Читать книгу The Vision Splendid - D. K. Broster - Страница 7

CHAPTER IX

(1)

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..."

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.

CHAPTER X

(1)

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.

(2)

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.

CHAPTER XI

(1)

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.

(2)

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.

(3)

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.