Chapter IV: Part 4

Though at Eton Dormer was considered odd and dreamy, it was known that he possessed powers above the average, and great things were prophesied of his University career. A great thing indeed awaited him at Oxford--the influence of John Keble. If Oriel had a distinguished reputation its most brilliant member had a more distinguished. Winner of a Double First and of two University prizes, already for seven years Fellow of a college that worshipped intellectual attainments, Keble was himself the herald of reaction from the Noetic philosophy to the older school of authority and tradition. Humility and otherworldliness had little in common with "march of mind," nor a quiet confidence in the Divine Commission of the Church with a speculation that was eventually to issue in free thought. All Charles Dormer's longing for "the severe sweetness of the life divine," all his ardent conviction that better things were to come, seemed to find their vindication in the faith and in the practice of this young man, not ten years older than himself, and there soon sprang up between the two an appreciation as lasting as that which a few years later was to unite John Keble and Richard Hurrell Froude. Eton prognostications were nevertheless fulfilled when, in 1822, the same year as Newman, Dormer, having already taken a Double First, won the coveted prize of an Oriel Fellowship.

The new Fellow, now reading for Orders, was made welcome enough in Common Room, but after Keble's departure from Oxford in the following year he was rather lonely. He did not find real companionship among the elder Fellows in residence, Hawkins, Tyler, or Dornford; with the younger he often walked or rode, but Newman was an Evangelical, and of the two whom he had known at Eton, Pusey was silent and depressed, Jelf of too practical a temperament. Keble alone shared his ideals, for though his own affection was given steadfastly to Tristram Hungerford, the grief at Tristram's development which had haunted him through the three years of their joint college life was sharpened rather than assuaged when their time together was over, and Hungerford definitely enlisted in the Latitudinarian or (in the phraseology of the day) the Liberal camp. He had fought for his friend and lost.

But the consequences of that defeat were far-reaching. Because of his sympathy for Tristram and for others like him, who were honest in their difficulties, Dormer tried, for the first time, to find the intellectual reason for his own clear faith. First-class man and Fellow of Oriel as he was, he could not. He had at last boldly to admit that his certainty was not gained by reason, though it was reasonable, and that the most his unaided intellect could do was to give him high probability. If faith was then ultimately a gift, to be won by surrender to a Divine Person, how great was the need of a Society in living communion with that Person, a Society strong alike in learning and in spirituality! And what of that Church of which he was a member? Was it because she fell so far short of what she might be that the time seemed to be coming when she would be swept away by the tide of unbelief which, since the days of the French Revolution, had devastated the Continent? Indeed, unless she made haste to seek out the credentials of her Divine commission and to reforge the links which bound her to the Church of the first ages, would she even be worth saving from that flood?

And then the day came when Charles Dormer found that he was not alone in these conclusions, for the same premisses were bringing together, in his own college, a number of persons whose loyalty to the Church led them to think not merely of defence but of reform. Dormer's rooms became henceforward the scene of many a fervid discussion, many a stimulating argument. In the end, even as Hurrell Froude, the youngest and most ardent fighter of them all, had drawn in his Evangelical and Whatelyan friend, so did Dormer insensibly win over the man for whom his affection had first set him on this track. And to Charles Dormer, not unnaturally, the adhesion of John Henry Newman was of vastly less importance than that of Tristram Hungerford.

*(3)*

Dormer's pen was still between his fingers. He roused himself, turned once more to the table, added a final sentence to the last sheet, and laid down the pen; then he leant back again with a long sigh. He was tired, for he had been finishing his book at high pressure; but he was more tired than he ought to have been, and he knew it. He supposed that he would pay for the strain by a bout of the disabling headaches, whose increasing frequency, during the last six months, had begun to make him uneasy.

And at this moment, just as Tristram in his need was riding towards him up St. Aldate's, he put his head back against his chair and began to think of him with peculiar affection. For fourteen years the bonds of their friendship had only drawn the closer. Tristram at last had the same cause at heart, and was about to take Orders. There was only one thing which separated them. He himself would never marry, but Tristram certainly would, and Dormer continually reproached himself with the quite human regret which this reflection sometimes roused in him. With his profound belief in the Providence of God, he felt that Tristram had always been destined for home life, and that he belonged, or would belong to the class of clergy who, in England at all events, seem able to serve their people best by being one with them in actual experience of the common life. For though Dormer would have wished that class to be numerically the smaller, the idea of an enforced celibacy was abhorrent to him.

And hitherto he had encouraged Tristram to hope that the time might yet come when Horatia would listen to him. But the results of his observations at Tristram's dinner-party last week had been most disturbing. Was it possible that this young Frenchman was carrying off Miss Grenville's heart--he did not say her hand--under Tristram's very eyes? This seemed scarcely credible, yet he had of set purpose interrupted their conversation that evening, and had felt uneasy ever since, for a reason that he could scarcely define. But perhaps he had been mistaken; at any rate, he hoped so...

He was at this point when a knock came at the door.

"Come in," he said, opening his eyes to see the subject of his meditations before him. He sprang up. "My dear fellow! I am delighted to see you. Forgive this litter."

"I hardly expected to find you in college at this hour," remarked Tristram, glancing at the table. "I suppose this is the reason for it."

Dormer nodded, and began gathering the sheets together. "The Non-jurors must be got out of the way as soon as possible, now that I have promised to undertake this work on the Councils for Rose. I've just been writing to Keble about his proposals, for, adequately carried out, they might provide almost a lifework for the person who undertook them."

"But _you_ have promised definitely to undertake them."

"Yes, I've accepted," said Dormer sitting down again with something like a sigh. "It's rather a daunting prospect, you know, Tristram, and yet it may be the work for which one has been waiting. I am so glad that you managed to see Rose the other evening; I wanted you particularly to meet him. He is the coming man."

"Oh, is he?" replied Tristram not very enthusiastically. "Well, yes, I was glad to meet him. He showed his sense in asking you to do this, anyhow. But what about those headaches?"

"Suppose you leave my headaches alone," retorted Dormer smiling. "You look rather fagged yourself. Will you have some tea, or would you rather have a glass of ale after your ride?--I seem to have been talking a great deal about myself."

If he had, the circumstance was so unusual--save perhaps in his present company--as scarcely to call for apology.

"Neither, thanks," answered Tristram, who was wandering restlessly round the room, which he knew as well as his own. "I am not tired that I know of... I like that drawing of Cologne Cathedral. Who gave it you--Froude?"

"No," said Dormer, watching him suddenly rather intently. "It was Robert Wilberforce."

Tristram strayed to a bookcase. "Hallo," he remarked, "here are these Non-juring books of yours which I am always meaning to have a look at. What is this--'Devotions for the Canonical Hours, to be used in the houses of the clergy and by all religious societies where there is a priest.' Surely that is strange!"

"It always sounds to me like an eighteenth century Little Gidding," answered his friend. "That copy belonged to Cartwright, the Shrewsbury apothecary, and the last Non-juring Bishop. I had an older book, called 'A Companion for the Penitent, and for Persons troubled in mind,' but I gave it to Keble."

"I expect he was pleased with it," commented his visitor. He put back the book and came and threw himself down in a chair. "Doesn't it seem strange to have finished, after all this time?"

"Yes," said Dormer, looking at his papers, "and I believe I am almost sorry. But it would have been a pity to spend longer over the Non-jurors, for I expect very few people will so much as glance at the book."

"When I was talking to Froude the other day he seemed to hold a different opinion," said Tristram.

"Ah, yes, but then you see he is almost as keen about the Non-jurors as I am myself. I have heard him say that he was beginning to think that they were the last of English divines, and that those since were twaddlers."

"Froude is almost too bold. He doesn't seem to care what he says."

"But," continued Dormer, leaning back in his chair, "although I know, of course, that it will be read by a few, what I mean is that it will appeal chiefly to those already interested. And if this remark applies to a modern book, how much more will it apply to what I am afraid will be a rather dull work on the first centuries.--You know, Tristram, what we want alongside of this sort of thing is some more arresting kind of writing, some series of short essays in a popular form that could be circulated among the country clergy--essays to prove the continuity of the Church for instance. In this book I've been trying to show the direct connection between Non-jurors, the Caroline divines, the ancient Church of England, and the primitive Church. For the next five years or so I shall be trying to point out, by means of the history of the principal Councils, that the doctrine of the Church of England is that of an undivided Christendom. I don't say my volumes won't be read, but I do say that the same thing put in a cheaper and shorter form would be more read."

"Why shouldn't it be done, then?"

"Well, it's an idea," admitted Dormer. "It is the country clergy that we need to get hold of, for after all they are the people who really count. I must talk to Newman about it. I fancy it might appeal to him."

"What might appeal to Newman?" asked a voice. The door was open, and in the aperture stood a young man of twenty-seven or so, tall, thin to the point of emaciation, with very bright eyes and an air of being intensely alive. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for bursting in upon you; but the only thing that appeals to Newman just now is his mother's furniture at Rose Hill--at least I hope it is appealing to him, for he has gone to Iffley with Wilberforce to inspect it."

"Oh, come in, Froude," said Dormer. "If you had been eavesdropping a moment or two earlier you would have heard Hungerford's opinion of you."

Hurrell Froude smiled, and, shutting the door, half leant, half sat on Dormer's writing-table. "I don't care in the least what Hungerford thinks of me. I have just had a shock. Did you know that the first Latitudinarians were Tories? I did not. It looks as if Whiggery has by degrees taken up all the filth that has been secreted by human thought--Puritanism, Latitudinarianism, Popery, infidelity, they have it all!"

Tristram laughed. "Is that the result of your studies at Dartington last month, Froude? I thought you were working at the English Reformers."

"So I was," replied the intruder, "but their civilities to the smug fellows on the Continent, added to the fact that the weather was rather hot, stuck in my gizzard. Their odious Protestantism----"

"Ah!" interrupted Dormer like lightning. "It was too hot for work at Dartington, was it? We've got that admission at last! Have I not always maintained that there was no air so far up the Dart? Now at Colyton there is always the valley breeze either up or down the Axe."

"Horrible!" ejaculated Froude, running his long thin hand through his hair with a gesture of repulsion. "Like living in a perpetual draught! Now at Dartington----"

"O, for Heaven's sake!" cried Tristram. The interminable feud between the two Devonians on the merits of their respective birthplaces and rivers was one of the standing jokes of the Common Room, and Dormer had just scored one by Froude's careless admission.

Froude got off the table. "Out of regard for you, my dear Hungerford, we will cease. I really came in to ask Dormer if he would ride with me one afternoon this week. I have found a delightful little thirteenth century church in Buckinghamshire with piscina, sedilia and all complete, and I want him to see it."

"I'll come with pleasure. But that reminds me," said Dormer, rummaging in a drawer and getting out a little water-colour sketch of a church tower. "What do you think of that?"

The visitor took it and looked at it attentively for a moment. "Charming," he pronounced. "Where is it? I sometimes think I like a square tower better than a spire, especially when it has an elegant lantern like this. It is nowhere near here, I am sure. Is----" He broke off suspiciously, for Dormer was standing looking at him with a mischievous smile.

"That is Colyton church tower which you are pleased to admire," said he.

Hurrell Froude flung down the sketch. "Villain!" he exclaimed, and broke into a fit of coughing. "That was a traitor's trick," he said, as soon as he could get breath. "I don't admire it at all, and I'm off. You will end as a Whig, or something worse, if that is possible!"

"Well, I must be getting back also," said Tristram, as the door closed. "How did Froude get that cough, I wonder? I only came in to see how you were."

"Your guest has gone, I suppose?"

"Went this morning," responded his friend, briefly.

"Oh, I thought he was to leave yesterday."

"He stayed another night. Good-bye; I must go."

"Wait a moment," urged Dormer. "I want you to read that." And he tossed a letter across the table.

"From Habington," remarked Tristram, taking it up. "What has he got to say?"

"You read it and see," persisted Dormer. "I wish someone would tell _me_ what to say. I haven't the knack of writing to people in his interesting situation."

Tristram read the letter as desired, Dormer studying him the while. Something _had_ happened!

"Habington engaged to be married!" exclaimed Tristram. "Well, I must say I am surprised. I thought he was a convert to your celibate views."

"I thought so once too, but, apart from Froude, and perhaps Newman, I intend to believe in no man's constancy in future."

"You're very fierce, Charles!"

"Well, I am disappointed. Habington was doing good work here in Oxford; now he must give up his Fellowship at Trinity and be a family man in a country parsonage. He will do good and be an example whereever he is, but he cannot be what he might have been."

"Then," said Tristram slowly, "if I marry after I take Orders I shall not be what I might have been?"

A look that few people ever saw came into Charles Dormer's eyes. He leant forward on the table, his elbows on his scattered manuscripts. "Tristram," he said earnestly, "you know that you have always had my good wishes, and you have them still. You are so obviously cut out for the charities and the humanities...." He stopped and looked down at his papers. "I don't think I am being a sawney about you, even when I want you to be happy."

Tristram was at the door, his hand on the handle. His voice came jerkily. "I am afraid your good wishes are of no use to me now ... Yes, I wanted you to know, but I can't tell you, after all ... I only hope I shall do what is right."

He was gone, and Dormer, half-risen from his chair, was left staring at the closed door.

But as Tristram rode over Folly Bridge, where the river ran yellow in the sunset, he knew that his course lay plain before him.

Half way up the long hill he checked his horse, and from sheer habit turned in the saddle. There stood the towers, orderly and lovely, in the faint mist of the autumn day's ending. He almost fancied that he could hear the bells of Magdalen. Many and many a time, riding into Oxford on summer afternoons, on winter mornings, had he pretended to himself that he was seeing the city for the first time, that its streets were strange to him, its pinnacles a new delight. Now, without any effort of the imagination, it seemed to him both that everything he had ever loved lay below him, cruel and valedictory, never to greet him again, and that it was a place in essence still unentered, an alien city. So, by the mind's alchemy, were the town he had loved and the woman he had lost made one, for a second, in his spirit.

But his course was plain. He rode on up the hill.

*CHAPTER XII*

*(1)*

Tristram's plain course was to lead him, and he knew it, into the waste places of the spirit. In such a desert he wrestled, two days later, with a radiant Horatia, himself miserably conscious both of the interpretation that the world would put upon his action, and of the futility of his effort, and stabbed to the heart by her transfigured personality, to him the surest evidence of what had happened.

Yet she was the same Horatia, as kind, as generous as ever. She listened very patiently to his exposition of the difficulties attendant on a marriage with a man of a different race, of a different creed; she seemed even to do homage to the motive which had prompted him to speech. A lesser woman, so much in love as she, would, he thought, have sent him about his business.

She smiled at him divinely when he had finished.

"Dear, dear Tristram," she said, and she put her hand on his. "You are indeed, as you have always been, the best of friends. Everything you say is true, and I know you have not liked to say it. But you see that it is no good, and so I want you to be on my side in the fight I am afraid that I am going to have with dearest Papa. Will you?"

"I have already told him," said Tristram, "that if I thought the match was for your happiness, I should uphold it."

"_My happiness_! You cannot doubt that, can you, Tristram?"

He did not answer.

"Papa is in his study," she suggested. "Suppose you were to go now and see what you can do with him?"

"I will try," he answered.

She came after him to the door, thanking him. He could not have borne much more.

*(2)*

The Rector was sitting at his study table. "Well," he said, as the envoy entered. "What does she say? You have been my last hope of persuading her to see things sensibly."

Tristram crossed the room, and did not immediately answer. He had already professed himself convinced of Horatia's determination, but hope will lurk in such odd corners of the heart, that not till this moment did he know how the frail thing had really ceased to flutter in him.

"I am afraid," he said at last, "that I have been worse than useless, for I have promised to try to persuade _you_."

The Rector veered round in his chair to face him. "You, _you_, Tristram, support her! Then the world has gone crazy!" He took off his glasses and for a full half-minute gazed at the figure standing rather rigidly before him. "You really mean to tell me that, knowing Horatia as you do, you think I ought to take seriously this passing fancy?"

"I'm afraid I do, Sir," said Tristram steadily; "but, then, I cannot think it a passing fancy now that I have seen her and talked to her. Horatia does not have whims. If she changes, she changes whole-heartedly, and I confess I have never seen anyone so altered." His voice wavered for a moment. "She has put her whole happiness in Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and if you thwart her, you will be taking a very heavy responsibility."

"All the same," said the Rector stubbornly, "I shall take it. As you probably know, under French law my consent is a very important matter, and I shall certainly not give it. Allow my daughter to marry a foreigner, and a Papist--a Papist, Tristram, do you realise that?"

Tristram gave a little sigh. "I do, indeed, only too well. That is what clinched the matter for me. I mean I thought, of course, that it would be a serious obstacle to Horatia's mind, yet when I suggested it as a difficulty, she only said, 'But I love him, what else matters?' For Horatia, with her upbringing and her views that means a great deal. I confess I hardly understand it."

"Nor I," returned Mr. Grenville. "She has said the same to me, and even when I told her that her children would have to be brought up as Roman Catholics, she said that she did not like the idea, but she supposed that people always had to pay for happiness. He has bewitched her! But I shall save her from herself, Tristram. To throw herself away on the first wandering foreigner!"

"His father is a peer of France," said Tristram very quietly, "and Horatia will be a great lady. She is not throwing herself away in that sense."

The Rector gave an impatient exclamation, and brought his hands down violently on his knees. "To hear you talk, Tristram, anyone might suppose that you had something to gain from her marriage! 'Pon my soul, the young men of the present day are beyond me! A fortnight ago, in this very room, you were telling me about your own feelings for Horatia, and now here you are, as calm and cool as any lawyer, trying to argue me into letting her marry this organ-grinder! Really I find it hard to remember that not long ago you were a boy yourself, and a boy, too, whom I had hoped to call my son!"

It was the final turn of the screw. Tristram left him and went over to the window.

"I can't speak of that side of it," he said brokenly. "I have loved her distractedly ... I still love her ... but there is her happiness to think of, and if she ... if the Comte de la Roche-Guyon..." He could get no further, but laid his head against the cold glass.

"My dear boy, forgive me," exclaimed Mr. Grenville remorsefully. "I am so upset I don't know what I am saying. I'm a selfish old man, and you put me to shame ... you put me to shame...."

Sighing heavily, he turned round his chair to the table. He felt himself suddenly what he had often mendaciously declared himself to be, an old man. Perhaps it was wrong to struggle against the young--to play Providence overmuch. Yet this was Horatia's whole life at stake. Still, the man who stood silent there at the window, in what bitter pain he could guess, was able to see her go. He put out his hand, and took up the brass of Allectus, lying neglected among a disarray of papers, and, in the silence studied the galley on the reverse. At last he said miserably:

"What do you know about this young man?"

Tristram told him about the family, while the Rector turned the coin over and over.

"Yes, that's all right, I suppose, but what about the young man himself?"

"Frankly, I don't know any more than you do."

"But you have your suspicions, eh? Young Frenchmen don't bear a very good character, and you know that."

"Nor do all young Englishmen."

Mr. Grenville refused to be drawn off. "When you were in Paris, or wherever it was, Tristram, staying with his family, surely you must have heard something about him."

"No, not a rumour of the kind you mean."

"And yet," said the Rector, "you share my feelings about him. I know you do!"

"We have not either of us any right to have 'feelings' about him," retorted Tristram from the window. "We merely do not know. I would tell you if there had been anything. He may be a blackguard or he may be a hero. We don't know."

"Very well, then," said the Rector judicially, laying down the coin with precision. "I'll put it in another way. Do you consider him a fit husband for Horatia?"

Tristram started forward. "Mr. Grenville, don't drive me mad! You are putting me in a horrible position. Armand confides his interests to my hands; the first thing I do is to try to persuade Horatia not to marry him. Now you want to make me blacken his character ... I beg your pardon, Sir!"

The Rector was on his feet. "It is for me to beg yours. My dear, dear boy, do forgive me! I am behaving abominably; I am not only selfish but mean--but if I do seem to have been trying to get you to say things against a rival (as I suppose I have), remember I am also trying to save Horatia from this ... this calamitous marriage, and you from your own fantastic principles. It is all such a confusion, but I am really trying for your own happiness as well as hers ... You know, Tristram, I'm sure you could still have her if you tried, when she has forgotten him.... But do say that you forgive me!"

The young man took his outstretched hand. "As if I had anything to forgive, Sir!" Then he went back with him to the table and sat down beside him, and once again reiterated his conviction that Horatia would not forget her lover, that he himself had no chance now, probably never had, so that the case must be considered on its own merits, and that perhaps, after all, the two were made for each other--though here, indeed, the conviction sounded less sincere.

"Well," said the Rector, looking at him with affection as he finished, "however this turns out I am not likely to forget how you have behaved! And perhaps (but don't say so to Horatia) I may have to think about the possibility some day--but not yet ... no, not yet!"

*CHAPTER XIII*

*(1)*

The ostler of the Red Lion at Compton Regis and one of the stablemen, who happened at the time to be conversing outside that hostelry, were the only persons in the village privileged to behold a certain blue and yellow postchaise draw up in front of the inn at dusk on an evening in October. Scenting a guest of importance, and preparing to summon the landlord, the ostler was, however, stayed by a curt inquiry from the postilion--

"Be this the way to Little Compton?"

"Straight on, first road to the left," responded the ostler, advancing into one of the paths of radiance cut by the lamps in the damp autumn air. "You're no Oxford man or you'd not ask."

"Well, why should I be an Oxford man?" retorted the postilion. "I'm from Salisbury, if you want to know, and damme, if that ain't as good as Oxford----"

But here a head was thrust out of the far window of the chaise, and a voice with a trace of foreign accent--the voice of a young man--demanded what the devil they had stopped for, and, grumbling, the postilion shouted to the steaming horses. As the chaise rolled off the ostler caught sight of a much older face, lit by the travelling lamp within the carriage. He stared after the receding vehicle.

"'Ere, Bill," he called, "I've seen a Dook. Strike me, but it's 'im wot's going to stay with Mr. 'Ungerford down to Little Compton. 'Ear the posty say 'e come from Salisbury? That the Dook, sure enough, the old party. T'other'll be his son, the young spark wot was 'ere before."

"Dook! Wot's a furrin Dook?" queried the exclusive Bill, and spat on the ground.

*(2)*

These worthies were quite right in their surmises, and Mr. Hungerford down to Little Compton was at that moment awaiting, with what equanimity he might, the visit of his all but successful rival and of his father, to whom he had been forced to offer a hospitality which would probably ensure that rival's complete triumph. Nor was Tristram unaware of the ironical humour of the situation.

A week had scarcely passed since Armand's departure for Dorset--a week in which the transfigured Horatia had seemed to tread on air--when there came to her a letter from her lover saying that his father absolutely refused his consent to the match. Tristram did not like to think of the days that had followed, when Horatia went about the house dimmed and red-eyed--though she was generally invisible when he was at the Rectory--and when the Rector (so curiously are human beings compounded) raged alternately against Armand for his audacity and against the Duc de la Roche-Guyon for his prohibition. Nothing in fact could have done so much to forward the match, in so far as the Rector was concerned, as this obstacle: and at last, late one evening, Mr. Grenville came over to see Tristram quite broken, reiterating pitifully, "I am being driven to it. I can't have the child going into a decline," and ending up: "As for this Duke, it's preposterous! Who is he, I should like to know, to behave as if my Horatia were not good enough for his younger son? As you know, Tristram, I detest boasting of my connections, but if it comes to that----"

And since Mr. Grenville could indeed claim cousinship of varying degrees with the Most Noble Richard Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Nugent, with the Marquis of Chandos, and little Earl Temple, and old Lord Grenville, the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, it was hardly surprising that he was annoyed.

Tristram could only suggest that the Duc might come round. "It seems so strange," complained Mr. Grenville, "that he should be so opposed to his son's wishes, when his son is not a minor--how old is he?--twenty-five or twenty-six, I suppose.... You don't think," he said suddenly, "that it's just a ruse on the young man's part to get out of marrying her--that he is repenting of it--that it was only a passing fancy on _his_ part? For if that should be so, Tristram, if he is capable of anything so vile, it will kill my girl." His voice shook with agitation. Gone for ever were the days when he would have hoped that such was the suitor's intention.

Tristram tried to reassure him, for he did not believe this to be the case. After the Rector, somewhat comforted, had gone, there was nothing left for him to do but to pray convulsively for Horatia's happiness.

And when, two days later, he got a letter from Armand, saying that as the King was moving to Holyrood in mid-October he had prevailed on his father to break the journey northward and come with him to Compton Regis, and that he, Armand, had hopes ... it was with real relief as well as with repugnance that Tristram did what Armand obviously hoped he would do, and invited his father and him to honour his roof during their sojourn. And if anything could have nerved him this evening to endure the position in which he had placed himself, it was the brief sight which he had of Horatia that day when he went over to tell the Rector that everything was arranged--of Horatia as she turned on him a sort of rainbow look of gratitude.

That was this morning. Now he was out in the dark and the damp to welcome his guests, exchanging suitable greetings with the elder and submitting to Armand's embrace.

"Ah, mon cher, how amiable of you to receive us thus! We have had a dog of a journey. Mon pere, enter then, while I pay the postilion; you should not expose yourself thus to the damp."

"No, indeed," said Tristram. "If you will come in, M. le Duc..."

In the hall, the face of M. le Duc de la Roche-Guyon appeared above the high collar of his full cloak, old, pale, rather bleached-looking. He was beginning a stately little speech when his son appeared, full of solicitude and hurried him upstairs. And Armand in person reappeared alone before dinner in order to get a few words with his host. Tristram had been preparing himself for this. The young man professed profound gratitude, was sure that if his father once saw the lady of his choice, all would be well. He himself was more hopeful than he had been for weeks past.

"In fact," he went on, his eyes sparkling, "I believe the day is already won. My grandmother supports me--and that will turn the scale. My father has great respect for her wishes. Her letter arrived, praise the saints, just before we left Lulworth."

Tristram now remembered to have heard something of an autocratic old Dowager Duchess, the Duke's mother.

"She says--mais n'importe," went on the Comte. "Now, with your permission, and if my father does not appear too tired, I will leave you after dinner to yourselves."

"You are trusting me with a good deal, La Roche-Guyon," Tristram was moved to remark.

"Parbleu, are you not my friend!" retorted the Frenchman. "Besides, you are one of those people whom it is natural to trust."

Although the Duc, when he appeared, was very plainly, if immaculately attired, he somehow radiated from his person an air of courts and of diplomacy very foreign to Tristram's dining-room and its solid British furniture. He was grand seigneur to his finger-tips, polished, melancholy, affable, and perfectly simple in his address; but it required no effort to imagine the absent cordon bleu and stars on his breast. Armand behaved towards him with a mingled air of deference and affection which, while it amused Tristram--so far as he was capable of being amused by anything--did not displease him, for it appeared genuine and habitual. Apparently the young man considered the paternal health equal to a discussion, for after one glass of port he very unembarrassedly excused himself, and left the others still seated with their wineglasses at the polished mahogany.

The Duc looked after him with a little smile of amusement and affection flitting across his delicate bloodless lips.

"That is the signal for us to begin our 'conversations,' Monsieur. You have plenipotentiary powers, I think?"

"I--not in the least!" said Tristram, somewhat alarmed. "I have no--no official position at all in the matter. It will be between yourself, M. le Duc, and the lady's father. Anything that I can arrange, in the way of a meeting between you, I shall be happy to do, and any information I have is at your service. Beyond that I cannot go."

The older man bowed. "You are a kinsman, I think, Monsieur?"

"Distant," said Tristram. "I rather count myself an old friend."

"Of M. Grenville or of Mademoiselle?"

"Of both."

"And--pardon me if I ask an impertinent question, but we must know where we stand--as a kinsman and as an old friend, you have yourself no objection to this alliance?"

"I am solely desirous of Miss Grenville's happiness," responded Tristram, his eyes on the foot of his wineglass.

"And you think that the match with my son will ensure it?"

"How can I possibly say? But I hope that it may take place."

"Merci, Monsieur, for your courtesy," said the Duc, very courteously himself. "Now I in my turn must make my position clear to you. I had other views for my son--in fact I thought he ... had other views for himself. I am, however, convinced that he is passionately in love with this lady, whom I doubt not I shall find to be all and more than all that he represents. But you know, Monsieur, that we French people do not look with favour upon marriages of love. We prefer that love should come after marriage. We find it better so. Then there is the difference of race. To these young people that seems nothing now, but it tells, Monsieur, it tells more and more through life. This objection naturally applies on your side also; not so the former, for you are more sentimental than we are." He was arranging two little groups of almonds with fingers as blanched as they.

"I seem to remember," commented Tristram, "that the Comte de Flahault, coming over to England, fell in love with an English lady and married her, and that they are living happily in Paris at this very moment."

"Quite true," said the Duc, with the air of one acknowledging a point, and he added another almond to the smaller pile. "But I cannot wholly allow the parallel. M. de Flahault was an Imperialist--an aide-de-camp of Napoleon in fact; he is now an Orleanist, and the lady, she was titree, noble in her own right, I believe, the Baroness Keats, or Keat, il me semble."

"Keith," said Tristram. "But surely I do not need to remind M. le Duc, who has, I understand, lived much in England, that many of the members of our best families bear no titles, that with us the grandson of an earl, not being the heir, is plain Mr. So-and-so, and that some of the oldest families have never had titles at all--have, indeed, refused them."

"That I know," conceded M. de la Roche-Guyon. "But it is not generally understood in France."

Tristram pushed away his wineglass. "You must not suspect me of flattery, Sir, if I say that I should have thought your own ancient and illustrious name capable of covering any disparity in station between the parties, did such exist. But I should wish to remind you that Mr. Grenville is by no means the ordinary country parson that you have perhaps imagined. He is himself the younger son of a noble family; he has connections among the highest of our English nobility, and he is no pauper. I can sketch you his family tree if you wish.... As for the lady herself, she would grace the most exalted rank, and, as a kinsman and an old friend, I think I have the right to say that the man who wins her is to be congratulated indeed."

The Duc lifted his eyes from the almonds and shot him a keen, rather disconcerting glance. "Ah, yes. You, Monsieur, the accredited ambassador, have espoused the match with warmth. How is it that M. Grenville then refused, in no uncertain terms, to entertain the thought of it; indeed, so far as I could gather, forbade my son the house?"

For a second Tristram was taken aback by this pertinent inquiry, for he had really forgotten the Rector's one time vehement opposition.

"I think," he said, "that you will find Mr. Grenville ... in short, that that difficulty does not now exist."

The Duc leant back in his chair. "Will you permit me, Monsieur, to say (since I am a man so much older than you) that there is something in you, I know not what, which pleases me very much. I will be franker with you than I had meant to be. My mother, the Dowager Duchess, to whose judgment I pay great deference, is in favour of this match. I have learnt the fact but this morning. I own that I am surprised, but Armand is her favourite grandson. There are reasons, with which I need not trouble you, why her wishes should have great weight with me. I am, therefore, little likely when I see this lady, by all accounts so charming, to find her unsuitable. But what of M. son pere? It will not consort very well with my dignity (to which you must permit me to hold) if I approve my son's choice only to find that M. Grenville does not approve his daughter's."

And in the gaze which he directed upon Tristram, in the tones of his thin, well-bred voice, there peeped out something of the arrogance of an ancient race.

The younger man smiled. He felt suddenly very weary.

"You need not apprehend anything on that score, I can assure you, Sir. I saw Mr. Grenville this morning. When your son first asked for his daughter's hand he was startled, greatly startled, and surprised. He probably spoke words which he would have recalled afterwards. You will find him, I think, more than reconciled to the idea."

The Duke seemed to have fallen into a short reverie.

"It is well to be young," he said at last, and there was faint regret in his tone. "The fire of youth--who shall give us that again? When I married my first wife, Emmanuel's mother, I was only twenty--but that was a mariage de convenance. Armand's mother was very beautiful; I loved her as Armand loves this lady, but he has the advantage of me ... he has the advantage of me ... for then I was no longer young." He sighed, and passed his handkerchief over his lips, and his face, deeply marked, seemed to wither and grow older than its sixty-five years. "But why am I talking thus to you, Monsieur, who still have that inestimable gift of youth? Mais tout passe, tout lasse ... I will do myself the honour of calling upon Mr. Grenville to-morrow morning at eleven, if you think that hour will be convenient to him."

And he flicked with one long, polished nail at the two heaps of almonds, scattering them.

*(3)*

Not being present next morning at the momentous interview between the Duc and Mr. Grenville, Tristram could only guess at what happened. Armand, on fire with restlessness, spent the time walking round and round the not very extensive garden like a caged animal, and when Tristram went out to say that his father had returned and would like to see him in the study, he found the young man slashing with a stick at his rose trees.

"Oh, pardon if I have hurt them!" he exclaimed. "Mon Dieu, que je suis enerve! Yes, I will go at once. I had better have borrowed one of your horses and gone for a gallop.--He is in the study, you say, this good father of mine?"

The irony of Tristram's own position oppressed him the more in proportion as his anxiety about Armand's intentions was relieved. Neither the Duc nor his son said much when they emerged from their conference, only the elder man informed his host that he was to dine alone at the Rectory that evening, and that he hoped then to make the acquaintance of Miss Grenville. As good luck so ordered, a colleague of Tristram's on the bench turned up at dinner time and had to be asked to stay. Never had Tristram so blessed his boring but steady flow of conversation, nor so welcomed his presence, which effectually prevented Armand from pouring out his own hopes and fears.

There was no one, however, to save Tristram from the Duke's really enthusiastic praises of Miss Grenville when he returned from the Rectory, and expatiated on the gifts of heart and mind and person which he discerned in her.

"I shall keep that young rascal on tenterhooks a little longer," he declared. "Another sleepless night will not do him any harm, if he has had as many as he asserts. Besides, it is not absolutely arranged. With your permission, Mr. Grenville will come over here to-morrow morning to discuss matters with me. I will send Armand out; no doubt, even in this misty weather, his flame will keep him warm."

He kept his word, and next morning the Comte, refusing a horse, went soberly off on foot in the direction of the Downs. Mr. Grenville arrived; Tristram was unable, and did not indeed particularly desire, to make an opportunity of seeing him alone before he left him and the Duc to their discussion. The whole thing was getting dreamlike to him now, losing the outlines of its reality as the Downs had lost theirs with the death of summer. He would be glad when this whirl of conferences was over, the result--already certain--announced, and Armand de la Roche-Guyon no longer under his roof--not that he minded even his presence very much. How he should get on afterwards, from day to day, he did not know, but at present he seemed to himself a being without passions, energy, or desires--a mere leaf whirled on the engulfing stream of destiny, and the future was hardly worth speculating about.

He walked in his little orchard, for it was a morning gilded with the mellow brilliance of October, and noted the fallen apples. After a while, turning, he saw the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, his son and the Rector all coming over the grass towards him, conversing with an amiability which could have only one meaning. And dream-enveloped though he felt himself, leaf on the tide of fate though he might be, for a second Tristram saw nothing at all, neither figures, nor grass, nor sky, nor the bricks of his house; he was conscious only of a surging wave of rebellion that blotted them all out. Then they reappeared, and Armand, coming forward with both hands outstretched, said, in a voice of radiant happiness:

"Congratulate me, mon ami! And ah, how much I owe it to you!"

Next evening it was observed in Oriel Common Room that Dormer was unusually quiet. He withdrew earlier even than his wont, and while Newman and Hurrell Froude, going up their staircase, were commenting on the absence of light from his windows on the other side of the quadrangle, he was sitting by the fire, Tristram's read and re-read letter on his knee, and the half-bitter postscript of it running in his head, "Henceforward your fanatical ideas will easily carry the day with me. I shall never marry now." What he had dreamed of had come to pass--and his heart within him was desolate with pity.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*(1)*

Morning on the Downs, with the clean, the thrilling wind, intoxicating even in autumn, the air that gives the sensation of a draught of the barest and intensest life, the air of the world's morning. Add to this youth, a good horse beneath you, and by your side, never henceforth to leave it, that one person who to you sums up the spirit of all these other things. What can Heaven give more?

So, flashingly, thought Horatia, as she and Armand finished their gallop, and her green veil, outstreaming from her tall hat, fell to a position a little more composed. Laughing, a trifle breathless, "O, I should like to ride like this for ever!" she exclaimed, as the horses fell to a walk. "It was glorious!"

Armand de la Roche-Guyon, sitting his big brown mare with the ease of the born rider--a lover of whom any girl might be proud--bent on her a long and smiling look. "We shall often ride in Brittany," he said. "If the peasants know mythology--which I doubt--they will take you for Diane chasseresse."

Moving on, they came to the edge of the Downs, the great wind still blowing steadily upon them.

"There is Compton Regis, and there is Compton Parva," observed Horatia, pointing with her whip. "Do they not seem low from here? And--do you see?--that looks like Papa and Robin, deserting us and making off home." For the Rector, having ridden with the affianced couple, for propriety's sake, as far as the Downs, had refused to come any further. The protestations which his action had drawn forth had been singularly lacking in fervour.

"I think," went on Horatia, "that before we have another gallop, you had better tighten my girth for me, if you will.... But what are you looking at, down there?"

"I was trying to distinguish the road on which you first came to me, like an angel of mercy," said the young man, swinging off. "And the spot where Mr. Hungerford's horse so inexplicably cast a shoe! By the way," he went on, pulling at the girth, "speaking of your cousin, ma toute belle, reminds me that I have long wanted to ask you----"

"My cousin!" broke in Horatia, laughing. "Whom do you mean?--That is tight enough, I think."

"Mais ce bon Tristram. He is your kinsman ... or have you all been deceiving me?"

"Certainly he is my kinsman, but a very distant one. His mother was my mother's third cousin, or something of the sort. I never think of him as a cousin, exactly; rather as a brother."

"Not in any other capacity?" inquired Armand, his eyes mocking her as he leant against her horse's neck. "I have no right to ask you, perhaps--si, I think I have the right." He laughed. "If he were never in love with you, he ought to have been."

Horatia looked away from his amused, lazily penetrating glance. "To tell you the truth," she said, flushing a little, "he was once--years ago. But that is all over, and the proof is, that we have been very good friends ever since."

"Ah, I wondered. I am glad he had the good taste to be a soupirant once. Were you very cruel to him? He is an original; but I am very grateful to him. Had he been a rival I should have found things much more difficult."

"No, you would not," said Horatia suddenly. "He would have behaved just the same, when he found that I really loved you."

The Comte lifted his expressive eyebrows. "Forgive me, my angel, but I am totally unable to follow you there. Men don't do those things nowadays; we are not in the pages of Scudery. You have a soul of the most romantic, my Horatia, in spite of your Greek and Latin; but romance is not in harmony with facts. Your 'cousin' is a capital fellow, but if I believed him capable of that sort of thing, ma foi, I should be inclined to recommend him for a madhouse. As it is, shall we ask him to stay with us one day?"

"If you like," said Horatia, looking at her horse's ears. There was a vague trouble in her voice.

"If _I_ like! But yes, that is perhaps what it comes to. I warn you, I shall be like a tiger for jealousy, and you will turn every man's head who sees you.... Par exemple, I am sure you must have had many more victims than you will acknowledge. Passe Mr. Hungerford, but what of that so dear friend of his at the college of Oriel?"

Horatia looked absolutely horrified. "Mr. Dormer!"

"Eh bien, why not? You shrink, my angel, as if I had suggested a thing improper, as though he were a priest--one of our priests. But he is not, and you must have met sometimes, and he is bel homme too, for all that austere air of his. Why, now I come to think of it in Mr. Hungerford's very drawing-room----"

"I cannot conceive why he talked to me that evening," said Horatia. "I have often thought of it since.... But I will not be catechised about such absurdities. And suppose I were to insist on knowing how many fair ladies have been in love with you, Monsieur?"

"And pray, Mademoiselle, what would you think of me if I answered that question?" asked her betrothed, regaining his saddle. "Ask me how many I have admired, and some day--perhaps--I will tell you."

They rode on, talking of the--to French eyes--daring honeymoon that they were to spend, alone, at the Breton chateau, which had come to Armand through his mother. For, since they were to be married in England, nobody could prevent their going straight to Brittany after the tying, by civil as well as by double religious rites, of the triple knot which should, as Armand said, make the most beautiful hand in the world so very securely his.

*(2)*