Читать книгу Foxglove Manor - Robert Williams Buchanan - Страница 9

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The low-lying landscape had vanished in the twilight, and the stars were twinkling in the clear blue sky before Edith rose, dried her eyes, and began to return homeward. The moon had risen, but had yet scarcely freed itself from the tops of the dark woods, through which it shone round and ruddy. As she passed the Vicarage, she paused and looked up at the windows. She felt prompted to steal quietly up to the door and inquire whether Mr. Santley was any better, but a fear arising from many causes held her back. Besides, the house was in darkness, and every one seemed to have retired to rest.

Since Edith had been in the habit of visiting the Vicarage, this was the first occasion on which she had returned home alone. Unreasonable as she acknowledged the suspicion to be, she could not rid herself of the belief that Mr. Santleys indisposition had been, assumed as an excuse for avoiding her. She strove to convince herself that she was foolishly sensitive and jealous, to hope that the change in the vicars manner was but an illusion of her excited fancy, to feel confident that when she saw him to-morrow she would recognize how childish she had been.

Miss Dove was exceedingly fond of music, and during the week she was accustomed to spend hours alone in the church, giving utterance to her thoughts, and feelings in dreamy voluntaries, which were the fugitive inspiration of the moment, or filling the cool, richly lighted aisles with the impassioned strains of Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. The sound of the organ could be heard at the Vicarage, and Mr. Santley had been in the habit of going into the church, and conversing with her while she played. It was with the hope that one of his favourite pieces would again bring him to her that, during the afternoon of the following day, Edith took her seat at the organ. With nervous, eager fingers she swept the key-board, and sent her troubled heart into the yearning anguish and clamorous impetration of the Agnus Dei of Haydn’s No. 2. When she had finished she rested for a little, and glanced expectantly down the aisle; but no footstep disturbed the quiet of the place. She then turned to another of the vicar’s favourites—a Gloria of Mozart’s. The volumes of throbbing sound vibrated through the stained windows, and floated across the bright churchyard to the Vicarage; but Ediths hope was not realized. She played till she felt wearied, rather with the hopelessness of her task than with the physical exertion; but the schoolboy who blew the organ for her was exhausted, and when she saw how red and hot he looked, she closed the instrument and dismissed him. Every day that week she repeated her experiment, but her music had apparently lost its magical influence. The vicar never came. She called thrice to see Miss Santley, but each time he was away from home. Once she saw him in the village, and her heart began to beat violently as he approached; but they were on different sides of the street, and instead of crossing over to her, as he had always done hitherto, he merely smiled, raised his hat, and passed on. Sunday came round at length, and she looked forward with a sad, painful wonder to the customary visit in the evening.

It was a bright, breezy sabbath morning, and the great limes and sycamores which buried Foxglove Manor in a wilderness of billowy verdure, rolled gladsomely in the sun, and filled the world with a vast sealike susurrus. On the stone terrace which ran along the front of the mansion the master of the Manor was lounging, with a cigar in his mouth, and a huge deer-hound basking at his feet; while in the shadow of the room his wife stood at an open French window, conversing with him.

Mr. Haldane was a tall, broad-shouldered, powerful man of about forty years of age. His face, especially in repose, was by no means handsome. His grave, large, strongly marked features expressed decision, daring, and indomitable force. His forehead was broad, and deeply marked with the perpendicular lines of long mental labour. The poise of his head suggested a habit of boldly confronting an opponent. His short hair and closely trimmed beard were touched with gray, and gave a certain keenness and frostiness to his appearance. A grim, self-sufficing, iron-natured man, one would have said, until one had looked into his bright blue-gray eyes, which lit up his strong, rugged face with an expression of frankness and dry humour.

“My dear Nell,” he said at length, in answer to the persistent persuasion of his wife, “do not be cross. There are two things in the world which I abhor beyond all others: a damp church and a dry sermon. Invite your vicar as often as you please. I will do my best to entertain him; but do not press me to sit out an interminable farrago of irritating platitudes in a chilly, straight-backed pew.”

“I assure you, George, you will be charmed with him, if you will only let me prevail on you to come.”

“Why cannot you Christians dispense with incense, and allow smoking instead—at least during the sermon?”

Mrs. Haldane made a little grimace of horror.

“You would then have whole burnt offerings dedicated with a devout and cheerful heart.”

“George, you are shockingly profane! I see it is no use urging you any further; but I did think you would have put yourself to even some little inconvenience for my sake.”

“For your sake, Nell!” replied Mr. Haldane, laughing. “Why did you not say so sooner? You know I would do anything on those terms. Have I not often told you the married philosopher has but one moral law—to do his wife’s will in all things.”

“Then you will accompany me?”

“Certainly I will.”

“You are a dear, good old bear,” exclaimed Mrs. Haldane, slipping on to the terrace and caressing his head with both hands. “But you know you are a bear, and you will try for once to be nice and good-natured, will you not? And you will not be cold and cynical with him because he is ideal and enthusiastic? And if you do not acknowledge that he is a delightful preacher, and that the dear little church is charming——”

“You will not ask me to go again?”

“I was going to say that, but it will be wiser to make no promises. You know, dear, you should go to church, if it were only for the sake of giving a good example; and it is my duty to try and persuade you to go. And oh, George, seriously I do wish you could feel that it drew you nearer to God; that where two or three are gathered together, He is in the midst of them. Now, do not smile in that hard, derisive way. I know I cannot argue with you, but if I cannot reply to your reasoning, you cannot convince my heart. I do believe, in spite of all logic, that I have a heavenly Father who loves and watches over me and you too, dear; and I should be wretched——”

“My dear little woman,” said Mr. Haldane, taking both her hands in one of his, “you have no cause to be wretched. I have no wish to deprive you of your belief in a heavenly Father. With women the illusions of the heart last longer than with men; and perhaps, in these days of change and innovation, it is as well that women have still a creed to find comfort in. For my part, I confess I hardly understand what it is attracts you in your religion. The civilized world, so far as I can see, has outgrown the golden age of worship, and latria is one of the lost arts.”

The presence of the master of Foxglove Manor created considerable surprise and curiosity among the congregation at St. Cuthbert’s. Though he had lived in the neighbourhood for the last twelve years, this was the first time he had been seen inside a church. Much more attention was paid during the service to the beautiful lady of the Manor, and the grim, powerful man who sat beside her, than was in keeping with the sacred character of the occasion. Mr. Haldane, on his part, though he did his best by imitating the example of his wife to conform to the ritual, was keenly critical of the whole service. The dim religious light of the painted windows pleased his eye, but failed to exercise any influence on his feelings. The decorations of the church seemed to him insincere and artificial. He missed in the atmosphere that sense of reverence which he had experienced in the old cathedrals in Spain and Italy. The ceremonies appeared dry, joyless, and uninteresting, and as he watched the congregation bowing, kneeling, praying, singing, pageants of the jubilant mythic worship of the ancient world crowded upon his imagination.

“What are you thinking of?” his wife once whispered, as she caught a sidelong glance at his abstracted face.

“Diana at Ephesus!” he replied, with a curious twinkle in his keen gray eyes.

Once or twice during the sermon a saturnine smile passed across his face, and Mrs. Haldane pressed his foot by way of warning; but otherwise he listened gravely throughout, with his large, strongly marked features turned to the preacher.

“Well, have you been interested, dear?” asked Mrs. Haldane, when the service was over, and they were waiting in the churchyard for the vicar.

“Yes,” he replied drily; “your vicar is interesting.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?”

“He will repay study, my dear.”

Mrs. Haldane looked sharply into her husband’s face, but was dissatisfied with her scrutiny.

“You don’t like him?”

“I have no reason yet to like or dislike him. In a general way, I should prefer to say that I do like him.”

“But what do you mean by your remark that he will repay study?”

“Perhaps you will not understand me,” he answered thoughtfully. “Your vicar has a soul, Nell.”

“So have we all, I suppose.”

“At least he believes he has one,” said Mr. Haldane, with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“Well!”

“And he is trying to save it.”

“We all are, I hope.”

“I beg your pardon, Nell; the phenomenon in these days is a psychological rarity, and, being rare, is naturally interesting. It is one of the obscure problems of cerebration. Ah! here comes your vicar.”

With a bright smile Mrs. Haldane advanced to meet him, and cordially shook hands with him. “You must allow me to introduce you to my husband. George, Mr. Santley.”

“My wife tells me,” said Mr. Haldane, as they shook hands, “that she was an old pupil of yours.”

“Yes,” said the vicar, with an uneasy glance towards her, “many years ago.”

“It is a little curious,” continued Mr. Haldane, “how people lose sight of each other for years, and then are unexpectedly thrown together into the same small social circle, after they have quite forgotten each others existence.”

The vicar winced at the last words, but replied with a faint smile, “The great world is, after all, a very little world.”

“Ah, my dear sir, I see I have started a familiar train of thought—the littleness of the world,” said Mr. Haldane, with a dry light in his eyes.

“And you fear I may improve the occasion?” asked the vicar a little coldly.

“Pray do not misunderstand my husband,” interposed Mrs. Haldane. “He was delighted with your sermon to-day; and I do not wonder, for you have the power of appealing to the heart and raising the mind beyond earthly things. It was only a few moments ago that he told me he was deeply interested.”

“I perceived that he was amused once or twice,” replied the vicar, with a smile.

“I confess that I may have smiled at one or two points in your discourse.”

“Excuse my interrupting you,” said Mrs. Haldane; “will you not walk? You can spare time to accompany us a little way?”

Mr. Santley bowed, and Mrs. Haldane signed to the coachman to drive on slowly towards the village.

“For example,” resumed Mr. Haldane, “I see you still stick to the old chronology and the mythic Eden.”

“Certainly I do.”

“And yet you should be aware that at least a thousand years before the date you fix for the creation of Adam, tribes of savage hunters and fishers peopled the old fir-woods of Denmark, and set their nets in the German Ocean.”

“It may eventually prove necessary to revise the chronology of the Bible,” replied the vicar; “but there is at present too much conflict of opinion among your archaeologists to decide on the absolute age of these tribes. After all, the question is one of minor importance.”

“Granted. But you cannot say the same of the efficacy of prayer.”

Mrs. Haldane laid her hand on her husband’s arm, and stopped abruptly. “Ask Mr. Santley to dinner, George, and then you can discuss as long and as profoundly as you like; but I will not allow you to argue now. Besides, I want to talk to Mr. Santley.”

Mr. Haldane laughed good-naturedly. “Just as you please, my dear. If Mr. Santley will favour us with his company, I shall be very glad. Your predecessor was a frequent visitor at our house. A jovial, rubicund fellow, whose troubles in this life were less of the world and the devil than of the flesh! A fat, ponderous man and a Tory, as all fat men are; a sort of Falstaff in pontificalibus; a man with a wit and a shrewd palate for old port. Poor fellow! he was snuffed out like a candle. One could have better spared a better man.”

“Will you come to-morrow?” asked Mrs. Haldane; “and, if your sister can accompany you, will you bring her? You will excuse our informality and so short a notice.”

“I shall be very happy to call tomorrow.”

“Then, if you can spare me a few moments I will have a better opportunity of speaking to you. I must learn all about the parish, and I have a whole catechism of questions to ask you. You will come to-morrow, then?” she concluded, with one of those flashing looks from her great dark eyes.

He watched them drive away with that look burning in his brain and the pressure of her hand tingling through every nerve. He stood gazing after her with a passionate light in his eyes and an eager, yearning expression on his pale, agitated face. This was the woman he had lost, and now they were again thrown together in the same small social circle, after she had completely forgotten his existence! Those words of her husband had cut him to the quick. Could she so soon, so easily, so completely have forgotten him? It seemed incredible. If she had used any such expression to her husband, was it not rather to forestall any jealous suspicion on his part? Clearly she had not divulged the secret of those schoolgirl days. He knew not the story of that sweet, imperishable romance; those burning kisses and unforgotten vows had been hidden from him; and in that concealment the vicar found a strange, subtle pleasure. It was at least one tie between him and her; one secret in common in which her husband had no share.