.

"But supposing he was committed very far ... would
it be right to ... to go back?"

It had to be done.  "No," said Dormer in a low voice.
"No, I am afraid it would not."


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Across the silence there came a faint clattering
sound, probably a tray from the buttery being taken to
someone's rooms.  Stillness fell again.  Then the voice
of an undergraduate not yet gone down was heard
inquiring in a shout what that ass Simpson had done
with his carpet bag.  Horatia got up from her chair and
began to pull down her veil.

"I do not think you need be afraid of me any longer,"
she said with a sort of smile.  "There is only one way
for me to answer the Duchesse's letter.  Thank you for
speaking so plainly to me.  You have been very patient,
and I am more than grateful.  Would you have the
goodness to send to see if my carriage is at the gate?"

She stooped for her muff, which had slipped to the
floor, but, hearing no movement, glanced round and saw
Dormer still standing between the table and the hearth,
blocking her exit, his eyes fixed on her.  And as with a
faint surprise she gazed at him he seemed to alter.  The
sternness had gone from his face; it looked, if possible,
still more sad, but she could hardly believe that this
was the man against whom, for the last half-hour, she
had been fighting.  And she heard him say, with
singular gentleness—

"'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.'  May our Lord of
His great mercy comfort you!"

"Don't, don't say that sort of thing to me!" exclaimed
Horatia.  "I am doing nothing at all heroic.  It is
only necessity.  It has nothing to do with God or
religion, or because I believe for one moment in
Tristram's foolish ideas—it is because ... because..."  It
was impossible to go on, for his voice had touched
some secret spring in her, some deep-buried self which,
suddenly released, was struggling to respond—as once
before, at the same voice, it had struggled in St. Mary's.
She sat down again and hid her face in her hands.

"Because," said Dormer, still more gently, "you
have found out the secret of love—the willingness to
go without the beloved for the beloved's sake."

"I do not know what I have found out," said Horatia
after a moment, passing her handkerchief over her eyes.
"I am only following an instinct.  I mean to go back
to France, and after that ... I don't care much
what happens."  She paused again.  "With Tristram
I should have been safe.  He was my hope.  I know I
have done wrong, very wrong, but am I never to be
forgiven, never to be allowed to forget the past?—O!"
she broke out passionately, "your God is a cruel
God!  He is cruel to Tristram and to me.  I don't
believe what you said in your sermon about suffering—I
can't believe it and I won't believe it! ... Why
are you making me talk to you?"

"Because I want to help you.  Will you not let me
try—for Tristram's sake?"

Horatia looked at him for a moment, then she rose
and went to the window.  When she turned round again,
some three minutes later, the buried self had won, and,
not ungenerous in victory, had given her composure for
its purpose.

"You are the only person who could help me," she
said very simply.  "But it is such a long story, and I
ought not to take up your time."

"I have plenty of time," replied Dormer with equal
simplicity.  "If you will sit down, and tell me what you
can, I daresay I can fill in the gaps."

"I thought my marriage was the ... the 'vision
splendid,'" began Horatia after a little, "I was
mistaken; but there was still something remaining, only
I was exacting and foolish, and refused to make the best
of what I had ... At last I heard two miserable
women speaking of the infidelity of my husband, and
the name coupled with his was ... that of my
greatest friend.  There were proofs with which I need
not trouble you ... I taxed him with it, but he
denied it.  I would not believe him.  I told him I hated
him and his child.  It was then that Maurice was born.
For many weeks I visited my hatred of my husband on
the child.  For a long time I would not let them bring
my baby near me ... and I definitely refused to
believe my husband, who still protested his innocence,
or to have anything more to do with him.  I"—her
voice began to falter—"practically drove him from me
to do the very thing of which I had falsely accused him....
I think I lost all faith in God, and I believe that
I wished to die."

"It would be at that time," asked Dormer, to help
her, "that Tristram and I came to see you?"

"Yes ... and that was somehow ... a turning
point for me.  During the cholera I was away with
Maurice, and it was then that I began to be a little
sorry.  I think I meant to take Armand back into
favour by degrees.  But when I returned to Paris he
had already left for Vendée.  Soon afterwards I heard
that the rising had proved a failure, and that he was
in hiding.  I followed as quickly as I could to our
house in the country ... and it was there that
the news was brought to me that he had been shot."

"By the Orleanists?"

"Yes."  Horatia hesitated.  "He ... he was
shot in saving the life of that lady ... who was
never what I thought her.  His death prevented that."

"How do you know this?"

"Because in his delirium I heard everything."

"You were with him when he died?"

Horatia made a great effort.  "Yes.  My friend
... whom he loved ... whom he would have
married had he not met me ... took him dying
to her house ... and sent for me to be with him
at the last."

"Yes?" said Dormer.

And Horatia went on, more and more agitated.  "I
shall see him lying in that bed fighting with death until
I die ... and it was I who sent him to his death
... it was my hardness that drove him to someone
who really loved him....  And ... and," she
choked down a sob, "it was for her that he died
... not for me."

She came to a full stop.

"Yes, I see," said the priest, but in the tone of one
who thinks there is more to come.

Horatia went on again, almost inaudibly.  "I hear
him crying out, in the night when I wake, 'Leave your
scruples, Laurence, she does not believe me,' and then
again, 'Why do you send for Horatia ... she would
not care ... I am nothing to her now; she told me so.'"

Her listener had himself put his hand over his eyes,
but he gave no sign, and at last Horatia finished.

"He would not forgive me ... he said there was
nothing to forgive ... and I have felt—I still feel—that
God has not forgiven me, that He has punished
me, and that He will go on punishing me."

She had been speaking in a very low voice, and there
was now hardly a sound outside.  Inside the room there
was the sort of silence that could be cut.  It might have
been lasting for centuries or for seconds—Horatia could
not tell—when Dormer broke it.

"I will not ask you if you have been able to forgive
that unhappy lady, who you say was once your friend,
but are you able sometimes to feel compassion for her?"

"I doubt if I know what you mean by forgiveness,"
answered Horatia.  "I only know that once, perhaps,
I hoped that she might suffer, because I had suffered so
much, and that now I cannot bear to think of what she
is doing at this moment."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I did not tell you.  I was staying some weeks
ago with a friend in Devonshire, and we had to take a
letter to a convent near, a convent of French nuns.  There
was a novice scrubbing some flags; she did not see me,
but I saw her, and it was Laurence, Laurence whom I
had not seen since ... since..."

"I understand."

"Laurence," went on Horatia fiercely, "who was
more sinned against than sinning....  Yes, I know
that now!  I have always known it, but I tried to
excuse my husband.  Laurence was rich and admired,
and could have everything she wanted, and now she
has not enough to eat, and she does menial work, and
spends hours in prayer—and all for Armand's soul.  It is
an order of perpetual intercession.  And I who was his
wife—I am feeling that life holds very little for me
because I cannot marry Tristram!  What is there to
forgive now!"

"I should not be quite prepared to say that," replied
Dormer, looking rather staggered, "but I am quite
certain of one thing.  If you have been able to forgive
so wholeheartedly the irreparable injury done to you,
I do not think that you will have long to wait for the
assurance of your own forgiveness."  He hesitated, as if
he were not sure whether he should say more, and taking
up one of the Christmas roses from the saucer, looked at
it intently for a moment.  Then he went on, "You
understand, do you not, that the power of the keys is in
the Church of England, and that those who cannot
quiet their own consciences (as the Exhortation says)
have a right to avail themselves of it.  I think you
should do so.  That God has forgiven you I have no
doubt, but even if after absolution you should have to
wait for that conviction, you will be able to take it as
your penance, remembering that the forgiven soul does
not want to escape, it longs for the cleansing fires which
alone can fit it for the presence of its Lord."

"I should deserve to wait for the feeling of forgiveness,
but am I to think that this also is the penalty
of sin, that God is pursuing me and tracking me down?
He is taking Tristram from me; what more does He want?"

Dormer leant forward, and spoke very quietly, but
with great intensity.  "It is you yourself that He
wants.  He is stripping you of everything because by
love or by fear He will save you.  From all eternity you
have belonged to the God Who died for you.  Everything
in your life and in your circumstances has existed
in order to bring you nearer to Him.  Even now, when
you have misused His gifts, your sin and your suffering
can be turned by His mercy into the means of bringing
you back to Him.  But it is on one condition.  You must
submit.  You must give up your will to Him."

"But how can I give up my will, when all my life I
have followed my own way?"

"Our Lord will show you how, if you ask Him.  He
will teach you by degrees, do not doubt that."

"I think I hardly understand what you mean," said
Horatia with great hesitation, "but if I pray to be able
to do this, will He—will our Lord save me from myself,
and shall I in the end find rest?"

Dormer did not answer at once.  He looked up (it
seemed to Horatia unconsciously) at the print over the
hearth, and she heard him sigh.

"Yes, He will save you, but it will be by the Cross;
for it is only in the Cross that there is safety, and in the
Cross that there is rest.  If you go back to France, and
bring up your son in the best traditions of his family,
your life will be full, and not empty.  That is where you
must look for comfort.  Think of what it means to have
a child, your own child, to give back to God.  It is a
high vocation and peace waits for you.  I think God has
sent you a child to show you where to find it."

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As he went to open the door for her she said, "Mr. Dormer,
there is something else ... I should like
you to feel that you can say anything—I mean that
you can tell Tristram anything about me which
you think can help him.  It is worse for him than
for me.  I shall write to him, of course, but you will
know what to say....  He will be so ... so hurt."





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   CHAPTER XI

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The stone-rimmed basin in the old Physic Garden,
fringed with a few yellowing reeds, held water that
seemed as black as night, water that reflected, clear and
blacker still, the bare interlaced boughs of a great tree
beside it.  And in this dark net, like a silver fish
entangled in waterweeds, lay the shining half-moon,
brilliant already, though it was only half-past four of a
December afternoon.  It was an afternoon, too, of
extraordinary radiance, as if to mark that herald day
of Christmas when the longing of the Church, no more
to be suppressed, bursts through the monitory thoughts
of Advent, in pure joy and expectation, with the first of
the great antiphons of Magnificat, and hails as the
Eternal Wisdom the Child so soon to come.

But there was nothing of this in the heart of the man
who sat, his head in his hands, on a seat by the little
pond.  Reading, an hour ago, in his lodgings, the letter
which he had just returned from Northamptonshire to
find, he had felt that he must get out, away—anywhere—and
pushing up the narrow, screaming High Street
of St. Thomas's, past the Castle keep, had come,
through St. Ebbe's, full on to the front of Christ Church,
looking, in the golden light, like the battlements of an
ethereal city.  But he had gone blindly forward, and
found himself, at last, in the old walled garden
which had seen so many generations of flower and seed.

Horatia's letter had been quite ordinary, speaking of
the child, of his future, the necessity of her care, the joy
that he was to her.  But, of course, she understood
... And three years ago he would willingly have died for
her; now he could not even live for her!  As for his own
letter of last week, he could not think how he had ever
brought himself to write it—and yet were it to write
again, he must have said the same.  He belonged, now,
body and soul, to a force whose demands on some lives
were so exorbitant as to come into mortal conflict even
with the best and holiest human claims.

He ought never to have gone to Compton; he ought
to have left Oxford, at whatever cost of unkindness.
He could not say that it had been only pain to go and
see her, and since he could not even now accuse himself
of having done or said anything amiss, it must have been
that his pleasure was visible....  He felt an outcast,
a pariah.  How deeply he had sinned against God he
could not fathom, but he had sinned, it seemed to him
irretrievably, against the code in which he had been
brought up.  For if he was a Christian and a priest he
was a gentleman, too ... or had been.

The thought of Dormer came into his mind as he sat
there.  Dormer would understand—he would despise
him, no doubt, but he would understand.  He could
never tell him.  He was sitting among his books in that
well-known room scarcely a quarter of a mile away, yet
a thousand miles might be between them.  He could
never tell him, because of Horatia.  Besides, he had
lost the habit of close intercourse.

And in his misery he did not know that Dormer was
at that moment standing on the other side of the basin,
looking at him, across the drowned moon, with the
profoundest tenderness, wondering whether he could
speak to him now.  Only, after a while, he was conscious
of someone on the seat beside him, and felt an arm laid
across his shoulders.

"Tristram, Tristram, don't sit here in the cold like
this....  Come to my rooms....  I know all
about it—she has told me; I have seen her and she
wants me to tell you that she understands....  You
must not take it so hardly; it is all quite simple, and
... and wonderful, it seems to me....  My dear,
dear fellow, I don't want to pester you, but if you would
only come away..."  Dormer's voice, ordinarily
so cool and restrained, broke suddenly.

There was a silence; Tristram did not move.  A
London coach rolled over the bridge; the chimes of
Magdalen struck a quarter to five.  Dormer slowly took
away his arm.

And at that Tristram removed one of his hands from
his face, and put it out gropingly towards him.

"Carissime..."


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The actual writing of the letter to Tristram had not
cost Horatia the effort that she had anticipated.  She
hardly felt, indeed, what she was renouncing, for
everything was swallowed up in the sense of rest, a feeling
that was partly a physical reaction, due to the intensity
of the emotional strain of her interview with Dormer.
She seemed to be floating in a sea of such mental and
spiritual relief as she had not known for years.  Such
peace as she had compassed in the summer—she knew
it now—had only been a drugged peace after all.

She had had to tell her father.  That had not been
easy.  Yet she had, somehow, dominated his bitter
disappointment.  She did not show him Tristram's letter,
but she did not keep from him the fact that she had
been to Oriel.  Perfectly calm, and not, apparently,
in an exalted state, she yet produced on the Rector the
impression of some change so profound as to make her
seem another person.  He was, if the truth be told, a
little alarmed.

But it was the letter which, two days later, she was
obliged to write to the Duchesse that really showed
Horatia what she was losing.  Madame de la Roche-Guyon
had said that she should have her own establishment if
she wished.  It occurred to Horatia, rather bitterly, how
much to be envied she would seem to her friends—young,
titled, rich, her own mistress, with the entrée to
the most exclusive society in the world; and yet—and
yet, even with the child, all these advantages were as
a pinch of dust.  Better to be by Tristram's side in some
tiny parsonage, in some dull village...

And when this really came home to her she suddenly
threw down the pen and covered her face, an action
which was the cause of the straggling blot on the page
which, later, drew forth from the Duchesse strictures
on the untidiness of the English.

But Horatia, neglecting the blot, took up the pen
again and went on without flinching to the end.  In
spite of the sense of suffering, she had something which
she had not before.  For the first time in her life she
could really pray.  And already, on this and the days
that followed, she had some inkling of what Dormer
had meant, some taste of the peace that truly comes to
the resigned will.  In this ocean of rest she lived for
some days, thinking sometimes how wonderful it was
that it should have enclosed her, with all her turbulent
desires, in so sudden a gentleness, but not unconscious
that its waves broke quietly over a rock of regret.


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"Darling, what are you doing?" she exclaimed,
coming suddenly into the study, and surprising her
father on his hands and knees on the hearthrug,
surrounded by a medley of objects, and trying to stuff
something into a large stocking—trying also, with
incomplete success, to hide from her both stocking and
litter.

"Well, my dear, Christmas will be upon us before
very long, and I thought I would try whether they
will go in," said the Rector, attempting to pull out the
bulky object, which, having refused to enter the
stocking now equally refused to be extracted.

He looked ten years older than he had done at the
time of their conversation in the night nursery a few
days ago.  Horatia's heart smote her as—not for the
first time—she realised the change, and her eyes were
full of tears when, kneeling down by him she put her
arms round him and kissed the white hair by his temple.

"Dearest Papa, you can't be going to give him all
those toys; it will be so bad for him!  Keep some of
them for next Christmas."

She had said it without thinking.

"And where ... where will he be then?" asked
her father rather gulpily.  A single tear splashed on to
the drum which he had succeeded in pulling from the
stocking.  Horatia bit her lip hard.

"I think, dear, that we shall always come home for
Christmas.  Or else you will come to us.  You will have
a curate soon; you know we discussed it the other day,
and then you will be so free.—What a splendid drum!
Where did you get all these things, you secretive old
Papa?  Surely not in Oxford?"

"I bought them when I was in London the other day,
at the Soho Bazaar.  I was thinking that we should
have such a pleasant Christmas...."

A stab went through Horatia's heart.  That broken
vision of his was in her mind too—the Christmas hearth,
Tristram with the child in his arms, prefigurement of
what should be henceforward ... and what would
now never be.

"It will be Maurice's third Christmas," went on the
Rector, with an attempt at cheerfulness, thinking from
her silence and averted face that he had been too cruel.
"I made up my mind last Christmas that he should
have——"

A knock caused him to scramble hastily from his
unwonted position.  Horatia jumped up and went to
the door.  Martha stood there.

"Please, Mam, would you come to the nursery.  I
don't think Master Maurice seems quite himself."

Horatia was gone before the Rector had got to his
chair.  She was back in a few minutes.

"Papa, if I may I shall send Sam Dawes for the
doctor.  I don't think it is anything serious, at least I
hope not, but he seems so drowsy and feverish, and he
has been very sick, poor darling."

"He was quite well this morning," observed the
Rector, astonished.  "Indeed, he was making such a
great noise in here that I could hardly get on with my
sermon."


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Maurice de la Roche-Guyon, who was to have a drum
and many other delights on his third Christmas Day,
did not seem likely to receive these now, though as he
lay, flushed and brilliant-eyed, chattering to himself,
his rambling talk ran sometimes on his small
possessions.

"A child to give back to God."  All through the two
long agonising nights and days the words echoed in
Horatia's head, with those others "He is stripping you
of everything."  Every few hours the doctor came, and
there was never any change, except that Maurice's
breathing seemed to get more and more rapid as his
lungs consolidated.  And Horatia could do nothing,
for now she could not even pray.

"He is stripping you of everything."  Then He
wanted from her the last thing, the best thing, the thing
incomparably the dearest, not the baby she had refused
to look at, not the baby who had been a delightful toy
at Plaisance, a growing interest in England, but her own
child, her very own, to hold through the years against
sorrow and change, to be, not her comfort but her
existence, not a consolation for what she had lost, but
life itself.  And set against it all, inexorable, "a child
to give back to God"—not hers at all, but only a
treasure lent...

"O God, save Maurice—take the rest, take everything,
I give it willingly, only save Maurice!  I will give
him back to You in the end, only leave him a little
longer!"  But she believed that her prayers could not
pierce the thick cloud that hung now between her and
the Christ she had so lately come to know, though she
never doubted that prayer could reach Him—the
prayer of a heart that prayed always...

Downstairs were the floods of toys, the half-filled
stocking, the holly and the mistletoe; up here the gift
of gifts was going away from her.

"O God, make me so that I can pray to You...."

But there was only Maurice asking, in his shrunk
little voice of delirium, for something to drink.


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It was always rather dark in St. Thomas's, and what
daylight remained to the December afternoon hung
nearly vanquished in the little church.  It had been
much lighter when Tristram, unlocking the door, had
come in over the planks laid along the aisle for a
causeway in time of flood, and, passing the disproportionate
pulpit, had entered the chancel and knelt down at the
altar rails.

Many hours had he spent there during the last two
days, holding up before God not his own suffering but
that of the woman who suffered for him.  Now he
could pray no more, but he still knelt, a suppliant
at the door of the Divine Pity, a beggar at the
Heavenly Gate.

But as the light withdrew itself more and more from
the sanctuary, till at last the bare table itself was
scarcely visible, he became gradually conscious that this
church was not more still than that inner place into
which he found himself somehow to have passed, a
place of great quietness, of which he had never before
possessed the key—the innermost room in the house of
his soul.  He did not know how he had gained entrance
to it—perhaps because he had ceased to strive—he only
knew that he was there, that he could never again lose
the way thither, and that this chamber held for him
that open vision which he had sought so often and never
found.

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As he left St. Thomas's he remembered that he must
go to Christ Church and ask if the Precentor, who was
indisposed, was likely to be well enough to preach the
charity sermon on Christmas Day, or whether he wished
him to do it.  So he walked once more up the way of
sorrows that he had traversed three or four days ago, and
came out in just the same manner on the front of Christ
Church.  Lights were beginning to twinkle there, and
down the narrow dusk of St. Aldate's, along which he had
so often ridden.  In Tom Quad he met Mr. Pusey, who
responded to his salutation by wishing him a happy
Christmas, passed on and then turned back.

"By the way, Mr. Hungerford," he said, "I am
afraid the Grenvilles at Compton Regis are in sad
trouble—but perhaps you know it?  I heard from my
brother this morning that the little boy, Madame de la
Roche-Guyon's child, is very ill—dying, they fear."

The pain in his voice and eyes (his own little
Katharine's death being only a year-old wound) was lost on
Tristram who, after a moment's horror, forgetful alike
of his errand and of himself, had turned and hurried
back into St. Aldate's to the nearest livery-stable for
a horse.

He probably galloped most of the fifteen miles on the
hard December road, for he got there by half-past six.
Anyhow the hack came down with him in the dark just
outside Compton village, and Tristram, merciful man
though he was, left it to the two or three yokels who had
collected and hastened on, oblivious of a slightly
wrenched knee.  Sick at the thought of what he might
hear he rang the bell at the Rectory.  Mr. Grenville
himself answered it.

"O, my dear Tristram!" he exclaimed, his eyes
brimming with tears.  "Have you heard—is that why
you have come? ... No, the child is alive ... the
doctor is here now.—Forgive me, come in...."

"Is that Tristram?" exclaimed a breathless voice,
and behind her father suddenly appeared Horatia
herself.  She almost pushed the Rector aside, and seized
Tristram by the wrist.  "O, thank God, thank God that
you have come!"  And, the ghost of herself, she fairly
dragged him across the hall into the drawing-room
and shut the door.

"Tristram, our Lord has sent you!  Listen, for you can
save Maurice—only pray, pray as you never prayed
before!  It is the crisis.  He will listen to you—I know
He will!"

And, as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone.

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The stable clock struck nine.  Steps came down the
stairs, and voices; the outer door shut.

The Rector appeared at the drawing-room door,
mopping his eyes.  He beckoned and Tristram, with a
sinking heart, followed him out of the room and up the
stairs.  Half-way up Mr. Grenville put away his
handkerchief, and it was then obvious that his tears were
tears of joy.  He gripped Tristram's arm.

"He will live, my dear boy, he will live, thank God!"

He continued to ascend, and Tristram, hardly knowing
why, went after him.  They came to the nursery
floor.  A door was ajar.  The Rector stood aside, but
Tristram did not enter.

From the threshold he saw, as in a frame, part of the
room within, and the little crib against the wall by
which Horatia was kneeling, with bowed head.  Over
her shoulders was a shawl of Chinese silk, blue as
lapis-lazuli, studded with the golden eyes of dragons, and
glorified, like the shining auburn of her hair, by the
mingled light of lamp and fire.  For him the picture
seemed to hold the love and pain of years, his own and
hers, barren and fruitful both, and he did not know
that he could look any more....

The child stirred.  Horatia rose from her knees, and
bending over him began very gently to rearrange a
pillow.  The change of position gave Tristram to her
sight, and so he went softly in and stood by her side,
looking down with her at him.

Maurice lay fast asleep, breathing quietly, and more
natural of hue—a frail bark rejected by the great tide
that washes so hungrily round the shores of the little
island of life, and whose receding is nearly as full of awe
as its oncoming.  To the man and the woman looking
at him the spray of that ocean seemed still wet in his
curls.

"You have given him back to me," said Horatia in
a voice less than a whisper, and, to herself, more faintly
still, "God did not ask *all*."

For answer Tristram stooped and kissed her son.

.. vspace:: 2

In the doorway he looked back, and at last the toll
levied on human nerves by days of so much strain and
anguish was demanded of him.  A momentary hallucination
of the senses—nothing but that, he knew it—but
all his life it was to remain with him, in mysterious
consolation, that for one heart-beat he saw there, in
Horatia's place, a Woman wrapped, like her, in a blue
mantle glinting with light, kneeling in adoration of a
Child.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MORN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   EPILOGUE

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   EPILOGUE

.. center large bold

   THE MORN

.. vspace:: 2

The barrel-organ which was grinding out "Keemo
Kimo" changed with a hiccough to "Bobbing Around,"
and the ring of tattered dancers likewise made some
alteration in their steps.  Five very dirty little girls
composed the corps de ballet, and a small boy
industriously kicking an empty can along the gutter added
further orchestral harmony.  This youth had already
rejected the offer of his peers to "play at the Relief of
Lucknow," having learnt by experience that the rôle
of a Sepoy was unenviable, that it was vain ever to
aspire to the part of Sir Colin Campbell, and still
retaining, in this autumn of 1859, unpleasant recollections
of the massacre of Cawnpore, as staged by the same
players in a certain backyard two years ago.

Had it been daylight this long street of the great
seaport town would have showed for what it was, a
slum, but the evening darkness of the last day of
October veiled some of its worst features, while it caused
the radiance pouring from the *Dockers' Arms*, half-way
along it, to gain tenfold in attraction.  Outside this
resort two sailors were engaged in a muddled argument,
not sufficiently foreshadowing blows to recall the now
scattered impersonators of the Indian Mutiny, but
interesting enough to cause the pensive child with the can
to direct his football towards them with a gleam of hope.
He was rewarded otherwise than he had foreseen, and,
after a moment's delighted gazing along the vista
beyond the public-house, abandoned his tin and ran back
towards the dancers.

"Victorier!  Victorier!  there's a swell coming!  I
seen 'im—coming this way!"

The conviction in her brother's tone detached Victorier
from her pirouetting.  She followed his finger and
saw that his imagination had not betrayed him, as
sometimes, into falsehood, for a figure answering indubitably
to his description came at that moment into the light
of the *Dockers' Arms*, the half-drunken sailors made
way for it, and, in a moment or two, the organ, now
ploughing mournfully through "Poor Dog Tray," had
lost its fascination, and Victorier's fellow-artistes, were
all standing at gaze.

The newcomer was a tall young man in a greatcoat,
palpably a gentleman; to any instructed eye a soldier,
but not—though this would have taken some discernment
to detect—an Englishman.  To the children he
was merely a swell, and his passage heralded as such by
cries that rang along the street, bringing a slatternly
woman or two from an alley, and rousing occasional
comment from male loungers.  But the young man
exhibited no sign of embarrassment at these attentions,
and, stranger still, he seemed to know his way in his
surroundings.  Indeed, on the open-mouthed Victorier
he bestowed, so she declared for days afterwards, "a
lovely smile" and a "Time you were in bed, little girl,"
ere he passed out of sight into the ill-lighted gloom.

As the street left the *Dockers' Arms* behind, it
became slightly more respectable, and signs of some
agency at work began to appear, for though the
uninformed might not have known that a nondescript
building on the left was a school, no one could have
mistaken that it was a Sister of Mercy who suddenly
emerged from one of the houses near.  But the swell
evidently did not need these tokens to guide him
towards his objective, and, indeed, as the street turned a
little, it was before him—a big church, lighted up.
When he realised this latter fact the young man
hesitated a moment; then he made his way, as one who
knows his whereabouts, to a small door, and pushing
it cautiously open, went through.

.. vspace:: 2

An intense, almost strained silence reigned within,
so that for a moment it was difficult to realise how large
a congregation was there, and how varied—clerks,
dockers, women with shawls over their heads, women in
fashionable bonnets, ragged boys, a few sailors.  The
great gilt cross suspended from the roof over the chancel
steps glimmered faintly in the lowered lights.  From
the screened-off door by which he had entered, Maurice
de la Roche-Guyon could have seen a section of the
great raised choir, and half the altar, severe and simple,
even on a festival, but it was not in this direction that
he looked.  He looked at the pulpit.

He saw there a spare, rather shrunken figure that
rested both thin hands—and not without a suggestion
of leaning for physical support—on the edge of the
stone.  Then he checked an exclamation.  Not since
the days after Balaclava had he seen anything like
this.  Across the preacher's forehead, from grey hair to
eyebrow, ran a terrible scar, red and puckered, straight
as a swordcut but not so clean-edged, showing the
worn and thoughtful face to be as much that of a soldier
as of a priest.

"*Children*," said the slow, very clear voice, "*I
commend you from the bottom of my heart into the
captivity of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.*"  The
tension was lifted, the lights went up, and the voice that
Maurice was waiting for gave out the first lines of a hymn;

   |  "Spouse of Christ, in arms contending
   |  O'er each clime beneath the sun..."
   |

So he *was* there!  The young Frenchman slipped out,
and went round to the clergy-house.

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Squire, the housekeeper, a small wiry lady of
varied, and especially of conversational gifts, opened
the door herself.

"Lor bless me!" she exclaimed exhibiting much
surprise.  "Well, I never!  Fancy you poppin' in like
this, Sir, and all the way from foreign parts, too, I
suppose.  They're all in the church, Sir; been at it
this long time.—But come in; I hope you're well,
Sir—your Grace, as I should say.  You must be tired, and
want some supper, I'm sure."

"Thank you, Mrs. Squire, I am very well, and I've
had supper," responded the young man, following her
into the narrow hall.  "But I do want a bed for the
night, and to-morrow night, too, if you have a room."

"You can't 'ave the guest-room, Sir," said Mrs. Squire,
opening a door, "seein' as the Vicar's sleepin'
there, because he would have Mr. Dormer put in *his*
room, but Mr. Johnson he's away, and I'll have 'is room
ready in 'alf-an-hour.  If you'll please to step in here,
Sir."

A lamp was already burning in the study, but the fire
demanded her attention.  The visitor meanwhile began
to divest himself of his greatcoat.  The light showed
him pleasant to look upon, fair rather than dark, with
a small sunburnt moustache and a very lively expression,
while the removal of his outer garment revealed
a tiny scrap of red ribbon in his buttonhole.

"Now, Sir, you make yourself comfortable here, and
I'll have a snack of something ready for you when they
come in."  At this point a thought appeared to strike
Mrs. Squire, for she shut the door and advanced
mysteriously on the young man.

"I think I ought to warn you, Sir, that when you see
Mr. Dormer, you may have a shock."

"I've had it!" said Maurice with a little grimace.
"I saw him in the church.  Tell me about it quickly,
before he comes in.  It was an accident, I suppose?  My
mother heard that he had not been well, but no more
than that."

Mrs. Squire sniffed.  "That's what they told her
Ladyship, no doubt, and that's what they told more
than one!  Mr. Dormer he hates to have it mentioned,
but he'll carry the mark to his dying day.  Nothing to
be ashamed of, rather the opposite, I says, but you
know what Mr. Dormer is.  Nor I wouldn't say nothing
about it to the Vicar, Sir, if I was you—Not well, indeed,
and 'im unconscious for twenty-four hours, and the
Vicar, when 'e 'eard about it, in such a taking as I've
never seen 'im, and off up to London at once, and..."

"But what was it, Mrs. Squire?"

"A brick, Sir."

"A brick!" repeated Maurice, mystified.  "Do you
mean off a house?"

"Thrown at 'im, Sir, and cruel hard!  Ah, there's
wicked people in this world!  In London it was, at one
of them nasty places by the docks, St. George's-in-the-East.
They've got what they calls a mission there, and
there was dreadful disturbances going on all summer,
even in the church itself, if you'll believe me, so that
they could 'ardly 'old their services.  A very low lot,
Sir, and paid to do it, roughs 'ired by them as keeps bad
'ouses thereabouts and the like, so I've 'eard.  Well,
Mr. Dormer goes there in August to preach for them,
and coming out of the church there was a terrible riot.
Fancy 'im alone in an 'owlin' mob without so much as
an umberella in 'is 'and!—not, I'm sure, that 'e'd 'ave
used anything if 'e'd 'ad it.  A pity you wasn't there,
Sir, with them queer baggy soldiers of yours.  Well,
the end of it was one of these villains throws a brick at
'im—pretty near did for 'im altogether, I believe.  This
'ere's the first time he've preached since."  Mrs. Squire
paused, and then added judicially, "Of course I don't
deny we've 'ad trouble 'ere before now, as your Grace
knows, though not for a long time, and I can't say as I
approves of all the 'igh Church goings on.  Not that
I'm saying anything against the Vicar, for I wouldn't
leave him not if he was to turn Papist to-morrow.
Where 'e goes I goes, if it's to the Pope of Rome
'imself—the Lord forgive me for saying so."

She went to the windows and gave a twitch to the
already drawn curtains, as Maurice digested this
information, and also had a sudden little memory of a gory
combat waged by him in boyish days with an urchin
who asseverated that that —— parson was a —— Papist,
the champion only remembering at its victorious close
that he was a Papist himself.

"Between you and me, Sir," resumed Mrs. Squire
confidentially, "I shan't be sorry when Mr. Dormer's
gone back, for I shouldn't like a death in the 'ouse, and
it's my belief 'e's not long for this world.  Not fit for
this preachin', any'ow, and don't eat 'ardly nothin'....
But 'ow I do run on.  I daresay the Vicar won't
be late, Mr. Dormer being 'ere, though sometimes, if
you'll believe me, he ain't in from church till after
compline.  It gets worse, Sir; selfish, I calls it, keeping
'im out of bed with their sins, and then all this getting
up early in the morning.  The Vicar is strong, thanks
be, but he ain't so young as he was, and it tells on him.
Can't see, meself, as the Almighty asks so much of us.
Where's your bag, if you please, Sir?"

The news that it was being brought up from
the railway station and might arrive any moment,
put a term to Mrs. Squire's volubility, and she
departed.

.. vspace:: 2

Maurice de la Roche-Guyon looked round the room
thus left to him with a smile of recognition.  Of fair
size, though somewhat choked up with furniture, much
of which belonged to a past decade of the Mahogany
Age, it was spotlessly clean and possessed a sort of
shabby comfort.  There was little to mark it as the
room of a priest, since any person with a large
correspondence might have had so littered a
writing-table—the sight of whose contents filled the beholder with
wonder and thankfulness that he should ever have
received a reply to a letter—and the pictures were
mostly views of Oxford, the High, Oriel, and a couple
of Dighton's caricatures.  Only in a corner of the
room was a little water-colour drawing of average
execution, representing the Madonna kneeling by the
child Christ in the manger.  On the window-sill were
several flower-pots containing forlorn geranium stems,
green tips with yellow leaves at the base.  Maurice did
not know if the pathetic hope of preserving geraniums
through the winter had ever been realised, but he
supposed that it had, since the pots persevered.  They
had been in exactly the same depressed condition when
he was here a year ago.

He threw himself into one of the armchairs by the
fire.  The spring was broken, so he exchanged it for
another.  Tristram's chairs were given to broken springs.
It was either the same chair, never mended, or else
succeeding occupants were heavy.  He stretched out
his legs and smiled to himself, thinking of the great
news he brought and of Tristram's pleasure in hearing
it.  Most important events in his life had been unfolded
to Tristram, since the occasion on which he had first sat
in a springless chair and waited for him.  Not that he
had smiled then....

It had been in dull quarters in the next street, before
the clergy-house was built, that Maurice had first sat
in a broken-springed chair and wished that chair and
remaining springs and he might sink into the earth.  He
was in his first year at Eton, and his adored English
grandfather having recently died he had begged to be
allowed to spend Christmas (it was that of 1844) with
Tristram, before going for the rest of the holidays to his
mother's cousins in Cavendish Square.  It was a curious
preference for a small boy brought up in stately
surroundings, to go into a dingy habitation in the
neighbourhood of docks, but to Maurice it was an
adventure of the wildest nature.  Although he could
not have explained it, to be with Tristram at all meant
a feeling of freedom.  There were so many things which,
according to Tristram's code, did not seem to matter;
but the fact that he was not punished for spilling ink
and tearing his clothes only convinced him that really
to transgress might be very uncomfortable indeed.

Maurice, though he was an only child, had been
brought up by an almost military discipline to an exact
obedience, even to the acceptance without question of
those mixed ecclesiastical surroundings which had
always puzzled him.  Maman, though she prayed so
much, never went with him to Mass.  M. le Curé, in the
country, when pressed would shake his head and say
that Madame la Comtesse was Anglicane et très dévote,
and although not a Catholic not quite a Protestant.
As if to excuse this enlightened view he would add that
she believed in the Real Presence, that she had a
crucifix in her oratory, and that Mr. Dormer, for whose
learning he had a great respect, was her director.  Yet
this very director (whose infrequent appearances were
vaguely disliked by Maurice) seemed to be on the best
of terms with his own kinsman Prosper de la Roche-Guyon,
and though one was a Bishop of the Catholic
Church and the other a Protestant pastor, they looked,
to the son of Armand, very much alike—except that he
was somewhat afraid of Mr. Dormer and not at all of
His Grandeur.  His mother herself would say, "Mon
fils, you are a Catholic and a Frenchman.  Monseigneur
de Troyes will tell you what you ought to think."  The
Bishop's explanation, if painstaking, was unintelligible,
and left Maurice with the responsibility of praying for
the conversion of his mother, his grandfather Grenville,
his "Uncle" Tristram Hungerford, Mr. Dormer, and a
quantity of persons at Oxford of whom he had never
heard.  After this he abandoned for a time his pursuit
of knowledge.

But Eton had revived and intensified his bewilderment,
and it suddenly came to him that now was the
chance of asking Uncle Tristram.  He knew that
Tristram was the curé of this great parish, that the
church which could be seen from the windows would
soon be finished, but he was forbidden to enter a
Protestant temple, and an Anglican church was
certainly not Catholic, so it must be Protestant.  Partly
because of the prohibition he had an enormous desire
to see the inside of this edifice, and as there seemed no
possibility of its being gratified, he added to his nightly
petitions for the conversion of Tristram to the Roman
obedience, the turning of the Church of the Passion
into a Catholic place of worship.

Christmas Day came.  Maurice set off, lonely, to the
Catholic chapel not far away for Mass.  As he came back
he had to pass the Mission church, which was used until
the completion of the permanent building.  It was
mid-day, and the bell stopped ringing a little before he
reached the door.  He listened; a harmonium was
playing *Venite adoremus*.  Why should he not peep
inside; no one would see.  He yielded to the
temptation and slipped in, to find himself almost touching
Uncle Tristram's surpliced back at the end of the
procession which, with some difficulty, was squeezing
round the small building.  He decided to stay.

The church was decked with holly and flowers, and
the tiny sanctuary was hung with red.  Maurice was
much interested, especially as his ideas of Protestant
worship were extremely vague, so that he was surprised
to see what was clearly an altar (though it seemed to him,
with only two lighted candles and a cross, very bare),
and to listen to a service which, for all its lack of Latin,
of bells, and of inaudibility, was presumably some kind
of a mass.  But gradually his interest waned.  He began
to see clearly what he had done.  He had not only been
disobedient, but had dealt a wound to that implicit
trust which he always felt that Tristram reposed in him,
and the delicacy of Tristram's position was quite plain
to the half-French boy.  At the communion of the
people he went out.  The rest of Christmas Day, spent
at the house of a churchwarden with a large family,
lacked enjoyment.  Nothing was said on his return,
and he felt pretty sure that Tristram had not seen him.
But next day, after breakfast, he waited for him in a
broken-springed chair.

"I was at the Mass yesterday."

"I know," said Tristram.

"I mean I was at your Mass."

"I know," said Tristram again.  "I've been waiting
for you to tell me."  There was a silence.

"You have my pocket-money," suggested a miserable
voice, for Maurice always associated misdeeds with
an immediate penalty, and anything was better than
suspense.  But he looked up from the floor to find that
Tristram was smiling.

"My son," said the latter, "for your punishment I
am going to explain to you the Anglican position.  I
have always disagreed with your mother in not trying
to make this clear to you before."

It was not punishment to Maurice.  Sin had brought
him what had never been granted to virtuous behaviour.
He listened with the most rapt attention, until Tristram,
leaning back in his chair, said "Do you understand
now, my boy, why you are forbidden to attend an
Anglican service?  It is for this reason that you must
regard me as a heretic, though *I* can believe myself
and you to belong equally to the Catholic Church.
Perhaps you can understand, too, how hard it has been
for your mother, so ardently devoted to her own faith,
to bring you up in a religion which must of necessity
separate you from her.  Not that she ever hesitated."

He got up.  "Come with me, Maurice.  I am going
to show you something."  And, leading him to a little
room at the top of the house, he unlocked a chest.  "I
won't take them out, but you can see what they are—the
full Eucharistic dress of a priest."

"Oh, Mass vestments," said Maurice, looking in.

"They have been given, but they cannot be worn
yet."  He unlocked another case and showed the boy
the sacramental plate, still unconsecrated.  One of the
chalices was studded with large pearls, the other with
different stones.

"What fine pearls!" observed Maurice.  "I have
never seen such large ones, except on a rope that Maman
used to wear.  Now she hardly wears any jewels."

"These were your mother's," said Tristram.  "She
wished to give all her personal jewels—all except those
belonging to your family, which will come one day to
your wife."  (He always spoke to Maurice in a matter-of-fact
way, as though Maurice were grown up.)  "And
here, you see, set in the paten, is a little old Anglo-Saxon
brooch that she used to wear as a girl, and which
she gave to me long ago.—Now I'll show you the church."

Maurice bore away from that visit an impression of
surprising dignity, simplicity, and space.  He had
seen the raised chancel, the still more raised sanctuary,
the stone altar, which it was doubtful if the Bishop
would consecrate, and the beautiful marble font, a
memorial to his grandfather Grenville, set in almost
equal honour in the apse at the west end.  He had been
told that there would be no galleries or pews, that the
church was to be quite free and always open, and that
one day a great cross or crucifix would hang from the
roof.  As they left he caught sight of a little inscription
on a stone let into the wall near the door—"Pray for
the sinner who built this church."

Going through the porch he said, reflectively, "I
suppose that as it is such a large church he was a very
wicked man."

But Tristram gave no answer.

.. vspace:: 2

Maurice had looked forward to his next Christmas in
the new clergy-house, and next Christmas had, indeed,
found him there, but in company with Mr. Dormer and
great gloom—unwelcome circumstances which it took
him some time to connect with a certain notable
conversion to his own communion in the previous October.
But what mattered to Maurice was much less that the
Church of England had lost John Henry Newman, than
that the Church of the Passion was now offering a
haven among its priests to its founder, and that the
centre of interest at the clergy-house had shifted from
him, Maurice, to the man who was mourning not only
the defection of a leader but the loss of a friend.

But when next he came to scale the church roof and
plague the curates, Mr. Dormer seemed to have gone,
not to Oxford but to London, and careful cross-questioning
of the new deacon elicited facts which, to
Maurice's mind, could only mean that Mr. Dormer would
perhaps one day become a monk.  How this could be,
even in the Church of England as explained by
Tristram, was a mystery, but since such a calling
presupposed a fixed abode, and, for the time being,
Mr. Dormer was certainly settled in London, Maurice had
got all the information that he wanted.  There was
no cloud now upon a visit to Uncle Tristram, and one
delightful summer even brought his mother to stay at
the hotel in the fashionable quarter of the town.  By a
coincidence, which Maurice was not able to appreciate,
the arrival of the French comtesse was recorded in
close proximity to "More Popish Practices of a Puseyite
Priest."

.. vspace:: 2

A kind of sporting interest in the Tractarian Movement
was a curious possession for a French soldier and
a sound Catholic.  Yet, just when the English newspapers
were full of the battle of the Alma, the post bore
to Tristram, recently inhibited for hearing confessions,
a letter from the seat of war adjuring him to stick to his
guns, and this from a young man who knew that an
Anglican clergyman cannot bind or loose, whatever the
opinions of his bishop.

At this moment, however, the writer of that epistle
had some grounds for wishing that the inhibition had
not been removed, or that Tristram's invalid absolutions
were not sought at such a late hour.  Looking round for
something to occupy him, the Duc de la Roche-Guyon
caught sight of a heap of *Punches* in a corner.  He
guessed why they were there.  Mr. Punch was strongly,
even rabidly, "anti-Puseyite," and it was characteristic
of Tristram cheerfully to preserve the numbers in
which this guardian of public morals had also
constituted himself Defender of the Faith.  Here, for
instance, was the succession of last year's cartoons
dealing with the alleged Romanist tendencies of "Soapy
Samuel," the Bishop of Oxford, and the Puseyite cleric
being kicked downstairs by the united boots of
Mr. Punch and John Bull.  After what he had just heard
about St. George's-in-the-East, Maurice was not greatly
surprised to find Mr. Punch warning "reverend gents
who think fit to make images, figures, or guys of
themselves" to beware of an "iconoclastic spirit" which
plainly had his approval.  In the current number itself,
the Rector of St. George's, in a notice headed "Nathan's
Clerical Costumes," addressed to "sacristans, footmen
of the superior Roman Catholic clergy and others," was
made to express himself desirous of purchasing "any
amount of the left-off vestments of priests" and to
offer "a liberal allowance for holy candle ends and
waste incense."

Maurice put down the paper with a shrug, but as he
stooped to pick up a number which had fallen open on
the floor, his eye was caught by the words "Margaret
Street" and "All Saints":—

   |  "The All Saints crows his Lordship pets,
   |  And, hoping against hope, forgets
   |  The many birds that thence have come,
   |  Fled to the rookery of Rome.
   |
   |    \*      \*      \*      \*      \*
   |
   |  "Can it be right to consecrate
   |  The new church in Street Margaret,
   |  Which looks more Puseyite by far
   |  Than English churches elsewhere are?"
   |

He read these lines with interest, because he knew
that the famous Tractarian church had once been
Margaret Chapel, where his mother had been married.
Then he laughed, and threw the paper away.

What a devil of a time they were in coming!  He got up
and looked at the photograph of a young man in uniform
on the mantelpiece, one of Tristram's lads.  Five years
ago, at Inkerman, after his regiment had carried, at
the point of the bayonet, the seven times captured and
recaptured Sandbag Battery, the young lieutenant of
Zouaves had happened to address a word or two in
English to one of the rescued men of the 95th, and
thus, amid the carnage, had made the surprising
discovery of a common friend in an English clergy-house...

Maurice put his elbows on the chimney-piece.  Four
years more of soldiering, encounters with Kabyles in
Africa, even this summer's guns of Magenta and
Solferino, had done little to efface the memory of
Sebastopol, its horror and its glory.  Still, in dreams,
he led his men through the iron hail up to the Malakoff;
still, sometimes, felt again the shock and blankness
when that hail had scorched him too, and he fell, not
knowing that he had outdone the daring even of his
own most daring corps.  More pleasant to dream of was
the waking in hospital and the finding, pinned to the
sheet, the red-ribboned, five-pointed star, the Cross of
the Legion of Honour, which they had doubted if he
would live to receive.  Most pleasant of all, the putting
it into his mother's hands.

The Crimea had won him that, and his step as
captain.  Last July had brought him more promotion;
last month still more.  But last week had given
him——  he smiled and pulled at his ridiculous moustache.
Grand Dieu! what had he done to deserve such happiness?

.. vspace:: 2

Here they were at last!  The young man deliberately
went out of the lamplight into a corner and stood with
his back to any who should enter.  The door opened.

"You know, Charles," the well-remembered voice
was saying, "that unless you obey me in this I shan't
allow you to preach at all to-morrow."

And the other voice, palpably tired, but very quiet
and even, replied: "If I were you, Tristram, I would
not utter threats before witnesses.  Look there!"

Maurice turned slowly round and faced the two
priests, but the blur of shadow hid the smile on his
face.

"There is nothing the matter?" asked the taller, a
note of sharp alarm in his tone.  "Horatia—your
mother is not ill?"

"No, no!" cried Maurice, instantly repenting of his
jest.  "No—there is nothing the matter—only good
news!"  And, flinging himself at Tristram Hungerford,
he embraced him in French fashion.—"How do you
do, Mr. Dormer?  I heard your sermon—that is to say
the end of it."

"I saw you," said Dormer, smiling, as he shook
hands, and Tristram exclaimed, "Oh, were you there,
my dear boy?  Come and sit down, Charles, and then
we must hear this good news.  Supper will be up in a
moment—but I hope you have had something more
substantial, Maurice?"  And, evidently torn between
a desire to pilot his friend to the most comfortable chair
and eagerness to hear the promised tidings, he
accomplished the first before taking hold of Maurice and
saying "Well?"

And then it burst out.

"Solange will marry me, and what is more, will
marry me in three weeks' time!"

"At last!" exclaimed Tristram.  "My boy, I am so
glad!  But why is it so very sudden?"

A sort of struggle between satisfaction and sadness
was visible in the young soldier's manner as he replied,
"Because I am ordered to Algeria next month, and
must sail from Marseilles on the 25th.  You see, they
have made me lieutenant-colonel."

Tristram gave an exclamation, and Maurice went on
quickly.  "Solange is so wonderful; she has given up
all idea of a great wedding.  She said at once that if
she was to marry a soldier she could be ready in three
weeks."

"What did her mother say?" asked Tristram.

"Oh, Maman arranged all that," returned Maurice,
sitting down astride a chair.  "She is almost as pleased
as I am that it has come all right."

"Or as I am," said Tristram.  "How long can you
stay, Maurice?"

"Only long enough to tell you all about it.  I told
Maman I might sleep here two nights if there was room.
Will you let me, mon père?"

"My dear boy, what a question!  So you came all this
way just to tell me—you left Mademoiselle Solange and
your mother, who has you now for such a short time,
for that?"

"Mademoiselle Solange sent you a message that she
remembered you perfectly, that next time she would
not allow me to leave her, and that she should come with
me to visit you.  As for Maman, when did she ever think
of herself?  Of course she wanted me to come and tell
you.  Besides, what a fuss about nothing!  Who came
over to see me when I was invalided home after the
Crimea?"

"Hasn't this promotion followed very quickly on
that which you got after the Italian campaign this
summer?" asked Dormer, breaking in for the first
time.

"You know I have always been luckier than my
deserts!" explained the young man laughing.
"Tiens! someone at the door!"

It was Mrs. Squire with a tray, and so, in a moment or
two Maurice, drinking his coffee, was able to take a swift
survey of his companions.  There were a few more
threads of grey in Tristram's dark, grizzled hair, a line
or two more on his face, but yes, he was looking well,
and young for his years.  But Mr. Dormer—no, for
the last twelve years or so he had looked much older
than Tristram, and now, not ill exactly, but fragile in
the extreme.  Everything that was not spirit seemed to
have ebbed away from his face, where, by reason of its
bloodlessness, the angry line of the great scar was all
the more noticeable.  Indeed, it was hard to keep one's
eyes off it, hard too, to avoid surprising the anxious
glances cast by Tristram at his friend, who was
evidently very tired.

Voices in altercation had been heard for some time
in the hall, and now, as the simple meal drew to its
close, reached a climax.

"Whatever is that noise?" exclaimed the visitor.
"Not, surely, more ri——" He stopped himself in time.

"I think I had better go and see," said Tristram,
getting up.

Maurice laid a hand on his arm.  "Let them fight it
out, mon père!  It is my first night, and I have only two."

Outside a child's voice was raised in a dismal howl.
Tristram gently extricated himself.  "I must go," he
repeated.  At the some moment there was a knock at
the door, and Mrs. Squire appeared, in some agitation.
The little hall seemed entirely blocked up with people,
a young cleric among them.  Tristram closed the door
behind him.

"What a place to live in!  What a life—never a
moment's peace!" exclaimed the young Frenchman.

"Tristram is wanted by everybody all day long,"
said Dormer.

"I'm not surprised," returned Maurice; "but I
wanted him to-night."

Dormer shook his head as if it were hopeless.  Then
he said:

"Have I congratulated you, Maurice, as I should
do?  I don't think I have.  I am most sincerely glad
about Mademoiselle de Béthisy.  Your mother has
wished for it so long—and I have hoped for it, too.
Then there is your rapid promotion.  I suppose, my
dear boy, that one can hardly congratulate you
enough!"

He smiled, a very sweet and human smile that made
him look suddenly years younger, and held out his hand,
just as the door opened and Tristram reappeared,
glancing down at someone behind him.

"Come in, Jack!  You shall have some hot coffee,
and be quick about it, and then I will come with
you."

A thin, ragged boy of about twelve, all eyes, shyly
followed him.  In Tristram's arms, wrapped round with
an old red shawl, was a rosy little girl, not much more
than a baby, from whose cheeks Tristram was removing,
presumably with his own handkerchief, a few remaining tears.

"Pour out some coffee, Maurice, will you?" he said.
"No, Mary had better have milk only."

"There are no cups," observed Dormer, making to
ring the bell.

"Here is mine," said Tristram, seizing it with his
free hand.  "Jack and Mary won't mind, and there is
no time to lose."

"You are not going out again!" exclaimed Maurice
in dismay.

"My dear boy, I'm afraid I must!  I'm so sorry."  He
put the infant down in his chair, but as she
immediately started to howl he picked her up again, and
began to pour the milk down her throat himself.  "You
see, their mother has refused to have her baby
christened.  Now it is dying, and Jack has brought a
message that if the Vicar would come himself she would
have it 'done.'  Mrs. Squire, who I am afraid is
getting ideas of her own about who is and who is not to
see me, has been trying to persuade them to take
Wilmot or French, but the boy knew it would be
useless, and seems to have been arguing with them all for
the last ten minutes.  That was what we heard.  So I
must go myself; I can't help it."

"You never could," said Maurice, getting up and
stretching himself.  "I shall come with you, mon
père.  Is it far?"

"Yes, it's right down by the docks.  Now, Jack,
ready?"  He shouldered the drowsy bundle.  "Charles,
don't sit up, I beg of you!  It is a dark night, and we
shall be at least an hour."

They went out, Tristram in his shabby cassock, the
head of curls on his shoulder, the ragged boy's hand in
his, and Maurice, Duc de la Roche-Guyon, Zouave of
the Guard.

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But Dormer sat motionless in his chair, his hands laid
along the arms.  "When did she ever think of herself?"  Jack
and Mary had cause to say the same, had they but
known their debt to a greyhaired and crinolined French
lady, the envied mother of a soldier one day to be
famous.  Yet it was not greyhaired and crinolined that
Horatia de la Roche-Guyon came to the door of the
priest's memory to-night, but as he had once seen her
in a Parisian drawing-room, a few years after her return
to France, still young, laughing, admired—marked
nevertheless, to his eyes, with a sacrifice so deep that
no one, perhaps for that very reason, could have guessed
at its existence.  There were times, he knew, when not
even her child could comfort her.  But from that aching
loneliness the captivity of the Cross had long since set
her free.

Yet Tristram, whose outward life was hard, had
suffered less, for from the beginning it seemed as if the
promise had been fulfilled to him, an hundredfold now
in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and
mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions.
Tristram, who had been almost the last to see the
vision which had called to his friends in the streets and
gardens of Oxford, was, after all, one of the first to
interpret it to others.  Of those friends he who, among the
shining spires, had seen it most clearly, was come many
years since to the city whose builder and maker is God.
But though the inspiration of his ardour was so early
taken from them, though some were scattered, some
disheartened, Hurrell Froude lived on in those who
fought and suffered with unwavering hope.  To these
the vision splendid still beckoned, but for their leader,
the brother of his spirit, it had faded into the light
of common day.  And so, haunted by his dream,
John Henry Newman had gone out from among his own
people, and for him another vision dawned.

But Charles Dormer was not unfaithful to his early
vision.  For though he too had not found,—though he
no longer looked for—a perfect Church, he had seen
amazingly disclosed, in his own communion, the
treasures of a real if forgotten Catholicity.  He had seen
the slaves in the prison-house of sin free servants in
the palace of a King, Who Himself struck off their
fetters, and, clothing them in the garments of His
righteousness, led them by the steep stairs of penitence
to the protection of the angels, the companionship of
the saints, that they might sit, even with the princes
of His household, guests at the banquet of His love.
Henceforward disappointment, failure, persecution,
defection were to the Tractarian but proofs that the
Church of England was indeed a part of the Body of
Christ, for, all unworthy, she bore the marks of the
Passion of her Lord.

And now the vision of the Light Divine, drawing him
always out of the battle and the conflict, luring him still
further into the way of prayer, had brought him at last
to a dark place where he lay so close to God that he
could no longer see Him, where, in the tomb of life, he
waited the first rays of the Resurrection Glory.

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