Chapter II (1)
“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!”
(2)
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.”