Chapter VIII (1)
Mr. Dormer of Oriel was accustomed to assert that he felt no ill effects from his Italian carriage accident, but, as a matter of fact, he never went up or down any prolonged flight of stairs without being reminded of the slight muscular weakness which it had left. So that when, about six weeks after his sermon at St. Mary’s, he came rather fast down the sixty-five steps of the Bodleian library, and at the end of every group of five arrived with some force upon his injured leg, he was so reminded.
Outside, in the archway facing the Radcliffe and St. Mary’s, their gowns blown about by the wind which commonly sweeps through that passage, he came on Newman and his curate, Isaac Williams, in converse with Mr. Pusey.
“Wait a minute, Dormer,” exclaimed the first-named, catching at him as he was about to pass. “We are having a most interesting conversation.”
“I was just saying to Mr. Newman,” said the Canon, smiling and wrapping his gown round him after a habit he had, “that I think you are all too hard upon the Evangelicals. You should conciliate the Peculiars, as you would call them. I am thinking of writing a letter myself for that purpose.”
“Were you!” exclaimed Newman. “Well, suppose you let us have that for one of the Tracts?”
The young Regius Professor smiled his particularly sweet smile. “Oh, no!” he replied, “I will not be one of you!” and they all moved out of the archway together, Dormer taking the opportunity to ask Isaac Williams for news of Keble.
Meanwhile Newman seemed to be arguing with his friend, and at last, as they stood on the steps, he could be heard saying, “Suppose you let us have that letter of yours, which you intend writing, and attach your own name or signature to it? You would then not be mixed up with us, or be in any way responsible for the Tracts.”
“Well,” said Pusey after a little hesitation, “if you will let me do that I will.”
He gave them a smiling farewell, and went off, in his usual rather abstracted fashion, down Brasenose Lane.
“Come out with me to Littlemore, Dormer,” urged Newman. “It is a beautiful day. Isaac has some business of his own, I don’t know what, in Oxford. Come along, and we will sing pæans of thanksgiving for the great victory obtained by the Apostolicals over the Regius Professor of Hebrew.”
And he set out with his curious swift gait, as if walking in heelless slippers, along the side of All Souls, where two years ago a daring hand had painted “No Bristol Riots.”
“I must write to Froude at once,” he continued. “How I wish we dared take his advice and throw the Establishment men overboard! I am sure that if he knew the trouble I have had with that good Palmer, on the question of continuing the Tracts, he would pity me.”
“If Pusey should end by casting in his lot with us,” observed Dormer thoughtfully, “it might make a difference.”
“You mean that if we had him we could venture to row our own little boat, because he could be all that Rose might be?”
“Well, yes, with his influence and his easy relations with the University authorities.—Excuse me a moment, there’s Mr. Grenville of Compton Regis. I must just go across.”
For they had by this time come abreast of the Angel in High Street, where an elderly cleric was about to enter a post-chaise.
“Ah, Mr. Dormer,” said the Rector heartily, “That’s very kind of you to come and speak to an old man. I’m just returned from a jaunt, I suppose you may call it, to London, to my sister-in-law’s. Oxford is looking its best this morning. Yes, thanks, I’m very well, too, although I am so bombarded with these Tracts—rather a turning of the tables, you know, for we clergy are more accustomed to distributing than to receiving such things. And I ought to obtain a meed of praise from you, too, for I have just arranged a meeting next week, to get signatures to the address to the Archbishops—though I think it rather a milk-and-water thing myself... Well, good-day.”
“I hope Madame de la Roche-Guyon is well,” observed Dormer, in the tones of convention, as he opened the chaise door for him.
“Yes, quite well, thank you,” replied the Rector, his foot on the step. He hesitated, withdrew that member, and glancing round lowered his voice to a confidential tone: “When I see how she welcomes our friend’s visits, I really begin to hope that it will all come right in the end! So perhaps what has happened has been for the best!” His face beamed. “How little we trust in Providence, Mr. Dormer! But there, I mustn’t keep you. Good-day!”
John Henry Newman had a rather silent companion on his walk to Littlemore.
(2)
The chaise conveying Mr. Grenville from Oxford to Compton was, unknown to Tristram, but a few miles in advance of him as he trotted along the frosty Berkshire lanes that afternoon, revolving in his mind the points in his tract on “The Church the Home of the Poor,” of which he had left the proofs with Horatia—proofs which he was going to reclaim before he left next week for a “missionary tour” in Northamptonshire on business connected with the Tracts.
Last Christmas, when he had come to think over his afternoon at Compton, he knew that he would rather not see Horatia often. And a gradual abstention would have been possible, though a little awkward, but the Rector had insisted so much on the cheering effect of his visits, and the necessity for Horatia of some outside interest that, as always where she was concerned, he allowed his own feelings to be overridden. This was not the time to consider himself, when she was in a situation so poignantly pathetic, and when, for the first time in his life, he was really able to be of some use to her. That there should be any talk in the neighbourhood about his going to the Rectory seemed very unlikely, seeing that it had been a second home to him since boyhood. Had he suddenly kept away, there might have been something to talk about. And that there should be any wrong impression left upon her mind was quite unthinkable after he had once seen her. Never, in her teasing days, had she seemed so remote as now in her kindness, and her sadness and her motherhood. Nearly always, when he got back to Oxford, one or other of the different strands of pain would ache almost unbearably, but since the call to arms in July, and still more since the forging of weapons was begun in September, this great interest which she shared with him had made things easier for him. His going out there was no longer an emotional strain, but almost a soldier’s visit to a comrade at an outpost, woman though she was. And this was indeed the spirit in which he rode out to her to-day to reclaim his proofs.
But Mr. Grenville, blowing his nose very hard, met him in the hall. “Horatia is greatly distressed,” he said huskily. “She has had sad news from France. I’ve only just got back myself and heard it. That child—but there, I think you had better go in to her.”
In the dining-room, her head on the table, which was strewn with sewing materials, Horatia was crying as if her heart would break.
“It is poor little Claude-Edmond,” she said between her sobs. “He’s dead... poor darling... poor dear little boy...” And she broke into fresh weeping.
“Dead!” exclaimed Tristram horrified. “Emmanuel’s son—that little fellow! How...”
She could give him no answer for a moment, and in that pause, rent with sobbing, he knew without acknowledging it that the sight of her grief meant immeasurably more to him than its cause. He could not bear to see her cry!
After a moment she raised her head and dabbed at her eyes, and lifted them, all reddened and swollen, to his.
“You remember him, Tristram—such a dear little boy, so solemn and polite? He was riding in the Bois de Boulogne a few days ago when his horse took fright, and he was thrown—against a tree... He only lived a few hours.... O Tristram, when I think... and he was such a comfort to me once... and they say he asked for me... I can’t bear it!”
And during this short recital of that almost intolerable tragedy, a child’s death, every vestige of colour ebbed from Tristram’s face. Before she had ended he had turned it from her.
“And does this... this very sad news... will it make any difference to you, Horatia?”
“Any difference?” repeated she, not catching his real meaning, so completely was she absorbed in thoughts of the dead boy. “Oh, you mean Maurice being the heir now.” Utterance failed her and she began to cry again. “O, I can’t bear to think of it!”
“Yes,” said Tristram’s voice, curiously insistent and toneless, “but will it make any difference to you personally... will you have to go away—to live in France? I thought perhaps...”
“No, O, no, I don’t think so.” She sighed heavily. “I can do as I please, I think. I suppose I shall be there more often, perhaps... O Tristram, why is God so cruel?”
He did not take up the challenge, but he looked at her very gravely.
“I do not know,” he said. “I... I must go back and write to poor Emmanuel. I will come for those proofs again, or you can send them. I am going away next week... when I come back, perhaps...”
The Oxford road saw that evening the return of a man who, in all good faith, had attempted a task beyond his strength, and who was now paying bitterly enough for the discovery.