I

The next morning poor Cecily felt strangely forlorn. Somehow, this did not seem like Christmas Day. Wantley, haggard, but smiling, after his long night's vigil, had declared that the state of the roads made it out of the question that they should drive the six miles to the nearest Catholic church, and she had submitted without a word, only insisting that he should have some hours of sleep.

And then, after having knelt down by the fire in the spacious room which had been prepared for her, when she had read the service of the Mass and said her rosary, she sent a message to Lady Wantley asking if she could come to her.

The mistress of Marston Lydiate was still in bed, and in the wintry morning light Cecily saw with a pang how aged and how ailing her old friend had become, but the look of intolerable distress and terror had gone from the pale, delicate face.

'Do you know, my dear, what day this is—I mean, what day this is to me?'

'Yes,' said Cecily, smiling: 'I know that it is Penelope's birthday, as well as Christmas Day.'

Lady Wantley raised herself in bed. She put her arms round the younger woman and kissed her. 'I know how it is with you,' she whispered, 'and, oh, I am so glad! Do you know how long I myself had to wait?' And then, receiving no answer, she added: 'Nineteen years! That was the only shadow on my singularly happy, blessed life; but it was a shadow which sometimes darkened everything. I only once spoke to him—to my husband, I mean—on the matter, for in those days we women seldom spoke of our feelings. I had been ill, some trifling ailment, and he came and sat by me in this room, just where you are sitting now, and suddenly I told him of my longing for a child. I was foolish and repining, alas! for you must know, my dear, that I grieved for his sake as well as for my own. I have often thought, this last year, lying here, of what he answered. He looked at me so kindly. "Am I not more to thee than ten sons?" he asked; and I felt infinitely comforted.

'And then'—Cecily spoke softly—'Penelope was born?'

'Ah no, not then!' said Lady Wantley, with the literalness which sometimes suddenly came to her. 'Many years had to go by first. But when she came it was on Christmas morning.' She shaded her eyes with her left hand. 'Not a day like this,' she whispered. 'It was a warm, sunny, green Christmas that year; I remember it all so well. Ludovic's mother came up to see me after church. You know we were never really intimate; I fear she did not like me. But she was very kind that day. All women feel in sympathy with one another on such days, and Mrs. Wantley's love for her own son made her know what my daughter would be to me.' Lady Wantley hesitated, and then, as if speaking to herself, added: 'How often I have looked at my beloved child—my beautiful gifted Penelope—and prayed God to comfort childless women.' Then suddenly the speaker's face contracted, and she looked at Cecily as if wishing to compel her to speak truly. 'Is it well with my child?' she asked. 'Tell me what you think, what you know of her? I know you love her dearly.'

'I know nothing, and cannot tell what to think.' The answer was slow, reluctant, and truthful.

Lady Wantley turned and searched under her pillow. Silently she handed Cecily a letter, wistfully watched her read it. 'Doubtless she writes more fully to you, her friend, than to me, her mother,' she said at last; but Cecily remained silent while glancing perplexed, over the short, dry, though not unaffectionate note. 'There is a postscript on the other side of the sheet. Perhaps you knew already that David Winfrith was with her?'

On the last sheet of foreign note-paper were written in Mrs. Robinson's clear, pointed handwriting the words: 'David Winfrith is in Bombay. He is coming up to see me in a few days.'

'We acted very wrongly,' said Lady Wantley, in a low tone. 'He—my husband—now knows that we were not rightly guided in the matter. We were swayed by considerations of no real moment. She loved David then; she was very steadfast. It was he who gave way. Lord Wantley sent for him and made him withdraw his offer. Do you think that now—— Ah, Cecily, if I could only hope to leave Penelope in so safe a haven!'

Cecily's lips quivered. Not even to comfort her old friend could she, or would she, say what she believed to be false. To her simple heart such love as that once avowed to herself by Penelope for Downing could not change or die away. It might be thrust back out of sight at the call of conscience, but the void could never be filled by another man.

David Winfrith? Why, Penelope had often laughed at him in the old happy days when she, Cecily, was first at the Settlement. Oh no! David Winfrith might follow Mrs. Robinson all over the world, but Penelope would ever keep outside the haven offered by him, if, indeed—and again a flash of remembrance crossed her mind—such haven was still open to her.

She could say nothing comfortable, and so kept silent, but her troubled look answered for her. Lady Wantley drew a long, sharp breath. 'I cannot hope,' she muttered, 'to be wholly forgiven.'

II

There are certain days and festivals when every association of the heart confirms the truth of the old saying that any company is better than none. So felt Wantley and Cecily sitting down to their lonely Christmas dinner—or lunch, as Mr. Jenkins more genteelly put it—in the vast dining-room, where, as the same authority assured Cecily, 'fifty could sit down easy.'

Had these two not been at Marston Lydiate, they would now have been at the Settlement, Wantley doubtless grumbling, man-like, to himself because he was not spending Christmas Day alone, by his own fireside, with his own wife. But to-day even he felt the silence of the great house oppressive, and early in the afternoon he assented with eagerness to Cecily's proposal that they should walk down to the village and see the church where, as she reminded him, he had been baptized.

Mrs. Moss, the housekeeper, and Mr. Jenkins, the butler, standing together by the window in the butler's pantry—which was from their point of view most agreeably situated, for it commanded the entrance to the house—watched the young couple set off from under the portico.

They were talking together rather eagerly, Cecily flushed and smiling. 'It's easy to see they have not long been married,' said the housekeeper with a soft sigh. 'Still plenty to say, I expect.'

But young Lady Wantley was shaking her head, and as she and her husband passed on their way, within but a few feet of the window behind which stood the couple who were looking at them with such affectionate interest, she exclaimed rather loudly: 'Oh, Ludovic, how can you say such a thing! I don't agree with you at all!'

'Ho, ho, a tiff!' whispered Mr. Jenkins with gloomy satisfaction; but Mrs. Moss turned on him very sharply.

'Stuff and nonsense!' she said; 'that's only to show she's not his slave. Why, that girl Charlotte Pidder—her ladyship's lady's-maid I suppose she fancies herself to be, though, from what I can make out, she can't neither do hairdressing nor dressmaking—was telling me this morning that they fairly dote on one another. There now, look at them! There's a pretty sight for you!'

The walkers had come to a standstill, and Wantley taking his wife's hand, was trying to put it through his arm. 'I will not touch your sacred idol!' the eavesdroppers heard him say, 'In future I will always keep my real thoughts to myself.'

'Well, of all things! If the old lord could only hear them!' whispered Mrs. Moss, now really scandalized. 'It do seem a pity that such a nice young lady should be a Papist, and should try and make him a worshipper of idols, too.' And she turned away, for the two outside had quickened their steps, and were no longer within earshot.

Cecily was still indignant. 'I only wish,' she said, her voice trembling a little, 'that you were right and I wrong. If only Penelope would marry Mr. Winfrith, and live happy ever after——'

'I did not promise you that,' said Wantley mildly, 'though, mind you, I think she would have a better chance with him than with anyone else.'

'But why should she marry at all?' cried Cecily. 'I quite understand why her mother would like her to do so, but surely, after all that happened——'

Wantley shot a keen glance at his companion. 'Wonderful,' he murmured, 'the effect of even one night's good country air! You look much better, and even prettier, that you did yesterday.'

Cecily smiled. Praise from him always sounded very sweetly in her ear, but, 'No, no!' she said, 'I won't let you off! Tell me why Penelope is not to remain as she is if she wishes to do so?'

'There are a hundred reasons, with most of which I certainly shall not trouble you; but the best of them all is that, however much she wishes it, she will not be able to do so.'

'And pray, why not?' asked Cecily.

'If Winfrith doesn't succeed in carrying her off, someone infinitely less worthy certainly will, and then all our troubles will begin again. Don't you see—or is it, as I sometimes suspect, that you won't see?'—his voice suddenly grew grave—'that Penelope is never content, never even approximately happy, unless she is'—he hesitated, then went on, avoiding as he spoke the candid eyes lifted up to his in such eager, perplexed inquiry—'well, unless she has some man, or, better still, several men, in play? Now, that sort of game—oh! but I mean it: with her it has always been a game, and a game only becomes absorbing and exciting when there is present the element of danger—generally ends in disaster.'

Cecily walked on in silence. 'I admit there is some truth in what you say,' she said at last; 'but I am sure, sure, Ludovic, that you are wrong about Mr. Winfrith.'

Wantley looked at her thoughtfully. 'A bet, a little bet, my dearest, is a very good way of proving the faith that is in you. Here and now I propose that, if I prove right and you prove wrong after, let us say, two years——'

'Please—please,' she said, 'do not make a joke of this matter; it hurts me.'

'Forgive me,' he cried repentantly. 'I am rather light-headed to-day, and you know I always feel rather jealous of Penelope. After all that's come and gone, it's rather hard that she should take also my wife from me!'

III

Of the many ill things done in the name of beauty during the last hundred years, none, surely, can compare in sheer wantonness with the restorations of our old village churches. In this matter pious iconoclasts have wrought more mischief than Cromwell and his Ironsides ever succeeded in doing, and the lover of rural England, in the course of his pilgrimage, has perpetually thrust on his notice the loveliness without, wedded to the plaintive ugliness within, of buildings raised to the glory of God in a more creative as well as in a holier age than ours.

Here and there, becoming, however, pitifully few as time goes on, the seeker may even now find a village church to the interior of which no desecration has as yet been offered. But such survivals owe their temporary lease of life either to the happy indifference of a wise neighbourhood, or to the determined eccentricity and obstinate conservatism of an incumbent happening to be on intimate terms of friendship—or enmity will serve as well—with the patron of the living.

Such had been the fortunate case of the parish church of Marston Lydiate, and Wantley felt a thrill of pleasure when he saw how completely untouched everything had been left since the distant days of his childhood.

Together he and his wife made their way among the square old-fashioned pews, first to one and then to another of the holly-decked tombs and monuments of long-dead Wantleys. At last the young man led Cecily up to the most ancient, as also to the most ornate, of these, one taking up the greater part of one aisle.

The monument represented Sir George Wantley, of Marston Lydiate, Knight, who in the year 1609 had rebuilt the church. His effigy in armour, bare-headed and kneeling, was under a pillared canopy, and at some little distance was the statue of his wife under a similar canopy. The inscription set forth that their married life, if brief, had been unclouded by dissension, and that 'His lady, left alone, lived alone,' till, having attained her eightieth year, 'she was again joined unto her husband in this place.'

'So,' said Wantley, very soberly, 'would you wish our poor Penelope to be. She has been left alone, and now you would condemn her to live alone.'

But Cecily made no answer. She only looked very kindly at the stiff figure of the steadfast dame whose name she now herself bore, and whose conduct she so thoroughly understood and approved.

As they walked through the church gate, a boy came running up breathless. He held a telegram in his hand, and began, in the native dialect, an involved explanation as to why it had not been delivered before.

'Oh, it's addressed to you,' said Wantley, handing it to his wife.

Cecily opened it. 'I don't understand,' she began, but he saw her cheeks turn bright pink. 'I don't think it can be meant for me at all.'

Wantley looked over her shoulder. 'It certainly is not meant for you,' he said dryly.

The message, which had been sent from Simla, consisted in the words:

'Penelope and I were married to-day by Archdeacon of Lahore. Please have proper announcement put in Times.—Your affectionate son, David Winfrith.'

Wantley and Cecily looked at one another in silence. Then, fumbling about in his pocket, the young man finally handed the astonished and gratified boy half a sovereign. 'It's fair that someone should win the bet,' he said, with a queer whimsical smile, and then, after the recipient of his bounty had gone off, he added: 'Well, Cecily?'

'You are always right, and I am always wrong,' she cried, half laughing, and yet her eyes filling with tears. 'But, oh! do let us hurry back and give this to Lady Wantley. I shall have to explain to her how stupid it was of me to open it.'

They walked along in almost complete silence, till suddenly Wantley said musingly: 'I wonder how much David Winfrith knows—I wonder if she has told him——'

But Cecily looked up at him very reproachfully, and as if she herself were being accused—of what? 'There was very little to know,' she said vehemently, 'and very, very little to tell.'

'If you make half as good a wife as you are friend,' exclaimed Wantley, 'I shall be more than content.'

THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH