Chapter XIV: Part 14

"Where dwellest Thou?" All through the remainder of the day the question persisted, wrecking everything she did in the pleasant, dignified atmosphere of Mr. Pusey's house. Were these kind, learned people who sat round the Sunday dinner-table, were they the captives of His love; had they been loosed from sin? She wished that Tristram could have been there, sitting opposite to her. His familiar presence would have steadied her. Even if he knew the meaning of all these phrases there was nothing disturbing about him.

Later in the afternoon she watched Mr. Newman, the friend of the family, sitting with the two elder children on his knee, while he put his spectacles on their noses, or told them a story. What would happen if she suddenly interrupted the story with her insistent question--"Do _you_ know where He dwells?"

The interminable day came to an end at last, and she was alone in her room. Without waiting to undress she flung herself down beside the bed. "Where dwellest Thou, where dwellest Thou?" There was no one to answer, nothing to see, only the rose and jasmine of the wall-paper, distorted through the rain of tears.

She woke next morning in a very different frame of mind, more than a little ashamed of her emotion of the day before. She might have been a Methodist! It was not for her, this enthusiasm, and she ought not to have been so discomposed. To have been carried away, against her will, by the words of a man whom she disliked! She disliked, too, some of what he had said, now that more of it came back to her. Life was made for happiness; though sorrow intruded it was an incident to be forgotten, not to be dwelt upon. Comfortably eating her breakfast in her well-appointed room she felt sure of this, and knew that she, who was certainly not ignorant of suffering, did not approve of its glorification. What did Mr. Dormer know about it?

And yet ... she knew that she should not forget St. Mary's.

*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 paeans 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.

*CHAPTER IX*

*(1)*

From the bottom of Maurice's crib, wherein he lay fast asleep, his favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against the rails, stared at him reproachfully, for the little boy had taken to bed with him, against all precedent, an old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his own. The rag soldier probably felt his world tumbling around him.

And, indeed, the whole night-nursery was rather topsy-turvy. Maurice's bath things were not cleared away, though the water was long cold, and in the midst of downflung towels, soap, sponge and powder-puffs, sat his mother herself, doing nothing. It was she who was responsible for the disorder, for that dislocation in fact of the whole day which had been so pleasant to Maurice. He was certainly not likely to complain when, after breakfast, Mamma had sent Martha away and announced that she was going to have him to herself, for a special reason. The reason was less than nothing to Maurice, but the fact was delightful, implying a free hand with the coal-box, while Mamma, instead of wanting to change his frock, kept herself quiet with a piece of paper covered with black marks, on which she from time to time let fall those tears which Maurice himself could produce, though seldom so silently. The culmination of being bathed by Mamma had led to a great deal of splashing, and to the exhibition, which Martha would never let him complete, of his powers of drinking water from his sponge. That his mother was quite incapable of clearing up the mess which he and she had made together was not likely to trouble him either, indeed he fell asleep too soon to realise this deficiency.

And Horatia sat in the midst of the confusion, her eyes full of tears, her chin on her hand, watching the sleeping child. She could not get poor little Claude-Edmond out of her head. Most clearly of all she remembered him at Plaisance, confiding to her his desire to resemble Armand, to be able to ride, to fence.... Now they would neither of them ever ride again.... And the death of the little boy had thrown across her own life a shadow not only of regret, but of menace. For in her lap lay the testimony to the triumph of the indomitable spirit of an old lady over the Code Napoleon, under whose aegis Horatia had fondly imagined herself and Maurice to be sheltering.

The letter had come yesterday morning, the third day after her interview with Tristram. It was quite simple. The Duchesse's lawyer wrote that his venerable client was about to make her will for the last time, a course necessitated by the recent unfortunate death of the little heir. As Madame la Comtesse was no doubt aware, the ancient and noble family of La Roche-Guyon was extremely impoverished. Nothing indeed but the great private fortune of the Dowager Duchess had enabled it to keep up the appearance due to its rank. The bulk of this fortune the Duchesse was now proposing to settle upon the child of her late dearly-beloved younger grandson--on one condition. Madame la Comtesse must renounce entirely her plan of bringing him up in England; with or without her he must return to France by the time he was five--though in deference to the last wishes of her dear grandson he should be allowed to pass some years at an English school. But he must be brought up as a Frenchman, as the heir of the family which he would one day represent, and Madame la Comtesse was to signify her willingness to return to Paris for three or four months as early as possible in the New Year. If she refused to comply with these conditions the Duchesse's money, after the deaths of her son and elder grandson, would be left to distant relatives of her own family, and the future Duc de la Roche-Guyon would find himself the almost penniless inheritor of his great name and position.

Stunning though this ultimatum was, it had not taken Horatia long to decide that Maurice must go. She could not be the means of beggaring her child. He must go--but was she to go too? It was true that the Duchesse had not had the brutality to suggest an immediate separation from his mother, but the two years and ten months which lay between him and his fifth birthday would soon pass. If she went, good-bye to all her old home life, taken up again and found so peaceful and so dear; good-bye to her father who had recovered her with so much joy.

And good-bye to Tristram.....

But if she stayed, good-bye to that head of curls on the pillow. O no, no, she could never do that! She slipped to her knees and clutched at the cot rails. "My darling! I could not! I could not!"

And yet, on the other side of the crib seemed to stand Tristram, looking at her as he had looked three mornings ago, his voice fallen to that strange tone, "Will it make any difference to you, Horatia?" the only real evidence that she had of his wanting her--since his visits and his obvious pleasure in them could all be accounted for by their long friendship--but evidence enough. Yes, it had actually come to the choice, all unforeseen, between her child and the man ... she loved. The issue must be decided, too, within a week, for the Duchesse insisted on an immediate answer. This was why she had spent the day with Maurice, "to help her to decide"--a proceeding not free from the charge of indulgence in sentiment.

*(2)*

And yet she had not made up her mind when she heard her father, who had been out all day, coming heavily up the nursery stairs.

"My dear," he said, astonished, "why are you up here alone? Martha is wandering about outside waiting to come in to you. It is too much for you to do all this for the child by yourself, and why should you?"

To which his daughter responded, in an appealing tone not far from tears, "O Papa, I can't leave him, I can't leave him!"

"Well, my dear," remarked Mr. Grenville, approaching the crib, "you can leave him now, at any rate, for he is fast asleep, and Martha can sit with him instead of catching cold on the landing. Come, come, we will go down into the library and leave her to clear up. Yes, come in!" And as Martha entered and fell to work on the disorder he put Horatia's hand through his arm and led her out.

In the library she settled down in her favourite attitude on a stool at his feet, and for a time nothing much was said, except that the Rector, as he stroked her hair, would mutter, "It is very hard, very difficult, my love," and, at intervals, "I should never have expected it of them, never!"

At last Horatia broke out passionately, "I can't let Maurice be a pauper! He will have to go, and I--I think I must go with him." With that she escaped from her father's caress, and putting her head in her hands began to cry.

The Rector got up, found a box of Prometheans, went successfully through the process of pinching out the sulphuric acid, at the end, on to the chlorate of potash and sugar (in which he generally burnt his fingers), obtained a flame and lit a couple of candles. Then he sighed heavily, sat down again, and drawing his chair up close to Horatia took hold of a hand and made her rest her head on his knee.

"Now, my dearest child," he began, "I am going to speak very plainly to you. I do not think these tears are for me. No, don't say anything about that! It's all quite right. I should not wish them to be. I think Tristram is at the bottom of this."

For answer he saw her getting crimson behind the ears, and heard her murmur faintly, "O Papa!"

"Well, my dear, it's very right and natural, and nothing to be ashamed of. I have thought that I have seen signs, for some time, and I have been very thankful, very thankful. He is the right husband for you."

"I thought, Papa," came a stifled voice, "that you did not approve of second marriages."

"Perhaps not," replied the Rector, "but this is different, and Tristram has wanted you all his life."

"But how do I know that he wants me now?"

"That," said the Rector with conviction, "is very apparent; in fact, I was on the verge of speaking to him about it last week."

"Papa!" ejaculated his daughter, sitting up.

"Yes, we understand one another," went on Mr. Grenville, smiling, for there was unmistakably more pleasure than horror in her protest. "I have known more about all this, my dear, than you have. You never knew, because Tristram would not allow me to tell you, but he was going to propose to you, the very week that poor Armand came to visit him."

"Tristram was going to propose to me again," said Horatia slowly, "and yet he made the way easy for me to marry Armand!"

"One of his extraordinary notions, my dear. 'If she wanted the moon, I would get it for her,' he said. I have often thought that it was not for nothing that he had a fanatic for a father. He is one in a thousand, but of course, before now, he has seemed to me unnecessarily quixotic. I have meant to tell you this, Horatia, but I thought things were best without my interference. Still it is but right, now that the crisis has come, for you to know all that I do. It is my belief that Tristram is only hindered at this very moment from speaking by some idea of propriety. Or perhaps he feels that his prospects are not yet assured. Still, it is clear that he must declare himself in the near future, unless he wants to lose you altogether. If only it were possible to give him a little encouragement!"

"_I_ couldn't give him encouragement!" exclaimed Horatia in a tone of horror.

"I was not suggesting such a thing for a moment, my love. I was only saying if it were possible. I feel something could be done, ought to be done ... Let me see, how much time have we?"

Horatia had twisted round on her footstool and was now facing him with flushed cheeks. "A week. And, O Papa, even if he did ... if he wanted me to marry him, how could I let Maurice go without me?"

The Rector bent forward. He had the air of thorough and pleasurable mastery of the situation.

"My dear, let us be quite clear about that anyhow! I'm as fond of the boy as if he were my own, but I think you would do very wrong to deprive him of a stepfather like Tristram. After all, if you take him to France for a few months next year you may keep him until he is five years old. It was the Jesuits who said, 'Give us a child until he is five and we will make anything of him.' (No, now I come to think of it, it is 'until he is seven,' but no matter.) Very well then, until that age you and Tristram can bring him up, and you see already how he takes to Tristram. After that the parting will be hard for you, I do not doubt, but the time will soon come for him to return to England to school, and, if you agree in the main to the conditions, the Duchesse is not likely to wish to drive such a hard bargain that you cannot occasionally have him for his holidays ... Besides, we may hope that you will have other children."

"Papa, do you really mean all this?" asked Horatia thoughtfully. "I have never looked at it in that light."

"I do indeed mean it, but the question is, what is to be done? There is not too much time," said the Rector, pursing his lips. "This needs careful consideration." And, apparently, he considered, and Horatia too. At any rate she was silent, looking into the fire.

Finally Mr. Grenville gave an exclamation. "I have it! Did you not say, my dear, that you had to send back a proof of Tristram's to him? What more natural than to enclose the letter from the Duchesse's lawyer, and say that you would value his advice, or something of the sort?"

Horatia turned over and over the locket with the little curl of Maurice's hair that she wore.

Then she said, very quietly, "Yes, I will do it."

*(3)*

"My dear Horatia,

"I feel with you very much in the difficulty of the decision. It will be hard for the Rector to part with you again so soon, but I know you both too well to imagine that you can hesitate for long where Maurice's interests are concerned.

"For myself, I need not say how, after this year of renewed friendship, I shall miss your help and sympathy, but I have come to feel that my life is not my own. Wherever you go, whatever you do, may God bless you always!--T.H."

This was the letter which Horatia received at breakfast four mornings later, and which lay in her pocket all through that meal and for some time afterwards, not because she did not wish her father to see it, since he was away for the night, but because she dared not open it. In her own room, the door locked, she read it at last, once not understanding, the second time unbelieving, the third time understanding too well.

Then it dropped from the hands which she raised to hide the scorching blush that, though she was alone, spread itself from the nape of her neck to the roots of her hair, and that seemed to run like a wave of fire over her whole body. He had refused her! Under the guise of asking advice from a friend, she, Horatia de la Roche-Guyon--Horatia Grenville--had, practically, offered herself to a man, and he had refused her! And this man was Tristram!

After a few minutes, red and white by turns, she took up the letter again, and, reading it for the fourth time, she received yet a new impression. This did not seem to be Tristram at all who wrote to her; it was like the voice of someone else, or, rather, it was as though a veil hung between her and the man who had penned those words--words which, as she could see, had been chosen to spare her, words which made no reference to what the writer must have known was in her mind. But they were final enough, in all conscience!

She put the letter down on her dressing-table. Yes, that was what it was like--a dictated letter, a letter which another person had made him write....

There was something that she did not understand. She got up and began to walk about the room, the first biting shame of the repulse a little blunted by contact with her own imperious temper and by a certain bewilderment. She had a feeling that there was, somewhere, what her father would have called "hokey-pokey." And, as she arrived at that conclusion, she saw it all in a flash, and wondered how she could have been so stupid. Tristram had of course been "got hold of" by the Oriel people and had swallowed their ridiculous ideas on celibacy. That was what he meant by writing that he had come to feel his life not his own. That was, no doubt, the sort of thing they said, and that they had taught him to say; it was all a part of that miserable glorification of suffering as a part of Christianity at which her whole soul revolted.

Horatia stopped, her eyes shining with anger. Illogically enough, though she had endured many qualms since sending her letter, the receipt of his refusal made her quite sure that the real Tristram himself wanted to marry her, that "they" were preventing him. Well, they should see!

She carried this fighting mood about with her for an hour or so while she ordered the household and visited Maurice, who this morning was greatly intrigued by the presence of frost on the window-pane, a phenomenon, like many others, still strange to him. But all the while she was conscious that the spirit of resistance was slowly slipping away from her. At half-past ten she returned to her room, took out the letter and read it again, and thereafter sat a long time thinking.

No, it was not so simple. Something much more was here than the combatting of the influence of others. One thing, if one alone in life, the most ardent fighter should shrink from lifting sword against, a man's conscience. Had she not recently felt the reawakened stirrings of her own? And in this matter, however it came there, was some deep conviction of Tristram's. He could not, otherwise, have written so.

And a great and sad tenderness fell on her as, thinking of him whom she knew so well, she began to realise what he must be suffering at having to answer her thus. She forgot for a time her own shame and anger, and thought only of his long, unwavering, selfless devotion, that would do anything in the world for her, so as it was not against his conscience. Could not she, then, who had never, perhaps, been anything but a source of pain to him, could not she do something for him--take the disturbing element of herself out of his life, because, for his real happiness, she would be better gone, and go, without an attempt to hold him, to that other life where duty was calling her? ... The way was open, if she were strong enough to follow it.

But she must be sure that such a renunciation would be for Tristram's happiness. She must be sure that he really had this conviction. In her present mood she could almost have gone and asked Tristram himself, had she not known that he was away from Oxford. And the time was drawing very near when she must answer the Duchesse's letter.

But there was one person who could probably tell her as well as Tristram himself--Mr. Dormer, if he had not gone down. She could not write to him on such a matter. She would have to go and see him. The unusualness of the step gave her only a momentary pause. Even though it were not proper for her, a young woman--if a widow--to go and call on an unmarried man in his College rooms she did not care. At the worst she could get the Puseys to ask him to Christ Church and she could talk to him there. But she knew that only the most direct method would really satisfy her. The matter was too pressing and too desperate to admit of considering the proprieties.

Nevertheless, some three hours later, as she followed the porter across the quadrangle at Oriel, she was already regretting her precipitancy, and it was with a throbbing heart that she heard him announce her name in the mangled fashion to which she was becoming accustomed in England.

But the room was empty. It was undeniable relief, and had the porter, apologising for his mistake, not adjured her to take a seat, as Mr. Dormer could not be long, she would have brought out the words of excuse already on her lips and fled. But that everyday form--its visage not untouched by curiosity--was a barrier to escape more effectual than any sword-girt angel, and she obeyed.

So she was left, with a sulky little fire for company, to wait. For some time she was too restless to sit down, and wandered between the fireplace and the window. The room did not strike her as uncomfortable, and it was very orderly, except for the big table in the middle, which was strewn with books and papers, as if the occupant had been interrupted in his work. There was a good deal of old furniture, some of it beautiful, and the walls could not look bare, for they were almost completely lined with books. Indeed the only picture that she noticed was an engraving over the hearth of Velasquez' Christ on the Cross, straight and stark against its background of more than night, the face shadowed by the falling hair. Horatia felt suddenly afraid, she knew not of what, and going as far as possible from the print, sat down by the window.

The only thing that comforted her was the sight of some Christmas roses in a saucer, standing among the books and papers, close to their owner's chair.

*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 Vendee. 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!"