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The Case of Richard Meynell

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




Mary quietly sent a few messengers into the street. Then she gathered
up the sleeping child again in her arms, and sat waiting. In spirit she
was in the room overhead. The thought of those two--her mother and
Meynell--beside a bed of death together, pierced her heart.

After what seemed to her an age, she heard her mother's step, and the
Rector following. Catharine stood again beside her daughter, brushing
away at last a few quiet tears.

"You oughtn't to face this any more, indeed you oughtn't," said Meynell,
with urgency, as he joined them. "Tell her so, Miss Mary. But she has
been doing wonders. My people bless her!"

He held out his hand, involuntarily, and Catharine placed hers in it.
Then, seeing a small crowd already collected in the street, he hurried
out to speak to them.

Meanwhile evening had fallen, a late September evening, shot with gold
and purple. Behind the village the yellow stubbles stretched up to the
edge of the Chase and drifts of bluish smoke from the colliery chimneys
hung in the still air.

Meynell, standing on the raised footpath above the crowd, gave notice
that a special service of mourning would be held in the church that
evening. The meeting of the Church Council would of course be postponed.

During his few words Mary made her way to the farther edge of the
gathering, looking over it toward the speaker. Behind him ran the row of
cottages, and in the doorway opposite she saw her mother, with her arm
tenderly folded round a sobbing girl, the sister of one of the dead. The
sudden tranquillity, the sudden pause from tumult and anguish seemed to
draw a "wind-warm space" round Mary, and she had time, for a moment, to
think of herself and the strangeness of this tragic day.

How amazing that her mother should be here at all. This meeting of the
Reformers' League to which she had insisted on coming--as a spectator of
course, and with the general public--what did it mean? Mary did not yet
know, long as she had pondered it.

How beautiful was the lined face!--so pale in the golden dusk, in its
heavy frame of black. Mary could not take her eyes from it. It betrayed
an animation, a passion of life, which had been foreign to it for months.
In these few crowded hours, when every word and action had been simple,
instructive, inevitable; love to God and man working at their swiftest
and purest; through all the tragedy and the horror some burden seemed to
have dropped from Catharine's soul. She met her daughter's eyes, and
smiled.

When Meynell had finished, the crowd silently drifted away, and he
came back to the Elsmeres. They noticed the village fly coming toward
them--saw it stop in the roadway.

"I sent for it," Meynell explained rapidly. "You mustn't let your mother
do any more. Look at her! Please, will you both go to the Rectory? My
cook will give you tea; I have let her know. Then the fly will take you
home."

They protested in vain--must indeed submit. Catharine flushed a little at
being so commanded; but there was no help for it.

"I _would_ like to come and show you my den!" said Meynell, as he put
them into the carriage. "But there's too much to do here."

He pointed sadly to the cottages, shut the door, and they were off.

During the short drive Catharine sat rather stiffly upright. Saint as she
was, she was accustomed to have her way.

They drove into the dark shrubbery that lay between the Rectory and the
road. At the door of the little house stood Anne in a white cap and clean
apron. But the white cap sat rather wildly on its owner's head; nor would
she take any interest in her visitors till she had got from them a fuller
account of the tumult at the pit than had yet reached her, and assurances
that Meynell's wound was but slight. But when these were given she
pounced upon Catharine.

"Eh, but you're droppin'!"

And with many curious looks at them she hurried them into the study,
where a hasty clearance had been made among the books, and a tea-table
spread.

She bustled away to bring the tea.

Then exhaustion seized on Catharine. She submitted to be put on the sofa
after it had been cleared of its pile of books; and Mary sat by her a
while, holding her hands. Death and the agony of broken hearts
overshadowed them.

But then the dogs came in, discreet at first, and presently--at scent of
currant cake--effusively friendly. Mary fed them all, and Catharine
watched the colour coming back to her face, and the dumb sweetness in the
gray eyes.

Presently, while her mother still rested, Mary took courage to wander
round the room, looking at the books, the photographs on the walls, the
rack of pipes, the carpenter's bench, and the panels of half-finished
carving. Timidly, yet eagerly, she breathed in the message it seemed
to bring her from its owner--of strenuous and frugal life. Was that
half-faded miniature of a soldier his father--and that sweet gray-haired
woman his mother? Her heart thrilled to each discovery.

Then Anne invaded them, for conversation, and while Catharine, unable to
hide her fatigue, lay speechless, Anne chattered about her master. Her
indignation was boundless that any hand could be lifted against him in
his own parish. "Why he strips himself bare for them, he does!"

And--with Mary unconsciously leading her--out came story after story, in
the racy Mercian vernacular, illustrating a good man's life, and all

His little nameless unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

As they drove slowly home through the sad village street they perceived
Henry Barron calling at some of the stricken houses. The squire was
always punctilious, and his condolences might be counted on. Beside him
walked a young man with a jaunty step, a bored sallow face, and a long
moustache which he constantly caressed. Mary supposed him to be the
squire's second son, "Mr. Maurice," whom nobody liked.

Then the church, looming through the dusk; lights shining through its
fine perpendicular windows, and the sound of familiar hymns surging out
into the starry twilight.

Catharine turned eagerly to her companion.

"Shall we go in?"

The emotion of one to whom religious utterance is as water to the thirsty
spoke in her voice. But Mary caught and held her.

"No, dearest, no!--come home and rest." And when Catharine had yielded,
and they were safely past the lighted church, Mary breathed more freely.
Instinctively she felt that certain barriers had gone down before the
tragic tumult, the human action of the day; let well alone!

And for the first time, as she sat in the darkness, holding her mother's
hand, and watching the blackness of the woods file past under the stars,
she confessed her love to her own heart--trembling, yet exultant.

* * * * *

Meanwhile in the crowded church, men and women who had passed that
afternoon through the extremes of hate and sorrow unpacked their hearts
in singing and prayer. The hymns rose and fell through the dim red
sandstone church--symbol of the endless plaint of human life, forever
clamouring in the ears of Time; and Meynell's address, as he stood on the
chancel steps, almost among the people, the disfiguring strips of
plaster on the temple and brow sharply evident between the curly black
hair and the dark hollows of the eyes, sank deep into grief-stricken
souls. It was the plain utterance of a man, with the prophetic gift,
speaking to human beings to whom, through years of checkered life, he had
given all that a man can give of service and of soul. He stood there as
the living expression of their conscience, their better mind, conceived
as the mysterious voice of a Divine power in man; and in the name of that
Power, and its direct message to the human soul embodied in the tale we
call Christianity, he bade them repent their bloodthirst, and hope in God
for their dead. He spoke amid weeping; and from that night forward one
might have thought his power unshakeable, at least among his own people.

But there were persons in the church who remained untouched by it. In the
left aisle Hester sat a little apart from her sisters, her hard, curious
look ranging from the preacher through the crowded benches. She surveyed
it all as a spectacle, half thrilled, half critical. And at the western
end of the aisle the squire and his son stood during the greater part of
the service, showing plainly by their motionless lips and folded arms
that they took no part in what was going on.

Father and son walked home together in close conversation.

And two days later the first anonymous letter in the Meynell case was
posted in Markborough, and duly delivered the following morning to an
address in Upcote Minor.




CHAPTER XI


"What on earth can Henry Barron desire a private interview with me
about?" said Hugh Flaxman looking up from his letters, as he and
his wife sat together after breakfast in Mrs. Flaxman's sitting-room.

"I suppose he wants subscriptions for his heresy hunt? The Church party
seem to be appealing for funds in most of the newspapers."

"I should have thought he knew I am not prepared to support him," said
Flaxman quietly.

"Where are you, old man?" His wife laid a caressing hand on his
shoulder--"I don't really quite know."

Flaxman smiled at her.

"You and I are not theologians, are we, darling?" He kissed the hand. "I
don't find myself prepared to swear to Meynell's precise 'words' any more
than I was to Robert's. But I am ready to fight to prevent his being
driven out."

"So am I!" said Rose, erect, with her hands behind her.

"We want all sorts."

"Ye-es," said Rose doubtfully. "I don't think I want Mr. Barron."

"Certainly you do! A typical product--with just as much right to a place
in English religion as Meynell--and no more."

"Hugh!--you must behave very nicely to the Bishop to-night."

"I should think I must!--considering the _ominum gatherum_ you have asked
to meet him. I really do not think you ought to have asked Meynell."

"There we must agree to differ," said Rose firmly. "Social relations in
this country must be maintained--in spite of politics--in spite of
religion--in spite of everything."

"That's all very well--but if you mix people too violently, you make them
uncomfortable."

"My dear Hugh!--how many drawing-rooms are there?" His wife waved a vague
hand toward the folding doors on her right, implying the suite of
Georgian rooms that stretched away beyond them; "one for every _nuance_
if it comes to that. If they positively won't mix I shall have to
segregate them. But they will mix." Then she fell into a reverie for a
moment, adding at the end of it--"I must keep one drawing-room for the
Rector and Mr. Norham--"

"That I understand is what we're giving the party for. Intriguer!"

Rose threw him a cool glance.

"You may continue to play Gallio if you like. _I_ am now a partisan."

"So I perceive. And you hope to turn Norham into one."

Rose nodded. Mr. Norham was the Home Secretary, the most important member
in a Cabinet headed by a Prime Minister in rapidly failing health; to
whose place, either by death or retirement it was generally expected that
Edward Norham would succeed.

"Well, darling, I shall watch your manoeuvres with interest," said
Flaxman, rising and gathering up his letters--"and, _longo intervallo_, I
shall humbly do my best to assist them. Are Catherine and Mary coming?"

"Mary certainly--and, I think, Catharine. The Fox-Wiltons of course,
and that mad creature Hester, who goes to Paris in a few days--and
Alice Puttenham. How that sister of hers bullies her--horrid little
woman! _And_ Mr. Barron!"--Flaxman made an exclamation--"and the deaf
daughter--and the nice elder son--and the unpresentable younger one--in
fact the whole menagerie."

Flaxman shrugged his shoulders.

"A few others, I hope, to act as buffers."

"Heaps!" said Rose. "I have asked half the neighbourhood--our first big
party. And as for the weekenders, you chose them yourself." She ran
through the list, while Flaxman vainly protested that he had never in
their joint existence been allowed to do anything of the kind. "But
to-night you're not to take any notice of them at all. Neighbours first!
Plenty of time for you to amuse yourself to-morrow. What time does Mr.
Barron come?"

"In ten minutes!" said Flaxman, hastily departing, only, however, to be
followed into his study by Rose, who breathed into his ear--

"And if you see Mary and Mr. Meynell colloguing--play up!"

Flaxman turned round with a start.

"I say!--is there really anything in that?"

Rose, sitting on the arm of his chair, did her best to bring him up to
date. Yes--from her observation of the two--she was certain there was a
good deal in it.

"And Catharine?"

Rose's eyebrows expressed the uncertainty of the situation.

"But such an odd thing happened last week! You remember the day of the
accident--and the Church Council that was put off?"

"Perfectly."

"Catharine made up her mind suddenly to go to that Church Council--after
not having been able to speak of Mr. Meynell or the Movement for weeks.
_Why_--neither Mary nor I know. But she walked over from the cottage--the
first time she has done it. She arrived in the village just as the
dreadful thing had happened in the pit. Then of course she and the Rector
took command. Nobody who knew Catharine would have expected anything
else. And now she and Mary and the Rector are busy looking after the poor
survivors. 'It's propinquity does it,' my dear!"

"Catharine could never--never--reconcile herself."

"I don't know," said Rose, doubtfully. "What did she want to go to that
Council for?"

"Perhaps to lift up her voice?"

"No. Catharine isn't that sort. She would have suffered dreadfully--and
sat still."

And with a thoughtful shake of the head, as though to indicate that the
veins of meditation opened up by the case were rich and various, Rose
went slowly away.

* * * * *

Then Hugh was left to his _Times_, and to speculations on the reasons why
Henry Barron--a man whom he had never liked and often thwarted--should
have asked for this interview in a letter marked "private." Flaxman made
an agreeable figure, as he sat pondering by the fire, while the _Times_
gradually slipped from his hands to the floor. And he was precisely what
he looked--an excellent fellow, richly endowed with the world's good
things, material and moral. He was of spare build, with grizzled hair;
long-limbed, clean-shaven and gray-eyed. In general society he appeared
as a person of polished manners, with a gently ironic turn of mind. His
friends were more numerous and more devoted than is generally the case in
middle age; and his family were rarely happy out of his company. Certain
indeed of his early comrades in life were inclined to accuse him of a too
facile contentment with things as they are, and a rather Philistine
estimate of the value of machinery. He was absorbed in "business" which
he did admirably. Not so much of the financial sort, although he was a
trusted member of important boards. But for all that unpaid multiplicity
of affairs--magisterial, municipal, social or charitable--which make the
country gentleman's sphere Hugh Flaxman's appetite was insatiable. He was
a born chairman of a county council, and a heaven-sent treasurer of a
hospital.

And no doubt this natural bent, terribly indulged of late years, led
occasionally to "holding forth"; at least those who took no interest in
the things which interested Flaxman said so. And his wife, who was much
more concerned for his social effect than for her own, was often
nervously on the watch lest it should be true. That her handsome, popular
Hugh should ever, even for a quarter of an hour, sit heavy on the soul
even of a youth of eighteen was not to be borne; she pounced on each
incipient harangue with mingled tact and decision.

But though Flaxman was a man of the world, he was by no means a
worldling. Tenderly, unflinchingly, with a modest and cheerful devotion,
he had made himself the stay of his brother-in-law Elsmere's harassed and
broken life. His supreme and tyrannical common sense had never allowed
him any delusions as to the ultimate permanence of heroic ventures like
the New Brotherhood; and as to his private opinions on religious matters
it is probable that not even his wife knew them. But outside the strong
affections of his personal life there was at least one enduring passion
in Flaxman which dignified his character. For liberty of experiment, and
liberty of conscience, in himself or others, he would gladly have gone to
the stake. Himself the loyal upholder of an established order, which he
helped to run decently, he was yet in curious sympathy with many obscure
revolutionists in many fields. To brutalize a man's conscience seemed to
him worse than to murder his body. Hence a constant sympathy with
minorities of all sorts; which no doubt interfered often with his
practical efficiency. But perhaps it accounted for the number of his
friends.

* * * * *

"We shall, I presume, be undisturbed?"

The speaker was Henry Barron; and he and Flaxman stood for a moment
surveying each other after their first greeting.

"Certainly. I have given orders. For an hour if you wish, I am at your
disposal."

"Oh, we shall not want so long."

Barron seated himself in the chair pointed out to him. His portly
presence, in some faultlessly new and formal clothes, filled it
substantially; and his colour, always high, was more emphatic than usual.
Beside him, Flaxman made but a thread-paper appearance.

"I have come on an unpleasant errand"--he said, withdrawing some papers
from his breast pocket--"but--after much thought--I came to the
conclusion that there was no one in this neighbourhood I could consult
upon a very painful matter, with greater profit--than yourself."

Flaxman made a rather stiff gesture of acknowledgment.

"May I ask you to read that?"

Barron selected a letter from the papers he held and handed it to his
host.

Flaxman read it. His face changed and worked as he did so. He read it
twice, turned it over to see if it contained any signature, and returned
it to Barron.

"That's a precious production! Was it addressed to yourself?"

"No--to Dawes, the colliery manager. He brought it to me yesterday."

Flaxman thought a moment.

"He is--if I remember right--with yourself, one of the five aggrieved
parishioners in the Meynell case?"

"He is. But he is by no means personally hostile to Meynell--quite the
contrary. He brought it to me in much distress, thinking it well that we
should take counsel upon it, in case other documents of the same kind
should be going about."

"And you, I imagine, pointed out to him the utter absurdity of the
charge, advised him to burn the letter and hold his tongue?"

Barron was silent a moment. Then he said, with slow distinctness:

"I regret I was unable to do anything of the kind." Flaxman turned
sharply on the speaker.

"You mean to say you believe there is a word of truth in that
preposterous story?"

"I have good reason, unfortunately, to know that it cannot at once be put
aside."

Both paused--regarding each other. Then Flaxman said, in a raised accent
of wonder:

"You think it possible--_conceivable_--that a man of Mr. Meynell's
character--and transparently blameless life--should have not only been
guilty of an intrigue of this kind twenty years ago--but should have
done nothing since to repair it--should actually have settled down to
live in the same village side by side with the lady whom the letter
declares to be the mother of his child--without making any attempt to
marry her--though perfectly free to do so? Why, my dear sir, was there
ever a more ridiculous, a more incredible tale!"

Flaxman sprang to his feet, and with his hands in his pockets, turned
upon his visitor, impatient contempt in every feature.

"Wait a moment before you judge," said Barron dryly. "Do you remember a
case of sudden death in this village a few weeks ago?--a woman who
returned from America to her son John Broad, a labourer living in one of
my cottages--and died forty-eight hours after arrival of brain disease?"

Flaxman's brow puckered.

"I remember a report in the _Post_. There was an inquest--and some
curious medical evidence?"

Barron nodded assent.

"By the merest chance, I happened to see that woman the night after she
arrived. I went to the cottage to remonstrate on the behaviour of John
Broad's boys in my plantation. She was alone in the house, and she came
to the door. By the merest chance also, while we stood there, Meynell and
Miss Puttenham passed in the road outside. The woman--Mrs. Sabin--was
terribly excited on seeing them, and she said things which astounded me.
I asked her to explain them, and we talked--alone--for nearly an hour. I
admit that she was scarcely responsible, that she died within a few hours
of our conversation, of brain disease. But I still do not see--I wish to
heaven I did!--any way out of what she told me--when one comes to combine
it with--well, with other things. But whether I should finally have
decided to make any use of the information I am not sure. But
unfortunately"--he pointed to the letter still in Flaxman's hand--"that
shows me that other persons--persons unknown to me--are in possession of
some, at any rate, of the facts--and therefore that it is now vain to
hope that we can stifle the thing altogether."

"You have no idea who wrote the letter?" said Flaxman, holding it up.

"None whatever," was the emphatic reply.

"It is a disguised hand"--mused Flaxman--"but an educated one--more or
less. However--we will return presently to the letter. Mrs. Sabin's
communication to you was of a nature to confirm the statements contained
in it?"

"Mrs. Sabin declared to me that having herself--independently--become
aware of certain facts, while she was a servant in Lady Fox-Wilton's
employment, that lady--no doubt in order to ensure her silence--took
her abroad with herself and her young sister, Miss Alice, to a place in
France she had some difficulty in pronouncing--it sounded to me like
Grenoble; that there Miss Puttenham became the mother of a child, which
passed thenceforward as the child of Sir Ralph and Lady Fox-Wilton, and
received the name of Hester. She herself nursed Miss Puttenham, and no
doctor was admitted. When the child was two months old, she accompanied
the sisters to a place on the Riviera, where they took a villa. Here
Sir Ralph Wilton, who was terribly broken and distressed by the whole
thing, joined them, and he made an arrangement with her by which she
agreed to go to the States and hold her tongue. She wrote to her people
in Upcote--she had been a widow for some years--that she had accepted a
nurse's situation in the States, and Sir Ralph saw her off from Genoa for
New York. She seems to have married again in the States; and in the
course of years to have developed some grievance against the Fox-Wiltons
which ultimately determined her to come home. But all this part of her
story was so excited and incoherent that I could make nothing of it. Nor
does it matter very much to the subject--the real subject--we are
discussing."

Flaxman, who was standing in front of the speaker, intently listening,
made no immediate reply. His eyes--half absently--considered the man
before him. In Barron's aspect and tone there was not only the pompous
self-importance of the man possessed of exclusive and sensational
information; there were also indications of triumphant trains of
reasoning behind that outraged his listener.

"What has all this got to do with Meynell?" said Flaxman abruptly.

Barron cleared his throat.

"There was one occasion"--he said slowly--"and one only, on which the
ladies at Grenoble--we will say it was Grenoble--received a visitor. Miss
Puttenham was still in her room. A gentleman arrived, and was admitted to
see her. Mrs. Sabin was bundled out of the room by Lady Fox-Wilton. But
it was a small wooden house, and Mrs. Sabin heard a good deal. Miss
Puttenham was crying and talking excitedly. Mrs. Sabin was certain from
what, according to her, she could not help overhearing, that the man--"

"Must one go into this back-stairs story?" asked Flaxman, with repulsion.

"As you like," said Barron, impassively. "I should have thought it was
necessary." He paused, looking quietly at his questioner.

Flaxman restrained himself with some difficulty.

"Did the woman have any real opportunity of seeing this visitor?"

"When he went away, he stood outside the house talking to Lady
Fox-Wilton. Mrs. Sabin was at the window, behind the lace curtains,
with the child in her arms. She watched him for some minutes."

"Well?" said Flaxman sharply.

"She had never seen him before, and she never saw him again, until--such
at least was her own story--from the door of her son's cottage, while I
was with her, she saw Miss Puttenham--and Meynell--standing in the road
outside."

Flaxman took a turn along the room, and paused.

"You admit that she was ill at the time she spoke to you--and in a
distracted, incoherent state?"

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