Chapter VI (1)
“Want!” observed the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, stretching out a fat hand from his wheeled bassinette towards the huge red poppy nodding in the flowerbed beside him. “Want, want, want!” he repeated beating with the same member upon the satin coverlet.
Grimes the gardener, clipping the hedge near by, looked round. “And so you shall, my pretty!” quoth he. Turning, he broke off the object of Maurice’s desires, and presented it to him, and Maurice, after tearing off the flaming petals, inserted the fascinating remainder into his mouth.
He had not time, however, to try his newest teeth upon the green dainty before it was torn from him and flung whirling into the bed as Martha—who had but left her charge for a moment—emptied the vials of her wrath upon the luckless donor. “And you a married man not to know better than that! You might have poisoned the precious child under his mother’s very eyes! Come away, my beautiful... now don’t cry after the nasty thing!”
As the hand of indignation wheeled Maurice away from the vicinity of the unworthy Grimes it removed him also out of Horatia’s field of vision, where she sat under the acacia tree on the lawn, a book on her lap and a workbasket by her side. Horatia flew something of her old colour in her cheeks. Her father, after her outburst in the spring, had told her to say her prayers and to do her duty. To do her duty, or what she knew that her father would conceive to be her duty, was easy—anything was easy that served to take her mind off herself. She did all she could for Maurice, and was unaware that Martha generally did it all over again. She paid visits and went to local shows, proceedings that before her marriage had been very distasteful to her. The Rector thought her so brave, and wonderfully softened, for now she seemed to suffer fools gladly. She did, for any company was better than her own.
But to say her prayers was a different matter, for though she repeated a form of words she could not pray, and she hated being in church, for there her mind invariably became clear, and all that she had shut away in a box marked “Paris” would emerge, and be, not a dream of the past, but a present reality. At any moment this box was not over-securely fastened. Inside were remorse and hatred. Every letter from France shook the lid—though such letters were not very frequent—one or two melancholy epistles from the Duc, a few kind notes from Emmanuel, some, not so benevolent, from the Dowager, and one malicious communication from the Marquise de Beaulieu, informing her that Madame de Vigerie had not been seen in society this year, and that every one was wondering why.... How she hated the Vicomtesse! It was she who had cast the first poisoned fruit into their Eden, it was she who had deceived her with a show of friendship, she who had caused her to condemn Armand innocent, she who had lured him on—lured him on to his death. Merely to think of her was to revive, in its fadeless colours, that picture or dream of him, lying dead in her arms....
Better than saying her prayers or doing her duty were Tristram’s visits.
She did not take them as a matter of course, but looked forward to them almost eagerly, comparing them with the many times he had come in old days. She was changed, she knew, but so was he. The fact of his becoming a clergyman might have been expected to make him more sedate, but it had had the opposite effect. At times he was quite lighthearted and full of hope, and seemed to find no little enjoyment in the prospect of a fight to come. The hope and the joy of battle were for the Church, for the Church was in danger, and yet Horatia no longer wanted to laugh at him or to tease him. He would tell her that he and his friends at Oriel were conspirators, and that one day the conspiracy would break out, that Oxford was going to lead another hope, and not a forlorn one. In July he had said that they only waited for Newman to come back from Italy, that Froude was full of fire, and that if Keble could only be got to move he would be more potent than anyone.
Horatia had watched eagerly to see what the Reformed Parliament would do, and, when the bill for the suppression of the Irish bishoprics was introduced, she was pleasurably thrilled at the thought then presented to her that perhaps an era of persecution had really begun. She was full of elation when Mr. Keble preached his stirring Assize sermon in July and of regret that she herself had not heard it. In August she felt the futility of the meeting at Hadleigh, and she was as convinced as Tristram could have wished that no great movement was ever successfully conducted by an association; she was sure that it must be the work of individuals. And now she was waiting for the appearance of the first-fruits of that idea—the projected series of Tracts.
It was like an exciting game, for Horatia’s interest was, after all, purely intellectual. And her instinct told her that even if Mr. Froude could speak jestingly of a conspiracy, and the friends could use, out of reverence for holy things, a “little language” which to the outsider appeared merely flippant, there was within them a spirit which made her shrink. She knew that they had a profound belief in Providence, that they believed they had a work to do, and were but tools for its execution. This alone was a disturbing thought. And she perceived in them a moral force, a severity and a relentlessness which she had never met before. If, as people said, they wished to copy the Roman Catholics, she was at a loss to know where in that body, as she knew it, they had found their exemplar, for not even in Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, reputed and sincerely believed by her to be a saint, had she seen any trace of this spirit. But it was to be found, no doubt, in the religious orders. It also occurred to Horatia that this reformation of the Church for which Tristram’s friends were so eager would mean a change in the lives of the clergy. It would mean the disappearance of the hunting parson, of the prosperous rector of the “three-bottle school,” even, she supposed, of the fashionable Evangelical preacher. But it might mean, too, a change in the people who were taught by the clergy.... She much preferred not to hear about this sort of thing from Tristram, and yet he was so eager, when once set on to talk, that she often started him for the mere pleasure of watching him. She could laugh at its absurdity, yet she felt a lurking sympathy with Lord Melbourne’s plaint, that things were coming to a pretty pass if religion was to invade the affairs of daily life, for thought hovering round this connection was apt to become personal in its application, and that which served generally as a diversion would end by making her conscience still more uneasy.
Tristram might come any day now in his round of distributing these new Tracts. As Maurice was wheeled away Horatia took up the August number of the “British Magazine” on her knee to look at the “Lyra Apostolica” for that month, which she had not yet read. It would be interesting to see whether she could guess the authorship of each of these unsigned poems, and to tell Tristram her surmise. She suspected Mr. Newman, who edited them, of writing most of them himself.
There were only three poems under that heading last month, she found, and they all referred in some way or other to “the Golden Keys.” The first, short and somewhat cryptic, was called “The Three Absolutions.”
What were the three absolutions? Two she knew of; a little note said that the third was to be found in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. She must look it up one day.... Then, suddenly remembering that there was an old Prayer Book somewhere in her workbasket, she stopped and found it, and, turning up the place, suffered considerable amazement....
She looked again at the poem—
“Full of the past, all shuddering thought,
Man waits his hour with upward eye—
The Golden Keys in love are brought
That he may hold by them and die.”
In her own Church then she could have Absolution if she were dying. She felt that when she came to die she would like to have it, and remembered that there had been a time when she had thought that, if she were to go on living, she must have it, a time when she had not excused herself, but when, in the first weeks of horror and misery, she had taken all the blame, had been too much overwhelmed with self-accusation and remorse even to taste perfectly her hatred of Madame de Vigerie.
And with the thought the gates opened, and the whole tide of memory burst upon her, full-waved, bearing her out of the safe and quiet English garden to a little church in Paris, holding a warm incense-burdened air, and flooded with a soft dusk in which the winking light before the altar seemed doubly alive and significant, and the irregular concourse of candles by the statue of the Madonna burnt with a speaking radiance. And she was kneeling in a rush-bottomed kneeling-chair, weighed down by her deep mourning, unable to pray, her mind a maze of inarticulate pain, not knowing how or why she had strayed into this place, except that it was peaceful. A few persons scattered about among the disordered chairs got up one by one, moved away, and after a while knelt down again, and there was a murmur of voices. In a moment or two Horatia realised that they were making their confessions, an idea which had once been full of a fascinated horror. Now it suddenly seemed reasonable. That woman, for instance, a widow like herself, coming back from the confessional to her place, what had she been saying, what had she been told to do, what was she feeling like now? Supposing it had been she herself... for no one could say hard enough things to her, nor could any penance equal the anguish that it would be to put her self-accusation into words, and to acknowledge her wrongdoing. Yet anguish she would have welcomed. Had she been of the faith of these people she could have comfort too.... But that was impossible.
And there came for the hundredth time the vision of Armand going in bitterness and agony down the slope to death, with the ironic little smile on his wryed mouth, the livid circles round the eyes which once had held for her all the light in the world. For she knew now—and the knowledge was only an added pang—that the reawakened feeling of that terrible night was only a transient emotion. She buried her face in her hands, and the heartrending pity of it surged over her, the horror and the tragedy of death, of his death, young and reluctant. Kneeling there, her face hidden, every voice of her soul went out suddenly to plead for him, though she knew not what to plead... “O God, it was my doing! The blame was not his, not his, O God.... He was kind to me, always. Have mercy, have mercy....”
So, after many days, had she prayed—but not for herself.
Horatia came back as one wakens from a painful dream, and, as sometimes in such an awakening, there were tears on her cheeks. She sprang up wildly from her chair. No, it was past, and here was reality, and comfort, and things of the safe, ordinary life—the sound of the gardener’s shears, the smell of cut box, a horse trotting along the road, someone opening a window in an upper storey, the voice of Dash in the kitchen garden yelping after a bird. She drew a long breath, and put out a hand to touch something palpable and present, the rough trunk of the acacia-tree.
“Please, ma’am, Reverend ‘Ungerford,” said the voice of Ellen behind her.
“Ask him to come out here,” said Horatia. Going back to her chair she passed her handkerchief quickly over her eyes, and snatched a small garment and needle and thread from her basket.
And Tristram, looking unusually elated, almost boyish, and also rather hot, approached her over the grass pulling something from a wallet.
“I’m too dusty to come near you,” he said, coming nevertheless. “This is the sixth parsonage I’ve descended on this afternoon. I think I may say without vanity that ’the dun deer’s hide on fleeter foot was never tied’—except that the foot in question belongs to a livery stable.” He almost threw into her lap a small bundle of pamphlets, and crossed the lawn to get another chair.
Horatia looked at his back with a curious expression, but when he turned her gaze was on the uppermost Tract.
“Fellow-Labourers,” began the first of its four small pages, “I am but one of yourselves—a Presbyter....”
“Newman’s,” said Tristram, sitting down beside her. “We’re going to make a row in the world at last!”
(2)
For the next six weeks or so, while various persons, clerical and lay, of the same opinions as Tristram Hungerford were riding about the country to the same end, or packing up for distribution large parcels of the new Tracts for the Times by Residents in Oxford, while the clergy thus bombarded were recovering from the shock of being told by “A Presbyter” of their apostolical descent, while Hurrell Froude, ordered to Barbados in the vain pursuit of health, was showing, as usual, his daring spirit by urging Newman to break an impossible alliance with the conservative High Church—while all these portents were taking place Horatia de la Roche-Guyon was paying a number of visits. Though sorry to leave the neighbourhood of Oxford just as the fiery cross was going round, she did not altogether regret the change of scene, for she was beginning to wonder whither these pleasant conversations with Tristram were leading, and she thought that absence might enable her to gain a clearer view of the situation.
By the end of October she found herself staying with her friend Emilia Strangways (whom once she had declared she would not go to see again for seven years) at the house in Devonshire to which her husband had succeeded on the death of an uncle. Only one more visit remained, a short sojourn with the Puseys at Oxford on her way home. Maurice, who had accompanied her on her first visits nearer Compton, had not been brought so far, but, with or without her son, Horatia was now able to bear an honoured part in the continual and detailed conversations on the uprearing of children (Emilia being by now the parent of a boy and girl) and threw herself with zest into discussions on the dangers of teething and the proper thickness of infantile winter clothing, feeling sure, with something of her old insight, that Mrs. Strangways commented to her husband upon “the improvement in dear Horatia.” On the wheels of these domestic conferences the visit passed away, uneventful until its last day, when Henry Strangways descended to breakfast with a set face, and a saucer upon which reposed a minute fleck of something flabby and green.
“In my shaving water, Emilia,” he said in a tense voice. “I have questioned the servants most closely. They are positive that it did not occur in the kitchen. So that means it has all begun again!”
Emilia rose with concern from behind the coffee cups, while Horatia lightly asked the nature of the intruder.
“I think,” replied her host very seriously, bringing round the saucer for her inspection, “that it is cabbage. At least I fear that it is cabbage. Having in the first place been cooked, and having also been a long time in the water, it is not readily distinguishable. Whatever it is fever will probably come of it. And the Mother Superior promised me most solemnly that it should not happen again.”
Horatia lifted puzzled eyes from the sodden speck.
“The nuns up at the Manor, dear,” explained Emilia. “Our water comes through the Manor grounds, and they will throw things from the kitchen into it. Henry has written twice; at last he went himself and had an interview with the Mother Superior. Since then it has been better.”
“I think I shall see the Lord Lieutenant about it,” said Mr. Strangways. “That I and my family should succumb to fever because these misguided women—foreigners, too, most of them—have been brought up without the most elementary notions of sanitation is preposterous. The whole thing is preposterous, that they should be established in this country at all, polluting at once our water supply and the faith of the villagers!”
“But you will write again, Henry, will you not?” urged his wife. “Or perhaps you would go again and see the Mother?”
“No, I shall not consent to another interview of that kind,” returned Mr. Strangways. “I shall now put the matter in the hands of the proper authorities. Mother, indeed! But I shall certainly write as well, and at once. I think I shall enclose this... this vegetable matter. Would it not be rather to the point, Emilia, if I sent up the saucer with my compliments, and nothing else?”
Horatia burst out laughing, and then perceived that she had done the wrong thing. Her host did not mean to be funny; he never did. Finally it was settled that he should write a letter of protestation, and that, instead of its being sent by a menial hand, Emilia and her guest should walk up with it.
“I thought you might like to see the outside of the Manor,” said Mrs. Strangways, as they started out over the fallen leaves. “You see, it once belonged to Henry’s uncle, and he most unfortunately sold it, at the time of the French Revolution, to these nuns. As Henry says, he ought not to have been allowed to do it. The grounds are rather fine, much better than ours, and I don’t know what they can want with them, for they never go out, and it is really very terrible to feel that they are throwing all sorts of refuse into the water, and might any day poison the children.”
“But the convents I have seen in France were so very clean,” objected Horatia. “And these are French nuns, you say? Why do they not go back?”
“I don’t know,” replied her informant. “I suppose they find themselves better off here. Besides, it may not be clean inside; nobody knows, for no one is allowed further than the parlour. I daresay awful things go on, for they are said to be a very severe order. I have heard that they sleep on plank beds, and hardly ever speak, and live on bread and water....”
“And cabbage!”
“Yes, I suppose so. Anyhow it is a fact that no meat ever goes in there. And they do nothing but pray—I mean, they don’t embroider, or make lace, or anything useful, but just pray all day long. But Henry says it isn’t tedious to them because, of course, after a few months of it, they go out of their minds.”
“What do they pray for?” asked Horatia.
A shade of enjoyable horror appeared on the fair face under the beaver bonnet. “They call it Perpetual Intercession. That means praying for wicked people. I know they pray for the dead too—think of that, Horatia! Henry says it’s worse than idolatry.”
And on this theological dictum of Mr. Strangways they turned through a wide gateway and saw before them, through a fading glory of beech-trees, a large Elizabethan house of mellowed brick. To its left stood the chapel, an incongruous late Georgian building, and up to the main entrance led an ugly covered way of still more modern construction, topped by a statue of the Virgin and Child. Along this way Emilia preceded her guest, for it was barred only by a low oaken gate, which at the moment stood open, perhaps because a novice was scrubbing the stone floor within. Horatia glanced curiously as she passed at the grey-clad figure on its hands and knees, noticing that the hands in question were very small and white, and seemed to have had no past connection with bristles or soapsuds. She would rather have liked to see what sort of a face went with those hands.
The aged portress who took the note from Emilia revealed, as she opened the door, a glimpse of the square Tudor hall that had once known song and carousing but was now lamentably bare and empty. Facing all who entered, and stretching up from the floor against the whitewashed panelling, was a gigantic crucifix in relief, rather more than life-size, of the most startling realism, a realism that had gone so far as to suggest that the base of the cross was sunk in the floor of the hall, for it appeared to be fixed there with large wedges. A skull lay at its foot.
“Is it not horrible?” whispered Emilia as the door shut once more. “The first time I saw it I had nightmare.... I think it is so wrong to remind oneself like that... Oh, merci, ma soeur!”
For the novice, who had now reached the middle of the passage had risen from her knees, and, removing her bucket out of their way, stood aside with downcast eyes for them to pass. And so Horatia’s idle wish was gratified, and she saw her face—the face of Laurence de Vigerie.