Chapter IV (1)
“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When she had withdrawn he got up from his writing-table and poked his own fire.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.
(2)
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.”
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.
(3)
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.
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.
(4)
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.”
(5)
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....