  Produced by Al Haines. THE VISION SPLENDID BY D. K. BROSTER AND G. W. TAYLOR AUTHOR OF "CHANTEMERLE" LONDON: BOOK I: BOOK II: BOOK III: EPILOGUE: THE BOOK I CRAG AND TORRENT CHAPTER I (1) The broad faces of the sunflowers surveyed, with their eternal, undiscriminating smile, the nape of Horatia's white neck, and were no wiser. Her back was towards them, and they could not see what book was in her lap. But the hollyhocks further down the border were probably aware that she was not really reading anything. They swayed a little, disturbing a blundering bee; and Horatia, turning her head towards the flower-bed, glanced for a moment at those tall warriors en fÊte. A gust of perfume suddenly shook out at her from the border. Certainly the summer seemed hardly within sight of its end, though on this Monday, the thirtieth of August, 1830, much of the corn was cut already. Horatia's own summer was at the full, and it was now only old-fashioned people who thought the single woman of twenty-four in peril of the unblest autumn of perpetual maidenhood. For the sake of the red-gold bunches of curls at her temples, the dazzling skin that goes with such hair, the straight, wilful little nose, the mouth holding in its curves some petulance and much sweetness, an admirer might well have been sitting beside her in this agreeable old garden. Yet Horatia Grenville was not accounted a beauty. She was neither statuesque nor drooping. But part of the blame lay undeniably with the book on her lap, the Republic of Plato in the original. Horatia could and did read Greek without too much difficulty; could not, or would not, occupy her fingers for ever with embroidery or knitting, and was believed to despise amateur performance upon the harp. In short she was "blue," and therefore—at least in her own county—was not beautiful; she was learned, and could not, in Berkshire, be lovely. Yes, she was twenty-four, and unmarried; a country parson's daughter, but well-born and well-dowered; suspected (unjustly) of knowing Hebrew as well as Greek, but always admirably dressed. She had never been in love, and had never, to her knowledge, even desired to taste that condition. Nor had she discovered in herself any aptitude for flirting. She wished sometimes that she did not frighten young men by her real or supposed intellectual attainments, but not for any plaudits of the drawing-room would she have bartered all that was typified to her by the Greek text on her knee. And she had no craving for domestic bliss. Indeed, she could have had that bliss had she desired it. At least two decorous and (to her) entirely negligible requests had been made for her hand. They had come from quite suitable personages, whom she had met during her periodical sojourns with her various relations. Moreover, here, at home, five years ago, the man who had known her from a child, and was indeed a distant connection, had asked her to marry him. That episode had startled and distressed Horatia. Tristram Hungerford, six years her senior, had always been a quasi-fraternal part of her life. The boy who came over daily on his pony from Compton Parva, what time a pony was still to her as an elephant, who was construing Livy with her father while her own fingers created the tremulous pothook, who climbed the Rectory apple-trees while her infant legs bore her but precariously on terra firma—whom she welcomed home from Eton with unrestrained joy and offerings of toffee, from Oxford as frankly but less exuberantly—that this young man should suddenly propose to make her his wife was absurd, and she did not like it at all. At nineteen, Horatia Grenville had been singularly immature for her times. She had no wish but that her playmate and friend should retain that rÔle always; why should he want to change it? She signified as much, and to her great relief Tristram reverted with extraordinary completeness to his former part, and had filled it for five more years. Miss Grenville had, however, taken no vow against matrimony. It was merely that she could not bear the idea of so sudden a finality. Even now she refused to picture herself sitting down, as she put it, to count over forks and spoons. Indeed, having returned but two days ago from a visit to a newly married friend, whose chief occupations, so it seemed to her guest, were quoting "what Henry says," and trying to out-do other young married women of her acquaintance in dress, she was still full of an almost passionate wonder that people could shut down their lives to that kind of thing. Yet, deep in her heart, perhaps she realised—perhaps she did not—that in six or seven years' time, when the fatuities of the recently-wed had dropped away from Henry and Emilia, when there were children round them, they would have full lives, whereas she... But Horatia greatly desired her life to be full. She wanted to express herself somehow. Sitting there by the sunflowers and the phloxes, she thought of the many women of the day who had succeeded in doing this. She thought of Mrs. Somerville, of Miss Mitford, of Hannah More and of Mrs. Fry; of Joanna Baillie and Miss Edgeworth; of Miss Jane Porter, whose Scottish Chiefs had delighted her childhood; and of Lady Morgan. Most of these celebrated women were unmarried. And she considered also the women of the past: Joan of Arc, St. Catherine of Siena, Madame de Rambouillet, Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu. It was not that Horatia Grenville wished definitely either to lead a nation to battle or to write plays, to be an astronomical genius, or to sway the councils of princes. She wanted to do something, but knew not what that something was. This afternoon she was more conscious than usual both of her desire and of its vagueness. It occurred to her that she was rather like the sleepy wasp who, having painfully climbed up the skirt of her gown and attained the open page of the Republic, was now starting discontentedly to crawl down again. "Really, I am getting morbid!" thought Miss Grenville; "and here is Papa!" The Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville, Rector of Compton Regis, was seen indeed to issue at that moment from the long window of the drawing-room and to approach her over the grass, comfortable, benignant, and of aristocratic appearance. He held a half-written letter in one hand, and a quill pen in the other; his spectacles were pushed down his nose. His daughter jumped up. "Do you want me, Papa?" "My dear, only for this," replied Mr. Grenville, holding up the letter. "I am writing to your Aunt Julia, and you must really make up your mind whether you will pay her a visit this autumn. In her last letter she mentions the matter again." Horatia looked up at her parent. "Papa," she answered gravely, "I don't like staying with people who disapprove of me." A sudden little smile came about the corners of her mouth. "I shouldn't stay with you if you didn't appreciate me, you know!" The twinkle which was never far from the Rector's eyes came into them at this pronouncement. "Of that I have no doubt, my child," he said. "But it is a mercy that your aunt cannot hear your filial sentiments." Horatia caught at his arm. "Sit down, dearest Papa," she said half imperiously, half coaxingly, "and let us discuss the visit to Aunt Julia." The Honourable and Reverend Stephen, still holding paper and pen, submitted to be placed in her chair. Horatia, with the grace that was peculiarly hers, sat down upon the grass at his feet, her full skirt spreading fanwise around her. "First," she began, taking hold of the letter, "we will see what you have said about me." The Rector yielded it. "There is nothing at all about you as yet, my dear," he remarked mildly. "Your Aunt is thinking of putting some money into this new railroad between Manchester and Liverpool, and asks for my advice." Horatia made a face and returned the letter. "Papa, you always have the best of me! Now put down that pen—especially if there is still ink upon it, as I suspect—and I will show you many reasons why I should not pay Aunt Julia a visit. In the first place, she disapproves of me because I do not make flannel petticoats for the poor; in the second place, she wishes to see me married; in the third place she calls Plato a heathen and Shakespeare 'waste of time.' In the fourth place, I am but just returned from visits elsewhere; ... In the hundredth place—I prefer to stop with you. One hundred reasons against Aunt Julia." And she laid her fresh cheek upon the hand that held the letter. The Rector pinched the cheek. "'La Reine le veult,' as usual, I suppose. Shall you always prefer to stop with me, Horatia?" "It is my duty, Papa," said Miss Grenville, without lifting her head. The solemnity of her voice was too much for her father, and he broke, as she had intended he should, into a chuckle. "That word on your lips!" he exclaimed. Then he put his hand gently on the smooth and radiant head. "I could bear to see you go from me," he said in a suddenly stirred voice, "if I knew you were going to a happy home of your own." The head moved restlessly. "You know how much I dislike—how much I wish you would not talk of that, Papa!" said the girl almost shortly, and she raised herself. "Why must every woman get married? One would think that you wanted to be rid of me." Her cheeks were a little flushed. "But even if you did, I would not marry!" she added. "I would—never mind what I would do." She flung her arms round her father's neck and kissed him. "Do not speak of it again! You do not deserve to have such a good daughter. Now go and tell Aunt Julia that I cannot stay with her—say that I am translating Rousseau, that will make her furious—and tell her that a Christian gentlewoman should not know anything about investments!" (2) Having thus dismissed her parent, Miss Horatia Grenville did not return to her book or her reverie, but crossed the lawn, showing herself as tall and generously made in her dress of thin mulberry-coloured silk with the great puffed sleeves, trim waist and full short skirt of the prevailing fashion. Catching up a flat basket and a pair of scissors, she then walked up and down by the flower border, snipping off dead blossoms and singing to herself snatches of Deh vieni. So occupied, she heard the click of the garden gate. "Probably Tristram," she thought to herself. "It is quite time that he came." And indeed a masculine figure was stooping to fasten the little gate at the end of the short privet-walled path, by which it had just entered. As it raised itself, and turned, it was revealed as that of a young man of about thirty, in riding costume, darker in hair and eyes than the majority of Englishmen, but none the less unmistakably English. Pleasant to look at, and more than common tall, he would not however have drawn the attention of a casual observer; a closer critic might have become aware of something in the eyes not quite consonant with his vigorous and every-day appearance. Horatia put down her basket and went towards him, holding out both hands. "I am so glad that you have come," she said frankly. "How are you, Tristram?" "As usual, very glad to see you," responded the young man, smiling. "I wondered if you would be in. Where is the Rector?" "Papa is writing to Aunt Julia, about investments and about the difficulty of getting me to leave home." "Before Martha has unpacked your trunks from this last visit, I suppose you mean?" "Don't tease me, Tristram, when you have not seen me for so long! Come and sit down on the lawn and talk sensibly. Papa will be out soon, I expect. You will stay to dinner, of course?" "I shall be very pleased," responded the guest, and he looked as if he were pleased too—as indeed he was—with his greeting. He walked beside her to her chair on the grass, picked up Plato, lying there face downwards, murmured "What shocking treatment for a philosopher!" fetched himself another chair from a little distance, and, sitting down by Miss Grenville, said "How did you enjoy your round of visits?" "Not at all," replied Horatia petulantly, half laughing. "I have not said this to Papa, because it might make him conceited; but I will tell you that I am delighted to be home again." And she added, still more confidentially, "Tristram, the newly-married bore me extremely! I shall not visit Emilia Strangeways again for seven years at least." Tristram Hungerford laughed. "All the better for us! It is dull enough without you." "O, what stories!" exclaimed Horatia. "You have not been dull. You have had Mr. Dormer with you!" There was mockery in her eyes. "I know all about it. Tell me the truth now! How long did he stay?" "A week, Horatia, only a week, and since then it has been duller than ever." "That I can believe," retorted Miss Grenville; "but it has been dull because Mr. Dormer has left you, and not because I have been away. You have no one now to exult with over the increasing circulation of the Christian Year, and no one to melt you with the sufferings of the Non-Jurors—which I think they brought on themselves. However, I must not jest about Mr. Dormer, I know; he is sacrosanct. Tell me any news. Tell me something interesting." The life, the vitality that responded to hers, dropped suddenly out of Tristram Hungerford's face. "I have got some news," he said hesitatingly, "but I am not sure that you will find it interesting. I have made up my mind at last, quite definitely, to take Orders—that is, if the Bishop will have me." And at that Miss Grenville's face changed too, and after a moment's pause she said, very seriously, "Why?" "Because," returned the young man almost guiltily, "I think that I may be able to serve the Church better that way, and the time is coming when we shall have to fight for her." Horatia did not try to conceal her feelings. "I thought you were getting views of that sort," she said gloomily; "and I was afraid that it would end in your taking Orders—in fact, I said so to Papa the other day. Of course, in my opinion you are made for it; but I wish that you were not." She sighed, and added inconsequently, "It must make a difference." Tristram flushed and leant forward. "But, Horatia, what do you mean? I shall never be any different—I never could be so to you!" The feeling in his voice was almost ardour—and it was not the ardour of a friend. Whether Miss Grenville were fully aware of this or no she pursued her own thoughts aloud. "I wonder; I am not so sure. By taking Orders you will be throwing in your lot for ever with all those Oriel people. That is what it means." "I cannot think," said the culprit, "why you dislike them so." "It isn't that I dislike them exactly," said Horatia, considering; "but that there is something about them that I don't like. Even Mr. Keble, although he lives in the country and writes poetry, can't be as harmless as he seems, or they would not all pay him such deference. I have nothing against Mr. Newman and Mr. Froude; in fact I liked Mr. Froude when you brought him out here, which is more than I could ever say about Mr. Dormer. He can make himself very charming, but he's steel underneath, I'm quite certain.... Yes, they are all different, and yet they are alike. They are only clergymen, as Papa is, but at his age they won't be in the least like him. For one thing they won't be half as nice. There is something about them that makes me shiver. They are too absolute. I have the feeling that they will change you, that they are changing you. O, I can't explain it; but I know what I mean—and, Tristram, I could not bear that you should be different from what you are?" She looked at him directly, earnestly, like a child pleading that something it likes may not be taken away from it, and never noticed her companion turn suddenly rather white. "Horatia, if you——" he began, and suddenly the Rector's voice cut through his own—"What are you two discussing so warmly that you haven't heard the dinner-bell?" it said, coming before its owner as he emerged through the drawing-room window. "It's long after half-past five. Tristram, my dear fellow, I am very glad to see you. You are staying, of course?" And after a barely perceptible pause the young man got up and said that he was. CHAPTER II (1) "Papa has really no right to be hungry," observed Miss Grenville as they sat down to table. "Saturday, you know, was our annual village feast, and he acknowledges that he is obliged to eat a great deal on that occasion." "How did it go off, Rector?" asked the guest. "Oh, quite successfully," replied Mr. Grenville, carving a leg of mutton. "There was a good deal to eat, I must admit. I left, as I always do, before the dancing; but not before I heard a swain (I think it was one of Farmer Wilson's men) assuring his inamorata that he would kiss her if she wished it." "The lady seems to have been forward," observed Horatia. "Papa, you are not forgetting the plate of meat for old Mrs. Jenkins? You know you promised to send in her dinner while she is ill." "No, my dear," returned her father, looking round. "I have not forgotten the meat, but Sarah appears to have forgotten the plates." The handmaid fled and remedied her error. It was no unusual thing for the Rectory crockery to go voyaging in the cause of charity. Horatia seemed in high though rather fitful spirits. She amused her hearers with an account of her visits. At one house, she affirmed, she was entertained to death; at the other her host and hostess only seemed to want to be alone together, though they had pestered her to go there. "You will find us, as usual, very quiet," said Tristram, looking across the table at her animated face. "I don't think anything has happened since you went away.—Stay, though, something has taken place in Oxfordshire. Rector, I suppose you have heard about the affair at Otmoor on Saturday night?" Mr. Grenville had not. "Well, Otmoor, as you know, was drained under Act of Parliament in 1815, and this proceeding has been a cause of discontent ever since, because the embankments were thought to prevent the water draining away from the land above. You remember the disturbances last June, and how the farmers cut the banks, and were indicted for felony, but acquitted on the ground that the embankments did do damage and were a nuisance?" "Yes, I recall the circumstance," said the Rector. "Well, the Otmoor people appear to have jumped to the conclusion that the Act of Parliament was void, the enclosure of Otmoor consequently illegal, and that they had a right to pull down the embankment. On Saturday night, therefore, they started to do so, and I believe they proceeded with the work last night also. They are said to have been riotous. I wonder you had not heard of it." "Dear, dear," commented the Rector, "that is excessively serious! I am afraid that there is indeed a spirit of unrest abroad at present. There have been one or two rick fires lately that looked to me very suspicious, very. And then there was that barn near Henley about a fortnight ago." "Do you think, then, that we shall have a revolution in England like the Days of July?" asked Horatia a little mischievously. "No, of course not, my dear! The Revolution in France the other day was above all things dynastic—at least, so I read it—and no one wants to turn out our new King, whom God preserve. But there is social unrest..." "Good Heavens!" suddenly exclaimed Tristram Hungerford. "I had quite forgotten, and your mentioning the Days of July has reminded me. I've got a Frenchman, a Legitimist, coming to stay with me the day after to-morrow. You remember how, when I was in Paris a few years ago, I made the acquaintance of the sons of the Duc de la Roche-Guyon, the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? I stayed with the eldest at their place in the country for a few days, and I asked them to come and see me if ever they were in England." "But the Duc de la Roche-Guyon accompanied Charles the Tenth on his flight over here, and is now with him at Lulworth, is he not?" asked Horatia. "I remember seeing his name in the papers." "Yes," said Tristram, "the Duc is at Lulworth with the King, and Armand, his younger and favourite son, has come over to pay him a visit. But I fancy that the young gentleman has no intention of remaining buried in Dorset; Lulworth is too dull for a person of his tastes, and he is returning to more congenial scenes in Paris—even though it be an Orleanist Paris. However, he has written from Dorset and suggested paying me a short visit. I own that I am rather surprised, for I am afraid that my chances of amusing him are not greater than those of his exiled sovereign. Moreover, I really hardly know him. It was his elder brother, the Marquis Emmanuel, of whom I saw more.... May I bring the youth here to call?" "Do," said Miss Grenville. "Papa, did you know that Tristram considered us a centre of gaiety? It is a flattering but a burdensome reputation. If anyone expects me to sparkle I am tongue-tied on the instant. I had better ask the Miss Baileys to come in." "My dear," said the Rector impressively, "I beg you will do nothing of the sort. I cannot endure those young persons." "I know it," replied his daughter.—"But, Tristram, it is a good thing that Mr. Dormer has left you. It is well known, is it not, that you may not have other guests when he is with you?" A very slight colour came into Mr. Hungerford's face, and the Rector said rather quickly, "Is Mr. Dormer going to be in college till term begins?" "Yes," answered the young man. "It is quieter for him, and he is very anxious to finish his book on the Non-Jurors. All the worry last term with the Provost—though, not being a tutor, he was not actually implicated—put him back in his work." "I have no sympathy with Mr. Dormer's sufferings," declared Horatia. "You have told me before now, Tristram, that he has very high views about the authority of the Church. Why doesn't he have high views about the authority of the Provost?" "But, Horatia," said Tristram earnestly, "don't you see that it was a matter of conscience? Newman and Wilberforce and Froude could not without a protest see their chances of influencing their pupils vanish, and themselves reduced to mere tutoring machines. If Keble had been elected Provost instead of Hawkins, the situation would never have arisen. Now they will have no more pupils after next year; and, as an Oriel man, I can't help thinking that it will be Oriel's loss." "Don't argue with her, Tristram," said the Rector. "She is only teasing you." "Not at all," returned Horatia. "My sympathies are with the Provost; and so are yours, Papa. Speak up now, and tell the truth. Did your tutor at Christ Church consider himself responsible for your soul?" "Well, no, I can't say that he did," admitted Mr. Grenville, remembering that port-drinking divine. "There you are!" exclaimed his daughter. "And look at the result; could it be better? Now these Oriel people want to make their pupils into horrid prigs, and all the parents in England ought to be grateful to the Provost for preventing it." "Horatia," said the Rector, "this levity is not at all becoming. I don't myself agree entirely with either side. I have a great respect for the Provost, and at the same time I admire the spirit and high sense of duty of your friends, Tristram. Mr. Keble is of their opinion, and although I cannot go as far as he does, I am bound to say that the Christian Year seems to me to combine sound scholarship with a proper appreciation of our historic Church. Yes, they are good men, and I am sorry they have been defeated." "And I," remarked Horatia impenitently, "am looking forward to seeing each with his one ewe lamb. How they will cherish their last pupil!" (2) When Tristram went, according to custom, into the Rector's study for a talk after dinner, the door was hardly shut behind them before Mr. Grenville said: "I had a feeling this afternoon, when it was too late, that I interrupted you with Horatia at an unfortunate moment." "No, Sir," replied the young man. "I think, on the contrary, that you saved me from making a blunder. One shock is enough for one afternoon." "Ah," said Mr. Grenville, making his way towards his favourite chair. "You have told her then that you mean to take Orders?" "I told her that I had practically made up my mind to do so." "And what did she say?" "I gathered that she wasn't surprised, and that she wasn't altogether pleased," returned Tristram with half a smile. "She is out of sympathy with your views," commented the Rector, tapping with his foot. "And of course, as you know, I deplore extremes myself. But in time you would settle down. Still, I know quite well Horatia's dislike to what seem to be the growing views of the Oriel Common Room, and she appears to me to be quite unable to discuss the matter on its merits. She always says, 'Papa, dear, I do dislike Mr. Dormer so much, and I'm not fond of any of those Oriel people. I cannot understand what Tristram sees in them.' But I'll tell you what I think, my boy," concluded the Rector mysteriously, "and that is, this dislike is a very hopeful sign." "Why?" asked Tristram with gloom. "Well, to begin with, Horatia, unlike most women, can generally discuss a subject impersonally, but in this matter she makes a personal application, and she always attacks your friend Dormer, when she might just as well select Mr. Newman or Mr. Froude. Why? Because I verily believe she is jealous of him!" And the Honourable and Reverend Stephen Grenville sat back in his chair to make the full effect of his words. "You don't really think that she cares—that she could ever...?" "I don't know, my dear boy; I can't say. Perhaps I oughtn't to raise your hopes. Horatia is a very extraordinary young woman. Sometimes I blame myself; I blame myself very severely. I gave her an education out of the common." "You did everything that was right," interjected Tristram. "I hope so, Tristram, I hope so. Did I ever tell you that her aunt once assured me she would either die an old maid or make a fool of herself? Well, I did my best. Your mother, Tristram, was very fond of my girl, and she told me more than once that she believed she had the makings of a fine woman. If she had been here now, she would have advised us; for I can't help feeling that we are at a parting of the ways. If we had had her help these last few years it might have been different. I have thought that you made a mistake in not trying again when you came back from abroad. Persistence sometimes works wonders." "I cannot bear the idea of pestering a girl until she accepts an offer out of sheer weariness," said Tristram with some heat. "No, I know, and I respect you, my dear fellow," said the Rector, looking at him affectionately. Continuing to look at him, he went on: "Of course, too, I have doubted whether I have been right to allow you to see so much of her. But sometimes I thought you were getting over it, and Horatia is so entirely at her ease with you that I feared to interrupt a friendship which I always hoped might become something else. But I believe it has been a strain on you, Tristram. I can see it all now, and it must not go on. It is not fair to you. How long is it since she refused you?" "Five years. I asked her in 1825, the summer before my mother died." "Well, well," said the Rector, sighing gently, "the sooner you try your luck again the better. The child strikes me as unsettled, and a little depressed perhaps. Anyhow, for your own sake, I do not think you ought to wait. I could wish that this young friend of yours were not coming, for it means that nothing can be done for a week or two. However, there is the autumn before you, and if Horatia won't have you, you will soon be taking Orders and wanting to settle down, and perhaps you will see someone else. You are not the sort of man to have to wait long for a living, and you will be lonely without a wife. If my girl is so foolish as to refuse you again, well——" Tristram shook his head. "There is no 'well,' Mr. Grenville. It is Horatia or nobody for me." CHAPTER III (1) One of Tristram Hungerford's earliest recollections was of the smell of sealskin, of its delicious softness, and of its singular utility, when rubbed the wrong way, as a medium for tracing the journeys of the children of Israel during Mr. Venn's long sermons in Clapham parish church. His Mamma, as he sat snuggled up against her, never reproved him for this ingenious use of her attire, and the stern, sad, greyhaired man, on the other side of her, could not see his small son's occupation, and would not have realised its significance if he had. For if at any given moment John Hungerford was not attending to Mr. Venn, he was thinking of the cause to which he had given his whole life and the greater part of his substance—the abolition of the slave-trade—thinking too, perhaps, of his English childhood, of his youth and young manhood spent in Barbados as manager to that very rich planter, his uncle, of his return to England a convinced champion of the freedom of the negro, his untiring labours to that end, in Parliament and out of it, his friendship with the like-minded group that held Wilberforce and Stephen, the Thorntons, Lord Teignmouth and Hannah More, and finally the meeting with Selina Heathcote, who now sat by his side, and the healing of that fierce loneliness which had cut the lines in his face that made people somewhat afraid of him. Tristram, however, was not one of these persons, though he had early realised that Papa was not quite the same on Sundays as on other days, connecting the fact with his known study of prophecy and with the puzzling distinction that was drawn between walking across the Common to church (which was permissible) and walking on the same portion of the earth's surface after church (which was not). But, after all, Sunday (with its sealskin alleviations in winter) was soon over, and thereafter Tristram was free, with his special friends Robert Wilberforce, little John Venn, and Tom Macaulay, to play by the Mount Pond and to explore the mysteries of the Common, or, if it was wet, reinforced by other Wilberforces and Venns, to engage in endless games of hide and seek up and down the big house, with its spreading lawns and aged elms, to which, three years before the old century had run out, John Hungerford had brought his bride. Mrs. Hungerford's chief characteristic was a charity that knew no bounds, so that it was in her drawing-room that Mr. Venn propounded his novel scheme of district visiting, and in her spare bedrooms that the unfortunate African lads, who were being educated as an experiment at Mr. Graves's school on the Common, were nursed back to life after having nearly died of pneumonia. And on a day in May, 1800, Tristram had made his own appearance under its roof, and now he himself, clad in a blue coat with white collar and ruffles, attended that academy with his small friends. Yet those earliest pictures of Evangelical Clapham, of his father pacing up and down the lawn under the elms in earnest talk with Mr. Wilberforce, of his mother smiling at her guests assembled round the great mahogany dining table (to meet, perhaps, Mrs. Hannah More or Mr. Gisborne of Yoxall, the famous preacher), were soon overlaid with others. In 1808 John Hungerford's health, shaken by his exertions for the General Abolition Act of the previous year, began to cause anxiety. The doctors recommended change of scene, and air more bracing than that of Clapham village, suggesting a temporary retirement to the neighbourhood of the Sussex or the Berkshire Downs. Mrs. Hungerford having a distant relative in the latter county—the young wife of the Rector of Compton Regis—and a suitable house at Compton Parva, the next village, falling vacant, this house was bought, the Hungerfords intending to divide their time between Clapham and Berkshire. But John Hungerford, worn out with his labours in the cause to which he had sacrificed everything, died a few months later, and Mrs. Hungerford, with her son, was left in circumstances considerably reduced. The large West Indian income reverted, on her husband's death, to other hands, and so the mansion at Clapham had to be sold, and the newly-acquired house at Compton became their permanent home. But at Compton, too, death had been busy, for the Rector was now a widower, almost inseparable from his baby girl. At Mrs. Hungerford's request he undertook to prepare Tristram for Eton. Herein he was carrying out her own wishes against those of her friends of the Common, who were inclined to regard public schools as nurseries of vice and Cambridge as the only tolerable University. Already Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Venn had urged tutors at home in preference to this scheme, and Mr. Zachary Macaulay had suggested that Tristram should accompany Tom to his private school in preparation for Cambridge. But all the Heathcotes from time immemorial had gone to Eton and Oxford, and Mrs. Hungerford, praying always against the spirit of worldliness, intended Tristram to follow the tradition. And so for three years Tristram rode his pony to the Rectory, and learnt to write Latin verse, while Mrs. Hungerford did her best to counteract the Rector's educational plans for his little daughter. Disappointed in his hopes of a son, Mr. Grenville said that there was no reason why Horatia should not be as good a scholar as any boy, and to this end she was to begin Latin at five and Greek at six, and meanwhile he gave her everything she wanted. But before Horatia had mastered Mensa, a table, the white pony had ceased its visits to the Rectory, for its rider was in his first term at school. Save for one thing, Eton did not bulk very large in Tristram's experience. He took with him there a questioning mind and a strong body. The first he soon learnt to disguise; the second brought him the thing that counted, his friend. Fond of all games, he gave himself assiduously to rowing, a sport then rather winked at than formally recognised by the authorities, and towards the end of his fourth year had attained the position of a captain. When selecting a crew for the Boats of the Fourth of June, he happened to cast his eye on a delicate-looking boy of his own age, above him in class, whose brilliant but rather uncertain oarsmanship he had once or twice observed, and, though he rather doubted his staying power, resolved to include him. Nor, when he asked him to take an oar in the Defiance, and Dormer, flushing with pleasure, had accepted, stoutly denying the imputation that he was not strong, had Tristram any idea that he himself had just performed the most pregnant action, perhaps, of his life. The Fourth of June came, and Tristram's recruit did not belie his promise, nor did he fail in the severer test of Election Saturday, when, amid fireworks and bell-ringing, the Defiance chased the Mars round and round Windsor Eyot and finally bumped her. It was not, indeed, until they had landed that Tristram's well-earned triumph was somewhat dashed by the news that Number Four had fainted, and that they could not bring him to. He ran back to find that not all the Thames water which was being ladled over his unconscious comrade was having any effect, and, conscience-stricken, he picked him up and went off with him in search of more skilled assistance, divided between alarm, admiration for his pluck, and a certain protective sensation quite new to him. To the end of his life he was always to entertain for Charles Dormer somewhat similar feelings. The result of it all was a verdict that the boy had slightly strained his heart and must pass a week in bed. The remorseful Tristram visited him daily, and thus, in talks more intimate than they could probably have compassed by other means, their friendship had its birth. Later, Tristram took Dormer home with him for the holidays, and the compassionate soul of Selina Hungerford was able to spend itself on the boy, who, she felt secretly sure, had never had a real mother. The time came at last for Tristram to go up to Oxford. In the selection of a college Mrs. Hungerford accepted the choice of Mr. Grenville, who voted unhesitatingly for Oriel. Copleston, the Provost, he had known and admired since undergraduate days, and he had followed the ascent of Oriel, under Provost Eveleigh, towards her present pre-eminence. He had seen her choose her Fellows for their intellectual promise rather than for their social qualities, and he had seen her force upon a University content hitherto with a farce, a system of real examination for the B.A. degree. He had also seen (though without quite realising its import) the gradual formation of that group of Fellows called the Noetics, who were products of the French Revolution though they were ignorant of the philosophy of the Continent, who, asking the why and the wherefore, pulled everything to pieces, and who had the temerity to apply even to religion itself the unfettered discussion meted out in Common Room to all subjects alike. Into this atmosphere of liberal thought the Rector was responsible for plunging the son of John Hungerford, born in the sacred village of Clapham, and destined by his parents for the ministry. The son of John Hungerford, however, was the last to complain of his immersion, especially as his friend, too, was entered at Oriel. That questioning spirit, which he had learnt to disguise at Eton, now found a suitable soil and blossomed accordingly. Tristram had, moreover, the fortune to fall for instruction to the great Whately himself, the Noetic of the Noetics, the "White Bear," who treated his pupils rather like the host of dogs which he took with him on his walks round Christ Church meadows, throwing stones for them into the Cherwell. With his boisterous humanity, his disturbing habit of launching Socratic questions, his almost equally disturbing habit of imparting information lying full length on a sofa, he kept the minds of his disciples in a continual ferment, and when, as in Tristram's case, the critical faculty was already highly developed, the result was so stimulating that an apt pupil might very well pass even beyond the ideas of his master. Above all things, Whately hated shams; he repudiated all authority, whether of the Church or of tradition, and held that there was nothing which should not be submitted to reason. Yet, in an Erastian age, he upheld the freedom of the Church from the State, though he denounced the priesthood as an invasion of Christian equality. He reduced dogma to a residuum, yet, for his able defence of that residuum, he might rank as a Christian apologist. His views at first appealed very strongly to Tristram, who thought that he was going to be able to reconcile reason, religion, learning, and the general scheme of things. But after a while he discovered that this process was not so easy, and Dormer, the High Churchman, was responsible for making it harder still. And at the end of his time at Oxford he found his opinions in such a state of flux that he determined to postpone taking Orders. Mrs. Hungerford, rather to the surprise of the conscience-stricken Rector, put no pressure on her son, and a noble lord writing at this juncture in search of a tutor for his heir, Tristram was glad to accept the post. Three years later, on his homeward way from the Continental tour which rounded off his time with his pupil, when choosing, at Brussels, a piece of lace for Horatia's approaching birthday (on which he had always given her a present), Tristram realised with a curious dismay that it was the eighteenth recurrence of this anniversary, that he had, of course, always intended to marry her, that applications for her hand might already have been made from other quarters—and accepted—and that he must get back at once. His charge was perhaps equally dismayed at the speed with which, next day, they resumed their homeward course. They need not have hastened. If the disappointed lover had not been obliged to consider his mother's suddenly threatened health, it would have gone even harder with him than it did. She who had always tended now needed tending, and had her illness been voluntary her unrivalled instinct for consolation could not have hit upon a means more healing. Tristram took her away to Hastings, and there, after eight months, she died. Doubly as the place was now painful to him, Tristram returned to Compton. His loss, however, had this effect, that it made intercourse with the Rectory more easy of resumption. Having sufficient means and no definite object for his energies he was thrown back upon himself. He had neither the money nor the inclination to stand for Parliament. His father's passion for the interests of the negro had not descended to him, but more and more the crying need of the English poor was forcing itself upon his attention. He would have liked to be able to take Orders and to immerse himself in activities in some growing town. As it was he found a shadow of consolation in studying the problem of Poor Law reform. He even wrote a pamphlet, "A remedy for the present distress," and, as a justice of the peace, he was active in the emigration schemes then so popular as a means of remedying the mischief caused by the insane administration of the Poor Law. But every day seemed emptier than the last. He saw Horatia frequently, but, disguise it as he might, this privilege was not entirely pleasurable. He had lost the mother to whom he was devoted, and now the Gospel according to Whately was beginning to fail him. Slowly and bitterly it came to him that the "manly, reasonable, moderate, not too other-worldly faith and practice" which had once satisfied him had done so only because he was young, and because things were going well with him. When he went in to Oxford to see Dormer, now in Orders and Fellow of Oriel, he came across Whately more than once, and felt the chill that one feels in meeting a person the glamour of whose influence has departed. But more and more he found himself a constant visitor at Oriel, until, as a privileged person, he came to be almost included in the circle of Dormer's friends there. These, without, exception, belonged to the new Oriel school, who were in reaction from speculation to authority, and, like John Keble, their guide, boldly placed character above intellect. Dormer never argued with him now, yet, imperceptibly, the leaven worked.... In the end it was Tristram's own need and his feeling for the needs of others which made him able to cut himself away from all "liberal" trammels and to rank himself under the same banner with the friend who had waited long and patiently for such a change of mind. During the summer term of 1830 he told Dormer that there was now no reason why he should not be ordained. He had told Dormer something else too—the something which he had been discussing this very evening with Mr. Grenville, the something which was engrossing his whole thoughts as he rode homewards under the infant moon—his intention of again asking Horatia to marry him. There had never been any other woman for him. He knew her very well; he was no stranger even to her faults—little flecks making more beautiful a beautiful flower, they seemed to him, for he had a profound belief in her, a sort of intuitive faith in the real, secret Horatia whom sometimes she seemed to delight in hiding up—the woman with a capacity for great things. And the more he knew her the more he desired her. The thought that, when the time seemed favourable, he was going to stake his happiness on another throw, shook him. It haunted his sleep that night in a harassing dream, relic of their conversation at supper, wherein he was feverishly trying to build up a dyke against a flood of water that poured and pushed upon it, and Horatia, dressed in the robes of the Provost of Oriel, was laughing at him and telling him not to be absurd, for the water had to come. Then, with her garden trowel, she had herself made a little breach in the bank, and at that a smooth wave had slipped over and carried her away, still laughing; and he woke, in a horror for which he could scarcely account, and lay wakeful till dawn. |
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