  On the day following Hester's death an inquest was held in the dining-room at Burwood. Meynell and old David, the shepherd, stood out chief among the witnesses. "This poor lady's name, I understand, sir," said the gray-haired Coroner, addressing Meynell, when the first preliminaries were over, "was Miss Hester Fox-Wilton; she was the daughter of the late Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton; she was under age; and you and Lady Fox-Wilton—who is not here, I am told, owing to illness—were her guardians?" Meynell assented. He stood to the right of the Coroner, leaning heavily on the chair before him. The doctor who had been called in to Hester sat beside him, and wondered professionally whether the witness would get through. "I understand also," the Coroner resumed, "that Miss Fox-Wilton had left the family in Paris with whom you and Lady Fox-Wilton had placed her, some three weeks ago, and that you have since been in search of her, in company I believe with Miss Fox-Wilton's aunt, Miss Alice Puttenham. Miss Puttenham, I hope, will appear?" The doctor rose— "I am strongly of opinion, sir, that, unless for most urgent reasons, Miss Puttenham should not be called upon. She is in a very precarious state, in consequence of grief and shock, and I should greatly fear the results were she to make the effort." Meynell intervened. "I shall be able, sir, I think, to give you sufficient information, without its being necessary to call upon Miss Puttenham." He went on to give an account, as guarded as he could make it, of Hester's disappearance from the family with whom she was boarding, of the anxiety of her relations, and the search that he and Miss Puttenham had made. His conscience was often troubled. Vaguely, his mind was pronouncing itself all the while—"It is time now the truth were known. It is better it should be known." Hester's death had changed the whole situation. But he could himself take no step whatever toward disclosure. And he knew that it was doubtful whether he should or could have advised Alice to take any. The inquiry went on, the Coroner avoiding the subject of Hester's French escapade as much as possible. After all there need be—there was—no question of suicide; only some explanation had to be suggested of the dressing-bag left within the garden gate, and of the girl's reckless climb into the fells, against old David's advice, on such an afternoon. Presently, in the midst of David's evidence, describing his meeting with Hester by the bridge, the handle of the dining-room door turned. The door opened a little way and then shut again. Another minute or two passed, and then the door opened again timidly as though some one were hesitating outside. The Coroner annoyed, beckoned to a constable standing behind the witnesses. But before he could reach it, a lady had slowly pushed it open, and entered the room. It was Alice Puttenham. The Coroner looked up, and the doctor rose in astonishment. Alice advanced to the table, and stood at the farther end from the Coroner, looking first at him and then at the jury. Her face—emaciated now beyond all touch of beauty—and the childish overhanging lip quivered as she tried to speak; but no words came. "Miss Puttenham, I presume?" said the Coroner. "We were told, madam, that you were not well enough to give evidence." Meynell was at her side. "What do you wish?" he said, in a low voice, as he took her hand. "I wish to give evidence," she said aloud. The doctor turned toward the Coroner. "I think you will agree with me, sir, that as Miss Puttenham has made the effort, she should give her evidence as soon as possible, and should give it sitting." A murmur of assent ran round the table. Over the weather-beaten Alice took her seat, and the oath. Meynell sitting opposite to her covered his face with his hands. He foresaw what she was about to do, and his heart went out to her. Everybody at the table bent forward to listen. The two shorthand writers lifted eager faces. "May I make a statement?" The thin voice trembled through the room. The Coroner assured the speaker that the Court was willing and anxious to hear anything she might have to say. Alice fixed her eyes on the old man, as though she would thereby shut out all his surroundings. "You are inquiring, sir—into the death—of my daughter." The Coroner made a sudden movement. "Your daughter, madam? I understood that, this poor young lady was the daughter of the late Sir Ralph and Lady Fox-Wilton?" "She was their adopted daughter. Her father was Mr. Neville Flood, and I—am her mother. Mr. Flood, of Sandford Abbey, died nearly twenty years ago. He and I were never married. My sister and brother-in-law adopted the child. She passed always as theirs, and when Sir Ralph died, he appointed—Mr. Meynell—and my sister her guardians. Mr. Meynell has always watched over her—and me. Mr. Flood was much attached to him. He wrote to Mr. Meynell, asking him to help us—just before his death." She paused a moment, steadying herself by the table. There was not a sound, not a movement in the room. Only Meynell uncovered his eyes and tried to meet hers, so as to give her encouragement. She resumed— "Last August the nurse who attended me—in my confinement—came home to Upcote. She made a statement to a gentleman there—a false statement—and then she died. I wished then to make the truth public—but Mr. Meynell—as Hester's guardian—and for her sake, as well as mine—did not wish it. She knew nothing—then; and he was afraid of its effect upon her. I followed his advice, and took her abroad, in order to protect her from a bad man who was pursuing her. We did all we could—but we were not able to protect her. They were married without my knowing—and she went away with him. Then he—this man—told her—or perhaps he had done it before, I don't know—who she was. I can only guess how he knew; but he is Mr. Flood's nephew. My poor child soon found out what kind of man he was. She tried to escape from him. And because Mrs. Elsmere had been always very kind to her, she came here. She knew how—" The voice paused, and then with difficulty shaped its words again. "She knew that we should grieve so terribly. She shrank from seeing us. She thought we might be here—and that—partly—made her wander away again—in despair—when she actually got here. But her death was a pure accident—that I am sure of. At the last, she tried to get home—to me. That was the only thing she was conscious of—before she fell. When she was dying—she told me she knew—I was her mother. And now—that she is dead—" The voice changed and broke—a sudden cry forced its way through— "Now that she is dead—no one else shall claim her—but me. She's mine now—my child—forever—only mine!" She broke off incoherently, bowing her head upon her hands, her slight shoulders shaken by her sobs. The room was silent, save for a rather general clearing of throats. Meynell signalled to the doctor. They both rose and went to her. Meynell whispered to her. The Coroner spoke, drawing his handkerchief hastily across his eyes. "The Court is very grateful to you, Miss Puttenham, for this frank and brave statement. We tender you our best thanks. There is no need for us to detain you longer." She rose, and Meynell led her from the room. Outside was a nurse to whom he resigned her. "My dear, dear friend!" Trembling, her eyes met the deep emotion in his. "That was right—that will bring you help. Aye! you have her now—all, all your own." On the day of Hester's burying Long Whindale lay glittering white under a fitful and frosty sunshine. The rocks and screes with their steep beds of withered heather made dark scrawls and scratches on the white; the smoke from the farmhouses rose bluish against the snowy wall of fell; and the river, amid the silence of the muffled roads and paths, seemed the only audible thing in the valley. In the tiny churchyard the new-made grave had been filled in with frozen earth, and on the sods lay flowers piled there by Rose Flaxman's kind and busy hands. She and Hugh had arrived from the south that morning. Another visitor had come from the south, also to lay flowers on that wintry grave. Stephen Barron's dumb pain was bitter to see. The silence of spiritual and physical exhaustion in which Meynell had been wrapped since the morning of the inquest was first penetrated and broken up by the sight of Stephen's anguish. And in the attempt to comfort the younger, the elder man laid hold on some returning power for himself. But he had been hardly hit; and the depth of the wound showed itself strangely—in a kind of fear of love itself, a fear of Mary! Meynell's attitude toward her during these days was almost one of shrinking. The atmosphere between them was electrical; charged with things unspoken, and a conflict that must be faced. * * * * * The day after Hester's funeral the newspapers were full of the sentence delivered on the preceding day, in the Arches Court, on Meynell and his co-defendants. A telegram from Darwen the evening before had conveyed the news to Meynell himself. The sentence of deprivation ab officio et beneficio in the Church of England, on the ground of heretical opinion and unauthorized services, had been expressed by the Dean of Arches in a tone and phraseology of considerable vehemence. According to him the proceedings of the Modernists were "as contrary to morality as to law," and he marvelled how "honest men" could consent to occupy the position of Meynell and his friends. Notice of appeal to the Privy Council was at once given by the Modernist counsel, and a flame of discussion arose throughout England. Meanwhile, on the morning following the publication of the judgment, Meynell finished a letter, and took it into the dining-room, where Rose and Mary were sitting. Rose, reading his face, disappeared, and he put the letter into Mary's hands. It was addressed to the Bishop of Dunchester. The great gathering in Dunchester Cathedral, after several postponements to match the delays in the Court of Arches, was to take place within a fortnight from this date, and Meynell had been everywhere announced as the preacher of the sermon, which was to be the battle-cry of the Movement, in the second period of its history; the period of open revolt, of hot and ardent conflict. The letter which Mary was invited to read was short. It simply asked that the writer should be relieved from a task he felt he could not adequately carry out. He desired to lay it down, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the cause. "I am not the man, and this is not my job. This conviction has been borne in upon me during the last few weeks with an amazing clearness. I will only say that it seems to represent a command—a prohibition—laid upon me, which I cannot ignore. There are of course tragic happenings and circumstances connected with it, my dear lord, on which I will not dwell. The effect of them at present on my mind is that I wish to retire from a public and prominent part in our great Movement; at any rate for a time. I shall carry through the Privy Council appeal; but except for that intend to refuse all public appearance. When the sentence is confirmed, as of course it will be, it will be best for me to confine myself to thinking and writing in solitude and behind the scenes. 'Those also serve who only stand and wait.' The quotation is hackneyed, but it must serve. Through thought and self-proving, I believe that in the end I shall help you best. I am not the fighter I thought I was; the fighter that I ought to be to keep the position that has been so generously given me. Forgive me for a while if I go into the wilderness—a rather absurd phrase, however, as you will agree, when I tell you that I am soon to marry a woman whom I love with my whole heart. But it applies to my connection with the Modernist Movement, and to my position as a leader. My old friends and colleagues—many of them at least—will, I fear, blame the step I am taking. It will seem to them a mere piece of flinching and cowardice. But each man's soul is in his own keeping; and he alone can judge his own powers." The letter then became a quiet discussion of the best man to be chosen in the writer's stead, and passed on into a review of the general situation created by the sentence of the Court of Arches. But of these later pages of the letter Mary realized nothing. She sat with it in her hands, after she had read the passage which has been quoted, looking down, her mouth trembling. Meynell watched her uneasily—then came to sit by her, and took her hand. "Dearest!—you understand?" he said, entreatingly. "It is—because of Hester?" She spoke with difficulty. He assented, and then added— "But that letter—shall only go with your permission." She took courage. "Richard, you know so much better than I, but—Richard!—did you ever neglect Hester?" He tried to answer her question truly. "Not knowingly." "Did you ever fail to love her, and try to help her?" He drew a long breath. "But there she lies!" He raised his head. Through the window, on a rocky slope, half a mile away, could be seen the tiny church of Long Whindale, and the little graveyard round it. "It is very possible that I see the thing morbidly"—he turned to her again with a note of humility, of sad appeal, that struck most poignantly on the woman's heart—"but I cannot resist it. What use can I be to any human being as guide, or prophet, or counsellor—if I was so little use to her? Is there not a kind of hypocrisy—a dismal hypocrisy—in my claim to teach—or inspire—great multitudes of people—when this one child—who was given into my care—" He wrung her hands in his, unable to finish his sentence. Bright tears stood in her eyes; but she persevered. She struck boldly for the public, the impersonal note. She set against the tragic appeal of the dead the equally tragic appeal of the living. She had in her mind the memory of that London church, with the strained upturned faces, the "hungry sheep"—girls among them, perhaps, in peril like Hester, men assailed by the same vile impulses that had made a brute of Philip Meryon. During the preceding months Mary's whole personality had developed with great rapidity, after a somewhat taciturn and slowly ripening youth. The need, enforced upon her by love itself, of asserting herself even against the mother she adored; the shadow of Meynell's cloud upon her, and her suffering under it, during the weeks of slander; and now this rending tragedy at her doors—had tempered anew the naturally high heart, and firm will. At this critical moment, she saved Meynell from a fatal step by the capacity she showed of loving his cause, only next to himself. And, indeed, Meynell was made wholesomely doubtful once or twice whether it were not in truth his cause she loved in him. For the sweet breakdowns of love which were always at her lips she banished by a mighty effort, till she should have won or lost. Thus throughout she showed herself her mother's daughter—with her father's thoughts. It was long, however, before she succeeded in making any real impression upon him. All she could obtain at first was delay, and that Catharine should be informed. As soon as that had been done, the position became once more curiously complex. Here was a woman to whom the whole Modernist Movement was anathema, driven finally into argument for the purpose of compelling the Modernist leader, the contriver and general of Modernist victory, to remain at his post! For it was part of Catharine's robust character to look upon any pledge, any accepted responsibility, as something not to be undone by any mere feeling, however sharp, however legitimate. You had undertaken the thing, and it must, at all costs, be carried through. That was the dominant habit of her mind; and there were persons connected with her on whom the rigidity of it had at times worked harshly. On this occasion it was no doubt interfered with—(the Spirit of Comedy would have found a certain high satisfaction in the dilemma)—by the fact that Meynell's persistence in the course he had entered upon must be, in her eyes, and sub specie religionis, a persistence in heresy and unbelief. What decided it ultimately, however, was that she was not only an orthodox believer, but a person of great common sense—and Mary's mother. Her natural argument was that after the tragic events which had occurred, and the public reports of them which had appeared, Meynell's abrupt withdrawal from public life would once more unsettle and confuse the public mind. If there had been any change in his opinions— "Oh! do not imagine"—she turned a suddenly glowing face upon him—"I should be trying to dissuade you, if that were your reason. No!—it is for personal and private reasons you shrink from the responsibility of leadership. And that being so, what must the world say—the ignorant world that loves to think evil?" He looked at her a little reproachfully. "Those are not arguments that come very naturally from you!" "They are the right ones!—and I am not ashamed of them. My dear friend—I am not thinking of you at all. I leave you out of count; I am thinking of Alice—and—Mary!" Catharine unconsciously straightened herself, a touch of something resentful—nay, stern—in the gesture. Meynell stared in stupefaction. "Alice!—Mary!" he said. "Up to this last proposed action of yours, has not everything that has happened gone to soften people's hearts? to make them repent doubly of their scandal, and their false witness? Every one knows the truth now—every one who cares; and every one understands. But now—after the effort poor Alice has made—after all that she and you have suffered—you insist on turning fresh doubt and suspicion on yourself, your motives, your past history. Can't you see how people may gossip about it—how they may interpret it? You have no right to do it, my dear Richard!—no right whatever. Your 'good report' belongs not only to yourself—but—to Mary!" Catharine's breath had quickened; her hand shook upon her knee. Meynell rose from his seat, paced the room and came back to her. "I have tried to explain to Mary"—he said, desperately—"that I should feel myself a hypocrite and pretender in playing the part of a spiritual leader—when this great—failure—lay upon my conscience." At that Catharine's tension gave way. Perplexity returned upon her. "Oh! if it meant—if it meant"—she looked at him with a sudden, sweet timidity—"that you felt you had tried to do for Hester what only grace—what only a living Redeemer—could do for her—" She broke off. But at last, as Meynell, her junior by fifteen years—her son almost—looked down into her face—her frail, aging, illumined face—there was something in the passion of her faith which challenged and roused his own; which for the moment, at any rate, and for the first time since the crisis had arisen revived in him the "fighter" he had tried to shed. "The fault was not in the thing preached," he said, with a groan; "or so it seems to me—but in the preacher. The preacher—was unequal to the message." Catharine was silent. And after a little more pacing he said in a more ordinary tone—and a humble one— "Does Mary share this view of yours?" At this Catharine was almost angry. "As if I should say a word to her about it! Does she know—has she ever known—what you and I knew?" His eyes, full of trouble, propitiated her. He took her hand and kissed it. "Bear with me, dear mother! I don't see my way, but Mary—is to me—my life. At any rate, I won't do in a hurry what you disapprove." Thus a little further delay was gained. The struggle lasted indeed another couple of days, and the aspect of both Meynell and Mary showed deep marks of it by the end. Throughout it Mary made little or no appeal to the mere womanly arts. And perhaps it was the repression of them that cost her most. On the third day of discussion, while the letter still lay unposted in Meynell's writing-case, he went wandering by himself up the valley. The weather was soft again, and breathing spring. The streams ran free; the buds were swelling on the sycamores; and except on the topmost crags the snow had disappeared from the fells. Harsh and austere the valley was still; the winter's grip would be slow to yield; but the turn of the year had come. That morning a rush of correspondence forwarded from Upcote had brought matters to a crisis. On the days immediately following the publication of the evidence given at the inquest on Hester the outside world had made no sign. All England knew now why Richard Meynell had disappeared from the Arches Trial, only to become again the prey of an enormous publicity, as one of the witnesses to the finding and the perishing of his young ward. And after Alice Puttenham's statement in the Coroner's Court, for a few days the England interested in Richard Meynell simply held its breath and let him be. But he belonged to the public; and after just the brief respite that decency and sympathy imposed, the public fell upon him. The Arches verdict had been given; the appeal to the Privy Council had been lodged. With every month of the struggle indeed, as the Modernist attack had grown more determined, and its support more widespread, so the orthodox defence had gathered force and vehemence. Yet through the length and breadth of the country the Modernist petition to Parliament was now kindling such a fire as no resistance could put out. Debate in the House of Commons on the Modernist proposals for Church Reform would begin after Easter. Already every member of the House was being bombarded from both sides by his constituents. Such a heat of religious feeling, such a passion of religious hope and fear, had not been seen in England for generations. And meanwhile Meynell, whose action had first released the great forces now at work, who as a leader was now doubly revered, doubly honoured by those who clamoured to be led by him, still felt himself utterly unable to face the struggle. Heart and brain were the prey of a deadly discouragement; the will could make no effort; his confidence in himself was lamed and helpless. Not even the growing strength and intensity of his love for Mary could set him, it seemed, spiritually, on his feet. He left the old bridge on his left, and climbed the pass. And as he walked, some words of Newman possessed him; breathed into his ear through all the wind and water voices of the valley: Thou to wax fierce Dejectedly, he made his way along the fatal path; he found the ruin where Hester had sheltered; he gradually identified the route which the rescue party had taken along the side of the fell; and the precipitous scree where they had found her. The freshly disturbed earth and stones still showed plainly where she had fallen, and where he and the shepherds had stood, trampling the ground round her. He sat down beside the spot, haunted by the grim memory of that helpless, bleeding form amid the snow. Not yet nineteen!—disgraced—ruined—the young body broken in its prime. Had he been able to do no better for Neville's child than that? The load of responsibility crushed him; and he could not resign himself to such a fate for such a human being. Before him, on the chill background of the tells, he beheld, perpetually, the two Hesters: here, the radiant, unmanageable child, clad in the magic of her teasing, provocative beauty; there, the haggard and dying girl, violently wrenched from life. Religious faith was paralyzed within him. How could he—a man so disowned of God—prophesy to his brethren?…. Thus there descended upon him the darkest hour of his history. It was simply a struggle for existence on the part of all those powers of the soul that make for action, against the forces that make for death and inertia. It lasted long; and it ended in the slow and difficult triumph, the final ascendency of the "Yeas" of Life over the "Nays," which in truth his character secured. He won the difficult fight not as a philosopher, but as a Christian; impelled, chastened, brought into line again, by purely Christian memories and Christian ideas. The thought of Christ healed him—gradually gave him courage to bear an agony of self-criticism, self-reproach, that was none the less overwhelming because his calmer mind, looking on, knew it to be irrational. There was no prayer to Christ, no "Christe eleison" on his rips. But there was a solemn kneeling by the Cross; a solemn opening of the mind to the cleansing and strengthening forces that flow from that life and death which are Christendom's central possession; the symbol through which, now understood in this way, now in that, the Eternal speaks to the Christian soul. So, amid "the cheerful silence of the fells," a good man, heavily, took back his task. From this wreck of affection, this ruin of hope, he must go forth to preach love and hope to other men; from the depths of his grief and his defeat he must summon others to struggle and victory. He submitted. Then—not till then—naked and stripped as he was of all personal complacency; smarting under the conviction of personal weakness and defeat; tormented still, as he would ever be, by all the "might have beens" of Hester's story, he was conscious of the "supersensual moment," the inrush of Divine strength, which at some time or other rewards the life of faith. On his way back to Burwood through the gleams and shadows of the valley, he turned aside to lay a handful of green moss on the new-made grave. There was a figure beside it. It was Mary, who had been planting snowdrops. He helped her, and then they descended to the main road together. Looking at his face, she hardly dared, close as his hand clung to hers, to break the silence. It was dusk, and there was no one in sight. In the shelter of a group of trees, he drew her to him. "You have your way," he said, sadly. She trembled a little, her delicate cheek close against his. "Have I persecuted you?" He smiled. "You have taught me what the strength of my wife's will is going to be." She winced visibly, and the tears came into her eyes. "Dearest!—" he protested. "Must you not be strong? But for you—I should have gone under." The primitive instinct of the woman, in this hour of painful victory, would have dearly liked to disavow her own power. The thought of ruling her beloved was odious. Yet as they walked on hand in hand, the modern in Mary prevailed, and she must needs accept the equal rights of a love which is also life's supreme friendship. A few more days Meynell spent in the quiet of the valley, recovering, as best he could, and through a struggle constantly renewed, some normal steadiness of mood and nerve; dealing with an immense correspondence; and writing the Dunchester sermon; while Stephen Barron, who had already resigned his own living, was looking after the Upcote Church and parish. Meanwhile Alice Puttenham lay upstairs in one of the little white rooms of Burwood, so ill that the doctors would not hear of her being moved. Edith Fox-Wilton had proposed to come and nurse her, in spite of "this shocking business which had disgraced us all." But Catharine at Alice's entreaty had merely appealed to the indisputable fact that the tiny house was already more than full. There was no danger, and they had a good trained nurse. Once or twice it was, in these days, that again a few passing terrors ran through Mary's mind, on the subject of her mother. The fragility which had struck Meynell's unaccustomed eye when he first arrived in the valley forced itself now at times, though only at times, on her reluctant sense. There were nights when, without any definite reason, she could not sleep for anxiety. And then again the shadow entirely passed away. Catharine laughed at her; and when the moment came for Mary to follow Meynell to the Dunchester meeting, it was impossible even for her anxious love to persuade itself that there was good reason for her to stay away. * * * * * Before Meynell departed southward there was a long conversation between him and Alice; and it was at her wish, to which he now finally yielded, that he went straight to Markborough, to an interview with Bishop Craye. |
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