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The Case of Richard Meynell

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> The Case of Richard Meynell




"No, dear--no. I'm--I'm better alone. Good night, kind angel. It's
nothing"--she raised herself in the chair--"only bad nights! I'll go to
bed--that'll be best. Go down--give him tea. And Mrs. Flaxman's going
with you?"

"No. Mother said she wished to go," said Mary, slowly. "She and I were to
meet in the village."

Alice nodded feebly, too weak to show the astonishment she felt.

"Just time. The meeting is at seven."

Then with a sudden movement--"Hester!--is she gone?"

"I met her and the maid--in the village--as I came in."

A silence--till Alice roused herself again--"Go dear, don't miss the
meeting. I--I want you to be there. Good night."

And she gently pushed the girl from her, putting up her pale lips to be
kissed, and asking that the little parlour-maid should be sent to help
her undress.

Mary went unwillingly. She gave Miss Puttenham's message to the maid, and
when the girl had gone up to her mistress she lingered a moment at the
foot of the stairs, her hands lightly clasped on her breast, as though to
quiet the stir within.

* * * * *

Meynell, expecting to see the lady of the house, could not restrain the
start of surprise and joy with which he turned toward the incomer. He
took her hand in his--pressing it involuntarily. But it slipped away, and
Mary explained with her soft composure why she was there alone--that Miss
Puttenham was suffering from a succession of bad nights and was keeping
her room--that she sent word the Rector must please rest a little before
going home, and allow Mary to give him tea.

Meynell sank obediently into a chair by the open window, and Mary
ministered to him. The lines of his strong worn face relaxed. His look
returned to her again and again, wistfully, involuntarily; yet not so as
to cause her embarrassment.

She was dressed in some thin gray stuff that singularly became her; and
with the gray dress she wore a collar or ruffle of soft white that gave
it a slight ascetic touch. But the tumbling red-gold of the hair, the
frank dignity of expression, belonged to no mere cloistered maid.

Meynell heard the news of Miss Puttenham's collapse with a sigh--checked
at birth. He asked few questions about it; so Mary reflected afterward.
He would come in again on the morrow, he said, to inquire for her. Then,
with some abruptness, he asked whether Hester had been much seen at the
cottage during the preceding week.

Mary reported that she had been in and out as usual, and seemed
reconciled to the prospect of Paris.

"Are you--is Miss Puttenham sure that she hasn't still been meeting that
man?"

Mary turned a startled look upon him.

"I thought he had gone away?"

"There may be a stratagem in that. I have been keeping what watch I
could--but at this time--what use am I?"

The Rector threw himself back wearily in his chair, his hands behind his
head. Mary was conscious of some deep throb of feeling that must not come
to words. Even since she had known it the face had grown older--the
lines deeper--the eyes finer. She stooped forward a little.

"It is hard that you should have this anxiety too. Oh! but I _hope_ there
is no need!"

He raised himself again with energy.

"There is always need with Hester. Oh! don't suppose I have forgotten
her! I have written to that fellow, my cousin. I went, indeed, to see him
the day before yesterday, but the servants at Sandford declared he had
gone to town, and they were packing up to follow. Lady Fox-Wilton and
Miss Alice here have been keeping a close eye on Hester herself, I know;
but if she chose, she could elude us all!"

"She couldn't give such pain--such trouble!" cried Mary indignantly.

The Rector shook his head sadly. Then he looked at his companion.

"Has she made a friend of you? I wish she would."

"Oh! she doesn't take any account of me," said Mary, laughing. "She is
quite kind to me--she tells me when she thinks my frock is hideous--or
my hat's impossible--or she corrects my French accent. She is quite kind,
but she would no more think of taking advice from me than from the
sofa-cushion."

Meynell shrugged his shoulders.

"She has no bump of respect--never had!" and he began to give a half
humorous account of the troubles and storms of Hester's bringing up. "I
often ask myself whether we haven't all--whether I, in particular,
haven't been a first-class bungler and blundered all through with regard
to Hester. Did we choose the wrong governesses? They seemed most
estimable people. Did we thwart her unnecessarily? I can't remember a
time when she didn't have everything she wanted!"

"She didn't get on very well with her father?" suggested Mary timidly.

Meynell made a sudden movement, and did not answer for a moment.

"Sir Ralph and she were always at cross-purposes," he said at last. "But
he was kind to her--according to his lights; and--he said some very sound
and touching things to me about her--on his death-bed."

There was a short silence. Meynell had covered his eyes with his hand.
Mary was at a loss how to continue the conversation, when he resumed:

"I wonder if you will understand how strangely this anxiety weighs upon
me--just now."

"Just now?"

"Here am I preaching to others," he said slowly, "leading what people
call a religious movement, and this homely elementary task seems to be
all going wrong. I don't seem to be able to protect this child confided
to me."

"Oh, but you will protect her!" cried Mary, "you will! She mayn't seem to
give way--when you talk to her; but she has said things to me--to my
mother too--"

"That shows her heart isn't all adamant? Well, well!--you're a comforter,
but--"

"I mean that she knows--I'm sure she does--what you've done for her--how
you've cared for her," said Mary, stammering a little.

"I have done nothing but my plainest, simplest duty. I have made
innumerable mistakes; and if I fail with her, it's quite clear that I'm
not fit to teach or lead anybody."

The words were spoken with an impatient emphasis to which Mary did not
venture a reply. But she could not restrain an expression in her gray
eyes which was a balm to the harassed combatant beside her.

They said no more of Hester. And presently Mary's hunger for news of
the Reform Movement could not be hid. It was clear she had been reading
everything she could on the subject, and feeding upon it in a loneliness,
and under a constraint, which touched Meynell profoundly. The conflict
in her between a spiritual heredity--the heredity of her father's
message--and her tender love for her mother had never been so plain to
him. Yet he could not feel that he was abetting any disloyalty in
allowing the conversation. She was mature. Her mind had its own rights!

Mary indeed, unknown to him, was thrilling under a strange and secret
sense of deliverance. Her mother's spiritual grip upon her had relaxed;
she moved and spoke with a new though still timid sense of freedom.

So once again, as on their first meeting, only more intimately, her
sympathy, her quick response, led him on. Soon lying back at his ease,
his hands behind his head, he was painting for her the progress of the
campaign; its astonishing developments; the kindling on all sides of the
dry bones of English religion.

The new--or re-written--Liturgy of the Reform was, it seemed, almost
completed. From all parts: from the Universities, from cathedral
cloisters, from quiet country parishes, from the clash of life in the
great towns, men had emerged as though by magic to bring to the making of
it their learning and their piety, the stored passion of their hearts.
And the mere common impulse, the mere release of thoughts and aspirations
so long repressed, had brought about an extraordinary harmony, a
victorious selflessness, among the members of the commission charged with
the task. The work had gone with rapidity, yet with sureness, as in those
early years of Christianity, which saw so rich and marvellous an upgrowth
from the old soil of humanity. With surprising ease and spontaneity the
old had passed over into the new; just as in the first hundred years
after Christ's death the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the
later Judaism had become, with but slight change, the psalms and hymns of
Christianity; and a new sacred literature had flowered on the stock of
the old.

"To-night--here!--we submit the new marriage service and the new burial
service to the Church Council. And the same thing will be happening, at
the same moment, in all the churches of the Reform--scattered through
England."

"How many churches now?" she asked, with a quickened breath.

"Eighteen in July--this week, over a hundred. But before our cases come
on for trial there will be many more. Every day new congregations come in
from new dioceses. The beacon fire goes leaping on, from point to point!"

But the emotion which the phrase betrayed was instantly replaced by the
business tone of the organizer as he went on to describe some of the
practical developments of the preceding weeks: the founding of a
newspaper; the collection of propagandist funds; the enrolment of
teachers and missionaries, in connection with each Modernist church. Yet,
at the end of it all, feeling broke through again.

"They have been wonderful weeks!--wonderful! Which of us could have hoped
to see the spread of such a force in the dusty modern world! You remember
the fairy story of the prince whose heart was bound with iron bands--and
how one by one, the bands give way? I have seen it like that--in life
after life."

"And the fighting?"

She had propped her face on her hands, and her eyes, with their eager
sympathy, their changing lights, rained influence on the man beside her;
an influence insensibly mingling with and colouring the passion for ideas
which held them both in its grip.

"--Has been hot--will be of course infinitely hotter still! But yet,
again and again, with one's very foes, one grasps hands. They seem to
feel with us 'the common wave'--to be touched by it--touched by our hope.
It is as though we had made them realize at last how starved, how shut
out, we have been--we, half the thinking nation!--for so long!"

"Don't--don't be too confident!" she entreated. "Aren't you--isn't it
natural you should miscalculate the forces against you? Oh! they are so
strong! and--and so noble."

She drew in her breath, and he understood her.

"Strong indeed," he said gravely. "But--"

Then a smile broke in.

"Have I been boasting? You see some signs of swelled head? Perhaps you
are right. Now let me tell you what the other side are doing. That
chastens one! There is a conference of Bishops next week; there was one
a week ago. These are of course thundering resolutions in Convocation.
The English Church Union has an Albert Hall meeting; it will be
magnificent. A 'League of the Trinity' has started against us, and will
soon be campaigning all over England. The orthodox newspapers are all in
full cry. Meanwhile the Bishops are only waiting for the decision of my
case--the test case--in the lower court to take us all by detachments.
Every case, of course, will go ultimately to the Supreme Court--the Privy
Council. A hundred cases--that will take time! Meanwhile--from us--a
monster petition--first to the Bishops for the assembling of a full
Council of the English Church, then to Parliament for radical changes in
the conditions of membership of the Church, clerical and lay."

Mary drew in her breath.

"You _can't_ win! you _can't_ win!"

And he saw in her clear eyes her sorrow for him and her horror of the
conflict before him.

"That," he said quietly, "is nothing to us. We are but soldiers under
command."

He rose; and, suddenly, she realized with a fluttering heart how empty
that room would be when he was gone. He held out his hand to her.

"I must go and prepare what I have to say to-night. The Church Council
consists of about thirty people--two thirds of them will be miners."

"How is it _possible_ that they can understand you?" she asked him,
wondering.

"You forget that half of them I have taught from their childhood. They
are my spiritual brothers, or sons--picked men--the leaders of their
fellows--far better Christians than I. I wish you could see them--and
hear them." He looked at her a little wistfully.

"I am coming," she said, looking down.

His start of pleasure was very evident.

"I am glad," he said simply; "I want you to know these men."

"And my mother is coming with me."

Her voice was constrained. Meynell felt a natural surprise. He paused an
instant, and then said with gentle emphasis:

"I don' think there will be anything to wound her. At any rate, there
will be nothing new, or strange--to _her_--in what is said to-night."

"Oh, no!" Then, after a moment's awkwardness, she said, "We shall soon be
going away."

His face changed.

"Going away? I thought you would be here for the winter!"

"No. Mother is so much better, we are going to our little house in the
Lakes, in Long Whindale. We came here because mother was ill--and Aunt
Rose begged us. But--"

"Do you know"--he interrupted her impetuously--"that for six months I've
had a hunger for just one fortnight up there among the fells?"

"You love them?" Her face bloomed with pleasure. "You know the dear
mountains?"

He smiled.

"It doesn't do to think of them, does it? You should see the letters on
my table! But I may have to take a few days' rest, some time. Should I
find you in Long Whindale--if I dropped down on you--over Goat Scar?"

"Yes--from December till March!" Then she suddenly checked the happiness
of her look and tone. "I needn't warn you that it rains."

"Doesn't it rain! And everybody pretends it doesn't. The lies one tells!"

She laughed.

They stood looking at each other. An atmosphere seemed to have sprung up
round them in which every tone and movement had suddenly become
magnified--significant.

Meynell recovered himself. He held out his hand in farewell, but he had
scarcely turned away from her, when she made a startled movement toward
the open window.

"What is that?"

There was a sound of shouting and running in the street outside. A
crowd seemed to be approaching. Meynell ran out into the garden to
listen. By this time the noise had grown considerably, and he thought
he distinguished his own name among the cries.

"Something has happened at the colliery!" he said to Mary, who had
followed him.

And he hurried toward the gate, bareheaded, just as a gray-haired lady in
black entered the garden.

"Mother," cried Mary, in amazement.

Catharine Elsmere paused--one moment; she looked from her daughter to
Meynell. Then she hurried to the Rector.

"You are wanted!" she said, struggling to get her breath. "A terrible
thing has happened. They think four lives have been lost--some accident
to the cage--and people blame the man in charge. They've got him shut up
in the colliery office--and declare they'll kill him. The crowd looks
dangerous--and there are very few police. I heard you were here--some
one, the postman, saw you come in--you must stop it. The people will
listen to you."

Her fine, pale face, framed in her widow's veil, did not so much ask as
command. He replied by a gesture--then by two or three rapid inquiries.
Mary--bewildered--saw them for an instant as allies and equals, each
recognizing the other. Then Meynell ran to the gate, and was at once
swallowed up in the moving groups which had gathered there, and seemed to
carry him back with them toward the colliery.

Catharine Elsmere turned to follow--Mary at her side. Mary looked at her
in anxiety, dreading the physical strain for one, of late, so frail.

"Mother darling!--ought you?"

Catharine took no heed whatever of the question.

"It is the women who are so terrible," she said in a low voice, as they
hurried on; "their faces were like wild beasts. They have telephoned to
Cradock for police. If Mr. Meynell can keep them in check for half an
hour, there may be hope."

They ran on, swept along by the fringe of the crowd till they reached the
top of a gentle descent at the farther end of the village. At the bottom
of this hill lay the colliery, with its two huge chimneys, its shed and
engine houses, its winding machinery, and its heaps of refuse. Within the
enclosure, from the height where they stood, could be seen a thin line of
police surrounding a small shed--the pay-office. On the steps of it stood
the manager, and the Rector, to be recognized by his long coat and his
bare head, had just joined him. Opposite to the police, and separated
from the shed by about ten yards and a wooden paling, was a threatening
and vociferating mob, which stretched densely across the road and up the
hill on either side; a mob largely composed of women--dishevelled,
furious women--their white faces gleaming amid the coal-blackened forms
of the miners.

"They'll have 'im out," said a woman in front of Mary Elsmere. "Oh, my
God!--they'll have 'im out! It was he caused the death of the boy--yo
mind 'im--young Jimmy Ragg--a month sen; though the crowner's jury did
let 'im off, more shame to them! An' now they say as how he signalled for
'em to bring up the men from the Albert pit afore he'd made sure as the
cage in the Victory pit was clear!"

"Explain to me, please," said Mary, touching the woman's arm.

Half a dozen turned eagerly upon her.

"Why, you see, miss, as the two cages is like buckets in a well--the yan
goes down, as the other cooms up. An' there's catches as yo mun knock
away to let 'un go down--an' this banksman--ee's a devil!--he niver so
much as walked across to the other shaft to see--an' theer was the
catches fast--an' instead o' goin' down, theer was the cage stuck, an'
the rope uncoilin' itsel', and fallin' off the drum--an' foulin' the
other rope--An' then all of a suddent, just as them poor fellows wor
nearin' top--the drum began to work t'other way--run backards, you
unnerstan?--an' the engineman lost 'is head an' niver thowt to put on
t'breaks--an'--oh! Lord save us!--whether they was drownt at t'bottom
i' the sump, or killt afore they got theer--theer's no one knows
yet--They're getten of 'em up now."

And as she spoke, a great shout which became a groan ran through the
crowd. Men climbed up the railings at the side of the road that they
might see better. Women stood on tiptoe. A confused clamour came from
below, and in the colliery yard there could be seen a gruesome sight;
four stretchers, borne by colliers, their burdens covered from view.
Beside them were groups of women and children and in front of them the
crowd made way. Up the hill they came, a great wail preceding and
surrounding them; behind them the murmurs of an ungovernable indignation.

As the procession neared them Mary saw a gray-haired woman throw up her
arm, and heard her cry out in a voice harsh and hideous with excitement:

"Let 'im as murdered them pay for't! What's t' good o' crowner's
juries?--Let's settle it oursel's!"

Deep murmurs answered her.

"And it's this same Jenkins," said another fierce voice, "as had a sight
to do wi' bringin' them blacklegs down here, in the strike, last autumn.
He's been a great man sense, has Jenkins, wi' the masters; but he sha'n't
murder our husbinds and sons for us, while he's loafin' round an' playin'
the lord--not he! Have they got 'un safe?"

"Aye, he's in the pay-house safe enough," shouted another--a man. "An' if
them as is defendin' of 'un won't give 'un up, there's ways o' makin'
them."

The procession of the dead approached--all the men baring their
heads, and the women wailing. In front came a piteous group--a young
half-fainting wife, supported by an older woman, with children clinging
to her skirts. Catharine went forward, and lifted a baby or two that was
being dragged along the ground. Mary took up another child, and they both
joined the procession.

As they did so, there was a shout from below.

Mary, white as her dress, asked an elderly miner beside her, who had
shown no excitement whatever, to tell her what had happened. He clambered
up on the bank to look and came back to her.

"They've beaten 'un back, miss," he said in her ear. "They've got the
surface men to help, and Muster Meynell he's doing his best; if there's
anybody can hold 'em, he can; but there's terrible few on 'em. It is time
as the Cradock men came up. They'll be trying fire before long, an' the
women is like devils."

On went the procession into the village, leaving the fight behind them.
In Mary's heart, as she was pushed and pressed onward, burnt the memory
of Meynell on the steps--speaking, gesticulating--and the surging crowd
in front of him.

There was that to do, however, which deadened fear. In the main street
the procession was met by hurrying doctors and nurses. For those broken
bodies indeed--young men in their prime--nothing could be done, save to
straighten the poor limbs, to wash the coal dust from the strong faces,
and cover all with the white linen of death. But the living--the crushed,
stricken living--taxed every energy of heart and mind. Catharine,
recognized at once by the doctors as a pillar of help, shrank from no
office and no sight, however terrible. But she would not permit them to
Mary, and they were presently separated.

Mary had a trio of sobbing children on her knee, in the living-room of
one of the cottages, when there was a sudden tramp outside. Everybody in
Miners' Row, including those who were laying out the dead, ran to the
windows.

"The police from Cradock!"--fifty of them.

The news passed from mouth to mouth, and even those who had been maddest
half an hour before felt the relief of it.

Meanwhile detachments of shouting men and women ran clattering at
intervals through the village streets. Sometimes stragglers from them
would drop into the cottages alongside--and from their panting talk, what
had happened below became roughly clear. The police had arrived only just
in time. The small band defending the office was worn out, the Rector had
been struck, palings torn down; in another half-hour the rioters would
have set the place on fire and dragged out the man of whom they were in
search.

The narrator's story was broken by a howl--

"Here he comes!" And once again, as though by a rush of muddy water, the
street filled up, and a strong body of police came through it, escorting
the banksman who had been the cause of the accident. A hatless, hunted
creature, with white face and loosened limbs, he was hurried along by the
police, amid a grim silence that had suddenly succeeded to the noise.

Behind came a group of men, officials of the colliery, and to the right
of them walked the Rector, bareheaded as before, a bandage on the left
temple. His eyes ran along the cottages, and he presently perceived Mary
Elsmere standing at an open door, with a child that had cried itself to
sleep in her arms.

Stepping out of the ranks, he approached her. The people made way for
him, a few here and there with sullen faces, but in the main with a
friendly and remorseful eagerness.

"It's all over," he said in Mary's ear. "But it was touch and go. An
unpopular man--suspected of telling union secrets to the masters last
year. He was concerned in another accident to a boy--a month ago; they
all think he was in fault, though the jury exonerated him. And now--a
piece of abominable carelessness!--manslaughter at least. Oh! he'll catch
it hot! But we weren't going to have him murdered on our hands. If he
hadn't got safe into the office, the women alone would have thrown him
down the shaft. By the way, are you learned in 'first aid'?"

He pointed, smiling, to his temple, and she saw that the wound beneath
the rough bandage was bleeding afresh.

"It makes me feel a bit faint," he said with annoyance; "and there is so
much to do!"

"May I see to it?" said her mother's voice behind her. And Catharine, who
had just descended from an upper room, went quickly to a nurse's wallet
which had been left on a table in the kitchen, and took thence an
antiseptic dressing and some bandaging.

Meynell sat down by the table, shivering a little from shock and strain,
while she ministered to him. One of the women near brought him brandy;
and Catharine deftly cleaned and dressed the wound. Mary looked on,
handing what was necessary to her mother, and in spite of herself, a ray
of strange sweetness stole through the tragedy of the day.

In a very few minutes Meynell rose. They were in the cottage of one of
the victims. The dead lay overhead, and the cries of wife and mother
could be heard through the thin flooring.

"Don't go up again!" he said peremptorily to Catharine. "It is too much
for you."

She looked at him gently.

"They asked me to come back again. It is not too much for me. Please let
me."

He gave way. Then, as he was following her upstairs, he turned to say to
Mary:

"Gather some of the people, if you can, outside. I want to give a notice
when I come down."

He mounted the ladder-stairs leading to the upper room. Violent sounds of
wailing broke out overhead, and the murmur of his voice could be heard
between.

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