Chapter X (1)
Dormer, in academical dress, was entering under Oriel gateway when the porter accosted him.
“If you please, Sir, there’s a lady waiting to see you in your rooms. She asked for you, and thinking you was there I showed her up. A French name, I fancy.”
The young Fellow mechanically took the card held out to him. “A French name” could announce only one lady. But on what errand had she come? For the first time in his life he was afraid. Then he set his face like a flint and crossed the quadrangle towards his staircase.
And in his sitting-room, in the low chair by the window where, in his time at least, no woman had ever sat, very pale, clad in black but wearing costly furs, with the light on her hair, was the woman who had wasted Tristram’s years, and whose happiness was always to be bought at the cost of his.
“I must apologise for keeping you waiting, Madam,” he said coldly, as he closed the door. “Please do not move! The porter told me you were here.” He laid his cap on the table. “There is something particular that you wish to see me about?”
“Yes,” said Horatia, “there is something that I have come to ask you.” She turned her head and glanced out of the window, and then looked again at her host, standing with exceeding stiffness in his gown and hood. “But now that I am here I hardly know how to put it into words.”
“If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate,” observed Dormer with icy politeness, and then, seeing that she did not speak, he sat down by the side of his big table and looked away. He felt miserably sure that she had come to say something about Tristram, but that, being a lady, she would not reach the point for another half-hour or so. He was therefore entirely taken by surprise when he heard her say, after a moment:
“I am going to ask you a very extraordinary question, Mr. Dormer. I want you to tell me if Tristram—if Mr. Hungerford has come to think that it is better for the clergy not to marry?”
Startled though he was, Dormer fell instantly on guard. “Is not that a question, Madam,” he returned, “which it would be better for you to ask Mr. Hungerford himself?”
“Could I bring myself to that,” assented Horatia, “it would be better.”
“He is not in Oxford at present, I know,” suggested Dormer, “but he will be back by the sixteenth.”
“I must know before that,” said Horatia gravely.
And Dormer had a sudden temptation. He felt more sure than ever that Tristram had got himself into a tangle. Here and now he could probably cut it for him. But he would not play Providence. It was one thing to warn Tristram, quite another to extricate him behind his back and without his consent... So his tone was even colder than before as he said, “If the matter is urgent I regret that I cannot help you, but I think you can understand that I am unwilling to discuss my friend’s affairs, even with another of his friends.” And he rose, as if to intimate that the interview was over.
But his visitor did not rise. On the contrary she said, with warmth, “Yes, I quite see that, but...” She bit her lip. “If you knew, you would not be so punctilious, Mr. Dormer. Will you not let me tell you?”
“Really,” said Dormer, hesitating a trifle, “I hardly know what to say, but I would much rather not be the recipient of any confidences. Surely, Madam, the matter is not so pressing but that you can wait for Tristram’s return.”
Horatia laughed rather bitterly.
“Mr. Dormer, you need not be so much afraid. We will not speak of Tristram then. If you will tell me your own views on the subject it will be quite enough. It is not easy for me to come to you—you must know that! I only do it because... O, well, that does not matter.”
Dormer sat down with a resigned sigh by the side of the table, and said briefly, “Please tell me anything you wish.”
“Thank you,” said Horatia; collected herself and started. “I am afraid I must trouble you with some personal details. You probably know that a good many years ago Tristram asked me to marry him. I was singularly young and foolish, and I refused him. You may also know that, as I have learnt quite recently, he was on the verge of asking me again in the autumn of 1830.” Dormer inclined his head. “What my answer would have been I do not know. But shortly afterwards I married my late husband. Our marriage was an unhappy one.”
Here she came to a full stop, and got no help from her listener, who was looking down at an ink-pot.
“It was largely my own fault, but I have suffered, and if ever anyone wanted to forget the past I have wanted to forget it.” For a second her voice trembled, then it recovered. “In my old home again, with my father, it seemed sometimes as if I should succeed. And although Tristram was changed, yet he was the same, and latterly it has seemed to me that he was indeed the same, and that... it is very difficult for me to tell you...”
Dormer looked up. “I think I can understand,” he said, with something different in his voice.
“Thank you. I was right... and I was wrong. I cannot explain it, but I must just ask you to believe that I was not utterly blinded by vanity, and on the other hand that Tristram did and said nothing that could not be accounted for by his long and extraordinary friendship.”
“That is quite easy for me to believe,” replied Dormer; but he seemed to have a slight difficulty in speaking.
“The end came a week ago,” pursued Horatia. And she explained, as shortly as she could, the bombshell which the Dowager Duchesse had cast into her plans, finishing by saying, “I felt almost confident that Tristram only waited for some sign from me... and yet I could not bring myself to give it. But time was pressing, and I must decide about the boy. My father urged me to send the letter I had received to Tristram, and to ask his advice. It... it was... unusual, I know... but I did so—and this morning I received his answer. I think you had better read it.”
Dormer got up and took with obvious reluctance the paper which she held out to him. He read it, flushed violently, and became very pale.
“I don’t want you to say anything,” said Horatia hurriedly. “When I got this letter this morning I saw it all in a flash. It has only needed your hesitation to make me quite sure that I was right. From time to time I have heard the views of his friends here at Oriel about the marriage of the clergy, but somehow—it was stupid of me—it never occurred to me that he shared them. But that of course is the key to the situation. He is bound by some vow not to marry.”
Her hearer during this speech had stationed himself by the fire, his head bent, with a hand on the high mantelshelf; his arm, in consequence, hid his face. She could not even see it now, as he said, in a voice noticeably less hostile. “There I think you are wrong. As I see now that it is quite unnecessary for me to keep anything from you, I can tell you that, to my knowledge, he has never taken any kind of vow, but that, even before his ordination as priest, he had a solemn intention to embrace the life of sacrifice to the glory of God. But it was a solemn intention, not a vow.”
“Intention or vow,” returned Horatia, “it would be all the same to Tristram. And please do not speak to me of sacrifice and the glory of God! I do not believe that the Creator is glorified by the self-inflicted suffering of His creatures. But if you speak to me of Tristram’s happiness, or of his conscience, which is more than happiness to him, then I can understand you.”
“You are right about Tristram’s conscience,” said Tristram’s friend.
“Yet I believe that I can still bring him back to me if I choose to,” said Horatia rather defiantly. The challenge drew from Charles Dormer a bow which was more eloquent than many words.
“But I do not mean to try,” she finished. “I am quite sure that Tristram is deluded, yet if this delusion has become a matter of conscience with him, he would not long remain happy with me. What I want to find out is how firmly he is fixed in this idea, and how he would look at his action later on if he married me. This is where you can help me, Mr. Dormer, for I know that you are his second self. In the end he would come to think as you think now. I want you to tell me, first, if in your opinion it would ever be right to go back upon what you call a solemn intention?”
Dormer saw now that he was being forced into the position which he had a short time ago rejected almost with regret—that of an executioner. Now, strangely enough, he hated it.
“Yes,” he said, “from our point of view it would be right... under certain circumstances.”
“And would you think,” asked Horatia, looking down and hesitating, “would you consider the fact that I have become a widow since his resolve was taken an exceptional circumstance?”
“I am afraid,” replied Dormer reluctantly, “that it would entirely depend on how far Tristram had committed himself already to the idea of the single life. You see it is impossible for me to discuss this from any but what I am sure you would call a fanatical standpoint.” He smiled fleetingly, without mirth.
“But supposing he was committed very far... would it be right to... to go back?”
It had to be done. “No,” said Dormer in a low voice. “No, I am afraid it would not.”
(2)
Across the silence there came a faint clattering sound, probably a tray from the buttery being taken to someone’s rooms. Stillness fell again. Then the voice of an undergraduate not yet gone down was heard inquiring in a shout what that ass Simpson had done with his carpet bag. Horatia got up from her chair and began to pull down her veil.
“I do not think you need be afraid of me any longer,” she said with a sort of smile. “There is only one way for me to answer the Duchesse’s letter. Thank you for speaking so plainly to me. You have been very patient, and I am more than grateful. Would you have the goodness to send to see if my carriage is at the gate?”
She stooped for her muff, which had slipped to the floor, but, hearing no movement, glanced round and saw Dormer still standing between the table and the hearth, blocking her exit, his eyes fixed on her. And as with a faint surprise she gazed at him he seemed to alter. The sternness had gone from his face; it looked, if possible, still more sad, but she could hardly believe that this was the man against whom, for the last half-hour, she had been fighting. And she heard him say, with singular gentleness—
“‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ May our Lord of His great mercy comfort you!”
“Don’t, don’t say that sort of thing to me!” exclaimed Horatia. “I am doing nothing at all heroic. It is only necessity. It has nothing to do with God or religion, or because I believe for one moment in Tristram’s foolish ideas—it is because... because...” It was impossible to go on, for his voice had touched some secret spring in her, some deep-buried self which, suddenly released, was struggling to respond—as once before, at the same voice, it had struggled in St. Mary’s. She sat down again and hid her face in her hands.
“Because,” said Dormer, still more gently, “you have found out the secret of love—the willingness to go without the beloved for the beloved’s sake.”
“I do not know what I have found out,” said Horatia after a moment, passing her handkerchief over her eyes. “I am only following an instinct. I mean to go back to France, and after that... I don’t care much what happens.” She paused again. “With Tristram I should have been safe. He was my hope. I know I have done wrong, very wrong, but am I never to be forgiven, never to be allowed to forget the past?—O!” she broke out passionately, “your God is a cruel God! He is cruel to Tristram and to me. I don’t believe what you said in your sermon about suffering—I can’t believe it and I won’t believe it!... Why are you making me talk to you?”
“Because I want to help you. Will you not let me try—for Tristram’s sake?”
Horatia looked at him for a moment, then she rose and went to the window. When she turned round again, some three minutes later, the buried self had won, and, not ungenerous in victory, had given her composure for its purpose.
“You are the only person who could help me,” she said very simply. “But it is such a long story, and I ought not to take up your time.”
“I have plenty of time,” replied Dormer with equal simplicity. “If you will sit down, and tell me what you can, I daresay I can fill in the gaps.”
“I thought my marriage was the... the ‘vision splendid,’” began Horatia after a little, “I was mistaken; but there was still something remaining, only I was exacting and foolish, and refused to make the best of what I had... At last I heard two miserable women speaking of the infidelity of my husband, and the name coupled with his was... that of my greatest friend. There were proofs with which I need not trouble you... I taxed him with it, but he denied it. I would not believe him. I told him I hated him and his child. It was then that Maurice was born. For many weeks I visited my hatred of my husband on the child. For a long time I would not let them bring my baby near me... and I definitely refused to believe my husband, who still protested his innocence, or to have anything more to do with him. I”—her voice began to falter—“practically drove him from me to do the very thing of which I had falsely accused him.... I think I lost all faith in God, and I believe that I wished to die.”
“It would be at that time,” asked Dormer, to help her, “that Tristram and I came to see you?”
“Yes... and that was somehow... a turning point for me. During the cholera I was away with Maurice, and it was then that I began to be a little sorry. I think I meant to take Armand back into favour by degrees. But when I returned to Paris he had already left for Vendée. Soon afterwards I heard that the rising had proved a failure, and that he was in hiding. I followed as quickly as I could to our house in the country... and it was there that the news was brought to me that he had been shot.”
“By the Orleanists?”
“Yes.” Horatia hesitated. “He... he was shot in saving the life of that lady... who was never what I thought her. His death prevented that.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because in his delirium I heard everything.”
“You were with him when he died?”
Horatia made a great effort. “Yes. My friend... whom he loved... whom he would have married had he not met me... took him dying to her house... and sent for me to be with him at the last.”
“Yes?” said Dormer.
And Horatia went on, more and more agitated. “I shall see him lying in that bed fighting with death until I die... and it was I who sent him to his death... it was my hardness that drove him to someone who really loved him.... And... and,” she choked down a sob, “it was for her that he died... not for me.”
She came to a full stop.
“Yes, I see,” said the priest, but in the tone of one who thinks there is more to come.
Horatia went on again, almost inaudibly. “I hear him crying out, in the night when I wake, ‘Leave your scruples, Laurence, she does not believe me,’ and then again, ‘Why do you send for Horatia... she would not care... I am nothing to her now; she told me so.’”
Her listener had himself put his hand over his eyes, but he gave no sign, and at last Horatia finished.
“He would not forgive me... he said there was nothing to forgive... and I have felt—I still feel—that God has not forgiven me, that He has punished me, and that He will go on punishing me.”
She had been speaking in a very low voice, and there was now hardly a sound outside. Inside the room there was the sort of silence that could be cut. It might have been lasting for centuries or for seconds—Horatia could not tell—when Dormer broke it.
“I will not ask you if you have been able to forgive that unhappy lady, who you say was once your friend, but are you able sometimes to feel compassion for her?”
“I doubt if I know what you mean by forgiveness,” answered Horatia. “I only know that once, perhaps, I hoped that she might suffer, because I had suffered so much, and that now I cannot bear to think of what she is doing at this moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I did not tell you. I was staying some weeks ago with a friend in Devonshire, and we had to take a letter to a convent near, a convent of French nuns. There was a novice scrubbing some flags; she did not see me, but I saw her, and it was Laurence, Laurence whom I had not seen since... since...”
“I understand.”
“Laurence,” went on Horatia fiercely, “who was more sinned against than sinning.... Yes, I know that now! I have always known it, but I tried to excuse my husband. Laurence was rich and admired, and could have everything she wanted, and now she has not enough to eat, and she does menial work, and spends hours in prayer—and all for Armand’s soul. It is an order of perpetual intercession. And I who was his wife—I am feeling that life holds very little for me because I cannot marry Tristram! What is there to forgive now!”
“I should not be quite prepared to say that,” replied Dormer, looking rather staggered, “but I am quite certain of one thing. If you have been able to forgive so wholeheartedly the irreparable injury done to you, I do not think that you will have long to wait for the assurance of your own forgiveness.” He hesitated, as if he were not sure whether he should say more, and taking up one of the Christmas roses from the saucer, looked at it intently for a moment. Then he went on, “You understand, do you not, that the power of the keys is in the Church of England, and that those who cannot quiet their own consciences (as the Exhortation says) have a right to avail themselves of it. I think you should do so. That God has forgiven you I have no doubt, but even if after absolution you should have to wait for that conviction, you will be able to take it as your penance, remembering that the forgiven soul does not want to escape, it longs for the cleansing fires which alone can fit it for the presence of its Lord.”
“I should deserve to wait for the feeling of forgiveness, but am I to think that this also is the penalty of sin, that God is pursuing me and tracking me down? He is taking Tristram from me; what more does He want?”
Dormer leant forward, and spoke very quietly, but with great intensity. “It is you yourself that He wants. He is stripping you of everything because by love or by fear He will save you. From all eternity you have belonged to the God Who died for you. Everything in your life and in your circumstances has existed in order to bring you nearer to Him. Even now, when you have misused His gifts, your sin and your suffering can be turned by His mercy into the means of bringing you back to Him. But it is on one condition. You must submit. You must give up your will to Him.”
“But how can I give up my will, when all my life I have followed my own way?”
“Our Lord will show you how, if you ask Him. He will teach you by degrees, do not doubt that.”
“I think I hardly understand what you mean,” said Horatia with great hesitation, “but if I pray to be able to do this, will He—will our Lord save me from myself, and shall I in the end find rest?”
Dormer did not answer at once. He looked up (it seemed to Horatia unconsciously) at the print over the hearth, and she heard him sigh.
“Yes, He will save you, but it will be by the Cross; for it is only in the Cross that there is safety, and in the Cross that there is rest. If you go back to France, and bring up your son in the best traditions of his family, your life will be full, and not empty. That is where you must look for comfort. Think of what it means to have a child, your own child, to give back to God. It is a high vocation and peace waits for you. I think God has sent you a child to show you where to find it.”
As he went to open the door for her she said, “Mr. Dormer, there is something else... I should like you to feel that you can say anything—I mean that you can tell Tristram anything about me which you think can help him. It is worse for him than for me. I shall write to him, of course, but you will know what to say.... He will be so... so hurt.”